Tram System Logos

More fun from the Europe Trip. Here are some photos of Transit Authority Logos. I thought it was interesting the other day when ColumbusING and Xing Columbus brought us MOTO. Here are some from Graz, Budapest, Prague, and Vienna.

Graz



Budapest



Budapest Metro



Prague Metro



Vienna

Can Transit Cause a Loss of Morals?

File this under: I'm not making this up.

According to a newspaper article dug up by TwoBells (Joe Lacey) on the SFMuni history list and confirmed by other list members, Cable Cars apparently caused one San Francisco woman to become a nymphomaniac. A few weeks after coming to San Francisco in 1964, she was involved in a terrible Cable Car crash which she claims made her go against her Lutheran morals. This in turn made the cable cars more popular (3rd Article). For the whole story you have to read the articles from the San Francisco Chronicle in their entirety below. It's quite hilarious and shows that you never know what could happen on transit or in the court of law.

Six New Subway Lines to Start Construction By End of Year

Some of you might have thought 'awesome!' when you saw the title but I'm sorry to be a downer because no its not LA or San Francisco but rather Beijing which has the luck. From China View via Live from the Third Rail.

Beijing's urban planning authorities have approved planning permission for six new subway lines on which work is scheduled to begin by the end of the year.

The six new lines - the No. 6, 8 and 9 lines, the second phase of the No. 10 line, and the Yizhuang and Daxing lines, have a total length of 152 kilometers, according to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning. They will be completed in 2012.

Beijing currently has five subway lines in operation, with a total length of 142 kilometers.

"The city aims to raise the proportion of citizens choosing public transport from the current 30 percent to 45 percent by 2015,and the subway passenger volume will increase to eight million a day from the current 2.2 million," said the commission's Zhou Nansen.

8 million a day is huge. New York City gets about 6.2 million a day. But what is interesting is that they set a goal to reach in terms of percentage of total and figure out what they need to do to reach it. It certainly would be exciting if a major city in the United States was building 6 new lines and LA comes to mind as a city that might want to do that.

LA Rockin The Transit Space Race

After the lift of the consent decree, the LACMTA has been busy planning the next wave of rail lines. Currently under construction are two lines, the Gold Line East Side and the Expo Line Phase 1. But slowly creeping up are the following lines...

The Crenshaw Corridor
Gold Line Foothill Extension
Expo Line Phase 2
Downtown Connector
Subway to the Sea

It's getting busy down there in LA, now if only they could speed it up and build them all at once like Denver, Houston, and Salt Lake City.

Finally a Trips Comparison!

Finally someone points out something I've been thinking for a long time about the hits on the Seattle light rail plan. The anti-transit faction has gotten away with their comparison of all regional trips to a specific corridor(s). This means they are comparing trips you take to get ice cream at 2am to trips taken on the freeway at rush hour. Obviously those 2am trips don't cause congestion, and capacity isn't an issue either. But as Diamajin points out, Mr. Westneat at the Seattle Times gets it too:

Project A, the no-brainer, will carry an additional 110,000 people daily over its 30 miles by the year 2030, according to its planners.

Project B, the wasteful one, will carry an additional 180,000 people per day over its 50 miles by the year 2030.

So ... the boondoggle will transport more people? For the same construction cost?

So it goes in the upside-down world of our transportation debate, circa 2007.

Project A is the widening of the Eastside's Interstate 405. The plan is to spend $10.9 billion (in 2002 dollars) laying four new freeway lanes and a bus rapid-transit route.

When done, the road will be 67 percent wider and carry 110,000 more trips than now. In some parts it will flow more freely. In others — such as the evening rush hour between Bellevue and Renton — it will be as jammed as it is today. (All this is from the state's studies.)

Project B is Sound Transit's light-rail plan. For $10.2 billion (in 2006 dollars), it would extend rail north to Lynnwood, east to Bellevue and south to Tacoma. The whole system, including the line being built now, is projected to carry 300,000 riders daily by 2030.

So the Times does some stuff right with Mr. Westneat, but allows Mr. Niles to parrot one of the anti-transit factions favorite comparisons without proper analysis of his claim. Regional trips to a specific corridor. As has been said before, the Big Dig only takes less than 2% of regional passenger miles. And before the cost escalations the road warriors loved that project. Some still love it and hope to repeat it in Atlanta among other places. But, as we know from the previous comparison: 180,000 > 110,000. But is it just 180,000?

What I would like to see is these 311,000 transit trips plus the calculation of walking trips generated from smarter development, specifically the trips that won't be taken by car. This is what the folks in Portland are referring to as the trip not taken.

In a 1994 travel survey, it was shown that areas with good transit and mixed use development got 9.8 VMT per capita. In outlying areas of the city, that number went up to 21.7 per capita. So if we look at the 7,200 housing units that were built in the vicinity of the streetcar, this means an annual reduction of 31 million VMT! This suggests that people don't have to drive as far (good for carbon reduction) and take trips using other means such as bikes and walking (even better).

So it seems to me that in this instance, if this light rail and streetcar network in Seattle generates smarter growth patterns for the next 1 million people, you can count on significant VMT reduction and more alternative trips. Now compare that to adding another freeway which will just add more VMT due to the extra trips you need to take in a auto-centric environment. I wish someone would discuss these issues rather than taking the bait and talking about that dumb region to corridor comparison.

All Rails in Space City

This afternoon the Metro board finally approved rail on Richmond putting the best line forward they could even if it wasn't the best line (Thanks Afton Oaks!). In a shocker that I don't think anyone expected, they also voted for light rail on all 5 lines! But after reading Christof's blog I was wondering if what he said about funding and the FTA was true? I haven't noticed any change in the funding mechanisms so what is going on down there? Is it possible that because Tom Delay is gone they have better support from their legislators (sans "I don't like rail" Culbertson)?

This was made possible by the other surprise of the day — the Southeast Line on Scott, along with all the other 2012 lines, will be light rail, thanks to new FTA funding rules. Thus, the Southeast Line and University Line will be able to share track on Scott. And that amended idea carried.

Perhaps they have been behind the scenes like Salt Lake City working out a deal with the feds to pay for their lines in bulk since they have a master plan. I think that might be the wave of the future so other cities might want to look close at how to plan a system then get funding for it rather than going line by line. We'll probably hear about it more in the coming days. From the Chronicle:

"We now feel we can pass federal muster (to obtain 50 percent funding) by going to light rail on all five lines at once," board chairman David Wolff said. "We can't help but believe that people will be thrilled by it."

In 2005, residents and elected officials along the planned North, East End, Southeast and Uptown lines were dismayed to learn that Metro analysis showed cost and ridership on them would be too low to justify federal funding for rail.

Check out the link to Christof for a new system map.

The Integration of Transit & Land Use

There is a Salon article that discusses how real this video is. Amazing!

Pay Now or Pay Later

That's what the Seattle PI is saying. And you know what, they are right. Costs and materials are always going to escalate and unless you get started its always going to cost more.

Speaking of the future ...It is coming, regardless of how you vote for this proposition. You could vote no and leave us in the transportation "Groundhog's Day" situation we're in. Or you could vote yes -- and we implore you to -- and free this region from its gridlocked thinking.

Really Freakin Fast

So if you go to Budapest watch out for the killer escalators. They are faster than any others I've ever seen. My mom almost ate it a number of times getting on. They are so fast they get videos on YouTube. AND they have bike races on them!

Utah Nimby's Have a Good Thing

Some just don't get it. They could have the best situation in the world but they wouldn't know it. Transit in Utah has the story.