World's Scariest Train Wrecks

Just Watch. Quite Ridiculous. But Funny.



Thanks Andrew for the Link.

Go Electric Young Man!

RTD has done the right thing in going with electric over diesel for two of their commuter lines. From the Rocky Mountain News:

But faced with staff research that showed the upfront savings would be overwhelmed by the higher operating costs of a diesel system, the few board members left who supported going diesel joined their colleagues in voting 13-0 to stick with the current arrangement. The DIA line is expected to be completed in 2014; the Arvada line in 2015.

If that wasn’t enough, 26 speakers led of by Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper unanimously urged the board to back the communities’ choices. No one spoke up for using diesel cars; many of the speakers demanded RTD abandon current plans to use diesel power on two other FasTracks lines, Northwest Rail to Boulder and Longmont, and North Metro to Commerce City and Thornton.

The other two lines should be electric as well. With rising fuel prices causing many of the nation's transit agencies to raise fares, there is no reason to think that this won't continue to happen when they choose diesel. Hopefully what they have learned from these two lines shows up in the other two. They are also going to be saving money on the Union Station by digging a trench for the lines instead of having a subway tunnel.

Banning Cars from Boulevards

There was an article in the Los Angeles Times on banning cars from Wilshire Avenue and bringing the Subway to the surface. There are tons of cross streets meaning that there would have to be a lot of over or underpasses if it was going to be grade separated. Maybe this can be achieved by tunneling under the major intersections and not allowing cross traffic on the smaller ones. Although everyone would be pretty mad about the construction. I really like the idea of subways though. Mostly because they can go in straighter lines and you won't have the ugly under and overpass issues. They also integrate into the landscape better since people don't have to cross streets. The New York Subways were an investment made over 100 years ago, why can't LA make that investment for the lifetime of that city?

Caltrain Ridership Record

And the hits keep coming. Caltrain, with the introduction of the Baby Bullet in 2004, has been rocking up ever since. The press release says ridership is up 8.2% from the previous year. The average weekday has been around 35,000. Now they just need to electrify it and get EMUs. Then the service would be faster and more energy efficient.

Update: Sounder is getting some good ridership as well. Check out Seattle Transit Blog.

Alan Webb. American Record in Mile

I know this is a transport blog but I have to give credit where credit is due. Alan Webb is now one of the greatest milers in history and now has sole ownership of the American Record in the Mile. His time of 3:46 is nothing short of amazing and I know that in the future he will represent our country well. He is our greatest hope for a gold medal and it was evident in his performance today. Congratulations Alan for a job well done from a proud former runner.

Update: You can watch history here. Mark at Flocasts, an old friend of mine from college, is the only one with a video. Thanks for the footage Flo!

Arnold the Hypocrite

So what's the deal with Arnold? Although he touts his green-ness he's constantly on the wrong side on transportation issues. The most recent debacle is the transfer of $1 billion dollars for transit that got transferred into the general fund. As RT Driver puts it, Arnold got the Dems to throw transit under the Bus. The cuts could mean problems for the Expo Line in LA and a seismic retrofit of the BART tube which has served us well through several auto infrastructure failures including the Loma Prieta quake and the Maze Meltdown. Other transport follies include the inability to support high speed rail. As green as we thought he was, he has proven that he is not.

Charlotte's Anti-Rail Opportunists

If you're paying attention to the Charlotte debate you might notice that the anti-tax/anti-transit jihad is foaming at the mouth down there right now. Since they can't kill light rail with common sense (because they don't have any) they are trying to use silly political tactics to get their repeal of the half cent sales tax that was enacted for transit in 1998. They can't however argue straight about it so they are going after the messenger Karl Rove style.

This week they found some emails that they believe suggest that the University and Chamber of Commerce were in cahoots to do a poll. A POLL! Wow that is going to change people's opinions. They didn't question the accuracy of the study but rather if the Chamber used it in the poll. This is ridiculous. But it's like these hypocrites to demand the disclosure that an academic study was going to be used for a poll yet they won't tell anyone how much money they raised for their campaign to take down the tax. If they were to question the study they'd have to look at themselves in the mirror because anti-transit libertarians like to do all their research about transit in the free market by cherry picking sources. The fundamental issue is this, as stated by the University President:

The critics of light rail can't question the facts, so they question the process of anyone whose position is different than their own. They will not be able to refute the fundamental conclusion of Dr. Hauser's study that the cost of transit in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, including buses and light rail, is on average with the cost in other cities.

An editorial the next day stated:

If you'll read the April 30 study, you'll have a tough time arguing that its data is partisan. It mostly compiles information from government sources or academic research. It doesn't take a stand for or against the transit tax, concluding only that there's "a need for a comprehensive study" of the impact of light rail transit.

