On this week's Talking Headways podcast we chat with Jeramey Jannene of Urban Milwaukee about his fair city. He discusses a whole bunch of topics including the streetcar, transit funding, freeway teardowns, bike share, and water. So check out this week's episode and find out more about the density of Wisconsin's largest city. You can also find it on Streetsblog, iTunes, or Stitcher.
Showing posts with label Streetcar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Streetcar. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Friday, August 1, 2014
Is Good Urban Form Slowing Us Down?
There has been a lot of chatter recently on the issue of fast vs slow transit. This week is the perfect time for this discussion as two major United States transit projects of differing stripes opened up; the Metro Silver Line in Washington DC and the Tucson Streetcar.
Last week, Yonah Freemark wrote a post discussing the benefits of fast transit specifically calling out the Green Line in Minneapolis for running 11 miles in about an hour. Now, this line has parts of what people are always asking streetcars to have; dedicated lanes. "They get stuck!" Yet this line, as well as the T-Third in San Francisco and others mentioned in the post are still "too slow". Yonah goes on to discuss metro expansion in Paris leaving a discussion of politics and costs of rapid transit to the very end.
To me this points to the first place where urbanism and fast transit disagree with each other, block sizes and stop spacing. By trying to maximize connections to the community, the transit line has to stop more often, slowing speeds. And if built into a legacy urban fabric, this also includes negotiation with tons of cross streets where designers don't give priority to the transit line. This happens in Cleveland on the Health Line BRT as well as the Orange Line in Los Angeles, even though it has its own very separated right of way. The Gold Line Light Rail in LA and the Orange Line originally had the same distance, yet one was 15 minutes faster end to end. A lot of this had to do with less priority on cross streets given to the Orange Line, not because it was a bus or rail line.
We continue to talk as if dedicated lanes are magic, but its a suite of tools that helps speed transit along inside of our wonderful urban fabrics. Transit is directly affected by urbanism, if we let it be.
But then there is the other side of this discussion. Transit's effect on urbanism. Some New Urbanists believe that slow transit is necessary for building better urbanism. Rob Steuteville of New Urban News calls this "Place Mobility". The theory goes like this:
To increase the viability of streetcars in a world dominated by a "cost effectiveness" measure dependent on calculations of speed, the "Trip Not Taken" was refreshing. Many transit lines were being built without regard to neighborhood or were cheap and easy. But they were fast! You can see how the "cost effectiveness" measure intervened with elevated rail through Tyson's Corner (yes I'm still annoyed) or the numerous commuter rail lines on freight rights of way in smaller regions that probably should never have been built. But they were fast!
Yes the streetcar helps with creating place in the minds of developers and urban enthusiasts, but no it doesn't do the whole job. The Pearl District and Seattle's South Lake Union were perfect storms of huge singular property ownership, massive investments in additional infrastructure, proximity to a major employment center, lack of NIMBYs, and a strong real estate market. But look at the results. It's hard to argue that the streetcar didn't help develop this massively successful district in one of planning's favorite cities. But it's also hard to give it all the credit.
The crux of the argument is that place making should be the ultimate goal and slowing things down makes things better. And many cities see the streetcar as some sort of fertilizer that makes it grow and a reason to change zoning code. Because of very stringent local land use opposition (read NIMBY), this makes a lot of sense. If a streetcar can lead to the restructuring of land use or the fulcrum of a district revitalization, I see that as a benefit. But again, don't give it too much credit.
From a safety standpoint this slowing down idea makes sense. The Portland Streetcar has been in collisions, but no one has died or been seriously hurt, unlike a number of high profile collisions in places like Houston, where drivers can't seem to follow the rules. Our society also puts up with over 30,000 deaths a year to get places faster on interstate highways as well.
But...
Ultimately the base success of a transit line isn't in the amount of development it has spurred or the zoning it has changed. It's the ability to get a lot of people where they want to go, in a timely fashion. A commenter on Jarret Walker's Human Transit Blog says it best.
But if we are going to spend so much money, we might as well figure out a way to transport the most people possible. Sometimes that might be streetcars. Other times it's not.
But back to urbanism and transit.
In Portland, dedicated lanes on the North/South parts of the line wouldn't make as much difference because it has the same issues we mentioned with the Green Line above and narrow streets. Streetcars have to deal with urbanism. I think streetcars are ok as a circulator in downtowns, because these are the trips that help people get around dense places that are proximate. You can bring your groceries on when its raining and disabled folks can load their wheelchairs with dignity. Tourists like the certainty of the tracks and little kids love the ride. We see that even on 20 minute headways, 13,000 riders are on the line every day. It's hard to argue with that, given it's more riders than many first choice bus lines in some major cities without rail.
However for linear route based transit operations, we need dedicated lanes and signal priority to at least make the expenditure worthwhile and play nice with our urbanism. Once you get outside of a district, people want to get places. I like subways and wish we had more, but it seems politics and money seem to get in the way like Yonah mentions above. Some might even argue that before we even think about building fixed guideway lines, we should focus on our buses. Perhaps we should have a threshold system ridership before putting in rail, to determine whether all options for increasing ridership have been exhausted. Houston's new network plan could be a good guide. And personally, I don't think BRT should be special. It should be the norm. Luckily the new 5339 bus facilities funding guidance could allow for BRT and Rapid Bus funding (they are NOT the same thing).
But there's a new report out which discusses which factors drive ridership for fixed guideway transit once we decide to go that route. Employment and residential density around transit lines, the cost of parking downtown, and grade separation were found to be the most effective measures when put together to drive ridership according to a recent TCRP report released earlier this month. Individually employment had an r squared of .2 while the others had negligible impacts. Only taken together as a whole did these measures drive the most ridership as seen below.
The report goes on to say "The degree of grade separation is likely influential because it serves as a proxy for service variables such as speed, frequency, and reliability that may lead to greater transit ridership."
