Showing posts sorted by relevance for query san jose. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query san jose. Sort by date Show all posts

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Been Thinking About Transit Density Part 2

So as a continuation of this post on transit density, we're going to look at San Francisco and San Jose. This is not transit density in the usual sense of passengers per route mile as discussed by Mr. Setty at PublicTransit.us but rather station density as discussed by Richard Layman and his oft looked at take on Belmont.

For San Francisco, Eric and others have looked at what a city wide metro would look like. However I thought it would be good to look at it from the standpoint of the sphere I created for the Oakland Map. These aerials are the same dimensions as the Oakland map as are the 5 mile spheres. In the fine grid of San Francisco, you can see that a metro as envisioned below would create a tic tac toe board where getting from destinations all over the densest parts of the city would be fairly easy.

San-Francisco-Sphere

For San Jose though I took a different approach. Instead of using downtown as the center, like Oakland, I thought about how a metro could be used to reconfigure the city and employment districts of Silicon Valley. What came out of it was a more northern sphere centered around west of the airport where there is a lot of land and buildings that could be rebuilt now that their 20-30 year life might be almost over.

It was hard to not try and cover everything instead of focusing on the sphere. These city sphere metro projects could be pretty inexpensive when compared to their resulting benefit which is why its important to think about the area in much smaller terms and corridors.

San-Jose-Sphere

In San Jose in particular, it grew up in such a spread out pattern, that serving the area, unlike Oakland and San Francisco, would be even more daunting. But its possible to use this metro as a starting point to comprehensive feeder bus and commuter rail system that connects the major cities.

Below is an example of this exercise at build out in Austin at the same scale.

Austin---Sphere

So the point of this exercise isn't to say that these networks should be built with these specific lines, but to show transit density in a core area that would promote the usage of transit in the core while also starting to change the development paradigm. If this type of service were available, walkable neighborhoods would be constructed that have more opportunities to go carless. These networks could also be used as a basis for bike planning.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Connecting the Dots

Looks like BART to San Jose has hit another snag because of the economy. The ~20 mile extension from the Fremont station all the way to the San Jose airport via downtown has been delayed for a number of years because of funding issues. Last fall the county passed an 1/8th cent sales tax to fix some of this but according to one analysis it won't be enough. I'm not sure if this is really true because the projections show flat sales tax revenues until 2036, which seems to me to be seriously wrong.
Board members used words like "shocked" and "astonished" at the report by consultant Bob Peskin, who analyzed sales tax projections through 2036. Once inflation is factored out, his sales tax projections are essentially a flat line.
But if true, this comes at the same time as a SPUR report that states suburban job growth imperils emissions reductions due to increased driving. As a practical goal, the region should focus growth in the more urban downtowns and urban areas that aren't office parks.
The city, and other urban areas better served by mass transit than suburban business parks, must adjust policies to attract a greater share of office development and employers, concludes "Recentering Work: The Future of Transit-Oriented Jobs in Downtown San Francisco," released by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association.
So while the BART extension to downtown San Jose might seem like a good idea, its important to note that the round about way in which BART reaches downtown doesn't connect the areas which hold most of Silicon Valley's jobs but rather takes the path of least resistance (ie: existing ROW).

This is a big problem. The line which was conceived many years ago is a continuation of BART and regional authorities poor planning for rapid transit integration with land use. While it might have been state of the art as an idea decades ago, we've learned so much since then about TOD and how connecting destinations strengthens them. No longer will the suburban to urban model work with parking lots catering to the automobile. We need a better analysis of what to do but unfortunately it seems like nothing will stop this move from going through.

The map below shows job density in the valley (From LEHD 2004). Areas with the darkest green are over 20 jobs per acre. But the new BART line (dark blue) touches only the clusters downtown and extension of the VTA light rail line (light purple) go nowhere near the jobs that would attract transit riders.

The VTA Light Rail line hits a lot of the dense job clusters but underperforms because it is seen as slower. I don't know how many people who live in San Francisco have told me that the killer for thier connection to a job in San Jose is the slow round about light rail. This will be the same excuse for BART to light rail on the other side of the Valley.

SanJoseJunk

When we look into these long term Bay Area projects, we need to push planners to think about where people work and where they want to go. It's really important to think about these long term strategies to connect people with jobs and connect jobs to each other. If we're going to be dependent on a knowledge economy here in the bay area, allowing people easy access through transit to amenities and each other is the best way to facilitate energy and emissions reductions. Even if TOD springs up along the new BART line, it won't be as good as connecting the existing clusters of dense jobs with tons of redevelopable parking spaces (see above photo) that might not be needed with rapid transit easily accessible.

Friday, May 2, 2008

Kenworthy Speaks

Fred at MetroRiderLA went to a lecture by Australian researcher Jeff Kenworthy. Here are a few things from Fred's overview that caught my eye.

1. LRT(Tram) Patronage in Europe has been increasing while bus ridership falls.

This is interesting to me because unlike the United States, Europe has kept a good amount of its tram systems. In many large cities, they are still networked to go a lot of places.
According to Jeff, in Europe, over a period of 10 years, Light Rail Transit (LRT) patronage rose 20.3% while bus patronage fell 5.6%. His implication is that people, the masses, simply and unequivocally prefer rail over bus. And surprisingly, it’s actually what are commonly considered the disadvantages of rail that turn out to be it’s advantages over bus transit in encouraging use. The high cost and inflexibility of rail creates a permanence that people prefer over the impermanent and unreliable nature of bus transit.
2. Rail Focuses Development, Buses Follow it
Another polished gem Jeff provided us with was the idea that rail systems “focus” a city and development while bus systems simply “follow” development. So buses, because of their impermanence and reliance on auto roads, must heed to the “predict and provide” game and attempt to follow wherever development may randomly occur. Rail on the other hand spurs and centralizes development, creating a sense of permanence not found in no rail cities. Rail and streets renaissances go hand in hand.
I've said this a few times before. Rail has the power if harnessed to focus development unlike buses that just respond to it. But it's not going to just happen. There need to be plans and policies in place to do it right. In the comments below Fred's post, a discussion started on San Jose. This is the perfect example of just saying that light rail is going to do all the work. I posted a while ago on employment sprawl. Well here again is an aerial of San Jose's system by all the tech jobs, something to not emulate.

San Jose Sprawl

Here is the Pearl District, which used to be a rail yard and was helped by the plans and policies of the PDC and the streetcar

Pearl District

Update: ABC in the comments asked that we use a more suburban area to show what's possible instead of an urban area. In the situation like San Jose above with 3 -5 story office buildings I think it's perfectly ok to expect a street grid like the Pearl Districts, there was a thought that it was the Pearl was predestined to turn out that way. Before the development agreement it was supposed to be tops 15 units an acre and the developer had thought about doing townhomes. Here is what it looked like in 1996.

But as suburban examples go, here is another from Portland with single family homes in a grid South of Orenco Station.

Orenco South

Downtown Plano trying to reintroduce Urbanism

Downtown Plano

And a Heavy Rail Subway example, Rosslyn Ballston on the Metro Orange Line. I've discussed this before but this used to be a strip suburban corridor. These things take time, this has been over 30 years.

RB Corridor

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Creating Demand for Office TOD

Recently Microsoft has started its own bus service to its campus in Redmond. Google and other companies have these bus services and I've discussed before why they annoyed me. But there might be a small consolation bonus in this that wasn't previously realized. Because of companies such as Google, office space is at a premium making it possible to build more office space near transit stops. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal:

Demand for quality space in Google-land is strong, and market rental rates now justify the costs of redeveloping obsolete industrial structures into higher-density modern offices, observes veteran Silicon Valley commercial broker Gregory M. Davies at CPS/Corfac Intl. in Santa Clara.

