Diridon Station and More Notes from French High Speed Rail

There are a couple of pieces of interest that have come out in the last week talking about high speed rail and TOD at Diridon.  Google is getting involved and SPUR is making case studies on main rail station revitalizations the centerpiece of their most recent Urbanist publication.

In regards to Google, the thinking for the Diridon area is ambitious and much more intelligent than what Apple has done with their suburban campus.  By buying up properties around Diridon, they are putting themselves at the center of a major regional transportation hub with light rail, Caltain, High Speed Rail, a revamped bus network, and future BART extensions that allow them to perhaps in the future spend less on their own private transportation modes.

"Google ultimately intends to buy all the parcels in a roughly 240-acre area that would be needed for the mega-campus, said a person familiar with the matter."

Our good friend and podcast guest host Eric Eidlin is also now in San Jose working on the Diridon project so I want to go back in time and pull out a few quotes from Episode 2 of our French HSR podcast as we think about transforming the area around Diridon Station.




Pull Quotes from Episode 2

Stephan De Fay on Return on Investment

"For its part, the French state, in designating a project to be a [project of national importance], is not saying that it wants to receive a full return on its investment in a narrow financial sense. Rather, it is affirming that it wants its money to produce real effects – real effects on the economy, on the housing market—and that these effects are not likely to materialize simply by allowing development to occur in a laissez-faire, Malthusian way."

Stephan De Fay on Overcoming Political Boundaries

"The issue that surfaced early on with the Grand Paris project was the strong and enduring divide between the governance structures of the City of Paris and that of the surrounding metropolitan region.  Just one figure that is quite awful.  In the Paris urban region, we have 1,483 mayors.  This is awful in terms of governance.  The first step of the Grand Paris was to deal with this.  We realized that it was a matter of economic competitiveness.  In order Paris to be economically competitive with other global cities—and with London in particular—we realized early one that we needed to overcome this governance problem."

Stephan De Fay on Big Development and Transportation Project Timelines

"And one point that bubbled to the top that focused a lot of attention because it’s a very big investment --32 billion Euros in this case—was the transportation project.  But the transportation project was actually not really the primary driver.  It was a consequence of a vision, where of course, mobility was a crucial element.  After articulating the vision, the next step was to figure out how to implement it.  And here we came back to transportation.  Because the problem between transportation and district redevelopment is that the transportation project takes longer than the first steps of the urban redevelopment of the district.  And in fact, you can’t really start the redevelopment of the district in earnest until the transportation infrastructure that will serve it is about to be operational.  It is not enough for this infrastructure to simply be promised.  And this is the reason why the primary focus of the Grand Paris project today is on the transit stations and supporting infrastructure.  Because the stations are the nodes of the urban development of the different districts that surround them."

Stephan De Fay on Governance

"One of the clear challenges that I noticed in California – and this hadn’t occurred to me before coming to California in October – relates to governance.  In France, we have one French railroad company and not 15. When you enter a transit station in the Bay Area, it is very strange.  In San Francisco, for example, when you enter a station it is so strange from a European perspective, that there is a lack of comprehensive passenger information.  And there is no integrated ticketing.  And so on.  But this is a big challenge for the customer.   And it is something that needs to be dealt with both at the station level and the district level."

Etienne Tricaud on Risk and Integration

"I would also like to mention a risk.  Coming from our experience, there is one risk in a project like Diridon or LA Union station.  And it is that some decisions are taken too early in terms of infrastructure, in terms of the types of projects and location of projects around the station that become obstacles for the next steps.  I remember when we were at Diridon, we had discussions, and I understood that some decisions – or perhaps not decisions, but studies – had been made regarding the location of the future BART portal, as well as for a potential viaduct for the high-speed train.  And it is good that studies had been done and reflections made on all of these questions.  But decisions on these things should only be made if – and only if – they are considered at a more global scale.  And to be sure that the decision is really the right answer for a specific item or issue within the global vision"

Podcast: High Speed Rail Station Planning in France, Parts 1 & 2

In a two part discussion of French high-speed rail and cities, guest host and German Marshall Fund fellow Eric Eidlin interviews Stephan de Fay, executive director of Bordeaux Euratlantique, the public agency overseeing the redevelopment of Bordeaux’s main train station, and Etienne Tricaud, president and CEO of AREP, the French railway’s architecture office.