But determining success is hard. In fact, its so hard that of the transit projects surveyed, the only thing that transit agencies seemed to agree on (it has dots in every project below) was that the line would be cheap! We discussed this briefly above.
So all of this is to say that Streetcars are not the worst transit ever and urbanism will affect transit, and transit will affect urbanism. We just need to decide what the appropriate ways are for intervention such that we maximize people's ability to get to the places they want to go and build great communities. Let's not swing the pendulum too far to either side, it might tip the balance against us.
Last week, Yonah Freemark wrote a post discussing the benefits of fast transit specifically calling out the Green Line in Minneapolis for running 11 miles in about an hour. Now, this line has parts of what people are always asking streetcars to have; dedicated lanes. "They get stuck!" Yet this line, as well as the T-Third in San Francisco and others mentioned in the post are still "too slow". Yonah goes on to discuss metro expansion in Paris leaving a discussion of politics and costs of rapid transit to the very end.
To me this points to the first place where urbanism and fast transit disagree with each other, block sizes and stop spacing. By trying to maximize connections to the community, the transit line has to stop more often, slowing speeds. And if built into a legacy urban fabric, this also includes negotiation with tons of cross streets where designers don't give priority to the transit line. This happens in Cleveland on the Health Line BRT as well as the Orange Line in Los Angeles, even though it has its own very separated right of way. The Gold Line Light Rail in LA and the Orange Line originally had the same distance, yet one was 15 minutes faster end to end. A lot of this had to do with less priority on cross streets given to the Orange Line, not because it was a bus or rail line.
We continue to talk as if dedicated lanes are magic, but its a suite of tools that helps speed transit along inside of our wonderful urban fabrics. Transit is directly affected by urbanism, if we let it be.
But then there is the other side of this discussion. Transit's effect on urbanism. Some New Urbanists believe that slow transit is necessary for building better urbanism. Rob Steuteville of New Urban News calls this "Place Mobility". The theory goes like this:
When a streetcar -- or other catalyst -- creates a compact, dynamic place, other kinds of mobility become possible. The densest concentrations of bike-share and car-share stations in Portland are located in the area served by the streetcar. That's no coincidence. You can literally get anywhere without a car.In Portland parlance, this is the "Trip Not Taken". When you build up the urban fabric of a city, many usually induced trips disappear. That car trip to the grocery store becomes a walk and that streetcar trip to Powell's Books might be a bike trip now. Or in the world of the web, that trip might change hands, from you to the delivery truck. In Portland at the time they calculated a 31 million mile reduction in VMT from the housing units built along the streetcar route.
To increase the viability of streetcars in a world dominated by a "cost effectiveness" measure dependent on calculations of speed, the "Trip Not Taken" was refreshing. Many transit lines were being built without regard to neighborhood or were cheap and easy. But they were fast! You can see how the "cost effectiveness" measure intervened with elevated rail through Tyson's Corner (yes I'm still annoyed) or the numerous commuter rail lines on freight rights of way in smaller regions that probably should never have been built. But they were fast!
Yes the streetcar helps with creating place in the minds of developers and urban enthusiasts, but no it doesn't do the whole job. The Pearl District and Seattle's South Lake Union were perfect storms of huge singular property ownership, massive investments in additional infrastructure, proximity to a major employment center, lack of NIMBYs, and a strong real estate market. But look at the results. It's hard to argue that the streetcar didn't help develop this massively successful district in one of planning's favorite cities. But it's also hard to give it all the credit.
The crux of the argument is that place making should be the ultimate goal and slowing things down makes things better. And many cities see the streetcar as some sort of fertilizer that makes it grow and a reason to change zoning code. Because of very stringent local land use opposition (read NIMBY), this makes a lot of sense. If a streetcar can lead to the restructuring of land use or the fulcrum of a district revitalization, I see that as a benefit. But again, don't give it too much credit.
From a safety standpoint this slowing down idea makes sense. The Portland Streetcar has been in collisions, but no one has died or been seriously hurt, unlike a number of high profile collisions in places like Houston, where drivers can't seem to follow the rules. Our society also puts up with over 30,000 deaths a year to get places faster on interstate highways as well.
But...
Ultimately the base success of a transit line isn't in the amount of development it has spurred or the zoning it has changed. It's the ability to get a lot of people where they want to go, in a timely fashion. A commenter on Jarret Walker's Human Transit Blog says it best.
But the romantic impulse towards slow transit wears away quickly if you have no choice but to rely on it all the time! I don't have a car, so I rely on buses that travel excruciatingly slowly, wasting much of my time.As someone who has gotten rid of my car and considers myself a walking, bike riding, transit loving (and sometimes zipcaring) urbanist, I find it very annoying that it takes an hour to go three miles here in San Francisco on the bus. And if I need to get downtown, I take the Subway which is a half mile away versus the streetcar which is half a block away because time does actually matter. We see this decision play out every day when people choose to drive cars over using transit.
But if we are going to spend so much money, we might as well figure out a way to transport the most people possible. Sometimes that might be streetcars. Other times it's not.
But back to urbanism and transit.
In Portland, dedicated lanes on the North/South parts of the line wouldn't make as much difference because it has the same issues we mentioned with the Green Line above and narrow streets. Streetcars have to deal with urbanism. I think streetcars are ok as a circulator in downtowns, because these are the trips that help people get around dense places that are proximate. You can bring your groceries on when its raining and disabled folks can load their wheelchairs with dignity. Tourists like the certainty of the tracks and little kids love the ride. We see that even on 20 minute headways, 13,000 riders are on the line every day. It's hard to argue with that, given it's more riders than many first choice bus lines in some major cities without rail.