Planned commercial projects are taking advantage of the neighborhood's attractive transit service, including not only the VTA light-rail system but also Caltrain's Baby Bullet express service whizzing commuters from San Francisco in well under an hour, Davies adds.

This also brings up another point about San Jose. The office park sprawl there with all the tech companies is probably the worst I've ever seen. I don't get why our buddy Randal O'Toole calls San Jose a failure in Smart Growth when there is none. The land use around light rail is the worst in the country and never focused. Just junk buildings that should be destroyed and reoriented towards the streets and given a grid.

Check out the aerial below to see what it looks like. Tons of parking spaces and wasted land. Its amazing this system gets over 30,000 riders a day. The green and blue lines are the San Jose Light Rail. Looks like its going through a bunch of industrial warehouses, but they are just single use offices.


SanJoseJunk

Sunday, November 23, 2008

A Shrinking Market Not Suitable for Rail Investment?

A lot of discussion about the auto bailout is out there by people much smarter than me so I'll leave that to them. But in a discussion about Detroit and its possible shrinking city status because of a drawn down auto industry, the Urbanophile states that transit expansion or initial construction of light rail doesn't really make sense in a low or no growth market. In the case of Detroit, he believes that a shrinkage strategy should be employed and money should not be wasted on movement and economic strategies such as light rail.
Detroit wants to build a big rail transit system. This is a variation on "silver bullet" thinking where Detroit will build light rail on Woodward and suddely life will be pumped into the city. It's possible I guess. But while that strategy might be appropriate for higher growth locations like Columbus, I don't think it is where declining cities like Detroit need to be spending their money. Detroit has much higher priority needs than this.
Perhaps this was made for greater discussion today by an article about Buffalo's light rail line, which is one of the new light rail lines that was built after the 1981 light rail return spark in San Diego. Buffalo was one of the cities that was low growth building new transit versus many of the high growth regions. Expansion also was stalled by politics and a lack of priority. Extensions have been on the books for a while and as of now, they total over $1 billion.

After San Diego, the class of the late 80's light rail included Portland, Sacramento, San Jose, and Buffalo. All of these lines have been successes in some ways and failures in others. San Jose for instance runs straight up the corridor it should, but the land use decisions along the line and its slow speed perception have doomed it so far too low ridership compared to peer lines. But we've learned a lot since then about focusing development, ridership induction, and urban design.

One thing those lines did that we know better about today is that they were designed to bring people from the suburbs to the Center City acting as extended parking lot. The lines that have succeeded the best today are those which connect multiple places and destinations. An example of this is Denver which just opened its southeast corridor just a few years ago which connects the Tech Center, Multiple Universities and downtown Denver. It has similar ridership to the Houston light rail line which connects downtown with the biggest medical center complex in the world. They both attract similar ridership with similar counts of jobs even though the lines have different distances (numbers on this are forthcoming).

The lesson from this is that if Detroit or Buffalo as shrinking/low growth cities are looking to bring people from the suburbs to downtown and hope that the line works without combining every other planning and infrastructure tool, it will be doomed to fail. A key to making expanding transit work on major corridors is the connection of destinations as well as a focusing program on bolstering those destinations.

One of the major mistakes that Buffalo made in its planning and subsequent allocation of funding was that it didn't take the line out to the University which was just a few miles further away. Cleveland, which is a city that is in a similar situation as a low growth city has made the Euclid Corridor their priority and have recently redone the whole street with BRT. They have also invested heavily with new public infrastructure and civic buildings. Obviously you know where I stand on the technology but the investment infusion and focus is something Cleveland did right. This is in stark contrast to the waterfront line which they built and just waiting for things to happen. They did not. Another simple improvement Cleveland could also do is move the Shaker Heights line further out a mile or two into a major suburban job center connecting that center with downtown with rapid transit.

So if you are a place like Detroit, Buffalo, or Cleveland which have a negative or low growth outlook, if there is a high capacity corridor that is ripe for investment, just holding back on the transit is not going to solve anything. In fact, you're taking away an organizing tool from the toolchest and increasing your longer term city and transit operating costs which all too often in these cities means service cuts, especially with a high cost energy future.

Weak market cities need those destination connections and a reason to organize or else there is likely to be a vacuum and development will happen in the business as usual sprawl fashion instead of focusing it making things even worse. Just because a city is low or slow growth doesn't mean development doesn't happen. The important thing is to be more fiscally conservative in your investments that promote new development. The long term viability of the city depends on creating value and not spending money on frivolous infrastructure such as road or water extensions that will make life even worse further down the road.

Of course these need to be long term strategies instead of short term fixes. Just building a light rail line and stepping back only works in Sim City. But if we're serious about helping these cities out, giving them the investment tools and pushing them to make the right investment decisions will go a long way towards a better livable environment, reductions in energy consumption, and long term fiscal strength.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

An Urban A's Stadium

Since their Fremont plan crashed and burned and neighbors close to the future Warm Springs BART station have shut down the second option the A's are now going to have to look elsewhere for a stadium. They might even start looking in San Jose for a place. Not that I don't like San Jose, but Oakland is a much better place for a baseball team and they have so much history here, I'd like to make another suggestion. What about an Urban Stadium in downtown Oakland?

Other Urban Stadiums around the country are a success and most of them have really good transit access. A few examples are in Colorado, Boston, and Chicago. The Rockies Play at Coors Field - Access at Left to Union Station which will be the major hub of the Fastracks commuter and light rail network.

Fenway in Boston - Access to the Green Line


Wrigley in Chicago - Access to the Red Line


For an example, look what San Francisco has been able to do in SoMa with AT&T park. There's even an urban Safeway as seen in the picture below.


So why not accomplish two things in Oakland, extend good transit up Broadway and have a built in audience for restaurants and retail in a refurbished Auto Row until it takes off on its own. This would help stem the extreme retail leakage to Emeryville and San Francisco that Oakland suffers from. Having this anchor ramp up redevelopment of auto row and the hospital district would go a long way. I had a little fun with this and photoshopped in a stadium just south of 26th and north of 24th just west of Broadway where there is an empty auto dealership.


Another need is extending transit. It's easily walkable(.3 miles) from the site to the 19th street BART station/AC Transit 2oth street transit center but it would be nice to either have a subway extension to Kaiser or at least a streetcar line. Such a streetcar line has been proposed in other places such as at SF Cityscape.

Obviously the stadium would be a tough sell because there would be so many landowners but its a fun excersise. I would go to tons more games if it were located here which is close to my work downtown. Is anyone in A's land interested in an Urban Stadium? Thoughts from locals?

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Northeast Corridor Rulez!

I appreciate the Northeast Corridor and would love for us to spend more money there. But don't screw over California or other mega regions to do it. Last week Mayor Bloomberg was talking about the national investments in HSR (from Second Ave Sagas) and it seems like he's taking the attitude that investing anywhere else is silly because the NE Corridor is where its at.
With projects in Florida, California and the Midwest garnering headlines, the Northeast Corridor has taken a backseat in Washington with only one percent of federal HSR funds coming our way. “That simply just doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
Sure it makes sense, but not in the way that he wants it to. I would LOVE if we doled out money based on merit which we're starting to do with TIGER and HUD grants but then those people that are elected called politicians in places that don't have a lot of population concentrated don't want their money all sent to the Northeast Corridor. Not to mention that sometimes I feel like people don't understand geography or population of the rest of the country (not readers of this blog of course). I can't tell you how many times people say they'll be able to hop up from San Diego to visit San Francisco. When I ask them if they like 8 hour drives they say "WHAT?!"