We thought you might find their thoughts on the subject illuminating so we pulled some specific quotes from Episode 1.  We'll be back with more in Episode 2 in a subsequent post.


A few quotes of significance from the first episode:

On the citizens mental map of France:

HSR has fundamentally changed the mental map of France. Time-space relationships are now completely different. The French now think of their country as a network of cities that are easily connected to one another. - Etienne Tricaud

On having experts in-house:

...we exist to take risks and to take decisions. At some point, we need to be able to evaluate things by ourselves. It is not our role to do architectural design, for example. But having people on staff who know how to design, and who therefore also know how to speak intelligently with people who design is very important. This in-house competency helps us to be more relevant, both in terms of the questions that we ask and ultimately the decisions that we make. - Stephan de Fay

On urban planning:

Fundamentally, architecture is space planning, it’s organization of the space. So early on, we need to think about the organization of the pedestrian spaces of the station, the organization of the surrounding district, as well as the layout of the local transportation systems that serve the station.- Etienne Tricaud

On value:

However, if the public sector leverages that value of the investment that it is making in transportation (HSR), additional public subsidy for urban development in station areas is not necessary. In our case, our expenditures are equal to our revenues. We invest one billion euros on the district around the station and we earn on billion euros through the sale of construction rights. - Stephan de Fay

The audio above was first posted at Streetsblog USA.



The audio above was first posted at Streetsblog USA.

Transit Trends Episode II - High Speed Rail

Podcast: High Speed Rail Lessons for California from France and Germany

Eric Eidlin joins the podcast to talk about his German Marshall Fund research on High Speed Rail in France and Germany.  Definitely check it out as there are lots of great discussions about station land uses, station locations, and last mile connections.

Podcast: Houston Part II - Transportation Time

This week we continue our conversation with Christof Spieler on Houston, this time focusing on transportation including discussions about BRT, High Speed Rail, the bayou bike network and implementation of the bus re-imagining program.

Thursday Night Notes

Some notes for the weekend...

If road projects like this one had to go through new starts they would never get built. This road like all other ring roads is about development. But you're not allowed to build a transit line and let ridership grow. It has to be on target! Double standard.

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Ed Glaeser floats the "We should invest in NE Corridor for HSR only" meme that's going around. See post below. Also, how can you say we shouldn't be building major city pairs for places that do already have the density? I never understand the idea that we should just wait until conditions are just right everywhere. That's just a stall tactic.

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If transit were all designed to look this good maybe more people would ride.

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THIS is the reason for my skeptical nature on BRT. People in Berkley or in West LA are going to screw the whole plan to make it worthless. You spent all that time to get what? A red bus that skips a few stops?

Northeast Corridor Rulez!

I appreciate the Northeast Corridor and would love for us to spend more money there. But don't screw over California or other mega regions to do it. Last week Mayor Bloomberg was talking about the national investments in HSR (from Second Ave Sagas) and it seems like he's taking the attitude that investing anywhere else is silly because the NE Corridor is where its at.

With projects in Florida, California and the Midwest garnering headlines, the Northeast Corridor has taken a backseat in Washington with only one percent of federal HSR funds coming our way. “That simply just doesn’t make any sense,” he said.

Sure it makes sense, but not in the way that he wants it to. I would LOVE if we doled out money based on merit which we're starting to do with TIGER and HUD grants but then those people that are elected called politicians in places that don't have a lot of population concentrated don't want their money all sent to the Northeast Corridor. Not to mention that sometimes I feel like people don't understand geography or population of the rest of the country (not readers of this blog of course). I can't tell you how many times people say they'll be able to hop up from San Diego to visit San Francisco. When I ask them if they like 8 hour drives they say "WHAT?!"

Also, just adding up from Wikipedia CSAs and MSAs not in CSAs, along the California HSR corridor we get the following:

Los Angeles CSA - 17,786,419
SF-San Jose-Oak CSA - 7,427,757
San Diego MSA - 3,053,793
Sacramento CSA - 2,436,109
Fresno CSA - 1,063,899
Bakersfield MSA - 807,407
Stockton MSA - 674,860
Modesto MSA - 446,997
Visalia MSA - 429,668 !B9871841047192


Merced MSA - 245,321

Then there are a bunch under 200,000. But that is ~34.4 million or 11-12% of the United States population. Compare that with the NE Corridor numbers from the New Republic blog post on Mega Regions. From the graphic we can add up to about ~44.2 or 14-15% along the NE Corridor. I left out Springfield and Poughkeepsie.