However for linear route based transit operations, we need dedicated lanes and signal priority to at least make the expenditure worthwhile and play nice with our urbanism. Once you get outside of a district, people want to get places. I like subways and wish we had more, but it seems politics and money seem to get in the way like Yonah mentions above. Some might even argue that before we even think about building fixed guideway lines, we should focus on our buses. Perhaps we should have a threshold system ridership before putting in rail, to determine whether all options for increasing ridership have been exhausted. Houston's new network plan could be a good guide. And personally, I don't think BRT should be special. It should be the norm. Luckily the new 5339 bus facilities funding guidance could allow for BRT and Rapid Bus funding (they are NOT the same thing).
But there's a new report out which discusses which factors drive ridership for fixed guideway transit once we decide to go that route. Employment and residential density around transit lines, the cost of parking downtown, and grade separation were found to be the most effective measures when put together to drive ridership according to a recent TCRP report released earlier this month. Individually employment had an r squared of .2 while the others had negligible impacts. Only taken together as a whole did these measures drive the most ridership as seen below.
The report goes on to say "The degree of grade separation is likely influential because it serves as a proxy for service variables such as speed, frequency, and reliability that may lead to greater transit ridership."
But determining success is hard. In fact, its so hard that of the transit projects surveyed, the only thing that transit agencies seemed to agree on (it has dots in every project below) was that the line would be cheap! We discussed this briefly above.
"Provide fixed guideway transit in corridors where inexpensive right of way can be easily accessed"Which is many times why we end up with slow transit. It's cheap. We're cheap. Streetcar costs are below that of light rail or subways and since its in a mixed traffic right of way, it will be cheaper politically than BRT. Commuter rail on freight rights of way is the best to them though even though its the worst at creating ridership. To me it's is even cheaper because it usually ignores the chart above with the focus on employment and residential density.
So all of this is to say that Streetcars are not the worst transit ever and urbanism will affect transit, and transit will affect urbanism. We just need to decide what the appropriate ways are for intervention such that we maximize people's ability to get to the places they want to go and build great communities. Let's not swing the pendulum too far to either side, it might tip the balance against us.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Anti-Sprawl Transit Chief?
Former Charlotte transit chief Keith Parker has pushed San Antonio towards Streetcar and BRT faster than anywhere else I've seen in the last few years. He had just moved in to that position back in 2009. According to the Express News, he hopes to have lines under construction by January of 2012.
The best part isn't the streetcar push though, it's that they are taking funding to spend on urban projects that would have been spent in unincorporated parts of the county.
For those of you not familiar with Texas land use issues, unincorporated areas generally have no zoning restrictions and very little subdivision restrictions. Regions like Houston have areas outside the city limits that form Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs) to provide water and sewer infrastructure but ultimately they end up sucking a lot of transportation funding away from cities given their peripheral nature. To be fair, I grew up in a place that was once a MUD and then annexed by Houston. It was well planned for a burb but most of them are not master planned communities that end up with 65,000 people.
In planning school one year we had class t-shirts that said "In the ETJ, no one can hear you scream". The extra territorial jurisdiction is a part of the county which the city can't zone but can annex, meaning you're going to get the worst sprawl you've ever seen from those parts of the region. So with this quote I was quite happy to hear that the county wasn't going to get sprawl generating funds and that it quite possibly could be used for a streetcar.
The best part isn't the streetcar push though, it's that they are taking funding to spend on urban projects that would have been spent in unincorporated parts of the county.
“Removing $55 million from the county,” he [opponent] said, “diminishes our ability to provide infrastructure services in unincorporated areas of the county.”
For those of you not familiar with Texas land use issues, unincorporated areas generally have no zoning restrictions and very little subdivision restrictions. Regions like Houston have areas outside the city limits that form Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs) to provide water and sewer infrastructure but ultimately they end up sucking a lot of transportation funding away from cities given their peripheral nature. To be fair, I grew up in a place that was once a MUD and then annexed by Houston. It was well planned for a burb but most of them are not master planned communities that end up with 65,000 people.
In planning school one year we had class t-shirts that said "In the ETJ, no one can hear you scream". The extra territorial jurisdiction is a part of the county which the city can't zone but can annex, meaning you're going to get the worst sprawl you've ever seen from those parts of the region. So with this quote I was quite happy to hear that the county wasn't going to get sprawl generating funds and that it quite possibly could be used for a streetcar.
Monday, February 21, 2011
This is a Boondoggle
This is a boondoggle. It's a craft project that we used to do in Boy Scouts so that we had something to put our keys on.
via Etsy Crap
Now, the overuse of the term boondoggle to describe projects that may or may not be bad but rather the writer doesn't like because its a hefty investment is epic. I find that its mostly writers and columnists who also use the phrases:
Streetcar Named Desire - Seriously. Stop it. It wasn't cool the first time you thought of it for an article headline, what makes you think its original the millionth time? Searching for an article on streetcars shouldn't bring me every mom and pop production of a a Tennessee Williams play.
19th Century Technology - So was the car. Karl Benz is the originator of the four stroke engine we know today in 1885. Frank Sprague made electric traction (electric railways) usable en masse in 1887. Also Portland Cement that we use in concrete was from the 1840's.
Driving pays for itself - I'm not going to waste time typing what people that read this blog already know.
If anyone has any other terms that the opposition uses that drive you nuts because of their truthiness, please use the comment section below. I saw boondoggle for the umpteenth time today while reading some articles, and it kinda made me want to hurl. But I wrote this to vent instead.
via Etsy CrapNow, the overuse of the term boondoggle to describe projects that may or may not be bad but rather the writer doesn't like because its a hefty investment is epic. I find that its mostly writers and columnists who also use the phrases:
Streetcar Named Desire - Seriously. Stop it. It wasn't cool the first time you thought of it for an article headline, what makes you think its original the millionth time? Searching for an article on streetcars shouldn't bring me every mom and pop production of a a Tennessee Williams play.