Also, just adding up from Wikipedia CSAs and MSAs not in CSAs, along the California HSR corridor we get the following:

Los Angeles CSA - 17,786,419
SF-San Jose-Oak CSA - 7,427,757
San Diego MSA - 3,053,793
Sacramento CSA - 2,436,109
Fresno CSA - 1,063,899
Bakersfield MSA - 807,407
Stockton MSA - 674,860
Modesto MSA - 446,997
Visalia MSA - 429,668 !B9871841047192


Merced MSA - 245,321

Then there are a bunch under 200,000. But that is ~34.4 million or 11-12% of the United States population. Compare that with the NE Corridor numbers from the New Republic blog post on Mega Regions. From the graphic we can add up to about ~44.2 or 14-15% along the NE Corridor. I left out Springfield and Poughkeepsie.

In any event, I hope these loosely added numbers put some things into perspective. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to get out of it but felt like it was close. I'm guessing that the Midwest Hub HSR network probably puts together city pairs that add up to a lot of population as well. The difference between the NE Corridor and other regions though, is that the NE Corridor exists, Amtrak from San Diego to Sacramento or San Francisco does not. Again, I'm not saying don't invest in the Northeast Corridor, or that medium speed rail is a great idea (that's a whole other post) but also let's not pretend like the Northeast Corridor is the only place where HSR can exist. It is not the center of the Universe. That is the Planet Nieuw-Vennep.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

Who Knew Part 2: Buy Poor People Cars

This is what our buddy Wendell Cox said in an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune. Wow. Read it for yourself:

Q: What would you do if you got to run the Port Authority?

A: If I were given dictatorial powers to go into a place like Pittsburgh and not have to deal with the feds and everything, I would propose that what we do is first offer a program of leased cars to our low-income riders and basically try to move all of our low-income drivers who can drive to cars. And by the way, the mathematics work very well.

Secondly, I would strengthen dial-a-ride (Access) programs to help those people we can't help with cars. And thirdly, I would provide whatever service can be provided by bus or rail profitably. That means that people who work downtown are going to have to start paying their share. Maybe that hurts downtown. But the fact is, there's no reason why a downtown employee should not be paying the full cost of his transit ride to downtown.

Wendell and other able bodied people don't really care about kids or older folks that can't drive. Those dial a ride programs are expensive and aren't very reliable. Imagine how much more expensive they would be if they were flushed with all the new traffic after bus routes were shut down. Basically buy people cars and provide taxis. Real good idea Wendell. Lets not get into "the math" either. You always forget to add in the taxpayer cost of local streets, health implications of higher pollution, cost of parking spaces, loss of property tax from highways not to mention the massive taxpayer cost of highway expansion that would have to take place to accommodate all those new cars you bought people.

There are a lot more gems of half truths and bs in this column, but I thought I would share more. I think its safe to say that Wendell just hates transit and loves cars. He loves the way of life that costs most Americans 19% of their income right off the bat.

Q: What's the best transit system in the United States -- or is there one?

A: Boy.... Oh, San Diego. I would not call it the best. I'd call it the least worst. San Diego has done some wonderful things. They started contracting out transit service in 1979. Their costs are much lower than other systems as a result. More than 40 percent of their system is contracted out now. They carry a huge increase in ridership compared to what they had in 1980 -- a ridership increase that's far greater than the population increase. Everybody likes to talk about the San Diego Trolley, the light rail line. It is, again, the least worst trolley in the country. It is less unsuccessful as a result of its first line that went to the Mexican border. For example, if those Port Authority tunnels under the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh were ending up at the Mexican border, they might make some sense. But in the early years, this San Diego line covered 90 percent of its operating cost; it never covered any capital. As the system has expanded, it's been decimated. There's no other destination like the Mexican border. When you talk about transit in the United States, you have to be talking about best prisoner awards. These systems are a scourge on taxpayers. There are some that do some wonderful things, but nobody does it all right.

There's a bit of race baiting in here mixed with some good ole misleading information. Nothing new from people like Wendell. First off, the San Diego Trolley is the most efficient light rail system in the United States. It operates at 20 cents per passenger mile. Give any other mode outside of bicycles and walking that operate at that low cost. This is saving taxpayers money. Don't give me this bs Wendell about decimation. Your twisted logic has led the United States into this mess we are in today with people dependent on the oil god. Consume all you want and pay later. Well that bill is going to come due soon and the tax payers are going to front it. That will be decimation. It would have been better off in the long run if you and your ilk weren't so busy promoting wasteful living arrangements and solutions that would create more carbon expulsion.

It also seems like Wendell also has a hate for downtowns. I'm not sure why. Perhaps he believes that people should be isolated from each other and knowledge agglomeration should be limited. It's funny to think that Randall and Wendell attack San Jose for its planning, when in reality its much of their thinking that has gone into what created that place. More roads, less downtown, more driving.

We'll get to those privatization arguments later when we have more time.

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Been Thinking About Transit Density Part 1

Richard has been pushing Belmont for a while now so tonight I broke down and bought the book.

Some thoughts before I read it though based on what I've read in Richard's posts and my own evolution in thinking.

I had a bit of a thought today that should have come together sooner but I was looking over Google Earth at a way to connect commuter rail/HSR directly to downtown San Jose instead of the current just outside of downtown location of Diridon station. It seems to me that what is needed in each city around the bay is a local metro that moves people quickly around the central city. Each of these metros can be connected by commuter rail lines like Caltrain along commuter corridors but the most beneficial systems will be those that serve future density, not just existing transit.

I started writing this post before going to Washington with the hope that on the plane I could make some maps. The good part is that the trip reaffirmed what I wanted to back up. That an in town metro is important to vibrancy and movement in a city. Serving the suburbs should be done, but the way we are going to make our transit systems work is with good circulation in the center to build up core density. If we could see where Washington DC was before Metro and where it is now, you would see a huge difference in the city. If the current naysayers were around then to kill projects, that project would have never been built, and the city would look very different.

But other cities should look to the future in the same way. The future benefits outweigh current costs and with more people preferring to live a city life, its got an increased benefit of soaking up growth that would usually cause gross distortions in where people live and work. This is the option of urbanism like Chris Leinberger says.

So we'll start at Oakland. Previously I made a fantasy map for an Oakland Metro that you see directly below.

OaklandSubway

This was based on getting people in and out of a city, and not really a core urban strategy. I realize that now, but when you compare it some of the Subway systems that work really well it doesn't really look quite right.

Vienna's Metro looks different. There are a number of lines that criss cross a number of ways. The same with the Washington Metro.

Vienna

With that being said, here's a more core system. I've come up with these for San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose as the major regional centers but am thinking about doing other cities as well. The Space Race focuses so much on suburban serving transit that the core again is left out. But perhaps this is the way we should rethink it. We'll start with Oakland.

Oakland-Sphere-2

Now all of these maps will be at the same scale for the Bay Area. The circles are about 5 miles across and show a primary core that could densify in corridors and the core soaking up a lot of housing need and with less energy usage from density, walkable neighborhoods, and easier access to close districts.

