I'm taking a few days off and I'll be nowhere near a computer. I think it'll be nice, until I come back to 1000 blog posts and articles in google reader. I'm going to play some of my favorite old posts though, timing them for each day I'm gone.
But I'd also like to make this an open thread. What's going on out there in the space race? What's going on in your city?
3 comments:
living in San Jose, I am frequently reminded of the interesting planning that went into the VTA light rail system. At the same time, I wonder if all the lines can ever function as a more fluid network.
Come to think of it, I believe light rail in Santa Clara county came too soon. It seems as though VTA planners tried to accommodate office park sprawl instead of reforming it.
VTA planners had, and continue to have, some very strange ideas about where light rail should go. Just look at the shape of the network. The busiest potential segment (along the 22 route) hasn't been built, instead we have a long street-running section down First, a long meander through the office parks to Mountain View, and a somewhat incongruous route that goes north and then back south down Capitol.
Light rail is also too slow to serve as the backbone of the transit system that can get you across the county: Caltrain should do that, but can't for lack of funding, and lack of proper integration with VTA's services and fare system. And now VTA is obsessed with getting BART at the expense of all else, for a corridor that could easily be served by a commuter rail line or two, and the rest of the money spent on turning Caltrain into the rapid transit system it should be.
I think they have a good opportunity as soon as all of those building start to die. Many of them have the usual 20-30 year shelf life and will be ripe for redevelopment. Arcady is right though, they are hell bent on BART to San Jose. I might be for it if it weren't the same existing ROW is the best ROW crap that has been built in this country over the last 50 years. If you're going to use existing ROW, might as well just do Caltrain and electrify.
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