19th Century Technology - So was the car. Karl Benz is the originator of the four stroke engine we know today in 1885. Frank Sprague made electric traction (electric railways) usable en masse in 1887. Also Portland Cement that we use in concrete was from the 1840's.
Driving pays for itself - I'm not going to waste time typing what people that read this blog already know.
If anyone has any other terms that the opposition uses that drive you nuts because of their truthiness, please use the comment section below. I saw boondoggle for the umpteenth time today while reading some articles, and it kinda made me want to hurl. But I wrote this to vent instead.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Unconventional Thinking On Charlotte
A lot of times I'll see an article or a piece that I want to comment on but hold off to see if more of a complete picture comes through. I'm glad I did this time because I've waffled back and forth on the idea of Light Rail on Charlotte's Independence Boulevard. When the debate raged between BRT and LRT on this corridor back in 2005-2006 I felt like BRT would have given the corridor a raw deal. Partly because frequencies and vehicle capacity would mean much more in operating costs even if the capital costs were lower.
At that point there was a lot of support from local mayors (like former Matthews Mayor Lee Myers) and communities for the light rail line but as usual no money. So the decision to pick a locally preferred alternative was shelved for a later date several years down the road when there might be money available.
However recently Mary Newsom at the Charlotte Observer tweeted then blogged about a ULI session that suggested that Independence should be HOV lanes and a Streetcar should be run up Monroe Road. Yonah has a good graphic for this over on the Transport Politic. Initially when I saw the tweet I thought that was a really dumb idea. I had seen the fight between LRT and BRT before and the current suggestions were for the line to be a rapid bus line in the HOV lane and a streetcar on Monroe Road.
While still rapid transit, all that type of transit would do is reward people living further and further away from the city without changing any of the land use patterns closer to the city center. The streetcar might do it but I'm starting to wonder whether line haul streetcars are a great idea for places that would rather have more rapid transit options. Just as Yonah points out, you aren't really going to be getting anywhere fast.
But then I started to warm up to the idea of HOV lanes considering that freeway alignments don't really work well for TOD considering most of the really good property is taken up by the size of the road. Especially if the road is going to be the size of a freeway at some point ceasing to be an actual boulevard. But that is the rub.
The problem here is the same problem that's happening when TTI releases its urban mobility report based on a travel time index. All the engineers at the state DOT care about at this moment are making the trip from a place outside of the Loop into downtown faster. They want to widen this road and make it a full fledged freeway. But that decision alone goes against the centers and corridors plan that Charlotte developed after they voted for the half cent sales tax initially and revamped in 2010.
The TTI travel time index is the wrong measure, especially if it is going to push infrastructure investment that drives the vicious cycle of speed to further away parts of the region. We know now rather that access is a more important measure. CEO's for Cities laid it out in their Driven Apart study, showing that travel time skews the data towards travel flow rather than closer access to work or other destinations.
What this means for Independence Boulevard is that if the NCDOT gets a hold of it and upgrades the outer sections to a grade separated highway, then the ability to change those patterns for better access to an employment node is lost forever. One of the commenters on Yonah's post noted that the outermost piece of Independence is actually a boulevard instead of a highway. Not a boulevard in the sense of a grand boulevard but it is still not a grade separated highway.
The one problem with changing it to a grand boulevard is that urban development patterns that people like are harder to realize further from the downtown or major employment cores. Because of land values and other market forces, the further you get out from major gravity centers like downtown Charlotte or the University, the harder it gets to realize new urban style development. In fact, the South Corridor already shows that development further out is harder to realize. The map below shows development projects from 2007 and before on the South Corridor. The basic distance from downtown before development starts to wane is approximately 3.5 miles. Basically, the strong market of downtown seems to be extended with access provided by the transit line. This is about a 13-15 minute trip to downtown.
Source: Realizing the Potential One Year Later
Part of the reason for this is the travel time people are willing to endure to get downtown. It's not likely that people will take the streetcar from the outer edges of Monroe Road or Central Avenue unless they have no other options. Additionally, this is why an Independence Light Rail line gets a bit tricky. But we need to start thinking of Independence not as a corridor feeding downtown but rather as a future mass that will have its own gravity. And I believe that gravity can be achieved with a strategic investment in the road to make it an urbanism changing Boulevard.
Considering the section of Independence that is already most like a freeway is within the 3.5 mile radius, its hard to imagine much happening in the short term along the Boulevard. Below shows the ~3.5 mile radius. The yellow shows the part most like a freeway already. The red shows the Boulevard and the light blue is the railroad corridor that is parallel to Independence. The Orange is the Central Streetcar.
This means that a Monroe Streetcar would be good for the inner 3.5 miles but two different service types will be needed further out for shorter and longer types of trips. This also leaves an opportunity for a Grand Boulevard that can attract business and development over time if the road is done right and parcels are slowly transformed into gridded and walkable areas. The approximately 120 feet of right of way are more than enough to build a road that would be friendly to transit, bikes, pedestrians as well as autos.
This corridor specifically could pull offices out to 7.5 miles, creating a new employment corridor which could bring land values up and with it densities over time. Creating a new center should be the goal, not making it another pass through on the way to downtown with HOV lanes for buses that are going to get 5000 riders a day at best. Additionally, by creating two centers with a rapid transit line and streetcar between, the market between the two centers gets stronger, allowing it to support the types of urban development people always draw on their maps at public meetings.
Photo via Hugeasscity
I realize this might be a bit too forward thinking for some people but ultimately we have to change our mindset about what is possible in urban places if we are to give people opportunities to choose different housing and mobility types. Yes this corridor is going to be auto dominated for the near future but that doesn't mean we have to doom it to freewaydom and forever feed sprawling development patterns further and further out. In fact, it's possible to create a new center that attracts new transit trips from within its own gravitational field.