Now I'm not sure that this necessarily needs to be a Metro Subway. It could be a dedicated lane streetcar or light rail. However a subway can go from end to end without having to stop at a light and stay on schedule with faster speeds. This facilitates use. But it might work in a smaller city with a smaller sphere than the five miles for core circulation. We should think about these implications and ask, what will get us the most riders and most future benefit instead of just thinking about cost and as I've mentioned before just bringing people into the center of the city.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Midweek High Speed Rail Links

My feed reader is getting bombarded with high speed rail articles. It's crazy how much attention something gets when leadership in this country gets behind it. In addition, things are heating up in California and the nuts on the Peninsula are trying to weasel out. Some of the anon comments on Robert's HSR blog are quite hilarious. I'm paraphrasing but when you say "Rich people live here and will sue so move the alignment to where the poor people are" it's time to rethink your priorities.
~~~
An article in the San Jose Mercury News discusses the possibility of trenching. This is a better option than ending the line at San Jose and running Rapid Rail (which I assume is BART or electrified Caltrain) up the peninsula.
~~~
One of China's High Speed Rail lines is going to start construction soon. Ahead again.
Groundwork started Thursday on a high-speed passenger rail line that will link Shanghai with Hangzhou in east China with trains that can run up to 350 km per hour.
And if only the United States worked like this...
Rail capacity in the Yangtze River Delta region has reached saturation point, said Yu. He said that during peak travel seasons, cargo transport was often suspended to make way for passenger trains.
Firefox warned me about the site so probably not a good idea to click...but if you must.
~~~
It looks like Richard Branson wants to wring more money out of the trip between San Francisco and Los Angeles. He has me sold on Virgin America. Robert says he'd rather an agency cover it so we can pump profits back into expansion.
~~~
Newsflash. People who are bashing high speed rail as a Disneyland Ride are out of touch with America. It would also do them some good to get out of thier congressional district, state, or Washington DC once in a while to that crazy socialist Europe part of the world. I mean, Bulgaria will have HSR soon! BULGARIA!!!

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Transit Election Results Central

So I don't clog anyone's Feed Reader I'm going to keep all the live-blogging within this one post. So keep it bookmarked and come back frequently for timestamped updates all in Pacific Time. Scroll down for deeper results than the top live blog.

Update 2:28 AM PT - So I get in bed and am about to shut my computer down when Measure R jumps to 97% complete! 67.3% looks great!

Update 2:04 AM PT - I have a flight to NC in the morning so I'm packing it in. Currently HSR is leading by a good amount and Measure R looks like it might pass as well. Hawaii looks good but I don't know where those missing precincts are and if they are pro-Mufi/pro-Rail. Measure B is a tough sell though. All in all it was a good night for transit. As I said earlier, Missouri was the only loser out of all of them. And when I get back, I'll put Seattle back on the Space Race list.

Update 1:42 AM PT - It looks like Missouri is just anti-transit. Everywhere else "won" even if they didn't win. ie: 66% is a really annoying threshold.

Update 1:32 AM PT - Measure R and HSR are looking good. The BART measure is really close teetering over and under the 66% it needs.

Update 12:53 AM PT - It's a pretty safe bet to say that KK (Requiring a vote to take away car lanes for transit) went down in flames while VV (AC Transit Parcel Tax) passed with a wide margin of error. The complete results are not in yet, but its probably fair to say it passed.

Update 12:42 AM PT - Sonoma Marin seems to have passed their commuter rail line. With three precincts left, it's at 69% which means its likely to pass the 66% mark.

Update 12:36 AM PT - It looks as if the transit tax passed in all New Mexico Counties. Rail Runner and possibly a streetcar in Albuquerque.

Update 12:23 AM PT - HSR is going strong at 52% With 61% reporting

Update 11:48 PM PT - Honolulu up almost 53% with 76% in

Update 11:46 PM PT - Aspen Returns are in. Yes for BRT There.

Update 11:31 PM PT - All of the returns are in for Marin so we'll have to wait for Sonoma. They both have to total 66%. Marin is 63% currently and Sonoma is 73%. HSR is really close at 52% For.

Update 11:02 PM PT - It's official, no Space Race Expansion for St. Louis. Measure M goes down by 51- 49. A close race for sure.

Update 10:38 PM PT - It looks like Light Rail in Seattle will pass and Streetcars have passed in West Sacramento. High Speed Rail is in a tight race and AC Transit looks to raise a parcel tax while KK, the anti-BRT measure looks like its getting shot down.

Update 10:17 PM PT - Looks like Milwaukee has a new source of money for transit. The electricity in the streets here is amazing as I just walked down Valencia street and cars were honking horns and people were biking and yelling on the street.

Update 9:52 PM PT - It looks good in New Mexico. We might see more Commuter Rail and a Streetcar there soon.

Update 9:04 PM PT - Prop 1 in Seattle Looks good so far.

Update 8:20 PM PT - We're starting to see West Coast Measures. Coming fast and Furious.

Update 7:57 PM PT - Missouri measures are looking bad.

Update 7:25 PM PT - It's good for Obama but rough out there for the transit measures. All are hovering around 50%. I don't know what parts of the counties these are in but New Mexico looks strong.

Update 6:47 PM PT - Starting to come in but slowly.

Update 5:41 PM PT - Results are going to be slow since we're working mostly on the West Coast. Wisconsin and St. Louis will probably be some of the first results we get so I'm keeping closer tabs on those.

Wheeee!!! Here we go...

Breakin it down below:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

St. Louis Proposition M - A half cent sales tax for Metrolink Operations and Expansion Results Below (LOSS)

Update 1: 3:43 PT - No Results Up Yet
Update 2: 50.2% No (1% in)
Update 3: 51% No (16% in)
Update 4: 52% No (44% in)
Update 5: 52% No (86% in)
Update 6: 51% No (93% in)
Update 7: Measure M Lost 51% No

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kansas City - Question 1 Light Rail (LOSS)

A 3/8 cent sales tax to build and operate a starter light rail line.

Update 1: 4:46 PM PT - No Results Yet
Update 2: 6:41 PM PT - 59% No 0% In
Update 3: 7:27 PM PT - 54% No (40% in)
Update 4: 7:49 PM PT - 56% No (84% in)
Update 5: 8:02 PM PT - 56% No (96.7%)
Update 6: 8:47 PM PT - 57% No (97%)

It looks like Kansas City burned its chance for light rail. A shame really.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Milwaukee Wisconsin - Sales Tax Increase (WIN)

A ballot measure that would increase the sales tax by a half cent to pay for transit service among other services.

Update: 4:55 PM PT - No Results Yet
Update 2: 6:43 PM PT - 53% No (1% in)
Update 3: 7:10 PM PT - 52% No (2% in)
Update 4: 7:21 PM PT - 50.1% Yes (3%)
Update 5: 7:34 PM PT - 54% Yes (19%)
Update 6: 7:52 PM PT - 54% Yes (38%)
Update 7: 8:04 PM PT - 54% Yes (42%)
Update 8: 8:49 PM PT - 53% Yes (71%)
Update 9: 9:07 PM PT - 53% Yes (76%)
Update 10: 9:33 PM PT - 53% Yes (86%)
Update 11: 10:17 PM PT - 52% Yes (94%)

It looks like we can probably put this one to bed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Santa Fe/Albuquerque - A quarter cent sales tax to bring Rail Runner into Santa Fe from Albuquerque and provide transport funding for local agencies. The Abq Streetcar could get a jump start from this source. (WIN)

4 Counties of Results
Valencia | Bernalillo | Sandoval | Santa Fe

Update 1: 3:44 PT - No Results Up Yet
Update 2: 7:15 PT - 52.9% For (Bernalillo County Absentee Only)
54 % For (Sandoval County Absentee Only)
Update 3: Valencia County 62% For (Unknown)
Update 4: 9:45 PT Bernalillo up to 53.5% For with 66% or so in
Santa Fe 52.7% For
Valencia County 61% For

All counties have come in for the Transit Tax.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CALIFORNIA SUBSET
From North to South

West Sacramento - Measure U Streetcar (WIN)

A half cent transportation sales tax that would in part pay for streetcar service across the river to the city.

