Thursday Night Notes: Fake Trolleys and Blown Up Ridership Estimates

These articles are from a few days ago but I wanted to clear my tabs and get some opinions.

Ogden is going to spend some money on buses that they hope will stimulate streetcar ridership. While I've been impressed with the Broadway Shuttle in Oakland that recently started running given the short headways and fast access to Specialties bakery and Bakesale Betty from City Center, I have to wonder if people honestly think they are going to get a real estimate from these faux trolleys. (Calling them trolleys is a whole other can of worms I could get into in another post) It's understandable to want to know what is going to happen and spending less money to do it. But I'm convinced that given the completely different experience, you're almost dooming any streetcar to death by running the fake trolleys, especially if the headways are limited. Would like to hear more on this from others though.
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I know we have to make ridership estimates for capital projects. Until recently ridership estimates made or broke your ability to build projects. So color me annoyed that Denver finally gets around to updating the regional land use estimates that boost ridership for the Fastracks plan. Should we think this estimate is correct? No. Ridership estimates will always be horrific when done using software built for estimating auto trips. Should Denver have gotten more federal money for the program? Yes. Given they are already underwater paying for it, why didn't they try to fix this earlier and get more than 20% from the Feds? Were they just lazy?

Regions that are doing these massive projects like LA, Seattle, Denver, Houston, and Salt Lake City should get more help from the feds. They have a plan and are moving forward with it. It's likely that these types of network expansions that make up the Transit Space Race will give more bang for the buck than one off single line expansions.
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Here's an interesting article sent in by reader David. I'm always amazed at the different issues that places like Vancouver are dealing with than the majority of the United States in terms of ridership and development pressure along transit lines.
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Finally, there are tons of academic journals out there. They make you pay for their products and don't really care if only a few academics read them. But there's always interesting things to be found. Here are some links to Elsivier journals with a barrel of research on transport issues you all might care about. If you're RSS junkies like me, put them in your reader.

Public Input in Ogden

I was really shocked by this quote in Standard Net, the newspaper for Ogden Utah:

UTA spokesman Gerry Carpenter said he is impressed with the amount of homework and energy the Trolley District group put in and believes the group has worthy goals, but it may be coming to the table too late.

That last part about coming to the table too late is outrageous considering the group has been looking at the 25th street alignment over the 36th street alignment for over a year and has been very vocal about it as well. They were never allowed at the table, so to say they were late is a bit disingenuous. I know this only because I went to speak about streetcars in Ogden about a year ago, though not to advocate for a specific route. The activists were pounding the pavement in support then and are still on the path now.

It shows a disconnect between the citizen process and leaders such as the Mayor of Ogden who haven't wanted to see the 25th street alignment considered at all because 36th was his idea. There was also thefear of the state DOT who people have always believe would not want the streetcar running on their road, whether in a dedicated ROW or not. Perhaps the upstart group should look to some of the Urbanophile's suggestions for beating state DOTs and apply them to both UDOT and UTA.

Sunday Night Notes

The mean green of UNT have done another study looking at the economic effects of constructing light rail in the Dallas region. The study says $5.6 Billion in economic benefits just from construction, not from development near the stations.
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This seems to be an issue all around the country. State roads are under state control, so it becomes harder to get local changes on them including transit. Places that are designated as State Roads seem to add another level of bureaucracy, even if they likely get gas tax money for repairs. This issue is popping up in Ogden Utah as well as on Van Ness.
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I wish alignment decisions weren't so political. The realistic solution is to look at the numbers for the starter line as we discussed in the job center post below. Check the places with the highest bus ridership and see what major job centers need to be connected. Granted I'm not familiar with Tampa, but you wouldn't need a million dollars to do a study of where the first line should go.
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The FHA is going to start giving mortgage credit for living near transit. This is part of the ACES bill better known for its fights over cap and trade:

Similar concessions on loan applicants' incomes would be extended for properties located in areas close to employment centers or mass transit lines. No concessions would be made for homes in far-flung neighborhoods that eat into family incomes because of long commutes, which would add to carbon emissions.

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An interesting article about the folks who operate out of coffee shops and other people's houses for work by internet. The digital nomad.

Ogden, Utah Photos

I spent a few days talking about streetcars with some folks in Ogden, Utah. Fortunately or unfortunately I didn't have access to the internet the last few days because of my schedule, but I did take a few movies and pictures. I wish I would have had a little more time for a vlog but perhaps if I go back. Also, if I do disappear for a few days, you can check me out on twitter as well. I still have to figure out how to use it more effectively but for the most part its random observations when riding transit or where i'm located.

Anyway, Ogden is a really neat little city and they have a spectacular downtown with some great old buildings and the nearby streetcar suburbs . It was the center of much of the railroad's east west movements. Much to my surprise, this wasn't Salt Lake City's role. I got to see the Front Runner Commuter line from a far and took some pictures of the old downtown. I'll have some more cool stuff up tomorrow or Sunday.

And if you wonder why we should keep moving towards better land use and transit that lowers emissions...take a look at what Temperature inversions do to Salt Lake City. They just became a non-attainment area.



This is 25th Street, really cool main street which used to be a really seedy part of town. Tons of cities would kill for buildings like these.



Front Runner Commuter Rail