In any event, I hope these loosely added numbers put some things into perspective. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to get out of it but felt like it was close. I'm guessing that the Midwest Hub HSR network probably puts together city pairs that add up to a lot of population as well. The difference between the NE Corridor and other regions though, is that the NE Corridor exists, Amtrak from San Diego to Sacramento or San Francisco does not. Again, I'm not saying don't invest in the Northeast Corridor, or that medium speed rail is a great idea (that's a whole other post) but also let's not pretend like the Northeast Corridor is the only place where HSR can exist. It is not the center of the Universe. That is the Planet Nieuw-Vennep.

Making Stuff Up

I know that Robert and everyone else is going to take a hammer to this one, but it's really annoying when people like Megan McArdle just make things up or toss out random numbers to make her feelings on a subject seem right. Here's the immediate culprit that made me want to post.

San Francisco-LA, the route my fellow journalist wanted to travel, isn't even on this map; the Bay Area MSA only has about 4 million people in it. By contrast, the smallest city on the Chinese map has a population over 5 million, and that's considerably understated, because I used just the population of the city, not the outlying areas that might conceivably drive in to use the HSR.

I know that blogs are blogs, but where is the sourcing for the numbers? If I use numbers I'm always trying to cite them. Why is she using MSA of San Francisco and Oakland instead of the Bay Area CSA? The Bay Area CSA is actually 7.4 million, not 4 million. That's a HUGE difference. Not to mention that she's talking about SF to LA, wherein LA's CSA is 17.8 million people! And then where's the link to Chinese cities? A simple wikipedia search would help even a little.

Finally, there are other high speed rail lines that were built WITH regard to environmental issues and have greater similarities to the possible US system. I think a comparison to France, Spain, or Netherlands/Germany would have been more apt in this circumstance.

Anyway, posts like this are why I get annoyed at general commentators taking stabs into my area of specialty. I've also mentioned before that if they are this bad at my subject, how are they in other people's areas? The focus of blogs like Human Transit, the Urbanophile, or the Transport Politic are always going to be much more informative than most of Megan's posts. But we push back on her because more people read her blog.

Chris Matthews Says Stimulate With HSR

I posted a few weeks ago about an discussion on Real Time with Bill Maher where Chris Matthews was arguing with a "Amtrak does nothing" conservative. Today he goes on his show and says that HSR is the way to stimulate the economy. Obviously there is a lot more than that but I like the way he's going.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Discussion is Lacking

This exchange on Real Time with Bill Maher between Chris Matthews and Ross Douthat is the perfect example of why this country is so misinformed. While Chris goes on extolling the virtues of High Speed Rail, all you can hear Ross say is that Amtrak is heavily subsidized. No mention of highway subsidies or other market distortions, just the fact that Amtrak is government run. And no one really fights back. Never mind that most of the time it has to borrow tracks or has a higher operating recovery ratio than any other mode in this country.

Anyway, listen to the exchange and see how the country can be mislead so easily by people that don't discuss things with the facts. I always say this when I listen to people I think might be smart talk about a subject I know something about, but I need to remind myself that if they are this unintelligent about a subject I know about, how much do they know about things I don't know about, and what kind of misinformation am I getting on other subjects?

You can listen here before the flash uploads.

For some reason the embed feature wasn't working. The audio is still at the link above...

