To Subway or Not to Subway

Apparently the FTA has given Tyson's Corner another opinion on the possibility of a subway tunnel. Live from the Third Rail has some good coverage and I tend to agree with the quote below:

It is disappointing that the national transit agency, which is supposedly interested in providing funding for high-quality transportation projects, has such trouble seeing through its foggy glasses and cannot recognize the advantages of a subway. It is heartening, though, that local businessmen and activists may be able to turn the situation around and convince Virginia's politicians that only a subway makes sense.

Kay Railey Hutchison?

Kay Bailey Hutchison has this to say about transit in Texas. She's a supporter but how much? Enough to tell Culbertson to shove it? I guess we should ask her.

Transit Space Race Update: Atlanta

I missed these articles but it is a good example of whats going on in the space race, specifically that folks in Atlanta are worried that other southeastern cities are going to eat their lunch.

A recent article in the Gwinnet Daily Post claims other cities are leapfrogging Atlanta for transit supremacy in the Southeast.

While Atlanta’s inner core has been served for decades by the MARTA rail system, efforts to connect the city with its more distant suburbs via commuter rail service have languished. As a result, smaller Southeastern cities like Nashville and Charlotte, N.C. — which now features light rail — have moved ahead of Atlanta in offering commuters an alternative to driving on clogged highways. "They’re beginning to outstrip the transportation hub of the Southeast,’’ said Emory McClinton of Atlanta, a member of the State Transportation Board and longtime proponent of commuter rail.

In December, the former king of Road Warriors in Atlanta had this to say in an Op-Ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

How then does Georgia expect to compete for industry and jobs against cities such as Miami, Charlotte, Nashville, Dallas, Denver, and Orlando, whose transportation alternatives are more than a decade ahead of Georgia's? Commuter rail just started operating in Nashville. Denver, Dallas and Portland have light rail in operation, while Charlotte is in the advanced stages of comprehensive regional alternative transportation planning.

Hopefully Atlanta wakes up from its congestion creation machine soon. They do have some interesting projects going on including the Beltline, The Brain Train, The Peachtree Streetcar and the embattled Lovejoy Commuter Rail. Those will help but a possible expansion of MARTA along with other improvements would go a long way.

Straphangers Rejoice!

Apparently short riders on Washington Metro were getting the shaft. Now they've put in 20 spring loaded handles on a single car to test them out. I would think they would want to put them on more than one car but at least they are starting to think about it. When i was riding BART to Lafayette from Oakland, it was always packed at rush hour in the afternoon. There would always be someone who couldn't quite reach and just had to hope that everyone else would hold them up during acceleration. Maybe BART will be next.

Tram Sign Blogging

There are lots of cool tram signs around the world. This one is in Melbourne Australia. Thought I would share some. This one was taken by Boyd at Flickr. Enjoy.

More Mapping and Jacksonville

Over at Metro Jacksonville they did the mapping exercise of comparing routes. I don't know Jacksonville very well but it seems like one line (the BRT) is aimed at commuters and one is aimed (LRT) at economic development. While both are important, which one is more important than the other given that these two lines don't follow a similar path? It looks from casual observation that they are both bad.

Why you ask? Well after further reading he compares the proposed LRT route to Austin which in fact it is much like Austin in that it doesn't really hit the main traffic corridor and does not go all the way into downtown. But Jacksonville has an amazing opportunity that isn't even being looked at to the South. On a main arterial to the South there are large grass medians to put LRT and once through downtown, arterial LRT could take travelers to the Major Regional Hospital and further north to a dead mall.

The arterials are where the opportunities lie. Not where things are cheaper such as with BRT or most rail rights of way. The reason is that this is where people drive and its also where the TOD redevelopment opportunities are because believe it or not, strip malls are not where the money is at anymore. Finally, in the google map from the link above, you can see major opportunities west of the downtown for redevelopment. A good catalyst might be...a streetcar? There is a peoplemover out there...but it just doesn't do enough.

Washington DC and Wires

Apparently when they ran the streetcars in Washington DC laws had been written that would require that no overhead wires in the District West of the Anacostia River be used to power anything. While this law keeps out unsightly wires it also discourages bringing back the streetcars that once ran down the streets of Washington. The pilot Anacostia Streetcar project on an abandoned right of way is not subject to these restrictions however anything West of this new project is affected.

