Sunday Night Notes

I had wondered if the 49ers or the stadium planners really understood how much transit would really be needed to serve the new stadium the way that it should be. Apparently some folks think they didn't think about it adequately.
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Check out these two pictures of neighborhoods. It really shows the difference between connected places and disconnected suburbs.
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400 miles of new road is really too much. And this is the most ridiculous quote ever:

The strategy is based on decades-old migration and birth statistics and on existing land- development rights. Long-range plans for roads to serve non- existent cities don't foster speculative sprawl, the planners say; they anticipate what's already in the works.

So basically they are anticipating and developing for sprawl. That's the most round about way to deny and prove the same thing at once I've ever heard. And it begs the question again why they can't build anticipatory rail lines without people yelling that no one uses them.
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Tram construction is blamed for rents dropping in Scotland. I wonder when they are going to develop a faster way to do these things.

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.

Tuesday Night Notes

Fun in Calgary:

The industry has warned targets are market interference and will limit home builders' ability to provide as many single-family homes as buyers want.

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Recent zoning code increases allow value along the light rail line in Tempe to increase at a greater rate than similar areas in the region. It's interesting because similar areas in Phoenix are limited in their growth potential.
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I'm really excited to go to Italy next month, especially Turin.
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Orinda might be up for medium density around the BART station downtown. I think it would be cool if they made it look Tuscan.
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Freeways are big priorities, especially those big beltway gifts to sprawl.

Late Night Notes

Gonna be a busy weekend. Check out some of the things that are going on:

Looks like the Capital Planning Commission still hates getting rid of particulates. Did anyone else see this report on how they affect the lungs of children from an earlier post?
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The Green Line in Dallas is opening soon. The Green Line in Portland is opening soon. And the Northstar line is coming as well. What's on tap after that?
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Honolulu is banning BO on buses.
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Helsinki is finally ordering trams replacing the old ones from the 1970's. Man those things last a long time.

Sunday Night Notes

Kevin Flynn (Formerly of the Rocky Mountain News) reports that the first Fastracks LRVs have arrived in Denver.
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Some in Portland are worried about gentrification and displacement in neighborhoods that Portland plans to run streetcars through. I wonder though if lots of close in neighborhoods get streetcars they will all gentrify. It seems to me that gentrification occurs due to exclusivity. If you built a bunch of lines at the same time, will there still be the same effect? The same issue could arise in Denver where there will be five new lines. Interested to see what other think.
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Why don't we electrify our freight lines. Even if the lines are powered by a bit dirtier pollution, it will still come from only one power plant away from the population center until alternative energy is put in place. That is better than say every engine pushing pollutants into the neighborhoods that freight lines run through. West Oakland is notorious for this very issue. I also wonder how much of the particulates in say the Port of Oakland are due to switchers. What if we just electrified the rail yards first with electric switchers?
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Developers are waiting before they start developing around the new Purple Line.
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My lungs don't care about aesthetics. Speaking of Wien, I wish I were going back soon. I love that city. Memories...

Sunday Night Linkfest

A Democratic Gubernatorial candidate from Georgia doesn't get how transit interacts with land use:

“I think that what we have to do is to elevate light rail over the interstate highways where we already have the right-of-ways. And every so many bridges, you retrofit the bridges to be stations above.”

No, you don't build light rail on freeways anymore. Someone needs to give folks a crash course in what works and what doesn't at stimulating land use change. It's not transit in freeways.
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Matt Yglesias thinks about what the next big thing could be to spur the economy such as IT did in the late 90's or the railroad boom did in the 1800s. If we're going to spend a lot of money on an industrial policy, shouldn't we do it with something that we know works. Obviously I agree with his thoughts that building high speed rail and metro subways in the densest parts of cities would be a good start. It's also proven to work, so it seems like a no brainer.
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A plan to raise the rails in Houston through the medical center gets a writeup in the Chronicle. It seems to me that the stray current issue has been lots of fear mongering from the opponents of light rail. Also, isn't there something better to spend around $300 million dollars of fixed guideway modernization dollars than on a viaduct for a line that would only be 7 years old? Seems to me there is a $50B backlog that should be addressed first.
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O'Toole ghostwrites an editorial page at the Denver Post that has so many holes it might as well be swiss cheese. So tired of beating back stupid.

