Airport Rapid Streetcar?

It seems that BART has decided not to build a People Mover (NOT a light rail system as it says in the article) to Oakland Airport due to cost issues. The route is 3 miles long and while they state that they have already raised $250 million dollars, they still need $130 million more. Are they insane? Would it really take $380 million to go three miles??? A single track BART spur with a passing siding would be cheaper it seems.

If the money is already raised, why not build a rapid streetcar line between the Colosseum and the Airport terminal with limited stops. Currently the bus line comes every 10 minutes or so and actually makes money. One of the reasons is because its so packed all the time. There have been a few times when I have had to wait for 2 buses to pass in order to get to the airport. Even if the separated the streetcar from traffic, it would not cost $122 million per mile.

With the route I've drawn out below, it would promote office development and for more than just airport riders to take the line and provide a direct link to the airport. It would however be a little bit longer at 3.9 miles, but would get its own lanes and have a consistent travel time. I'm also pushing it through the stadiums because at some point, this land will be much too valuable to just leave as a parking lot and should develop more like urban ballparks and stadiums around the country with proximity to transit. This line could also use value capture strategies to fund improvements or the line itself.


At 3.9 miles, you could certainly build the rapid streetcar for the $250 million already raised. I bet they could have some money left over for other projects.

Election Day Coverage on The Overhead Wire

So you all know ahead of time, we're going to have an election night liveblog here at The Overhead Wire. The reason? No it's not to talk about the presidential race, but rather the Transit Space Race elections going on all over the country. Here's a preview of what we'll cover:

St. Louis - An election is being held to give Metro a half cent more in order to keep up with operating expenses and expand Metrolink, the region's light rail system. It's called Proposition M.

Santa Fe - A Sales Tax to extend Rail Runner into the city from Albuquerque.

Oakland/Berkeley - AC Transit is looking to raise the parcel tax $48 annually to pay for operations. This measure is called VV. KK is also on the ballot and would allow AC Transit to build BRT on Berkeley streets.

Los Angeles - This would be a half cent sales tax for capital expansion. It's called Measure R.

Sonoma Marin - SMART will go back to the polls to ask for an 1/4th cent sales tax to build a commuter rail line. It is called Measure Q.

Honolulu - Island residents are being asked whether they approve of a steel on steel transit system. (Crazy huh?)

Kansas City - A half cent sales tax is on the ballot to build a starter light rail line.

Seattle - Prop 1. I'm not going to be covering this as much except for some crucial updates. I'm sure the boys at STB got it covered.

High Speed Rail - $9.9 billion dollar bond for a statewide high speed rail line. This one is Prop 1a.

If I am missing something let me know. I'll be live blogging into the night until we get the Hawaii results. It's still a bit of time away. But I'll be reminding everyone every once in a while to keep your minds off the presidential election.

Making San Francisco More Accessible by Amtrak

I'm not sure what annoys me more, that BART doesn't go to Emeryville or that Amtrak doesn't stop at a BART station closer to San Francisco. In reading a Contra Costa Times article, the main person in the story commutes via Amtrak from Martinez. Martinez downtown is very isolated from other transit options in the region including BART, yet it is the county seat with all the government office buildings and courts where people have to go for jury duty. It's also a nice transit oriented downtown when it comes to its proximity to Amtrak. This is good for a San Francisco connection, but not Contra Costa County (That's a whole other discussion).

However Amtrak makes you get off at Richmond if you want to BART into the city. There is also a bus from the Emeryville Station but that isn't so direct and could be eliminated with better service. What would be nice to see is a direct link from Amtrak to the West Oakland Station or BART extension to Emeryville. Emeryville is emerging as a dense city willing to go up because it has no other choice. It also attracts lots of retail and major employers because of its inexpensive tax burden compared to Oakland or Berkeley. This is a no brainer connection that would increase BART's reach while also increasing Amtrak's reach. You can see the current transfer and how indirect it is removed Emeryville is below.


