George Will Despises You, Livable Community Advocate

Really, how out of touch with America do you have to be to hate jeans and Portland simultaneously. Never mind the fact that roads don't pay for themselves or suburbanites want city amenities, usually without having to pay for them.

Of the 32 percent of respondents who live in the suburbs, 51 percent said they wish their community had a wider variety of offerings.

The top three amenities desired include access to convenient public transportation (23 percent), a broad array of housing options (22 percent) and a more walkable environment (22 percent). More than half (52 percent) of suburban residents say they would move to a community that offered more of those characteristics.

Look Georgie boy, if you want to waste your wealth on transforming that corn field into a single family home go ahead, but last time I checked, the Great Society Subway has created actual tangible wealth in the parts of DC it touches. So give me a break about freedom, especially when the freedom you espouse costs me more as a taxpayer than the "behavior modification" you're so fearful of.

72% Are Walking

72% of people who use the Orange Line in the R-B corridor walk to the stations.

Local Commercial "Prescribing Public Transit"

"You need PT" I feel like we can do a lot better than this. If we need to change people's public opinion, this doesn't seem like the way to do it. I guess its a start.



I still like this commercial from Madrid much more... if you're trying to sell a lifestyle, this seems to be a better way.

Silver Lie Continues

People still aren't happy with the Silver Line BRT in Boston. They want the replacement for the rapid transit line they were promised.

“Why not invest in the light rail system as the community has been asking for 20 years,” said Robert Terrell, a member of the Washington Street Corridor Coalition, a group of organizations that have been fighting to replace a segment of the Orange Line that was removed in the 1980s.

Sound familiar San Francisco??? Oh yes. The Geary Subway that was promised after the B Geary line was ripped out is going to be a BRT line now as well. Will we ever learn?

Hiding the Good Stuff

More like you weren't paying attention. Peter King of Sports Illustrated writes about the secret sauce, no not that stuff...

It's the new green me.

It's not like I'm going to be surrendering my car now than I'm a city guy, but being without it is increasingly enjoyable. Check out this 28-hour experience that began Thursday morning:

Walk 10 minutes to the Back Bay train station to catch a train to New York. Take the train to New York. Take a cab to visit buddy Jack Bowers in the hospital after surgery. Take a cab to SI in midtown Manhattan for an afternoon of meetings.

Take the subway to Queens for Mets-Padres. Take the subway to Manhattan after the game. Walk to Penn Station. Take the train back to Boston. Walk the 10 minutes home. Not an unpleasant trip on any of the legs. You people in cities have been hiding how great it is to get along without a car.

H/T Nick C

Russian Subway Dogs

I bet you didn't know that stray dogs in Russia had gotten so smart that they have become accustomed to riding the subway to and from "work". I think this is a bit of a spoof and hilarious. What do you think?

Bruxelles Finishes Subway Segment

Our friends over at spagblog have an update on the completion of the last part of the circle line in Brussels.

Passengers travelled for free on the 4th of April on the Brussels Metro, on the occasion of opening the last segment of the circle line, connecting Delacroix and Gare de l’Ouest stations. The whole metro network has been reorganized as well: The 2 line leaves and arrives in at Simonis, where every second train continues to Roi Bauduin as line 6; and the remaining 3 branches of the former 1A/B line are served by lines 1 and 5.

Philanthropy Intersecting Transit

I just had a wild and crazy idea. Much of the capital fundraising for philanthropy seems geared towards building new museums and other major pieces of infrastructure. In particular I was thinking about how Gap money man Don "More Parking" Fischer is looking to spend millions of dollars to build a new museum in the Presidio. The approximate $100 million could also be used to build a subway station along a Geary subway line.

But I wouldn't say that we shouldn't build the museum. I think the Museum should be attached to or at least part of the Subway station. In this way, new subway lines would be strings of culture funded in part by the philanthropic minded of the city while also providing a public good in transportation.

While we are always saying that we need to keep land use and transportation in one mindset, it seems that we could be thinking of better ideas of how to keep the large amount of donations that come from philanthropic interests moving towards not only the public good of increasing culture, but the public good of reducing emissions and improving movement and air quality for all citizens of the city. I would donate money to these causes and I believe others would as well for the double benefit that comes from it. I know I'm crazy but sometimes you just gotta throw ideas out there.

Muni History - Video of Twin Peaks Tunnel Opening

George B sent this to one of my email lists and if you're from San Francisco you'll appreciate it for sure.

Curitiba Subway

This article is from February but it was just brought to my attention. Seems as if those BRT lines just aren't enough.

Brazil's Paraná state capital Curitiba is planning to build a subway line and highway concessionaire Triunfo Participações e Investimentos (TPI) (Bovespa: TPIS3) is seriously studying the project, TPI president Carlo Bottarelli told BNamericas.

The subway initiative would be a first for the city and a first for the highway concessionaire. The city is planning to build a US$1bn, 22km system that will cross the city from south to north, Curitiba business relations secretary Luiz de Carvalho told BNamericas.

It also shows you the costing differences between Brazil and the United States. 13.75 miles of Subway is costing $72 million a mile. That's pretty cheap. If we could do that here, I think we'd have more Subway lines.

H/T ASD

Square the Wagons!

Engineering is starting on the circle line in Chicago. It looks like it might be a real one, unlike Boston's half hearted attempt. It seems these rings are all the rage, but as usual Europe is beating us to it.

Central Subway Further

Eric talks up the next phases of the Central Subway project. This got me thinking about the process the CS went through to get where it is today and all the dumb federal mandates that require Muni not to talk about anything outside of the scope of the project they are applying federal funding to. It's ridiculous really. I understand why they do it, so that the process is fair and all modes get a fair shake, but I wish they wouldn't pretend like one project is what a region needs. Extended network planning is important and waiting to talk about this expansion until a paper is signed is just silly.

