Podcast: The Vancouver Model with Brent Toderian

Former chief planner for Vancouver BC Brent Toderian joins the podcast to talk about cities and urbanism.  We have a fun discussion about city rankings as well as talk about planning for the Olympics.  Check it out!

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.

Midnight Notes

So sad to see that Elana Schor is moving on from Streetsblog. You can still follow her work but it's not likely to be all transportation all the time.
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I can appreciate the want to allow people to walk and bike to the store and perhaps consume less in general. But saying that people can't buy a lot of groceries seems like a bit of overkill to me.

The plan intends to discourage large purchases, which will help ensure that people walk or bike home.

I really only have time to go to the store once a week and I walk and use a single reusable bag. But if you have a large family that can be a bit tougher. What do you all think?
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If you haven't seen the dramatic photos that show the change of the Vancouver skyline, i suggest taking a look at Price Tags.
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I think Megan McArdle completely underestimates the value of buses and bikes in congestion pricing schemes. She doesn't make a single mention of them. While the subways in New York are crushed, if you limited traffic and gave buses and bikes some lanes, you might find that transit service could improve and people could get around the city just fine without their cars. While I love the subways and think many cities should have better subway systems (ie San Francisco) I think we discount the roll of buses and bikes at our own peril.

Midweek Notes

Arlington is the largest city in the United States without transit, but will run trains through the city for the Superbowl coming in 2011.
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Vancouver does Granny Flats in high rises.
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Seattle Mayoral candidate McGinn is floating ideas for another light rail election in two years. But by light rail does he mean rapid streetcar or light metro?
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A dustup over trolley buses in Seattle. I'd be interested to see if the bean counters actually did a lifecycle analysis considering how long electric trolleybuses actually last. Anyone who takes away existing hydro powered transit and replaces it with diesel needs a head check. It's unfortunate that it is even being discussed at all.
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The economy isn't being so kind to mixed use projects in Atlanta.

Triple Standards for Transit

One wonders why people must always be forced to vote for light rail but not roads. But yet the Columbian is editorializing just that and being very blatant about it:

Whatever the answer, a more general light-rail question should be presented to Vancouver voters, to cover all bases. There is no need for a vote on the new bridge itself (transportation infrastructure routinely is decided by transportation officials) or tolls (voters generally don't vote on user fees), but the light rail question is different. As we editorialized on Feb. 24, "Light-rail critics have complained loudly — and correctly — that people should be allowed to vote on the matter."

Really? Why is light rail different? Why shouldn't transportation officials be allowed to decide about this transportation infrastructure? And why are critics the only reason to vote? I'm sure there are plenty of critics of the CRC. Why not let them vote as well if you really believe in such deep democracy. The answer is that the Columbian doesn't believe in anything except for the George Will doctrine. If its not a car, its not transportation.

An Increase in Trips, But Leveling the Auto Volume

I agree with Stephen on this one. It's silly for Canadian liberals to say that if we encourage transit, it allows us to increase the traffic volume. I do believe that we can increase trips by building transit and livable communities. We can do more with less space. There's also no more room for expanding roads, so we need to increase the capacity of the surface roads we have, the easiest way being with transit.

Did You Know?

The city of Vancouver has barely a freeway touching its edge. A book i've been reading called Dream City discusses Vancouver's transit and its interesting to see how that city's streetcar lines weren't quite radial. The city grew up with the car, but the car didn't quite have the same pull as in American cities .