That's right. Unless we change energy sources or greatly increase light-rail ridership, we should just drive our cars to work instead.

Really? Maybe people should just not use electricity at all and read by the moonlight. It will be much cleaner. What will they come up with next?
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An interesting idea to get rail to Marin from San Francisco. Extend the Central Subway to Sausalito. How much would an anchored tube cost from end to end? It would certainly be cheaper than tunneling that whole way. But as Rafael says, you have to contend with the freakishly strong currents.

Assorted Quotes

More HSR in Spain:

By then 90% of the population will be within 30 miles of a station. New lines have already been opened to Segovia, Valladolid and Malaga in the last 18 months. New links will eventually connect France and Portugal.

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Madison has a choice between Airport and Downtown Amtrak Station

Moreover, they argue a First Street location has unlimited potential for sparking "transit-oriented" development of apartments, stores or offices that could generate millions in new property tax revenues while providing a catalyst for the long-awaited overhaul of the blighted East Washington Avenue corridor.

"Compare that to the airport, where you have zero opportunity for anything like that," says Barry Gore, a Madison-based urban planner who has previously worked on transit issues in Chicago and the Twin Cities.

Check out the Obama story at the start of the article.

H/T Planetizen
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The Streetsweeper has this to say about the Lazarus piece:

Lazarus at one point says that we will need to make our cities less comfortable in order to force our population into mass transit. Are these Japanese or European cities so uncomfortable that we will stop visiting in such great numbers? Are they so uncomfortable that their own inhabitants are fleeing in droves? I think not. So, why do we visit there (repeatedly) and long for what they have, yet fail to bring it about in our own country. Even our own "world class" cities cannot pull it off with the same panache as they do. I don' t think that we want their comfort level, because we are Americans and we deserve more.

A coworker mentioned the other day that only 20% of Americans have passports. Another lower number actually use them. I wish more people would go and see other places. Just to get a feel of not America.

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

More Notes

Not sure if you all enjoy the shorter link posts but they can be easier when I'm short on time.

A really cool look at how the Bell Red corridor could develop over time with LRT.
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An off topic but related issue, how Berkeley is paying for the city's solar panels is pretty innovative.

the city itself just issues a bond to pay for the upfront costs of installing the panels, and the homeowner then repays the government over the course of 20 years via a small line item on the property-tax bill. (This way, if the home is sold, the costs of the panels get passed on to the new owner getting the benefits.)

Not sure how this relates to transit but there must be something we can learn from this, especially since better access increases property taxes.
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Germany is looking at speed limits on the autobahn. It's good for the environment, even if it is fun to drive so fast.
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El Paso is looking to redevelop a strip mall infested street with BRT. No definition of BRT included.

Things Going On

Check out this really cool/not cool video of the swaying Manhattan Bridge. Kind of freaky when you think about how many full bends it took to break that really hard chewing gum in an old pack of baseball cards or a paperclip.
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Tom Toles is a great cartoonist.

Via GGW
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Matt Johnson has a map of ridership on the Washington Metro. Pretty informative and good lookin.
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Saying yes to the ballot measure that would outlaw streetcars in Cincinnati also outlaws any type of rail. What were they thinking?
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2/3rds in California is really annoying for tax increases. Over 62% of citizens in Marin voted for the train yet they are fighting about whether the Sonoma+Marin = 2/3rds rule applies. When do we get rid of prop 13 again?
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Shanghai Subway to be longest etc etc etc. The Chinese are moving fast.

Via Metro Librarian
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Houston one step closer to sprawl inducing road.
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A New York woman who owns a house near Columbia Pike doesn't like what will happen (italics mine):

A streetcar line would encourage further development along the Pike, generating windfall increases in property values to adjacent homeowners. I am one of those homeowners and lived in Arlington from 1991 until 2007. As much as I like to see my home value go up, I do not consider this an adequate justification for the proposed system.