Update 1: 5:15 PM PT - No Results Up Yet
Update 2: 8:24 PM PT - 63% Yes (0% in)

It looks like this has passed.

Sonoma Marin - SMART Rail (WIN)

Would build and operate a commuter rail line from Larkspur North. MUST HAVE 66% in the counties combined. Last time it just barely missed passing.

Update1: 4:22 PM PT - No Results Up Yet
Update 2: 10:22 PM PT - Marin 62% For (67% in) Needs 66% to pass
Sonoma 70% For (40% in) Needs 66% to pass
Update 3: 10:51 PM PT - Marin 62% For (97% in)
Update 4: 11:14 PM PT - Sonoma 73% For (52% in)
Update 5: 11:28 PM PT - Marin 63% For (100%) This means that Sonoma needs to bring it up to 66%. It looks like it might be able to.

Update 6: 11:51 PM PT - Sonoma 73% (68% in)
Update 7: 12:46 AM PT - Sonoma 73.5% (100% in)

If i'm correct, this adds up to 69% in both counties which means it wins.

Oakland/Berkeley - 2 Measures

Measure VV would give AC Transit a parcel tax increase to fund operations. Measure KK would require a vote to change street priority from cars to HOV, BRT, or other street running motorized dedicated transportation.

Update 1: 4:15 PM PT - No Results Up Yet
Update 2: 8:27 PM PT - 78% No on KK (0% in)
Update 3: 8:28 PM PT - 68% Yes on VV (o% in)
Update 4: 11:23 PM PT - 69% Yes on VV (10% in)
79% No on KK (4% in)

Update 5: 12:09 AM PT - VV 71% Yes (66% in)
KK 76% No (77% in)

At this point we can probably say that KK got shot down while VV passed.


San Jose - Measure B BART to San Jose (MUST HAVE 66% to pass)

An 1/8th cent measure to operate an extension of BART to San Jose.

Update 1: 4:28 PM PT - No Results Up Yet
Update 2: 8:34 PM PT - 65.6% Yes (Partial Results)
Update 3: 11:54 PM PT - 66% (37% in)
Update 4: 12:15 AM PT - 65.7% (46% in)

Californa Full - Prop 1A High Speed Rail

Float $10B in bonds to build High Speed Rail between San Francisco and Los Angeles

Update 1: 4:36 PM PT - No Results Yet
Update 2: 8:32 PM PT - 51% Yes (5% in)
Update 3: 9:37 PM PT - 51% No (14% in)
Update 4: 10:23 PM PT - 51% No (22%)
Update 5: 10:43 PM PT - 51% For (31%)
Update 6: 11:06 PM PT - 51% For (35%)
Update 7: 11:21 PM PT - 51% For (38% in)
Update 8: 11:27 PM PT - 52% For (43% in)
Update 9: 12:05AM PT - 51% For (50% in)
Update 10: 12:21 AM PT - 52% For (58%)
Update 11: 1:20 AM PT - 52% For (70%)
Update 12: 1:34 AM PT - 52% For (75%)
Update 13: 2:04 AM PT - 52% For (83%)


Los Angeles - Measure R (MUST have 66% to pass)

A half cent sales tax that would pay for an expansion of transportation such as light rail and subway.

Update 1: 4:37 PM PT - No Results Yet
Update 2: 8:18 PM PT - 64% Yes (10% in)
Update 3: 10:29 PM PT - 65% Yes (16% in)
Update 4: 10:46 PM PT - 65.9% Yes (23%)
Update 5: 11:06 PM PT - 66.3% Yes (29%)
Update 6: 11:44 PM PT - 66.3% Yes (44%)
Update 7: 12:04 AM PT - 66.5% Yes (51%)
Update 8: 12:50 AM PT - 66.9% Yes (64%)
Update 9: 1:07 AM PT - 67% Yes (70%)
Update 10: 1:25 AM PT - 67.2% Yes (77%)
Update 11: 1:43 AM PT - 67.3% Yes (83%)
Update 12: 2:04 AM PT - 67.3% Yes (90%)
Update 13: 2:28 AM PT - 67.3% Yes (90%)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Honolulu Hawaii - Steel on Steel Rail Election

An election to decide whether to move forward with a steel on steel rail line.

Update 1: 4:44 PM PT - No Results Yet
Update 2: 10:48 PM PT - 52% Yes (28% in)
Update 3: 11:49 PM PT - 52% Yes (76% in)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Seattle - Prop 1 Sound Transit Expansion (WIN)

A ballot measure to increase the sales tax to pay for expanded regional light rail and bus service.

Update 1: 4:49 PM PT - No Results Yet
Update 2: 8:17 PM PT - Snohomish County 55% For (100% In)
Update 3: 10:33 PM PT - Looks like ST2 is passing in all 3 counties. In King by 60%
Update 4: 12:31 AM PT - 58% passing with 335,000 votes cast

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Aspen - Prop 4A Bus Rapid Transit (WIN)

A ballot measure that would increase the sales tax by a .3% to pay for bus rapid transit expansion.

Update: 5:13 PM PT - No Results Yet
Update: 10:36 PM PT - 52% with 2 districts left to vote
Update: 11:47 PM PT - Prop 4A Wins

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If I'm missing something let me know.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Begin the Begin

I think Tom Radulovich hits the nail on the head with the basic tenants of this post. Infill stations are a no brainer, especially where suggested and core capacity and operating should be addressed. Don't forget to check all the rosy ridership assumptions at the door. However I don't think we can just sit and rest on our laurels. We need to find ways to build in greater capacity within Oakland, San Francisco and to a certain degree San Jose so people don't rely on thier cars as much. And while there are several BRT lines on the books, that is not going to be enough to deal with the rising tide of need. The longer term needs to be considered right now including that second tube and more urban extensions. Currently the plan calls for that tube, but more and more outward extensions are planned, meaning more and more funding will go to places that shouldn't get it. It's an export of our tax dollars to elsewhere and a practice that should be rectified.

San Francisco should have built a true Metro long ago and I still believe that is one of the major things this city can do to enhance existing service and get people out of thier cars (There are also a million little things that should be happening as we speak) As other cities have shown, 10,000 passengers per mile is possible with greater network connectivity. If we have core rapid transit within San Francisco and Oakland with quality bus and trams as redundancies and networks, there's no reason why we can't get a million more trips a day. Sure that might sound like a daunting number, but we need to look into the future of what is needed.

When my grandmother was born, there were still streetcars in every major city and very little automobile traffic. In her lifetime, there has been a huge change. Systems such as BART and WMATA have been constructed and the region has invested billions in its highway systems. We CAN invest in our future again. There's no reason why another Great Society Subway can't be constructed. And for those who say we don't have the money or that we're asking for the impossible, take a look at yourself and ask why that is.

You can call me a dreamer or an ivory tower thinker. Worse things have happened. But I'd hate to look back and see some kid like me drawing fantasy lines on a map and wishing that we would have invested in his generation, instead of just thinking of ourselves and our own defecits of imagination. If we listened to the same types of people that said no then, we wouldn't have a BART or Muni system to worry about now. Imagine San Francisco without rapid transit at all.