I think a more comprehensive metro system would be better to connect all the places but the MTC and others haven't been talking a lot about real core capacity increases like they should. The easiest would be to build a small loop track for Amtrak next to the West Oakland BART station. There's room and you could even use the aerial rights to pay for the small improvement and transfer station. This would pay off huge. West Oakland is the best connected station in the East Bay with more trains coming through than any other station. With the Amtrak Connection, you could get from Sacramento directly downtown without much waiting, considering the 2 minute headways into San Francisco at West Oakland in the mornings. Also, its a faster way to Oakland than from the Richmond Transfer, which is good if you're going to Berkeley. This would be a very cost effective option in my opinion to make Amtrak more attractive and might even create the need for even better service.

The Benefits of Electric Transit

After a few posts where people have been wondering about the benefits of electrification, I thought it might be useful to post on here the reasons why electrification is not just an energy argument, but rather an efficiency and operations benefit.

1. Point Source Pollution

It has been revealed in the last few years that higher rates of respiratory ailments including asthma occur near freeways, especially places like the Port of Oakland where diesel trucks and ships move in and out near the West Oakland neighborhood. In terms of transit, these emissions occur along a complete corridor. With electric propulsion, it occurs at one source, the power plant. This point source pollution is the issue and in the next 30 years of any project, we have to assume that alternative energy sources will come on line (if they haven't already, San Francisco for example gets electricity from hydro, Calgary is 100% wind) or better scrubbing technology will be available on coal and natural gas plants.

2. Operations Efficiency/Accelerations

Electric drive transit also has faster acceleration and stopping. According to TCRP report 59, 50% of energy for buses specifically is used for acceleration. Hybrid electric buses are able to capture 25% total through regenerative breaking. This type of system is available for rail systems as well, recently being introduced in Sacramento.

Electric motors also create more torque for faster acceleration. For example, the DART Kinky Sharyo LRV accelerates at 3 miles per hour per second(mphps). The Colorado railcar DMU accelerates at 1.44 mphps (1.6 according to Caltrain specs). Buses typically get around 1.5 mphps.

Caltrain has put together a matrix of all the specs for cars they are looking at for the future. DMU is 1.6 mphps, EMU is 2.0-2.5 mphps, the savings by using EMUs over a 15 stop run estimated for Caltrain is 10 minutes every run. That is a big time difference that would allow for more runs every hour. If the run takes about an hour. That means they can have 1o minute headways with 6 vehicles. You would have to add another vehicle with another driver to get the same with diesel.

If you've ever been on a PCC, they have high torque and accelerated at one time at 4 mphps often tossing patrons to the ground. It was later revised to 3.5 mphps. This is at the expense of top speed, but since they stop more often its not as necessary.

Another benefit is the lighter cars used because of electric motors being lighter which reduces wear and tear on the track as well. The electric motors also have less moving parts meaning they last much longer. The official amortization period for rail vehicles is 24 while buses are 12. However there are still PCC cars still in operation and some rapid transit vehicles like BART are reaching their 40 year mark (they should really be replaced soon though).

3. Energy Conservation

Another issue is energy conservation. In addition to regenerative breaking, there is the power draw during stops and at the end of runs. Commenter NJH mentions that when passing Diridon Station, trains are always idling, wasting energy. Electric vehicles do not need to do this, especially at stops.

Electrification is not that expensive either. Even with copper costing more and more, NJH makes the calculation.

Regarding the price of copper, you have: 3.4$/lb*pi*(0.5cm)^2*mile*9g/((cm)^3)

Definition: 8526.9645 US$

So we're looking at $8.5k/mile for the conductor. Double it, add in connections and throw a bit out for waste. The copper is not going to be a big part of the cost (given that estimates are usually around $1M/mile).

I've heard about $1.5 million per mile is somewhat normal, which is small change when you think about the benefits as mentioned above.