So just as I've stated before, it's sour grapes. Commonwealth for the common good, not every man for himself as the local anti's want you to believe.

Do Asia and Europe Do It Better?

Over at Daily Kos after the fifth rail diary, there was a comment by poster Konko that struck me. In it he lays out the reasons why Asia and Europe can get large rail infrastructure projects done faster and more efficiently. Headers include; experience and expertise, modularized fast track construction, and better project management and accounting procedures.

So I believe experience is the critical factor and those companies with expertise and a track record should be the first choice to make projects on time, on budget and with good quality. Americans would be smart to put these foriegn firms in competition on projects and to study the methods they use, just as these countries studied British and American steel and rail industries a century ago.

But I'm not sure if I agree with him on the post as a whole, just parts. I'd like to see it fleshed out more with links to papers and documents before I accept it as gospel. I'm inclined to think its true, but not sure. There are a lot of factors that lead to construction issues. Stacey Witback is getting really good with the streetcar construction and the time it takes. I will agree that we need to learn more on cost saving measures. There are a lot of things we need to do to keep from gold plating, but the companies doing infrastructure projects here have been doing them a long time and leading the way. But if he's right, then we do need to let foreign companies try and compete if they can do it better. I'm not sure if they would even want to work here under the political conditions of these large projects usually given out to the good ole boy network, but we sure could learn a lot from them.

I Dreamt I was An Architect

I got the Decemberists first album Castaway and Cutouts. Mostly because I watch the show How I Met Your Mother and I heard this song in the background.

and i am nothing of a builder
but here i dreamt i was an architect
and i built this balustrade
to keep you home, to keep you safe
from the outside world
but the angles and the corners
even though my work is unparalelled
they never seemed to meet
this structure fell about our feet
and we were free to go

The main character in the show is an architect and he had to go into work late one night while his friend Barney (NPH) used his name and profession to score with a woman. Apparently the idea of an architect is appealing to women, at least in the show.

But the reason I posted this was not because architects are related to urban planners but the fact that the singer of this song would be protective of his girl by building her a home. However when it fell over they were free. Personally this reminds me of the suburbs and gated communities in America. Working so hard to pay the bills and not being rewarded is exactly what I believe is happening to the middle class today. No transport options and being forced to live so far away. Also feeling like the answer to crime is to move away to a homogeneous community just makes our communities more segregated and less racially and economically integrated.

In the 50's people left in droves believing the cities unsafe and crowded. This movement from cramped spaces began with the streetcar suburbs and utility expansion available in the mid and late 1800s, however post war suburbia went too far and swang the pendulum past its equilibrium. Today energy usage is too high and an article in the Wall Street Journal Monday stated that we are getting closer to lower oil supply and increasing demand. Perhaps we'll wake up before then, but we'll just have to wait and see. Until then, let's build more transit and livable places so the end game won't be so shocking, and when it comes crashing down we be less bothered by energy supply inconsistencies.

In any event, if you haven't heard the song, check it out.

Green Dividend

There was an interesting paper about Portland done by Joe Cortright. The basic thesis of the paper was the Green Dividend that was created by Portlander's who drove less due to their land use and transportation patterns. It's basically the savings that comes from not having to pay for gasoline or cars, the money for which mostly goes to the multi-national corperations. That money gets put back into the local economy. They found that the VMT reductions were 4 miles per day.

Four miles per day may not seem like much, but do the math. The Portland metro area has roughly 2 million residents. If Portlanders traveled as much as the typical U.S. metro resident, that would produce 8 million more vehicle miles per day or about 2.9 billion more miles per year. A conservative estimate of the cost of driving is about 40 cents per mile. (At $3 a gallon, 15 cents of this is just the cost of fuel, figured at a fleet average of 20 miles per gallon, which is a generous number for city driving.) All told, the out-of-pocket savings work out to $1.1 billion dollars per year. This works out to about 1.5 percent of all personal income earned in the region in 2005.

This is a good minimum estimate of the aggregate economic benefits—the green dividend—that Portland area residents enjoy as a result of land use planning and related environmental policies. But the benefits don’t stop there. Since Portlanders don’t spend that money on transportation, they have more money to spend on other things. Because so much of what is spent on transportation immediately leaves the state—Oregon makes neither cars nor gasoline—money not spent on transportation gets spent on sectors of the economy that have a much larger local multiplier effect. (Think locally-brewed beer.) According to IRS data, about 73 percent of the retail price of gas (back when it was under $2 a gallon, by the way) and 86 percent of the retail price of cars is the “cost of goods sold,” which immediately leaves the local economy. The $1.1 billion Portlanders don’t spend on car travel translates into $800 million that is not leaving the local region. Because this money gets re-spent in other sectors of the economy, it stimulates local businesses rather than rewarding Exxon or Toyota.

Interesting. I wonder how many more cities are going to pick up on this.