Tram Blogging

Malvern #5 in Melbourne. Looks like a Siemens Combino but shorter than the Budapest versions.

What We Should Really Learn From Curitiba

The Candyland blog reminded me why Curitiba has been able to do what people go down there to see. What they see is shiny red buses as a low cost option to real rapid transit. That's also what they bring back to the United States after the trip shows them how great the buses are. But there is a bigger lesson they aren't learning from Curitiba. Starting in 1964 with a military coup, they radically planned for growth management of their city. This included intensive land use planning and a similar idea to our smart growth movement for curbing sprawl. Jamie Lerner, the mastermind behind Curitiba's revitalization was essentially the Brazilian Jane Jacobs and the ideas behind Curitiba would make road warriors and libertarians sulk.

(translated from Portuguese) the managing idea of the project was the creation of a composed infrastructure for a zone of great concentration of activities and of raised habitational density. The concentration of the urban activities had as purpose to revitalize(sic) “the street”, considering it with a primordial function of the life of the community. The proposals for the Structural Axles of Curitiba keep some similarities with this project.

This project in France of Jaime Lerner would show up in Curitiba as the corridors project. In keeping with the allowance of densification in downtown, there needed to be a new place to grow. It would be decided that this would occur on corridors and tie the transport together with the land use.

The same attitude demonstrated in these projects of architecture, with emphasis in the distribution of spaces and its relations with the structure and infrastructure of the buildings, if transposed for urbanism, in the interrelation between zoning and system of collective transport....The main quarrel of the Preliminary Plan was which proposal of growth would have to be adjusted for the future of Curitiba. The idea of city delimited for a green cinturão, seemed impracticable ahead of the possibility of a indeterminate growth. The orientation of development from linear axles, in contraposition to the concentrical city of the Agache Plan, seemed most adequate

Given the ability of cities to extend indefinitely, the corridor system would address this issue allowing corridors to grow up while not sprawling. In 1971 Jaime Lerner became mayor of the city. Trained as an architect and with the help of a dictatorship, he was able to impose his vision on the people for better or worse. After over 40 years of planning, Curitiba is what it is, it's what would happen if an architect and smart growther took over a city. But folks should not come back from that city just thinking, "what a cheap bus, lets do it here". They should be repeating the three premises of the Curitiba plan: use of the ground, collective transport and circulation. And in the United States, you might as well build rail, because that is what developers write checks for and building a busway to Curitiba standards costs the same as rail.

Charlotte News

So the knuckle draggers in Charlotte are fighting (i should say tricking) their way into a referendum on the half cent sales tax. As i have said before, this has serious implications for the space race as well as Charlotte's ability to be a city that attracts high quality work talent. The reason being is that these folks don't understand what this means for the buses. This isn't a light rail issue, this is a public transit issue. It's a fight against people who think that oil is forever, wars are good and creating auto dependent sprawl is the free market at work which we all know is false. Hopefully it will be upheld, right now it looks good, but you never know what kind of lies they'll spread.

The Success of the Hiawatha Line Has Consequences

The Space Race is on and in Minneapolis different parts of the region are expecting more now that the Hiawatha line has proved the success of Light Rail. With planning for the Central Corridor underway and funding secured for the North Star Commuter rail, the first parts of the planning process have started for the Southwest Corridor. But the Northwest doesn't really like that and they want to be treated like everyone else. This is why they've forgone the BRT option and begun to study streetcar and light rail. Not only that, a massive streetcar plan is in the works to replace the heaviest bus lines and spur development. This is why I love following the space race. With only one successful line, the region is quickly planning for an upgrade that will match that of the best transit cities. I hope to see this come to fruition.

Misconceptions of Smart Growth, New Urbanism and TOD

I would consider myself a New Urbanist and a Smart Growth advocate but I'm not sure that i would characterize it as wanting people to live on top of each other or even communism as some have so put it. Just like with rail transit versus the automobile, people like to have choices. And given that the vast majority of new construction are single family homes, this doesn't match up with consumer choices. The reason we know this is because this condo boom is always reviled as a rich boom. There is a huge demand and people will pay premiums to live in urban settings over suburban ones. Building neighborhoods is something that was forgotten between the era of streetcar suburbs and today.

What the New Urbanists are trying to do is bring that neighborhood structure back. You might hate the modernest architecture and the silly color schemes but that isn't what New Urbanism is all about (although its a hot type right now and all builders will want to claim new urbanism in their projects). A lot of projects are on greenfields where people have their own yards and the ability to walk in their neighborhood with interconnected streets and connections to transit. The projects you hear about are the infill projects where developers are fighting to make building density and mixed use legal again since it has been outlawed in many cities by post war zoning codes. That causes quite a rile in newspapers and media but doesn't tell the larger story of the movement.

In New Urbanism there is a strategy for design called the transect. It talks about the densities that should be employed from center city to the rural. You'll rarely see anything but single family homes in the T1 or T2 settings(The transect goes from T1 which is the most rural to the T6 which is New York City type density). So while many might think that New Urbanists and Smart Growth types are all about shoving density down your throats, its really all a misconception of how the movement operates and how it values neighborhood design that goes back to the streetcar suburbs that had grid street patterns and good transit options. If more people had the choice of walking, biking or taking transit we would have less of an issue with peak oil or oil at all.

Seattle Streetcars

I'm not sure how i missed this but Seattle has been having workshops on future streetcar networks in the city. There are some good suggestions. Check it out here.