Of course it's not the only consideration. But what happens when all that further development is walkable and lessens the need to drive everywhere for everything.
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The House Does NOT Like Larry Summers

Here are some Transpo folks quotes from the Hill Article:

“These theoretical economists don’t understand how the program works,” Oberstar told The Hill....“Who’s managed a construction firm? Who’s met a payroll?”
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Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) said Obama’s top economic advisers see only two ways to boost the economy: through tax cuts or by bailing out Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs.

“It wasn’t productive activity, it didn’t put any Americans back to work, it didn’t rebuild our infrastructure, it didn’t even fill in a single pothole,” DeFazio told The Hill on Tuesday when asked about Obama’s approach. “But that’s their orientation.”

Sunday News Dump

So these news dumps are just a way for me to make small comments when something doesn't warrant a whole post or I just have a bunch of things to share at once. Anyway, here's the dump for Sunday night.

Curitiba is naming its Metro. I can't wait for this to open up for us to have real vs. numbers on the modes.
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Why are more regions not doing transfer of development rights (TDR) schemes? It seems to me that this would show tangibly how you trade land for development.
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Something caught me in this Urbanophile article I forgot to mention before. I don't think it really matters how far jobs are from the center if most of them are clustered into centers. Many of the jobs in Minneapolis are not in the Central City but 60% of them are in distinct clusters. I think we need to look more closely at what job dispersal means and especially what it means for high capacity transit.
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I understand its a commuter rail station, but please do more than 4! units per acre. That's just wrong. Why not build these on the periphery and come back when the market is stronger around the station. You'll be kicking yourself when the market comes back morons. Not that it really matters with only 10 trips a day. Another reason not to go back to Austin.
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Very cool map of Detroit with SF, Manhattan and Boston drawn inside. Puts things in perspective.

via Urbanophile
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Silver Lie BRT concrete crumbles. Pattern with these BRT projects?
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A plan to streetcarize Oakland. I dig it.

Drinking from a Firehose

Here's a few tidbits from the last few days. I'm sorry for the outage but I was in Denver for CNU. The next few weeks should be a bit more stable.

Beijing wants to be a transit city...that means not waiting for more than 5 minutes for a bus. That would be awesome.

In peak hours, the minimum departure interval for subway trains will be shortened to 2 minutes; the waiting time at bus stops will be reduced to 3 to 5 minutes; public transport will account for 45 percent of the journeys in downtown areas.

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Forclosure is hitting the Lindbergh MARTA development. The area is seen as a model, but apparently that doesn't help get or keep funding.

“We worked 10 years to get to this point and to make such inroads and transformed the entire neighborhood,” said Harold Dawson Jr., president of the Harold A. Dawson Co., the project’s developer. “And unfortunately these lenders can’t see the forest for the trees.”

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Carrollton looks like the place to be in North Texas when it comes to TOD. The New York Times gave them a nod. Though what is even more interesting is that they are looking at getting Korean investors to build some of it.

Mink hopes to bring Korean developers to prospect for business around the city's three Dallas Area Rapid Transit rail stops. Those transit stations are scheduled to open in December 2010.

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Winston Salem is looking to use energy grants to plan the streetcar. I thought that was rather innovative.

The city hopes to apply for a discretionary grant through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant Program from the U.S. Department of Energy as soon as funds are available. Winston-Salem would be in competition with other local governments for the money.

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The Ragin Cajun is stumping for streetcars in New Orleans.
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Salt Lake Mayor Becker hopes the US Conference of Mayors will be able to push harder for more streetcar money.
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Looks like we have another I-10 situation in OK. I don't understand paving over rail ROW. It just doesn't make any sense in these times.
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Why bar the car when you get the milk for... wait that's cow. Well why are people buying cars if they have the zipcar option.

Connection Links

The most interesting finds of the day:

Train station revival in Redlands. Wonder if ESRI has anything to do with this...
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Peter Calthorpe is working in Toronto along the Subway extensions
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Streetcar expansion in the Big Easy?
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After the rocky start of the Music City Star Commuter Rail line, I'm really really surprised at this possible commuter rail expansion. It's in the long range plan but I thought long range meant 50 years.
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I love love love when I can go on a trip and not set foot inside a taxi. Fortunately a lot more cities are connecting their airports to downtown with transit. I do wish more places would think harder about the long term implications of not having a station in the terminal such as in Dallas or Phoenix. Yeah it meant some tunneling but it makes things so much easier! I know there are a lot of people that hate the BART to the airport connection, but I love it and use it all the time. If you need to charge me more, go for it. USA Today runs the story on rail from airports.