At that point there was a lot of support from local mayors (like former Matthews Mayor Lee Myers) and communities for the light rail line but as usual no money. So the decision to pick a locally preferred alternative was shelved for a later date several years down the road when there might be money available.
However recently Mary Newsom at the Charlotte Observer tweeted then blogged about a ULI session that suggested that Independence should be HOV lanes and a Streetcar should be run up Monroe Road. Yonah has a good graphic for this over on the Transport Politic. Initially when I saw the tweet I thought that was a really dumb idea. I had seen the fight between LRT and BRT before and the current suggestions were for the line to be a rapid bus line in the HOV lane and a streetcar on Monroe Road.
While still rapid transit, all that type of transit would do is reward people living further and further away from the city without changing any of the land use patterns closer to the city center. The streetcar might do it but I'm starting to wonder whether line haul streetcars are a great idea for places that would rather have more rapid transit options. Just as Yonah points out, you aren't really going to be getting anywhere fast.
But then I started to warm up to the idea of HOV lanes considering that freeway alignments don't really work well for TOD considering most of the really good property is taken up by the size of the road. Especially if the road is going to be the size of a freeway at some point ceasing to be an actual boulevard. But that is the rub.
The problem here is the same problem that's happening when TTI releases its urban mobility report based on a travel time index. All the engineers at the state DOT care about at this moment are making the trip from a place outside of the Loop into downtown faster. They want to widen this road and make it a full fledged freeway. But that decision alone goes against the centers and corridors plan that Charlotte developed after they voted for the half cent sales tax initially and revamped in 2010.
The TTI travel time index is the wrong measure, especially if it is going to push infrastructure investment that drives the vicious cycle of speed to further away parts of the region. We know now rather that access is a more important measure. CEO's for Cities laid it out in their Driven Apart study, showing that travel time skews the data towards travel flow rather than closer access to work or other destinations.
What this means for Independence Boulevard is that if the NCDOT gets a hold of it and upgrades the outer sections to a grade separated highway, then the ability to change those patterns for better access to an employment node is lost forever. One of the commenters on Yonah's post noted that the outermost piece of Independence is actually a boulevard instead of a highway. Not a boulevard in the sense of a grand boulevard but it is still not a grade separated highway.
The one problem with changing it to a grand boulevard is that urban development patterns that people like are harder to realize further from the downtown or major employment cores. Because of land values and other market forces, the further you get out from major gravity centers like downtown Charlotte or the University, the harder it gets to realize new urban style development. In fact, the South Corridor already shows that development further out is harder to realize. The map below shows development projects from 2007 and before on the South Corridor. The basic distance from downtown before development starts to wane is approximately 3.5 miles. Basically, the strong market of downtown seems to be extended with access provided by the transit line. This is about a 13-15 minute trip to downtown.
Source: Realizing the Potential One Year LaterPart of the reason for this is the travel time people are willing to endure to get downtown. It's not likely that people will take the streetcar from the outer edges of Monroe Road or Central Avenue unless they have no other options. Additionally, this is why an Independence Light Rail line gets a bit tricky. But we need to start thinking of Independence not as a corridor feeding downtown but rather as a future mass that will have its own gravity. And I believe that gravity can be achieved with a strategic investment in the road to make it an urbanism changing Boulevard.
Considering the section of Independence that is already most like a freeway is within the 3.5 mile radius, its hard to imagine much happening in the short term along the Boulevard. Below shows the ~3.5 mile radius. The yellow shows the part most like a freeway already. The red shows the Boulevard and the light blue is the railroad corridor that is parallel to Independence. The Orange is the Central Streetcar.
This means that a Monroe Streetcar would be good for the inner 3.5 miles but two different service types will be needed further out for shorter and longer types of trips. This also leaves an opportunity for a Grand Boulevard that can attract business and development over time if the road is done right and parcels are slowly transformed into gridded and walkable areas. The approximately 120 feet of right of way are more than enough to build a road that would be friendly to transit, bikes, pedestrians as well as autos.
This corridor specifically could pull offices out to 7.5 miles, creating a new employment corridor which could bring land values up and with it densities over time. Creating a new center should be the goal, not making it another pass through on the way to downtown with HOV lanes for buses that are going to get 5000 riders a day at best. Additionally, by creating two centers with a rapid transit line and streetcar between, the market between the two centers gets stronger, allowing it to support the types of urban development people always draw on their maps at public meetings.
Photo via Hugeasscity I realize this might be a bit too forward thinking for some people but ultimately we have to change our mindset about what is possible in urban places if we are to give people opportunities to choose different housing and mobility types. Yes this corridor is going to be auto dominated for the near future but that doesn't mean we have to doom it to freewaydom and forever feed sprawling development patterns further and further out. In fact, it's possible to create a new center that attracts new transit trips from within its own gravitational field.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Hiroshima Trams
Apparently my friends think of taking pictures of trains/transit for The Overhead Wire when they are abroad. That's pretty awesome. Here's one tiled tram from Hiroshima last week that my friend and newest international correspondent @spicer took. You can check out his blog for more on his trip to Japan and a pretty stunning photo of the city after the bomb was detonated.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Oakland Streetcars
The last few years have seen many ideas tossed around for a streetcar line up Broadway in Oakland. I like the idea personally because it would allow me to take the streetcar to Kaiser Hospital if I have Doctor's appointments during the work day and potentially revitalize a corridor with a huge economic upside. I've seen lots of floated ideas but none are as well thought out as Daniel Jacobson's plan. He really did his homework and has a great result. Hopefully some folks in Oakland take a good look at this work.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Temporary Switch
I'm a fan of Veke on facebook but most of the time I have no idea what they are talking about because Hungarian to English translation leaves much to be desired. But I enjoy their work covering trams in Budapest and other Hungarian cities. So it was kind of cool to see how an emergency tram switch would be employed when a section of track was closed due to what I believe is some sort of flooding. While they fix it, this ramp allows trains to move forward without having to dig into the track surface. Check out the blog through google translate here. Also check out the youtube video below.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Jack London Calling
Jack London is closing Barnes and Noble book store. It seems like the perfect place for an urban renaissance but its so disconnected from Downtown Oakland by the freeway that it hasn't drawn any of the energy from the employment center. There's even a relatively close BART station if you consider the blocks are of a walkable size and most of the attractions are about a half mile away. But the highway is daunting. I often wonder what would have happened if they trenched the freeway or just made it an urban boulevard for a number of blocks to allow a smoother connection between the urban fabric that existed before the freeway. Ultimately I believe that this is the perfect connection for a streetcar, but it would be nice if there were no highway as well.