One Dozen Per Million

Chris Leinberger has been hoofing it around the country pushing his idea of walkable urbanism and regionally significant walkable urban places*. Just today he got articles in Sacramento and Raleigh NC on his ideas. In Raleigh, they are thinking that if plans are followed through, it will be the end of sprawl. The skeptic in me says highly unlikely.

But i'm intrigued with how he came to the idea that every million people in population needs at least half a dozen regionally significant walkable urban places*

Leinberger said his study of metropolitan Washington, D.C., and Atlanta suggests that a city should have no more than a half-dozen walkable urban places per million people. Some of these will be downtown, some in inner-ring neighborhoods, and some in the suburbs, But what they have in common is their location at rail-transit stops, not on highways.

By his math, Raleigh should attempt to create two or three such places, in addition to downtown, by 2030, when the comprehensive plan anticipates the city will be home to 600,000 people.

These places should be on the rail or a streetcar corridor, which, he said, are permanent and attract investors, developers and upscale buyers. "I have never seen a dollar of real estate investment generated by a bus stop," Leinberger said.

If this is based off of DC, we need to start building a lot more monocentric rapid transit in our regions. This creates the ability to connect places that have different niches for the needs of the population. Not every walkable district is going to have everything you need, so they need to be connected with accessible transit. In Sacramento, there's more than enough room to build these significant places, but they need more transit.

According to Brookings Institution research, there should be eight to 12 regionally significant, walkable urban, transit-oriented places in the region. Today there are only three: downtown, midtown and Old Sacramento. The opportunity for locating and building five to nine additional walkable urban, transit-oriented places and building far more development in the existing three would be worth billions of dollars and would represent a more sustainable way of living.

*I wish he would define this more precisely.

Collective Investment

San Francisco is a great place and a city known around the world. If only we could be so forward thinking that we could cut emissions by 40% like Amsterdam.

Mark Scott has a nice piece in BusinessWeek on Amsterdam's plan to become one of the world's premier green cities—and fast. Scarily fast. The city is hitching up with utilities and private companies to plunk down $1 billion over the next three years to do stuff like creating a citywide smart grid that better juggles electricity demand, replacing old garbage trucks with electric vehicles, powering bus stops with solar panels, improving the efficiency of homes, putting meters in homes to let people better monitor their own energy use, and so on… All told, Amsterdam hopes to cut its carbon emissions 40 percent by 2025.

This also got me to thinking, a billion dollars over three years is not a lot if you're going to do something extraordinary. Especially when what you're doing is lowering everyone's costs. I would think this would be the same for expanding the subway network here in San Francisco. Sure it might be a bit of an up front cost, but the more people that we can get to leave their cars, the more they will save. Huge benefits to collective investment.

Never the Freeway Median

I think we've discussed this before but we need to really stop building transit lines on freeways. I'm not talking about allowing buses to use the HOV lanes but rather building new light and heavy rail lines along the side or in the center of freeways. If we want to create the most value out of these investments, existing ROW needs to be thoroughly examined for its benefits, which includes existing freight ROW as well.

The South Corridor in Charlotte is a good example of using the existing ROW because it runs a close parallel to the main south arterial street. However lines such as the Baltimore light rail line are really poor applications of existing ROW. The line there completely misses the downtown of Towson which is a major regional destination. BART is a huge example of rail transit designed for the auto age. Why didn't they run the Pittsburgh BayPoint Line under Broadway in Oakland instead of along the freeway median to Rockridge?

I think we need to think about how we can move away from focusing solely on the Interstate system that is built out as well as believing that since the interstates are there, they are the best routes for transit. They are the worst routes for Urbanism as freeways are not urban.

Subway to SoMa

We've been telling you for years! My favorite comment:

And after we ritually sacrifice whoever decided to dig up the Muni B Geary line back in the 50's.

Oscars Lame Again

Located at Hollywood & Highland, how many so called green loving stars took the subway to the Oscars? ZERO!!!! They closed the station again for "security reasons". LAME. They are making traffic worse for themselves when they don't have to and contributing more to the problem.

Hidden Trains of New York

Very cool article via Planetizen. It would be interesting to be there when they open up that Brooklyn subway wall and find a tipped over steam engine.

Since his big reveal in 1980, Mr. Diamond, the 49-year-old founder of the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association, has been conducting tunnel tours via the manhole with the blessing of the D.O.T. But of late, Mr. Diamond has been pushing for another potential urban architectural “get.”

Behind a wall in the tunnel, near Atlantic Avenue and Hicks Street, he believes, there is a steam locomotive lying on its side like an abandoned toy train, in “pristine condition, a virtual time capsule.” And he wants to dig it up.

Seems to me that instead of digging it up, you could do some sort of ultrasound scan or something to make sure its there before you start digging. You can check out the location on Wikimapia here.

Stealth Developer

There's an op-ed on Planetizen discussing the MTA in Los Angeles as a stealth development agency. I don't know if I would go that far. I think most people know they have eminent domain power and that they can redevelop property close to the stations but it's not as powerful as say the rail agencies in Hong Kong or Japan.

If any transportation agency was going to be a true development agency it would have even more power to land bank and develop properties than is currently allowed in the United States. In fact, this is how transportation worked during the streetcar era. Property was the main money maker rather than transportation, the transportation was the hook. But it created some great places such as the inner ring suburbs we now love. I would love to see transit agencies have more power to develop, but surely that won't happen because of property rights activism among other barriers.

Whither Dubai

Since the workers and money are leaving in droves, I wonder if this means that the Alstom APS light rail system and subway will be put on hold soon.