EPA, Regressive Progressives, A Green Link

The EPA is saying that the EIS for the Columbia River Crossing doesn't consider growth from Sprawl or water and air pollution caused by increased driving. Don't get me wrong, I think its important to look at these things but the EPA has been super schizophrenic as of late. Perhaps this is the wing of the EPA not controlled by Bush lackeys? You know, the ones that reduced the value of life...really. From the Oregonian:

The critique is drawn from EPA's review of the Columbia River Crossing's 5,000-page environmental impact statement, and it extends to other areas as well. Among those are whether doubling the congested I-5 bridge from six to 12 lanes will promote suburban sprawl; whether the combination of air toxics, noise and other pollution will punish North Portland communities living close to the I-5; and whether massive pile-driving efforts will stir up toxic sediments, compromising federally protected migrating salmon.

In other environmental news from the bay area, BRT booster Charles Siegel writes a fairly scathing critique of Berkeley residents which has become a city of regressive progressives r.

These hard-core anti-environmentalists seem to believe that they are fighting to protect Berkeley’s character against growth. They don’t realize that Berkeley’s early character as a walkable streetcar suburb was disrupted by auto-oriented development. Transit corridors were filled with drive-in uses, and they ended up being more like strip malls than like walkable Main Streets. Even in downtown, there were surface parking lots, tire stores, a strip mall, a car wash, and other drive-in uses that made it less pleasant to walk.

Obviously I'm not a fan of BRT in these corridors that used to be Key System lines, especially when its not electrified but the grounds on which this proposal is being opposed is a bit silly. It makes Berkeley residents look bad. Eric covers the worst of it.

Meanwhile, one quite confused speaker claimed that giving buses a dedicated lane would cause them to “get stuck,” and that what we really needed was “flexibility.” She suggested that with “flexibility,” AC Transit could run buses every three minutes, while implying that three-minute headways would be impossible with a dedicated bus lane. Just incredible.

It's at this point when you kind of just have to throw up your hands and say uncle. These people are never going to get it. And its sad, because even though BRT is a small step up in service, it represents a giant shift in priorities (people over cars) and better service than what exists now.

And Green News from BART, all of their peripheral systems are going solar. Pretty cool.

I Wish They Were All Like This

Man what a great find. Becks over at Living in the O has found the best bus stop mod ever. Check out the photos.

Been Thinking About Transit Density Part 2

So as a continuation of this post on transit density, we're going to look at San Francisco and San Jose. This is not transit density in the usual sense of passengers per route mile as discussed by Mr. Setty at PublicTransit.us but rather station density as discussed by Richard Layman and his oft looked at take on Belmont.

For San Francisco, Eric and others have looked at what a city wide metro would look like. However I thought it would be good to look at it from the standpoint of the sphere I created for the Oakland Map. These aerials are the same dimensions as the Oakland map as are the 5 mile spheres. In the fine grid of San Francisco, you can see that a metro as envisioned below would create a tic tac toe board where getting from destinations all over the densest parts of the city would be fairly easy.



For San Jose though I took a different approach. Instead of using downtown as the center, like Oakland, I thought about how a metro could be used to reconfigure the city and employment districts of Silicon Valley. What came out of it was a more northern sphere centered around west of the airport where there is a lot of land and buildings that could be rebuilt now that their 20-30 year life might be almost over.

It was hard to not try and cover everything instead of focusing on the sphere. These city sphere metro projects could be pretty inexpensive when compared to their resulting benefit which is why its important to think about the area in much smaller terms and corridors.



In San Jose in particular, it grew up in such a spread out pattern, that serving the area, unlike Oakland and San Francisco, would be even more daunting. But its possible to use this metro as a starting point to comprehensive feeder bus and commuter rail system that connects the major cities.

Below is an example of this exercise at build out in Austin at the same scale.