(The photo shows Jack London just south of the freeway before the waterway. The Lake Merritt BART station is just north and downtown Oakland is Northwest)
(The photo shows Jack London just south of the freeway before the waterway. The Lake Merritt BART station is just north and downtown Oakland is Northwest)
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Public Input in Ogden
I was really shocked by this quote in Standard Net, the newspaper for Ogden Utah:
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Ding Dong the Witch is Dead
Well sort of. Today the 2005 dear colleague letter that then FTA Administrator Jennifer Dorn released on the world requiring that all New Starts projects have a medium rating on their cost effectiveness has been rescinded. Many have hailed this as a huge step forward for livability advocates but honestly its only half of the picture. One of the reasons I believe that the medium rating was imposed was to build more cheap BRT projects and cut out subway and lrt projects. But another reason was to cut all the junk projects out of the funding loop. With only about $8 billion dollars available for new starts projects in the last transportation bill, it leaves the need for regions to pick up the hundreds of billions more needed to build out transit networks. One estimate pegged the total at approximately $250 billion dollars. That is a huge gap.
So while some newspapers including the New York Times believe that this is opening up the funding floodgates, they are sorely mistaken. It does however change a few dynamics that have been holding projects back. The Central Corridor in Minneapolis is a curious case. They have been wanting to add a station in St. Paul to serve lower income community however it slowed down the travel time just enough to push the line over the index. This is just one example of how suburban to downtown speedy travel is emphasized over shorter trips in denser communities by the existing cost effectiveness index. Yonah has specifically mentioned another Minneapolis project that I also believe is headed in the wrong direction.
Dropping the medium requirement also takes a step towards making us think harder about what we're really building transit for. Is it for existing population or the future population or both? A common comment about the current cost effectiveness rating is that it would have never funded the DC or New York Subways. But DC and New York would not have gotten to where they are now in terms of density without the investments in the subway. Really this is a chance to start thinking about how to make transformative investments in transit around the country. It's an opportunity we've been waiting for, but as with all big ideas, it needs money.
So while some newspapers including the New York Times believe that this is opening up the funding floodgates, they are sorely mistaken. It does however change a few dynamics that have been holding projects back. The Central Corridor in Minneapolis is a curious case. They have been wanting to add a station in St. Paul to serve lower income community however it slowed down the travel time just enough to push the line over the index. This is just one example of how suburban to downtown speedy travel is emphasized over shorter trips in denser communities by the existing cost effectiveness index. Yonah has specifically mentioned another Minneapolis project that I also believe is headed in the wrong direction.
Dropping the medium requirement also takes a step towards making us think harder about what we're really building transit for. Is it for existing population or the future population or both? A common comment about the current cost effectiveness rating is that it would have never funded the DC or New York Subways. But DC and New York would not have gotten to where they are now in terms of density without the investments in the subway. Really this is a chance to start thinking about how to make transformative investments in transit around the country. It's an opportunity we've been waiting for, but as with all big ideas, it needs money.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Tuesday Night Notes
I don't know if I want my buses to be described as “Quiet as a tomb”
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If Oklahoma City builds a streetcar before much of the country...
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The opposition in Madison wants to pull an Austin by having an election before all the facts are in. This happened in 2000 and things worked out pretty well....right?
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Streetcars and traffic are tricky. Yonah is right that these issues should be dealt with but every place is different and will have different solutions.
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Salt Lake City residents can have more bars! Put them near transit they say.
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If Oklahoma City builds a streetcar before much of the country...
~~~
The opposition in Madison wants to pull an Austin by having an election before all the facts are in. This happened in 2000 and things worked out pretty well....right?
~~~
Streetcars and traffic are tricky. Yonah is right that these issues should be dealt with but every place is different and will have different solutions.
~~~
Salt Lake City residents can have more bars! Put them near transit they say.
"Clustering bars near public transit, they agree, could reel in visitors, reduce drunken driving and send a signal that Utah's capital doesn't shut down after dark. "
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Sunday Night Notes
Design of train stations is important. My favorite airport in the US is Austin, because when you get off the plane, the high ceilings make you feel free from the cramped space. I think good train stations can give that same feeling.
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Salt Lake City is looking at Streetcar network plans. Just another arrow in the quiver.
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The Houston Chronicle interviewed the outgoing chairman of Metro. From afar, it seems like he's done a good job at moving the network forward. I hope he gets replaced with someone as good. Another interesting thing to note is the opposition from the congressional delegation. Sometimes I have to wonder why cities get represented by the suburbs, which seems to happen a lot, especially in Texas.
~~~
Salt Lake City is looking at Streetcar network plans. Just another arrow in the quiver.
~~~
The Houston Chronicle interviewed the outgoing chairman of Metro. From afar, it seems like he's done a good job at moving the network forward. I hope he gets replaced with someone as good. Another interesting thing to note is the opposition from the congressional delegation. Sometimes I have to wonder why cities get represented by the suburbs, which seems to happen a lot, especially in Texas.