While we might not be able to plan and construct Metros right now, we can start to think about how a better region can emerge from our planning. Just because we don't have money now doesn't mean we should toss out these ideas or shouldn't plan for them. It just means we need to incubate them, for that point in the future when they should bloom.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Calculating Social Justice

I love how the blogosphere works. Someone posts on an older story and makes it relevant again and it screams across the blogs like a meteor. Today STB posted on an older Intermodality post that got to Ryan which I imagine is where it got picked up by Markos of teh big Orange.

Kos' post also brought me to this post at A Future Oakland that put forward some fun stats that drive me crazy every time the social justice folks bring them up, which they do often. The issue I have is with the use of the National Transit database to compare subsidy across different mode types for the sole purpose of saying that one mode is better for poor or minority folks than others. Why they always want to pick this fight is beyond me and its a symptom of thier not being able to connect the different types of modes and thier function to regional job opportunty expansion for lower income job seekers. Check out this chart from Public Advocates dot org, a law firm devoted to social justice.

You can see that the chart doesn't discuss income levels but rather race, I imagine as a proxy for income levels? I'm also not sure what they mean by subsidy but I'm guessing its Capital funding+operating per rider? And as an issue, these lines all perform different services at different distances which affects the costs. No mention that BART and Caltrain riders pay higher fares than AC Transit riders. No mention that per passenger mile (a standard measure across modes), Caltrain and BART are far more efficient than AC Transit. There are a couple of reasons for this and AC's would be better compared to itself if it didn't include the less productive routes or $40 a trip paratransit but those are necessary services.

I want to believe in the social justice movement but they shoot themselves in the foot with dumb charts like this that don't tell me anything except that they don't understand transit operations or regional connectivity to jobs for lower income workers. If I were arguing on the social justice angle, I would start by saying that funding for road expansions is being wasted on suburbs that are leaching tax base and making people spend more of thier hard earned money on transportation. We also shouldn't be saying that AC is more efficient because thats false based on per passenger mile comparison and its operating type. Comparing AC to Caltrain per rider based on 20 mile trip versus a mile or two mile trip is rediculous and doesn't get us anywhere. Based on the 2007 NTD here are the comparisons for operating costs:

Caltrain is 27 cents per passenger mile.
BART is 34 cents per passenger mile
AC is $1.32 per passenger mile.

If we're going to look at capital and operating per passenger mile, it comes out to this in 2007:

BART: 50.9 cents per passenger mile
Caltrain: 60.3 cents per passenger mile
AC Tranist: $1.57 per passenger mile

Versus a Per Trip operations calculation:

AC Transit is $4.02
BART is $4.21
Caltrain is $7.28

What the argument should be is that expansion funding should stop going to stuff like ebart and expansion freeways and should start going to core expansion of AC Transit, Muni, BART, Caltrain Metro East etc. Put the transit where the riders are and it will be helpful for everyone to connect with job opportunities.

This culture war against rail that takes people to job centers in places like Concord and Walnut Creek needs to stop. Would it be more efficient to run buses? No. First that means more cars on the freeway because less people would be taking transit. It also means that more of downtown Oakland and San Franciso would be parking lots inducing less walking trips overall. But if we didn't look at regional transit systems, we would be allowing the bay area fiefdoms of transit to limit the job opportunities for low income workers. In Portland, the Max lines actually allow workers to reach a greater number of opportunities. This 2006 paper on economic development for the FTA by Strategic Economics shows an interesting chart below. But basically regional connectivity provides more opportunities for jobs that make it possible for upward mobility.

A preliminary analysis of transit ridership by industry and occupation in Portland, Oregon indicates that fixed guideway transit connects to more diverse employment opportunities than local bus. An Entropy Index was used to measure the diversity of incomes for occupations in industries with the highest percentage of transit ridership in the region. Entropy index scores are stated as a decimal and the lower the number, the more concentrated the occupational and income mix within that industry.

As Table 1 shows, industries with high percentages of bus ridership also tend to have low Entropy Index scores for an overall average of 0.54. For the most part, these were industries with a high percentage of low wage jobs. However, industries where workers use fixed guideway transit and/or bus and fixed guideway transit to get to work had a much greater diversity income diversity with an average index score of 0.89. This analysis demonstrates that fixed-guideway transit provides connectivity to jobs with different income opportunities, and possibly greater opportunities for advancement, while bus provides the best connectivity for workers in predominantly low-income industries with little opportunity for advancement.

If anything, the issue of expansion should point to the fact that suburban jurisdictions have too much power in how transportation funds are allocated. If it were equitable towards the core, services such as AC Transit would get more funding for more service, but it wouldn't make them more efficient in moving people. They are still a bus company.

This should tell you that MTC is shafting Oakland and San Francisco by not spending more on more efficient rail and metro type service for trunk lines that would serve hundreds of thousands of people. Compare the expansion of BART to San Jose versus a Geary Subway. A Geary Subway would cost around $3 billion and carry 100,000 riders easy the first day. The BART to San Jose line will not get anywhere close to that ridership number and cost a lot more money. These are the decisions that are being made based on regional politics rather than real expansion needs. The up front costs are more but the efficiency of operations leads to less cuts and better travel times for all riders in the core and connections beyond.

Just because people are poor or of a different race doesn't mean they deserve inferior or just one type of service. A network of service that serves different travel sheds is the best way to get people to thier jobs and open up the region for opportunity for all. The fight against the modes that take people further needs to be better thought out as a regional strategy for improving core service rather than pitting modes against each other, especially operations as efficient as BART or Caltrain. It's not very productive and the way the social justice movement is going now can only fail if they are going to bring data such as the chart above to the game.

Flame on...

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Using Space Better

What happens when we orient buildings to transit? It saves space. It creates more value from the land. It creates more opportunities for walking. Here is an exercise I did with that employment sprawl photo from the post below.

1. The Sprawl Way - What San Jose Looks Like

San Jose Sprawl

2. Sprawl Rearranged - What the same amount of development would look Like if the development were organized around the station. I outlined the buildings and rearranged them in a more compact way.

SJArrange

3. Sprawl Rearranged x2 - Doubling the amount of buildings, using the same footprint for each original building.

SJArrange

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Thinking Big: The Next Bay Area Project

I know that BART to San Jose is in the pipeline and as usual it wasn't planned to serve people but to be cost effective. This means that it goes where no one is along available ROW and skips major employment centers except Downtown San Jose. You would have thought that we might have learned something from the planning of BART in Oakland and Berkeley but apparently not.

But that isn't what i really wanted to talk about. I have a new idea for the Bay Area's newest New Start/Transit Project. I'd like to call it the Subway to the Sea 2, Urban Core Capacity Enhancement. The title is a nod to the Subway to the Sea bubbling up in LA and the New Jersey Access to the Core tunnel under the Hudson. If we're going to densify the bay area further, we need more of a metro system along major corridors. We need to be cost effective, so we should start with a corridor that would generate a lot of new ridership. So how about we build a line between the beach and downtown on Geary, build the new trans-bay tube that's been planned, and build up Broadway in Oakland to Rockridge and Berkeley under the 51 line.

Current ridership in this corridor is 56,000 for Geary and 18,600 boardings on the 51. This means that if everyone changed modes (which we know there still has to be a surface bus line for shorter trips) there could be about 80,000 riders. Given the speed of the new line and convenience it could increase ridership to way over 100,000 a day just on the line. This is a third of BART's ridership. Now the line is 19 miles from Berkeley to the Sea along the route I mentioned.

