Amtrak Sees Ridership Rise

Not bad for a small little railroad that gets limited funding. Imagine what they could do with some money, say a percentage of the interstate highway budget. We can dream right?

A Year of The Overhead Wire

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone out there who reads and comments on the blog. It's been a great first year. It's been really great meeting others out there in the transit blogosphere who share the love of transit and hopefully 2008 will be even better. Thanks again!

Metro Dreams

Earlier this month I posted on my dreams for San Francisco and East Bay Metros. Eric over at Transbay Blog has done the same. Check them out.

Budapest BKV Unloading Old Trams

Budapest's transit system is putting up 61 UV Trams for sale. Martin Thorne of the LRTA hopes that someone will scoop them up instead of letting them go to scrap. Sounds like a cheap way to get streetcars for smaller cities that are looking to build heritage lines. To see which ones are available, visit the BKV site here. They are available for bid until January 21, 2008, so if you're looking to build a heritage system, better jump on them soon. I hope at least Muni does and adds another vehicle or two to the historic service here in San Francisco.

Photo Flashback

When I was at the Bellview Station in Denver a few months ago I snapped this photo. Would have been cool if I got an LRV to shadow the sun...perhaps next time. Also, Richard Layman mentioned the Siemens Combino Ultra in a recent post about streetcar vehicles. Here is a photo you all have probably already seen of the Combino Supra in Budapest I took while I was there in October.

High Ridership = Rail Bias

So the FTA does this thing to cities that haven't had a rail project where the first project is not given a rail bias. We know a bias exists and is about 34-43% according to a TRB report by Ed Tennyson. So in cities like Portland and Denver where they are extending their lines, they were able to use their bias. However cities like Minneapolis and Charlotte weren't able to. In 2020, the Hiawatha line was supposed to get 24,000 riders a day. But here it is 2007, 13 years away from the goal and ridership is at 29,000.

So after a year's worth of ridership data, Charlotte planners will be able to use the bias that they weren't able to use on the first line, which if the FTA used current regulations, wouldn't even have been built. Charlotte got a medium low on their cost effectiveness rating, which now the FTA says you must have a medium to even get into Preliminary Engineering. But guess what they use to calculate cost effectiveness? Ridership! Which seems to be behind recently; Houston, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Denver have all opened lines recently and have had much higher ridership than predicted. So higher numbers lead to better CE measures, but new lines aren't allowed the bias. Does this mean that new lines aren't afforded the right numbers? Ask the folks in Columbus Ohio. Early indications say that ridership in Charlotte will be exceeded. 9,000 riders were expected and so far daily numbers have been around 12,000. I expect it will die down a little but as more development on the South Corridor comes online, more ridership will be added. What this tells me is that more cities are going to get the short end of the New Starts stick. Is anyone else ready for a new administration that cares about urban issues?

Moving from Colors to Numbers

I've been noticing as part of the space race that most cities operate their rail lines in a color system, meaning each line has a color. A good national goal should be to get cities off of the color system and to numbers and letters like New York City. Why? Because if you have numbers and letters that means you probably have more options. There are a limited amount of colors to use for light rail lines. ROY G BIV comes to mind but of course there are others in between. In Austin you could have a burnt orange line. However if you have a color system, it most likely means there aren't a lot of choices of places to go in the city. If lines are as prolific as most bus systems, I think we'll start to see good things happen. What do you all think? Is this a good goal?

Lake Oswego Rapid Streetcar Steps Toward Reality

They discarded the Rapid Bus and now are doing the EIS with either rapid streetcar or bus with system management. The best part about the streetcar is that the Tri-Met Capital funding coffers wouldn't even receive a small dent due to the fact that the ROW is worth so much. If they get a federal match, the ROW would be worth $75 million and the FTA could possibly take care of the rest of the total cost.

This would be the first modern application of the Rapid Streetcar idea. It would connect to the City of Lake Oswego to the South Waterfront Streetcar while using the same vehicles.

Miami Surprise + Subway Rangers

Initial funding was approved today as a part of the port tunnel plan for the Miami Streetcar.

Also, there was an article in the New York Times on how the Rangers take the subway to work while the Knicks park their cars wherever they want. Streetsblog has the coverage in the link above.

Two Seattle News Items

Lots of coverage over at the Seattle Transit Blog Triad...

South Lake Union Streetcar Opens
Seattle Transit Blog
Orphan Road Overlords
Orphan Road Opens

New Viaduct News
Carless in Seattle
Orphan Road
Seattle Transit Blog