Friday, December 4, 2009
What is "Economic Development"?
What comes to mind when someone says that light rail, streetcars, or BRT will bring economic development? My first guess is that people imagine that more buildings will be constructed along the route and the economic impact of that construction is what comes to mind. But what about other measures of economic development like worker productivity and connectivity to the regional employment pool?
I think too often economic development comes in one form when we're talking about transit, which I think might be going down the wrong path. We know that transportation decisions which provide or increase access to a place are likely to increase its value and ability to develop. But what about all the other benefits such as fostering denser employment clusters or connecting workers of all economic levels to regional jobs? Increases in the quality of workers that an employer has access to is another measure of economic development. Allowing workers to save money on transportation in order to spend it elsewhere is local economic development as well.
The related issue is who gains from this economic development. With the building construction based economic development, its easy to assume that developers and the people that buy the new condos are the only ones who benefit. This type of thinking creates a flash-point on which opposition to your project can zero in on to say you're not helping the people that need it the most. It's a valid concern but it's also missing out on the creation of tax base that goes back into the budget for the whole city to use. Denser areas for their part are huge economic engines. Not discussing this larger view of economic development is doing a disservice to the project, especially when you think through how the specific project will or will not help the situation.
If the main reason for a project is economic development, it would be helpful to describe the economic outcomes that you expect to achieve with the project. A streetcar or light rail line is going to provide a mobility benefit, but it is how we talk about those benefits that ultimately allow people to understand what the project is really about. Many projects don't do a good job at this and are maligned by the opposition. Many bad projects get oversold, hoping that "economic development" will save the day. I believe the key is to figure out whether the project is doing what its supposed to be doing, and move forward from there.
I think too often economic development comes in one form when we're talking about transit, which I think might be going down the wrong path. We know that transportation decisions which provide or increase access to a place are likely to increase its value and ability to develop. But what about all the other benefits such as fostering denser employment clusters or connecting workers of all economic levels to regional jobs? Increases in the quality of workers that an employer has access to is another measure of economic development. Allowing workers to save money on transportation in order to spend it elsewhere is local economic development as well.
The related issue is who gains from this economic development. With the building construction based economic development, its easy to assume that developers and the people that buy the new condos are the only ones who benefit. This type of thinking creates a flash-point on which opposition to your project can zero in on to say you're not helping the people that need it the most. It's a valid concern but it's also missing out on the creation of tax base that goes back into the budget for the whole city to use. Denser areas for their part are huge economic engines. Not discussing this larger view of economic development is doing a disservice to the project, especially when you think through how the specific project will or will not help the situation.
If the main reason for a project is economic development, it would be helpful to describe the economic outcomes that you expect to achieve with the project. A streetcar or light rail line is going to provide a mobility benefit, but it is how we talk about those benefits that ultimately allow people to understand what the project is really about. Many projects don't do a good job at this and are maligned by the opposition. Many bad projects get oversold, hoping that "economic development" will save the day. I believe the key is to figure out whether the project is doing what its supposed to be doing, and move forward from there.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Sunday Night Notes
Long Beach is looking at streetcars
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Quatar has a $22B deal with Deutsche Bahn to build freight, passenger, and Metro rail lines using Siemens technology.
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Having the last train leave at 6:30 is a ridership killer. Commuter rail lines with limited time tables make no sense to me.
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Major developments along the North Corridor Commuter Rail line in Charlotte. My question, will it actually be Transit Oriented?
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Is the housing bust going to actually halt suburbs? I feel like this will be short lived unless something bigger changes.
~~~
Quatar has a $22B deal with Deutsche Bahn to build freight, passenger, and Metro rail lines using Siemens technology.
~~~
Having the last train leave at 6:30 is a ridership killer. Commuter rail lines with limited time tables make no sense to me.
~~~
Major developments along the North Corridor Commuter Rail line in Charlotte. My question, will it actually be Transit Oriented?
~~~
Is the housing bust going to actually halt suburbs? I feel like this will be short lived unless something bigger changes.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Use the Land to Pay the Tab?
The city of Charlotte is contemplating buying a dead mall. The same dead mall is at the end of the proposed streetcar route. It would be interesting if they would decide to view it as an opportunity to be innovative in their financing. If they go Portland style, they could put together a development agreement and sell to a developer who might be able to do something interesting and urbanist with the property, provided there is a market for such a thing. It's also quite possible that this development could pay for part of the streetcar, some affordable housing and other amenities.
Does anyone know why Charlotte would want to buy this property? It's not clear that there is a true goal in mind, which could hinder any thinking, innovative or otherwise.
Does anyone know why Charlotte would want to buy this property? It's not clear that there is a true goal in mind, which could hinder any thinking, innovative or otherwise.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
The Market Must be Right
There's an article from London Ontario with the ever awesome Troy Russ of Glatting Jackson discussing what light rail can and can't do. One of the things it can't do is change the market around its stations. While there is a lot of hope out there that just building a light rail line will solve most if not all the worlds problems, hope alone won't make it so.
So I would urge caution when pumping up that local light rail project or streetcar as the answer to a lack of development pressure. Alone without other regulatory help that swings the pendulum away from today's road paradigm, the tracks will lay dormant. But if you can figure out where the market is going to be next and lay down the rules, it's likely that shaping the development will be as easy as aligning poles on a magnet.
"The biggest misconception about transit is it's the reason development happens," said Russ, a planner in an American company, Glatting Jackson, who has designed rail lines in Charlotte, Pittsburgh and Orlando and stations in Denver.Much development we've seen with recent light rail lines has been from the ability to expand the sphere of a market like downtown, but not change it. The line also has the power to shape an existing market. This is what the Portland Streetcar did when it pushed most of the development in downtown for the last decade along its corridor. I also believe that the streetcar allowed the market in Portland to feed on itself creating a synergy that wasn't possible without it or regulations that shaped growth around it.