The only possible fix is the third rail technology that has been used in Bordeaux France. This system, pioneered and owned by Alstom is rumored to not be available and the word on the street is that it won't be available in the United States any time soon. According to Werner Uttinger, the safety certification process in the United States is too much to overcome to bring this technology to the United States so for now it seems that DC will have to invent its own power system or keep dreaming.

UPDATE: In the comments Christof has this to say...

The "no overhead wire" law predated DC's streetcars. As a result, the city used conduit streetcars, with the electrical supply buried in a slot in the street (resembling a cable car slot). As proved by more than 70 years of operation, it was a workable system, but expensive to build and labor-intensive to maintain. Pictures here. If you ever wondered what streamliner cable cars might have looked like: Click Here

Apparently also, since it was so expensive to have the underground conduit, there were pits on the outskirts of town to switch to overhead wires. This is a similar situation to Bordeaux where the Alstom trainsets change to overhead wires outside the historic downtown. Thanks for the Links Christof.

Superbowl Sunday!

It's Superbowl Sunday and the teams are Indianapolis and Chicago. If we have to vote by going purely off of transit systems, this one is a no brainer. Chicago's legacy system beats Indianapolis' buses hands down. Basically Indianapolis forfeits the game. But thats only in transit, lets see how the game plays out.

If anyone saw Mo Rocca on Letterman he slammed Indianapolis players for the city taking out their streetcars. If you're a transit nerd it was pretty funny. But I can't find a youtube clip. So if anyone finds it let me know.

What If...

Transit Miami did it for Miami, M1ek did it for Austin, Christof did it for Houston, and the Transit Coalition has lots of maps on possible LA scenarios so I thought maybe i would throw my hat in the ring.

Above is my dream map of San Francisco. Black lines are existing and colors are not. The northern most green line would be an extension of the F line. It would also serve as a piece of the Van Ness blue line subway. The reason it wouldn't be a surface line is that that street is way too busy as it is and being the main 101 freeway route to the Golden Gate the line should be underground.

The red elbow is the central subway thats under planning right now. However it should be extended to the orange line into the Marina district. The indigo line goes north south to connect lines and the Richmond district with the San Francisco State. And finally the bottom red line connector would meet up the Geneva rail yards with the end of the 3rd street light rail that just opened up. These are my dream routes to expand an already pretty good rail transit system. I hope they do the blue, yellow and orange lines first because those are the ones i would use the most! Anyone else have dreams?

Dallas and the Space Race

As the first city in Texas to build light rail Dallas is planning a large expansion that has been approved by the FTA. The road to light rail wasn't so easy though. Similar to Austin in their approach, Dallas formed a Transit Authority with the sole purpose of building rail. While it was a bus company also, the point was to build a regional rail system with a 1983 map showing 160 miles worth of rail planned. After waiting a while to start Dallas finally completed its first line in 1996. Now after a few extensions DART is gearing up for two more to bring the total to 93 miles by 2014. Half of this will be paid for by the second largest Full Funding Grant Agreement by the FTA ever for a new start project, the east side access project in NYC being the first.

One light rail extension is planned to go to the airport. This will put Dallas among the few mutltimodal transit/airport hubs in the United States. Operation on the Orange Line is planned to start in 2011 and connect Dallas with Los Colinas also. The other extension is the Green Line. It will go from Pleasant Grove in the southeast through the hip neighborhoods of Deep Ellum, through downtown and north to Carrolton. At some point it will probably be extended to Denton.

In addition the Mckinney avenue trolley is being expanded. Bonds for an expansion were passed in November of 2006 and this key part of the Dallas rail system will finally form a real connection between Cityplace station and the downtown transit mall via the rapidly developing uptown district. Finally is the move by the region to petition the state to allow them to raise another half cent for commuter rail operations. This push has been bubbling all last year but it remains to be seen whether the state house in Austin who has often been hostile.

These expansions will keep Dallas at the top of the Texas transit food chain and hopefully someone in Austin will take notice of the way it could have been while Houston and Dallas kick their butts.