Memorial Day Links

Have a great Memorial Day, here are some links for good reading.

Urban Transport has an interesting chart of Energy Consumption by sector.
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Alan Pisarski decides to take on the affordability index. The PDF doesn't work, but you can get a gist of the findings and a rebuttal at Streetsblog, where Heritage kingpin Ron Utt has posted in the comments of Elana Schor's post.

It is odd that Elena was unable to get her question in during the 45 minute Q and A, especially as she was sitting next to me -- the meeting's host -- and I was handling the questions. Anyway, I'm excited about the exposure and soon we will be posting Alan's presentation so that her readers can make up their own minds.

It's funny when Heritage folks think that Streetsblog is a forum where they can win friends after continueing to hate the basic premise behind it. Streets are for people. We must be making some headway if they are starting to complain about this stuff now. Good job Streetsblog.
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More parking decks means more development downtown. Didn't you know that?
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Jon Stewart is awesome.
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Richard points out the Dutch form of accessibility planning that pushes zoning to follow the transportation infrastructure available.

Wee Hours Linkage

I'm kind of a night owl and its sometimes nice because the next days news comes out right before I go to bed. It's also bad because the next days news comes out right before I want to go to bed :)

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Apparently the TA really likes BRT on Geary. Whatever. After riding the bus on the HOV/BRT lane from LAX to Union Station I realized why the rubber tires just don't cut it. I couldn't read the news on my Iphone without getting seriously ill. I feel bad for the people who will have to ride that bouncefest in from the Richmond every morning. Sure it will be a faster bouncefest, but a bouncefest nonetheless.

The next sick part though, the completely ridiculous cost estimate of $5 billion dollars for surface subway. If it really does cost $100 million a mile and it's a ~6.5 mile line with ~2 miles of subway, why the hell would 2 miles cost $4+ billion dollars???!!! And why does it cost $100 million a mile on the surface? It's not like the T-Third with drawbridge retrofits. Someone at the TA is a little too close to those medical hash dispensaries. Plz to have new engineers!!!

I guess it really doesn't matter. The Richmond is never going to get a Metro, BART or otherwise. I'm sorry guys, you've been deemed second class citizens to the TA and Muni. Well maybe third class, because everyone who rides Muni is already second class.
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And we wonder why a ton of suburban roads get built?

The city of Charlotte has 75 percent of Mecklenburg's population, but only has 1 of 9 voting members on the MTC.

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I think we need new engineers in the bay area. All these cost estimates are insane. The airport connector is just another example of it. If there is one place I would like to see intelligent design, it's here. And 80 foot buses? Come on Transform, you know thats not possible. The Orange line had to get special permission from Caltrans to run 65 footers, just five feet longer than the usual artics.
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If Microsoft wants a light rail extension so bad, why can't they pay for it. It's thier own fault that they located so far away from the center of the region. Job sprawl has consequences, one of them being high capital cost for extensions. Papa Gates should foot the bill for this one.
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Does the Peninsula want to pay for a tunnel? I'd be interested in seeing a poll on the issue of a tunnel. I wonder if the NIMBY's would get rejected for thier high cost plans.

So Much to Read!

I've been away for a couple of days in LA and haven't been able to keep up with the feeds. It gets a little disconcerting when you take a day off and your feed reader shows 600 articles to dash through. Here are a few gems from those days. I can't comment in depth on all of them but hopefully I'll be back to full speed tomorrow. Also, if anyone is in Minneapolis for APA next weekend, let me know as I'll be there too!

Wall Street Journal - Spain has a rockin HSR system. I had heard before that the Basque separatists (ETA) aren't happy about a possible extension to their neck of the woods. Very interesting article.
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I guess history doesn't matter as much as making money. Give them some time to get some samples out of the ground. I don't see why the dig can't be a part of the development plan. Themes!
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Trees vs. Sidewalks!
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What Pedestrianist said... and Mayor Tom Bates is beating the Emerald Aristocracy at the green game. Now if we could only get his wife to find this thing called the Capital Corridor.
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MTC pushing back hard because well, they like bad plans.
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Suburban demographics are changing. Any surprise there is a market for not suburbia?
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Relating transit to your road network.