Now the line wouldn't just generate a lot of ridership, but it would generate a lot of new TOD, Office and Residential. In Oakland on Broadway, there would be a surge in new development along the corridor between College Avenue and Downtown. It's possible to capture a lot of the office and residential markets and take some pressure off of the outer sprawling suburbs. It will also take pressure off of the almost at capacity Transbay Tube.

Another feature of this would be the tunnel under the bay. it should be designed to be dual mode so that Caltrain/HSR could go to Oakland, Emeryville, and/or Jack London Square. That way Caltrain could extend into downtown and across the bay to Emeryville and possibly beyond making a connection between the jobs there and Silicon Valley (Yellow). It's possible to electrify the line all the way up to Martinez making commutes from around the horn easier with new stations in North Richmond and Hercules. It might also provide a way to keep trains away from Jack London which has had some issues with accidents. It would be a big project and more than likely cost a lot of money, but it will also be a huge ridership generator. Not only will you get over 100,000 from the subway alone, there will be the tens of thousands that want to get across the bay with a one seat ride to Emeryville and Jack London Square.

Subway-To-Sea-Access

Thursday, May 28, 2009

How I Learned to Love the B...Geary

A number of San Francisco websites including SFist and Curbed have posted on the Draft alternatives screening report, which I suppose is a pre-alternatives analysis analysis to get the project into preliminary engineering for either small starts or new starts funding.

SFCTA, or TA throughout this post, has basically closed out all hope of getting new starts funding for a rail line instead opting for a process for which they already have one project in and which under the new administration is likely to get changed back into a streetcar fund with more projects that got pushed to BRT under Bushco likely to get hopped by rail projects such as the recently funded Portland Eastside Streetcar extension because of their livability component. The next administration isn't going to be looking for projects on cost effectiveness alone but rather on what that project contributes to the community. When we take a long hard look at each of the things we hold important below I think that we'll come away with a sense that this is a project that could be better and should take the high road instead of the current low one.

But you all know I have a bit of a bias. I like riding the rails and advocating the construction of lines I think are worthy, especially those that others seem to contend should be BRT lines or Bus Repackaged Transit but should really be rail. The TA has tried to lay down some reasons why they can't build rail but really it just comes out looking and sounding like a little kid saying "It's just too hard". Since when did something being hard have anything to do with doing what is right? No is not the right answer here. Kind of reminds me of the SF Chamber.

Now this isn't to say that I don't have multiple thoughts going through my head about this stance. For one thing, BRT on the surface and a BART subway might not be such a bad thing for Geary. But then again my thoughts on that have some, as SFCTA puts it, "fatal flaws" (who uses that type of framing and language for a transit report anyway? Apparently the TA). The biggest one being the Geary Merchants who in their own self interest have (Again, similar to Market) opposed any kind of rapid transit whether it be BRT or rail for fear of the construction effects . So if they let it happen once, what is the likelihood of them letting it get ripped up again? What is the likelihood of going back with more funds to an area that already got an improvement of any kind? Likely never. My hypothesis is that if rail doesn't get built on Geary this time or an agreement is reached to press regional agencies to push it to the front of their priorties, rail will not be constructed in the corridor where it makes the most sense out of any other in the city for another 40 years. Perhaps when I'm 70 they'll consider it. That is just not acceptable and I'll tell you why.

There are a number of things I believe are important considerations that we are leaving out of the discussion when we just think of this BRT line as a transportation project. In fact, that's the sick math that is done in every city around this country when considering transportation impacts. It's often siloed away from land use and the people themselves and its impacts on quality of life are not really considered. A five minute decrease in travel time from end to end doesn't really matter to average joe (a 20 minute decrease would) but what does matter to him is money in his pocket,clean air to breathe, and the ability to step off of transit at his destination every day without hating Muni, which is often the case when you read the twitter feed for Muni. It's usually followed by "sucks" or another complaint. Instead of being the ones that own the system, we the people are often seen as customers to be served with a place setting of whatever the waiters are looking to serve on that day. Don't like it, go to the other store. The problem here with public transit is, there is no other store, but in fact, we the tax payers own this store.

So as owners of this store, what are we getting in return? Are we getting 5 minutes reduction in travel time or are we getting a healthier environment, a return to the greater community, more money in our own pockets for spending? Let's look at what WE should get out of this.

1. Environmental Impact

The Geary line currently carries ~55,000 a day on a number of limited and local bus lines that run under the number 38. Because the TA report doesn't actually give us ridership estimates on the alternatives because BRT is a foregone conclusion in their minds, we have to somewhat guess. They do give a clue as to what the percentages are for ridership in the subareas (p14) along the corridor and they are pretty low to what they should be. 28% of trips non auto is really good for any other part of the country. But can you believe that 72% of trips in the Outer Richmond are still made by car!? 61% of trips on the corridor are to other areas within San Francisco. That should tell you something about people feeling that they need to take the car because transit and their neighborhood sidewalk won't do it for them.

But with center running BRT, the prediction is that there would be 3,400 new riders on the corridor(including taking from the 5 and other parrallel lines) by 2015 (p26). This seems like a rather small number if the service were to be so much better. But if we're looking through the lens of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and particulates, pulling from other corridors and increasing your ridership by such a minimal amount doesn't seem worth it when you're talking about continuing to run on diesel instead of electricity.

But its not just the lack of skyrocketing ridership. It's the lack of access that keeps the demand for increased density on the corridor depressed. With greater access to downtown you're actually shifting the market outwards to an area that can support greater density on the commercial parcels that make up parts of the Geary corridor. And while it might look like it's all packed up on the corridor there are lots of parking lots and parcels that can change with the right incentives while preserving the surrounding neighborhoods. But with the shift in the market comes another reduction in GHGs. As Ed Glaeser often states, with our rather temperate climate and lowered energy use, it's actually more efficient from an energy standpoint to have greater housing unit allocation to places such as Geary and Broadway in Oakland than more to Antioch and Livermore.

Concentrating more jobs on the corridor(perhaps by getting the base of a Geary metro through SoMa) and granting faster access through a metro only reduces this further. With an increase in population also increases the specific base needed for neighborhood retail and restaurants including grocery stores. I know personally that the grocery store/dinner run is one of the trips that I take more than others. Perhaps not as much as the work trip but still a considerable percentage of trip making.

2. Resident/Merchant Impact

Aside from the carbon savings that would come with not having to use your car for more trips out on the Geary Corridor, there would also be greater incentive to get rid of a car all together and use a car sharing service such as Zipcar. Many more residents getting rid of their cars and pooling into zip cars would be a realistic result of more efficient rapid transit. Not only does this reduction allow you to cut your carbon, you're also moving around $10,000 a year into your wallet from insurance companies, auto repair shops, and those evil oil companies.

Consider the increase in ridership discussed above for BRT. About 3,400 new riders for the BRT option. Since we don't have subway or Muni Metro numbers I don't want to speculate too much as to make you roll your eyes at my point but with a Subway, I would guess a rise of at least 10,000 riders. Now I feel as if that is being conservative. And it's likely that if you built a BART line under Geary you could get that many more very easily. So think about all the money those people are saving and all the money that pumps back into the local economy. It's not going offshore to some oil country or to that insurance company in another state. It is likely that a large percentage of it will stay on Geary boosting local merchants and giving the city what Joe Cotright called the Green Dividend. This dividend increases when there is greater walking, biking, biking and transit.

The money that isn't spent on the Green Dividend can also be spent on housing. We all think of subsidized housing in the sense of inclusionary zoning and fee based funds for affordable housing but with such a great number of people saving money through quality transit, this investment we make in the city also acts as a subsidy for more affordable housing. It doesn't necessarily open up the market and lower prices but it does allow a renter or first time buyer to meet a greater threshold for what is affordable to them on their income. If we are giving people quality access, we're allowing them to have choices in where they live that allow them access to work.