Wednesday Night Notes

Notes for folks:

China is seeking their own manifest destiny with trains. (Reuters)
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China's Urban property is going up in price. (Wall Street Journal)
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A new (to me) place to get all of your transport research needs!
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The most hilarious (unintended of course) trucks vs. trains conspiracy theory I've ever read. I probably shouldn't link to it, but I couldn't resist. (Examiner)
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The Pedestrianist discusses what should happen to San Francisco's Central Freeway.
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Why people underestimate the pain of their commute. (Frontal Cortex)
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Why the Expo Line goes where it goes... (via @thetransitfan)

Setting the Table for a Buffet

Perhaps a knowledgeable and keen businessman such as Warren Buffet is the key to restoring the railroads to prominence in this country. It would be interesting to see if such a large buy in BNSF is going to give others a small push to start thinking about passenger rail as a buy situation as well. One of the things that I think he will benefit from are the billions of dollars that will go into rail lines between cities for high speed rail. Because the government is pushing harder for HSR than anything else, and so far it's a popular program, he knows that if he plays correctly within the confines of the current government parameters, the sky is the limit. Who knows, perhaps he'll be on track to follow in Vanderbilt's footsteps.

Thursday Night Notes

They don't want a tram, they want a subway. via (GGW)
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Paz takes a look at TOD at Castle Shannon. I agree with him that transit agency parking lots often get in the way of good place making.
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Siemens has built high speed trains for Russian winters, they hope they can build them for America as well.
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The GAO has a report out on affordable housing and TOD.
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Is there just a little bit of cognitive dissonance on the issue of growth boundaries in Portland? People understand that they save farmland by doing infill development and over 80% in a recent survey support that. But when asked if they want higher densities near them, it's 42% no. Perhaps if they were told how much it would save them in taxes?
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Yup, no one is in charge. Politics, not intelligence governs Bay Area transport policy.
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Circle line BRT is dead. That's kinda good, maybe they'll do it right next time.

Small Cities Paying for Flights

I'm not really quite sure what to think about this. It seems as if we had a real national rail program that chambers of commerce and cities wouldn't have to be ponying up money to guarantee a certain financial minimum to the airline industry.

With airlines cutting back service in a weak economy, some cities that are too big to qualify for federal help but too small to keep the planes flying in have stepped up with ways to hang on: paying the airlines, either directly or indirectly.

Places like Duluth should have a faster connection to Minneapolis and the airport there. It doesn't really make sense to keep a slush fund that the airline can raid when the economics don't work out for them. There are many even smaller cities out there that depend on Amtrak for their carless connections out of the area. These smaller cities should be on the forefront of regional rail service to larger metro areas with major airports and service.

Southwest Airlines CEO Fires First Shot

And so it begins. the Southwest Airlines CEO believes that the federal government shouldn't give it a competitive advantage.

After his speech, I asked Kelly whether his company would likely oppose high-speed passenger rail, given how precious every dollar has become to the airlines. Southwest's opposition years ago was a key reason a previous effort to build a high-speed line linking Dallas, Austin and Houston died. (Trains are seen by many as likely to compete with and in some cases perhaps eliminate short-haul flights.)

He said it's too early to oppose any particular plan, but said federal support for bullet trains shouldn't put airlines like his at a competitive disadvantage.

Perhaps if you can't beat them, you should join them. But airlines aren't looking that far ahead yet. Perhaps they'll start screaming when gas prices go back up again. I don't quite understand why they can't see the future in which higher oil prices make life for airlines hard. If last summer wasn't a wake up call, they'll be getting water splashed in their face soon.

High Speed Rail for the Masses

Yesterday was such an HSR frenzy that I thought it should be documented:

First, David Lazarus questions whether transit will work in the United States. He talked to some "experts":

He said investments in transit projects need to be accompanied by policies designed to make driving costlier and thus make public transportation more attractive. These policies include significantly higher charges for parking virtually wherever you go and the increased use of toll roads.

I don't like this frame. You mean we need to charge what they really cost. It's not like we would inflate the cost just for the heck of it to some arbitrary number. I guess we could, but really if people just realized how much that garage spot cost or how much the roads really cost things would be much different. Lazarus concludes:

I hate to be cynical, but I simply can't imagine political leaders at the local, state or federal level telling voters that they support a big increase in gas taxes, sky-high parking fees and high-density neighborhoods.

There's a lack of supply of those types of neighborhoods. I really wish people would realize this. It's not that some people don't want to live in these types of environments. It's that for the most part it's illegal. That we need to change.