So the point of this exercise isn't to say that these networks should be built with these specific lines, but to show transit density in a core area that would promote the usage of transit in the core while also starting to change the development paradigm. If this type of service were available, walkable neighborhoods would be constructed that have more opportunities to go carless. These networks could also be used as a basis for bike planning.

Been Thinking About Transit Density Part 1

Richard has been pushing Belmont for a while now so tonight I broke down and bought the book.

Some thoughts before I read it though based on what I've read in Richard's posts and my own evolution in thinking.

I had a bit of a thought today that should have come together sooner but I was looking over Google Earth at a way to connect commuter rail/HSR directly to downtown San Jose instead of the current just outside of downtown location of Diridon station. It seems to me that what is needed in each city around the bay is a local metro that moves people quickly around the central city. Each of these metros can be connected by commuter rail lines like Caltrain along commuter corridors but the most beneficial systems will be those that serve future density, not just existing transit.

I started writing this post before going to Washington with the hope that on the plane I could make some maps. The good part is that the trip reaffirmed what I wanted to back up. That an in town metro is important to vibrancy and movement in a city. Serving the suburbs should be done, but the way we are going to make our transit systems work is with good circulation in the center to build up core density. If we could see where Washington DC was before Metro and where it is now, you would see a huge difference in the city. If the current naysayers were around then to kill projects, that project would have never been built, and the city would look very different.

But other cities should look to the future in the same way. The future benefits outweigh current costs and with more people preferring to live a city life, its got an increased benefit of soaking up growth that would usually cause gross distortions in where people live and work. This is the option of urbanism like Chris Leinberger says.

So we'll start at Oakland. Previously I made a fantasy map for an Oakland Metro that you see directly below.



This was based on getting people in and out of a city, and not really a core urban strategy. I realize that now, but when you compare it some of the Subway systems that work really well it doesn't really look quite right.

Vienna's Metro looks different. There are a number of lines that criss cross a number of ways. The same with the Washington Metro.



With that being said, here's a more core system. I've come up with these for San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose as the major regional centers but am thinking about doing other cities as well. The Space Race focuses so much on suburban serving transit that the core again is left out. But perhaps this is the way we should rethink it. We'll start with Oakland.



Now all of these maps will be at the same scale for the Bay Area. The circles are about 5 miles across and show a primary core that could densify in corridors and the core soaking up a lot of housing need and with less energy usage from density, walkable neighborhoods, and easier access to close districts.

Now I'm not sure that this necessarily needs to be a Metro Subway. It could be a dedicated lane streetcar or light rail. However a subway can go from end to end without having to stop at a light and stay on schedule with faster speeds. This facilitates use. But it might work in a smaller city with a smaller sphere than the five miles for core circulation. We should think about these implications and ask, what will get us the most riders and most future benefit instead of just thinking about cost and as I've mentioned before just bringing people into the center of the city.

Free Shipping

I was talking with my Grandmother last night about downtown Oakland. It used to be the place to go for shopping and she remembers when there were four large department stores downtown. She also mentioned something else interesting; free delivery. Since most people in the 20s and 30s took public transit shopping, if they bought an item at a department store it was delivered to their home, for free. Sure would make some transit trips easier to make when the complaint is, "I can't take that on the train."

FTA Privitization Program Hunts School Buses

Oh the places they will go...with their ideology. More tales of the Bush administration transferring wealth to private corporations. The FTA has decided to make it a requirement to allow charter services to bid for event transport that is now provided by the transit agency such as for baseball games and other special events. And now they are trying to make school bus service. But who is going to serve kids in downtrodden districts that no private entity wants to serve?