Let's not also forget the neighborhoods as well. Many residents could feel threatened by such an investment providing better access to their neighborhood. The access granted will increase property values and shift/increase demand up the corridor from closer to downtown where transit access is better. It will also bring more density which people often equate with more traffic. But if we look at places like Arlington County in the DC region which chose to build a Subway, they were able to protect the surrounding neighborhoods on the corridor by defining a strict zone for dense development. The pattern has also created almost no new traffic on many of the streets because people have such great access to services and a direct line downtown and to other parts of the corridor. In fact, 72% of people who use metro in the R-B corridor get there by walking.

3. Access to Jobs

There is also the issue of connecting citizens to jobs. The faster you can get them to jobs in other parts of the region on transit, the more likely they will be to use transit to get there. Much of this was addressed in a post on San Jose's BART to San Jose project and another post that featured a report by Strategic Economics that I'll post the most interesting information about below again:
A preliminary analysis of transit ridership by industry and occupation in Portland, Oregon indicates that fixed guideway transit connects to more diverse employment opportunities than local bus. An Entropy Index was used to measure the diversity of incomes for occupations in industries with the highest percentage of transit ridership in the region. Entropy index scores are stated as a decimal and the lower the number, the more concentrated the occupational and income mix within that industry.

As Table 1 shows, industries with high percentages of bus ridership also tend to have low Entropy Index scores for an overall average of 0.54. For the most part, these were industries with a high percentage of low wage jobs. However, industries where workers use fixed guideway transit and/or bus and fixed guideway transit to get to work had a much greater diversity income diversity with an average index score of 0.89. This analysis demonstrates that fixed-guideway transit provides connectivity to jobs with different income opportunities, and possibly greater opportunities for advancement, while bus provides the best connectivity for workers in predominantly low-income industries with little opportunity for advancement.
This means that the broader group of incomes that lives in the Richmond would likely have better access to jobs outside of San Francisco without having to drive their cars. The difference is made in the speed that would be attainable underground from this area rich with residents to areas outside of the city.

4. City Fiscal Impact

Another reason for pushing for a subway would be the shifting of greater expense to the capital of this project rather than the corridor operations which as we all know around here tend to be stolen or used as an ATM machine. If this line is a Muni Metro subway, then operations costs on the corridor should go down with the allowance of 3-4 car trains. Two cars will not do it with the current fleet operating as we've seen from the recent data that shows the cost per passenger mile being higher for Muni Metro than the city buses.

With lower costs on the corridor than for buses or BRT, this should mean that more service can be obtained for less money. With BART you would likely see a similar finding but an even greater operational cost savings. In addition, greater density provides way to capture greater receipts from sales and property taxes for the city.

~~~

These are just a few of the reasons why I think we should start earlier rather than later on a Geary Subway. As I continued to write this ridiculously huge post (mad props to the Urbanophile who writes posts like this all the time), I started to think no one would read. Congrats if you got this far. I imagine that BRT on this corridor is a done deal because all the TA and everyone else for that matter is cared about is the up front costs instead of the long term value created by such an INVESTMENT. I'll have to get around to how I think we might be able to pay for this, and I have some ideas, but its definitely doable...hopefully before I turn 70. Let's stop neglecting the urban corridors in this region for the suburbs alone.

I was also going to go into the whole issue of how the TA's estimates for the current project are BS, how the BRT is underestimated and compared to a light rail line that they likely estimated based on reconstructing the whole street. But I'm not sure that's a detailed fight I want to get into right now. I'm sure it will come up later. My only comment today is that we need new people to do cost estimates and design these things, because it shouldn't cost this much to put back something that was there just 50 years ago.

Some fun reading:

TA Memo
Enviro PPT

Finally, my long term dream for the corridor which makes me think that BRT on the surface would be perhaps ok if we actually got a Subway from UC Berkeley to Geary.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

TODcasts Available from MTC

Even if you can't be in the station areas, these Podcasts about TOD in the Bay Area are interesting and have a lot of information. I highly recommend them if you're in the area and want to go TOD sightseeing as well. There are five of them including Hayward BART, San Pablo's BRT, San Francisco's Third Street Corridor, Redwood Caltrain, San Jose Downtown. Check em out.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

LRT Number Crunching

I got into a debate on Streetsblog about passenger miles and capacity and saw a calculation I had never seen used as a reason that light rail sucked. It's an interesting calculation but it tells me nothing. GaryG states:
You simply multiply vehicle revenue miles by vehicle capacity in passengers to get total revenue capacity in passenger-miles. You then divide actual passenger-miles by revenue capacity passenger-miles to calculate the share of capacity that was actually used to transport passengers in revenue service. The calculation works out to an average occupancy of about 14 passengers per light rail vehicle. Each vehicle has a capacity of 140 passengers or more.
This makes no sense what so ever to me. First off, averaging anything over the whole day seems silly to me. Do we talk about roads being a waste when they don't carry cars at midnight? Another thing is that there's no filter for the peak period which is what of these lines relieve pressure on. The telling thing is that when we looked at the New York Subway, it was only 28 passengers per car. It reminds me of that calculation done a few years ago that all transit systems except for BART are worthless.

Anyways, my argument was that we should look at cost per passenger mile to see the efficiency of each mode. There was a fight about capital costs as there always are from people who think buses can do any job rail does but it led me to the 2007 National Transit Database numbers in easily readable format. Check out some of these numbers:

Cost Per Passenger Mile 2007

Denver
34 cents Light Rail
67 cents Bus

Portland
39 cents Light Rail
93 cents Bus

San Diego
27 cents Light Rail
71 cents Bus

Houston
53 cents Light Rail
55 cents Bus

Minneapolis
42 cents Light Rail
72 cents Bus

San Jose
103 cents Light Rail
155 cents Bus

Buffalo
1.63 cents Light Rail
1.24 cents Bus

Muni
116 cents Light Rail
101 cents Bus

Perhaps light rail in San Francisco is a waste. We should just rip out the tracks, no one likes riding on rails anyways...right? Wouldn't it be nice to toss a three car train on the N or KLM? Perhaps making Muni less like a bus stopping at every stop sign in the Avenues and on Church would help too.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Not that Simple

Update: You Can Listen to the Episode of Forum by clicking here.

I worry about analysis like these in the Tyee. While it's nice to think that if we didn't build that heavy rail line we could build x more miles of streetcar lines, it's really not that simple. Mostly because they serve two different purposes. You can't just say we can have 8 miles of streetcar for a mile of heavy rail, because what is happening is your trading short trips at a slower speed for longer trips at a faster speed. It's necessary to have both.

This morning I was listening to forum on KQED and one of the callers said it was absurd that he couldn't get from Sunnyvale to Berkeley in 2 hours. This is due to the lack of express trains between major destinations. In a better transit system, you would have Caltrain bullets stopping only at places like San Jose, Palo Alto, and San Francisco. Then it would go in it's own tube to Oakland and Berkeley. This is an expensive service due to the tube and electrification etc, and would likely generate calls to spend money more "cost effectively". They would say, why not build 400 buses or the next big trade off. The problem is you need both. In order to make transit useful, there need to be short trips and long trips made easy.

Now I know there is limited funding, but we need to start thinking like non-transit wonks think. And they think, why can't I get from a to b in under an hour if it takes that long in my car. Transit has to be competitive time wise, whether you're trying to hop a few blocks to get a bite to eat or going to a different city in the region.