So I would urge caution when pumping up that local light rail project or streetcar as the answer to a lack of development pressure. Alone without other regulatory help that swings the pendulum away from today's road paradigm, the tracks will lay dormant. But if you can figure out where the market is going to be next and lay down the rules, it's likely that shaping the development will be as easy as aligning poles on a magnet.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Voting for Streetlights, Manhole Cover Locations
I don't quite understand where there is this want to vote for transit improvements that aren't related to tax increases. The most recent example of this after Cincinnati's issue 9 is Boise, where local city council member Dave Lister is looking to put a measure on the Ballot that would require a 50% vote to build a streetcar even though there is no tax increase involved.
The precedent for this is Capital Metro in Austin, which is the only public agency in the United States that has ever required a vote for city services for which it already had the money to construct. In fact if a vote was required for every rail project in the United States we might not have successful rail projects in San Diego, Houston, or Denver who's first lines were built with existing funds without voter approval.
We don't have votes for road expansions, only bond measures to pay for them. We don't have votes for water treatment plants or new sewer systems that we have money for. Perhaps if we need to raise money we would ask the people. What is so different about rail transit infrastructure that requires a pure democratic vote? Isn't that why we elect city council members? To make more informed decisions on these issues than the general electorate can take on.
It's actually a road we've been traveling down in California and other places where elected officials wimp out behind expected voter mandates instead of taking a strong stand. Many places have councils that have taken a stand against streetcars and other projects which is great because they are stepping up to say yes or no, but whenever a council gets close to making a decision in their favor, it seems like these pure democracy votes pop up for something that doesn't require a tax increase. Ultimately infrastructure decisions shouldn't be left up to a vote unless there is a tax increase involved. I imagine that nothing would ever get done if it were the case that every infrastructure decision needed a vote. It's bad enough as it is with lacking political will in this country to do anything forward thinking, why put another layer on it?
The precedent for this is Capital Metro in Austin, which is the only public agency in the United States that has ever required a vote for city services for which it already had the money to construct. In fact if a vote was required for every rail project in the United States we might not have successful rail projects in San Diego, Houston, or Denver who's first lines were built with existing funds without voter approval.
We don't have votes for road expansions, only bond measures to pay for them. We don't have votes for water treatment plants or new sewer systems that we have money for. Perhaps if we need to raise money we would ask the people. What is so different about rail transit infrastructure that requires a pure democratic vote? Isn't that why we elect city council members? To make more informed decisions on these issues than the general electorate can take on.
It's actually a road we've been traveling down in California and other places where elected officials wimp out behind expected voter mandates instead of taking a strong stand. Many places have councils that have taken a stand against streetcars and other projects which is great because they are stepping up to say yes or no, but whenever a council gets close to making a decision in their favor, it seems like these pure democracy votes pop up for something that doesn't require a tax increase. Ultimately infrastructure decisions shouldn't be left up to a vote unless there is a tax increase involved. I imagine that nothing would ever get done if it were the case that every infrastructure decision needed a vote. It's bad enough as it is with lacking political will in this country to do anything forward thinking, why put another layer on it?
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Catenary and Trolleywire
Sorry if I left people hanging with the trolleywire vs. catenary article. Essentially, as Arcady explained in the comments of the last post, catenary suspension uses two or more wires to suspend the contact wire between poles. The term catenary comes from the curve created by the sagging of a wire or chain between two points. In overhead contact systems, the catenary curve is seen in the support wire while the contact wire is connected to it by suspenders.
Some versions can be pretty ugly such as New Jersey Transit's catenary:
Photo Courtesy HeritageTrolley.org
Here's a crossover in Charlotte and a long straight stretch.
Unfortunately this is sometimes the ugly that people think about when they think about overhead wires. While it's music to my lungs, many other people don't feel the same way.
The catenary differs from a simple trolley wire suspension in that there are more wires as well as generally more visual obstruction. The catenary is used for higher speed lines because the tension created in the wire is great enough to keep the pantograph from bouncing up against the wire which can cause great damage. Ultimately trolleywire is perfectly good for streetcars in cities and I would generally believe that it's probably the first consideration of designers of modern streetcar systems.
Below is a Combino Supra under trolley wire.
More Budapest
Some fun images from 1924's Electric Railway Handbook
Some versions can be pretty ugly such as New Jersey Transit's catenary:
Photo Courtesy HeritageTrolley.orgHere's a crossover in Charlotte and a long straight stretch.
Unfortunately this is sometimes the ugly that people think about when they think about overhead wires. While it's music to my lungs, many other people don't feel the same way.
The catenary differs from a simple trolley wire suspension in that there are more wires as well as generally more visual obstruction. The catenary is used for higher speed lines because the tension created in the wire is great enough to keep the pantograph from bouncing up against the wire which can cause great damage. Ultimately trolleywire is perfectly good for streetcars in cities and I would generally believe that it's probably the first consideration of designers of modern streetcar systems.
Below is a Combino Supra under trolley wire.
More Budapest
Some fun images from 1924's Electric Railway Handbook
Monday, September 21, 2009
Why the Catenary Talk?
After overriding the Mayor's veto, URS is going to look at how to bring the streetcar to the city. One of the issues, how to power them, will be fun to consider. Though the question asked in the article seems wrong:
"Do you want to be one of the last streetcars with a catenary system, or the first with a new system - that's the dilemma," Nadolny said.What streetcar actually needs catenary? Simple trolley wire will do. Some interurban lines could run up to 90mph on trolleywire. I don't see why we have to always over-engineer these things. If you want to ugly things up, go ahead and build catenary. Perhaps that is the goal since the idea of wireless streetcars is all the rage.
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