In the East Bay, about 30,000 schoolchildren use AC Transit buses to get to and from school, paying $15 a month for discounted youth passes. While many of those trips are on regular routes used for nonschool commuters, some of them with route numbers between 600 and 699 are specially scheduled and routed to serve specific schools. Local officials fear that the change sought by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) would ban those special routes.
...
"If this came to pass, it would be a disastrous development for Oakland and for many school districts in California," said Troy Flint, spokesman for the Oakland school district. Flint said it would be "a huge financial burden" for the district to pay for private contractors, and that it wasn't clear whether private companies would even be willing to serve all of the areas covered by AC Transit.

I'm not sure what to think of this, but at first thought, its the stupidest thing I've heard yet. Especially from the FTA spokesman who when asked about AC Transit situation had this to say: "Federal Transit Administration spokesman Paul Griffo said that because the regulation process is under way, the agency cannot address specific concerns such as those raised by AC Transit." That's probably because they didn't think of it, as usual.

Thinking Big: The Next Bay Area Project

I know that BART to San Jose is in the pipeline and as usual it wasn't planned to serve people but to be cost effective. This means that it goes where no one is along available ROW and skips major employment centers except Downtown San Jose. You would have thought that we might have learned something from the planning of BART in Oakland and Berkeley but apparently not.

But that isn't what i really wanted to talk about. I have a new idea for the Bay Area's newest New Start/Transit Project. I'd like to call it the Subway to the Sea 2, Urban Core Capacity Enhancement. The title is a nod to the Subway to the Sea bubbling up in LA and the New Jersey Access to the Core tunnel under the Hudson. If we're going to densify the bay area further, we need more of a metro system along major corridors. We need to be cost effective, so we should start with a corridor that would generate a lot of new ridership. So how about we build a line between the beach and downtown on Geary, build the new trans-bay tube that's been planned, and build up Broadway in Oakland to Rockridge and Berkeley under the 51 line.

Current ridership in this corridor is 56,000 for Geary and 18,600 boardings on the 51. This means that if everyone changed modes (which we know there still has to be a surface bus line for shorter trips) there could be about 80,000 riders. Given the speed of the new line and convenience it could increase ridership to way over 100,000 a day just on the line. This is a third of BART's ridership. Now the line is 19 miles from Berkeley to the Sea along the route I mentioned.

Now the line wouldn't just generate a lot of ridership, but it would generate a lot of new TOD, Office and Residential. In Oakland on Broadway, there would be a surge in new development along the corridor between College Avenue and Downtown. It's possible to capture a lot of the office and residential markets and take some pressure off of the outer sprawling suburbs. It will also take pressure off of the almost at capacity Transbay Tube.

Another feature of this would be the tunnel under the bay. it should be designed to be dual mode so that Caltrain/HSR could go to Oakland, Emeryville, and/or Jack London Square. That way Caltrain could extend into downtown and across the bay to Emeryville and possibly beyond making a connection between the jobs there and Silicon Valley (Yellow). It's possible to electrify the line all the way up to Martinez making commutes from around the horn easier with new stations in North Richmond and Hercules. It might also provide a way to keep trains away from Jack London which has had some issues with accidents. It would be a big project and more than likely cost a lot of money, but it will also be a huge ridership generator. Not only will you get over 100,000 from the subway alone, there will be the tens of thousands that want to get across the bay with a one seat ride to Emeryville and Jack London Square.

Metro Dreams

Earlier this month I posted on my dreams for San Francisco and East Bay Metros. Eric over at Transbay Blog has done the same. Check them out.

A Real San Francisco Metro

After the Oakland Map, here is the San Francisco version. I came to think that at $250 million a mile for a subway, this project might cost around the same as Denver's massive Fastrax expansion which is scheduled to cost $4.7 billion dollars. With such a massive expansion in mobility, it allows for a massive expansion in ridership. Muni currently carries about 700,000 trips a day but only 146,000 of those on the Muni Metro. But Washington Metro has get's almost 900,000 riders with its Metro system. I imagine such a system with the inclusion of Oakland's metro could push ridership way above that. Now this map was created as a BART connected system which would probably make the most sense. But I imagine some of these lines could be Muni Metro also.