Within two to three decades, 90 percent of Wasatch Front homes should be within a mile of a major rail or express bus stop, said Mike Allegra, UTA's assistant general manager.

He describes the end result the same way one would Utah's network of roads and highways. The streetcars will act like neighborhood collector roads that move traffic to TRAX or rapid buses, which run in their own lanes, whisking people the way a major highway does. From there, passengers can transfer to FrontRunner, the rail system's limited-access freeway. "Each mode feeds the other," Allegra said.

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NIMBYs!

Opponents of a proposed commuter rail line from southwest Fort Worth to Grapevine say they will file a petition today in Colleyville saying increased train traffic would clog intersections and lower property values.

I've said this before and I'll say it again. Don't move near a rail line if you don't want to hear trains. Is that really so hard to get? This is pretty comical though. I hardly think a train every 15 minutes is going to jam up intersections. Perhaps they are thinking freight trains? Who knows.

Post Chicago Friday Night Linkfest

So I'm back from Chicago. Unfortunately my camera ran out of batteries after the first picture so I didn't get to take pictures like I have on all the other trips I've been on recently. I have to apologize for that one because man Chicago is a cool town.

The TOD bill is dead in Washington State. I agree with Dan, we deserve what we get.
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You're just figuring this out? I wonder if anyone has ever thought to cost what has been exported in terms of tax base to the suburban road complex. For now, we can look at what was exported from Atlanta to Georgia.

In 2004, each man, woman and child in the 10-county metro area funneled an average of $490 to Georgians who live outside the metro area. Put another way, metro Atlanta receives 72.5 cents in state benefits for every dollar it pays in state taxes.

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Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood names the next transportation bill Clean Tea and changes DOT's stance on bicycles.
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A Plano Republican says that they should stop giving money to DART and use it to partake in the retail sales tax war. This is why many of our regions are so messed up. We depend on sales tax and cities are competing with each other instead of building better communities for thier citizens. Canibalization is a better term.
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I'm still waiting to see a Ben Wear article where the transit critic is not Jim Skaggs, Gerald Daugherty, or that dude from Texas Monthly. Seriously. I don't really know what to say about the article otherwise. Keep digging that hole?
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If you like fantasy maps of tram lines in the United States, you'll love the Dutch blog Infrastruct. The most recent is in English but usually its in Dutch alone.
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I'm not sure if ground floor retail should be required. I think it should be flex space that has higher ceilings than the units above and able to be used for residential until the retail demand catches up.
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There are a lot of New Urbanists as well as Kunstler who would argue that skyscrapers are not green as Glaeser says they are.

Rainy Saturday Links

Looks like planning for the streetcar and future fixed guideway transit is in the works for Portland. You can find more info here at Metro's site.
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More proof that the Republicans are morons and have devolved to a party that just tries to win the news cycle. The cries that Harry Reid wants HSR to Vegas to get all the money is just ridiculous and is unfounded. Give me a break guys. Grasping at straws. And the fact that the media is reporting this dreck is disgusting. Yonah has more info, and it shows what kind of junk we'll have to fight back against. Good thing we've had some good training against the likes of O'Toole, Cox and the lot. Quote of the day from the LA Times...

(Dem Rep. David) Obey also took issue with Republicans' efforts to portray the rail funding as an earmark. "The worst thing that people can do in this town is to believe their own baloney," he said. Noting that funding decisions will be made by the Department of Transportation, he added, "The last time I looked, the new Cabinet secretary was a Republican."

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Bills are expected to go through the Texas legislature soon that would allow Dallas - Ft. Worth to have a vote to build a regional rail network.
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Salt Lake City is looking to use redevelopment districts to help pay for the streetcar. I think consultants and locals are not thinking outside the box on funding. This seems to be the first answer they come up with, as we saw in Charlotte recently. Consultants, stop being so boring!!!
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An interesting story about streetcars that once ran in Jamaica.