But a question I had coming out of it is whether HSR can really be called "transit". We don't call air travel transit do we? It seems to me like a kind of grey area. How do you define what transit is and what it isn't. Lazarus was also on NPR's Marketplace.
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The head of Ryanair is obviously going to jump up and down and hold his breath if the UK government states that all short haul flights should be by train. Obviously not all trips can be by train but England really shouldn't be hop skipping inside the country when there is a faster alternative.
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Rob talks Intercity buses. They are cheap and becoming more plentiful. I don't see them being an alternative to rail as some believe. Rob also talks Bent Flyvbjerg. Many people use his work to say we shouldn't do megaprojects. Rob must be back to posting more. Free time?
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That China place is rocking along with their HSR lines. Many places that were super far apart have halfed their travel time between the two. In such a large country, HSR will bring them closer.
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Glaeser. I've heard he's a good economist. How come everything I read from him that's politically tinged is awful. Ryan explains.

Sunday Night Notes

Karlsruhe, notorious for their introduction of tram trains, is looking at nickel cadmium batteries for short segments of the line where there is a switch from Mainline to Tram operations.
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Fort Collins had a street railway until 1951, some of the tracks were dug up under the pavement recently.
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All about priorities:

Luoni said the key is spending priorities, not lack of funds. The money the federal government spent in one year on the Iraq war could have funded 200 light rail transit systems.

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We might be seeing solar ferry service in Hong Kong. At some point the bay area was supposed to have a more robust ferry system, but I haven't heard or seen anything about it lately.
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Gavin seems to not really care. Please go away soon.
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The New York Times editorial on HSR is pretty good. We need a transportation bill, not a stall. And they don't call it the highway bill!

Despite his support of the idea of high-speed rail, President Obama has put off dealing with the national transportation bill for another 18 months. That is a delayed opportunity to move forward on an important new national transportation plan to expand public transit in much the way the Federal-Aid Highway Act did for roads more than 50 years ago.

Until Mr. Obama and members of Congress can enact a comprehensive new transit agenda, both have an obligation to make a down payment on high-speed-rail corridors across the nation.

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Tough times for TOD and Mixed Use projects in Atlanta

Where's Your Parachute?

I agree with Ryan, Glaeser seems to forget all his own research when he wants to become Randall O'Toole's cousin. Here's the quote that gets me though:

For most workers in America’s sprawling metropolitan areas, no train is going to drop them within walking distance of their home or job. In Greater Houston, only 11.6 percent of jobs are within three miles of an area’s center and more than 55 percent of jobs are more than 10 miles away from the city center.

And your point is? No airplane will either. Unless we finally get our flying cars. Isn't that what HSR is competing against? 500 mile or less trips that could be made by train instead of plane? Especially in smaller cities between that don't have plane service. There is a huge untapped market out there.

I still think people don't quite get what HSR is supposed to do. They think train and think transit. I guess that's good because airplanes are basically flying buses. At least in a train you might have some room to yourself where the person next to you won't have his elbow in your ribs.

Independence Day Notes

Links and ink:

I really like the idea of setting a baseline for ridership and road usage so you can use it for performance measures later. I hope that is what they are looking at. It might also be illuminating to see regions compared to each other. I hope they would take pedestrian and bike counts as well.
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The draft streetcar network plan is out in Portland. Looks pretty extensive.
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New Jersey is expanding the transit hub tax credit to include industrial areas that use rail access.
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Smart Growth is killing cities!!! Or rather, it's more NIMBYs. Not that I can't blame them, we don't really need more high end housing in this region do we? Considering almost all of it is high end. And looking at it from a tax perspective, building four houses that are 250,000 versus a million dollar single house brings in the same taxes in property, but greater taxes in local services such as restaurants and groceries. Has anyone ever looked at those numbers?
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This is cool. Making subways rainproof FTW.
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This could bring transit sexy back.
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Colorado Railcar reincarnated?
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More NIMBY articles! This time on the peninsula HSR version. My favorite quote:

Whatever option is chosen, peninsula residents simply want a transparent process that considers their opinions, said Nadia Naik of Palo Alto, who helped form a citizens' group, Californians Advocating for Responsible Rail Design. "That would give us tremendous peace of mind," Naik said. "Nobody's done that. We get a lot of, 'Oh, you're just 50 people who complain.'"

Is it really 50?

Oh Hai Secretary LaHood!

Thanks to Adam P for pointing out this brilliant picture of Ray LaHood on a TGV train.

Via AFP