The Forbidden Railyard

Telstar Logistics has an excellent post about some streetcars that have been stored in the woods of Tahoe. Great Pictures too. Check it out.

Tales of Transmilenio

I think the post below to the Light Rail_Now Yahoo Group is important. The BRT phenomenon is getting out of hand with people saying that its just like LRT but cheaper. Well its not just like LRT for several reasons.

Non Level Boarding - You can't build a bus that lines up exactly with the curb. And taking a bus like Oakland has and just painting it rapid isn't the same. I'm not sure why the equity people are letting them get away with this given that LRT is first class and BRT is obviously third world.

Ride Quality - You can make roads as smooth as possible but in terms of ride quality its night and day. Buses lurch forward, trains glide on the rails. I took buses in Austin to school for 5 years, it wasn't always pleasant during stop and go traffic. Now I take BART and Muni Metro and its amazing the difference.

Operating costs - Operating costs on LRT are lower. It's proven by the data in the National Transit Database. You can hook trains together, buses are limited to 60 meters and no one would allow anything longer on the roads. Labor is the biggest factor in costs and buses cost more because there must be more of them in order to reach the capacity of LRT. This is something critics often ignore.

Attraction of Passengers - When the Yellow line opened in Portland, it was the ultimate test. It basically replaced a bus line that had operated the same route giving a somewhat real comparison of ridership between the two. Guess what happened? 100% ridership increase. That's right, the line doubled its ridership by putting in LRT.

Attraction of TOD - Buses don't do it because developers don't trust them. Even fixed guideway BRT isn't trusted. The reason is because that road can be opened to cars, and that bus line could be moved. Rails in the ground signify people are in it for the long haul and investing in their future.

There are many more but let me continue by saying that these comparisons to third world countries systems are way off base. This is proven by the Hartford Example. Hartford is building a BRT line and guess what the cost per mile is according to the FTA. $55 million a mile where they paved over a rail right of way. Why not build rail? Eugene just completed an BRT line that is single tracked. They are saying you can do it too! But they never tell you the tricks. Below is a comment from Lyndon Henry responding to arguments for BRT in an article by US News and World Report. Enjoy.

The promotion of "BRT" as some kind of "just as good but cheaper" alternative to LRT is a swindle.

The Bogota Transmilenio "BRT" system featured in the article would easily cost more than LRT in fully allocated lifecycle costs while delivering far fewer benefits. Transmilenio consists of a fully segregated 4-lane busway with specially designed extra-long buses operated by dirt-cheap Third World labor. Loadings are far beyond
what US urban travellers would tolerate and ADA compliance is dubious. Average speed is 26 km/hr, or about 16 mph - about as fast as a slower LRT.

The busway was installed by appropriating existing street lanes for transit - no wonder it's hailed for its "low cost"! Where is there a large American city in which the transit agency can simply appropriate four lanes out of a major central-city arterial for dedicated transit use?

The costs of surface Transmilenio are almost invariably compared with those of an underground metro - and, gee, the surface busway always seems to come out ahead. Duh. How about comparing with the cost of a comparable surface electric LRT?

Not mentioned in the article is the fact that Bogota has an extremely transit-dependent population - Colombia's per-capita motor vehicle ownership is approximately 6% that of the USA. And the country is very poor, with per-capita income about 1/5 the US average. Factoring this into the $350 million cost of Bogota's Transmilenio busway system results in an equivalent cost of about $1.3 billion in the USA, or about $55 million per mile for Bogota's 24-mile system. That's about on a par with some US LRT systems with subway sections - such as Minneapolis' s Hiawatha line.

Why is it that just about every "BRT" promotion I see boils down to a huge flim-flam for dummies?

Don't fall for the BRT sham. It's too good to be true.

Industrial Land and TOD

As the Portland Example became more prominent, many cities are looking for industrial land to change into mixed use neighborhoods. While that is good and has done a great service for the Pearl District, it seems as if changing all industrial land uses into neighborhoods might not be a good thing.

Given that some industrial lands are still viable as such, pushing out the industry by routing light rail through it can either be good or bad depending on what your goals are for the corridor. Some places such as Oakland might be better served by saving industrial zones to keep jobs and tax base. Of course if there is a station adjacent, what is better for the city and region? Is it that short term tax base or the long term ridership goals of the transit agency? Is it the housing and reduction of VMT through TOD or is it being able to keep vital industry such as shipyards in Oakland's case. Where else are the ships going to go? It's an interesting dichotomy that is only beginning to pop up in planning and land use for these systems.

So how do we figure which industrial uses should be changed over? The Pearl was a railyard that was abandoned and snatched up by developers. It's proximity to downtown made it very valuable after all the details were worked out. Now its the hottest address in the northwest. Minneapolis citizens however are worried that they will run out of industrial land uses unless some of them are protected from rezoning. I want to say that is short sighted and there is plenty of land for industrial uses, the old ones disappeared for a reason, but i'm not sure if i have all the facts to make that claim yet.

The Central Subway and Beyond

Today there were numerous articles about the planned Central Subway for San Francisco. There is political backing for going forward with the project even with the objections from some who say it's too little for so much money. I wonder if today's anti-transit folk would argue against BART, the Washington Metro, or even the New York City Subways. They probably would.

The Central Subway for some of its faults is a good project section. It begins to address the North South rail deficiencies that plague the City and completes the second of three segments that will connect North Beach to Downtown and Bayview. I personally can't wait to use it.

Extra Note: Here is a link to a PowerPoint for converting the Geary Subway to BRT then LRT.