The Gift of Rails

How awesome. When you register for a wedding, it's usually at Bed Bath and Beyond or somewhere you can find nice china. How about registering to give to the streetcar movement? Cincinnati residents are rather ingenious.

As they planned their Saturday wedding, Kristen Myers and Chris Heckman knew they didn't need a toaster or blender. So, true to their urban lifestyles and love for downtown Cincinnati, they suggested their guests give to what they think is a great cause: the streetcar project.

Don't Let High Speed Rail Get BRTized

You know that definition problem that BRT has. No one knows what it is so they just call everything BRT that doesn't stop every block like a city bus. Well something like this for HSR has got Yonah visibly angry. So what is the high speed threshold? Is it over 150? How do we make sure that HSR doesn't get BRTized?

Houston's Rail Cars Overworked

This was the same story I heard with the first Portland Streetcars. They were overworked but luckily the Skoda models were hardy and didn't break down much. But deferred maintenance to keep people from overcrowding the trains will strain the vehicles eventually. Though the Siemens cars will have to continue to work hard until the new CAF cars get there.

Ridership Up But Most Likely Going Down

The boosterism behind the data is a little behind the reality on the ground. As employment drops so will ridership this next year, but APTA says that ridership in 2008 was at a 52 year high. That isn't bad but when you look at the per capita numbers its a bit of a different story.

The total is refreshing though. After some dismal time in the mid 90's when gas was sometimes 75 cents a gallon or less, ridership has been steadily increasing again. I'm sure it helped that a lot more resources could be put into transit which shows that what you invest in will be what people will be able to use, other than the other way around that the opponents would like you to think was true. Mainly, no one uses it because everyone likes to drive. But they never tell you how much we weren't inevesting in transit all those years as much as we are now.

In 1995 7.76 billion people took transit. $17.8 billion was spent on operating costs ($23.40 inflation adjusted to 2006). Fast forward to 2006 where we've spent $32.03 Billion on transit operating and accrued 10.01 billion trips. If we look at the changes in spending, 36.8% operations cost adjusted for inflation and 28.9% ridership increase and 31% increase in passenger miles. The greater we invest, the more we'll see people taking the options that work for them.

Saturday Night Quick Links

Had a pretty busy last few days and it's been hard to post. Here are some quick links until I get a bit more time.

Dallas officials might stop the future Orange Line short of the airport.
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Should cyclists pay a registration fee? Personally I think absolutely not!
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The Hawaii Senate wants to take from the rail fund to balance the budget. You know, all this stealing from transit to pay for budgets is not cool. Why not take from the road funding? Too much of a sacred cow for you?
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Apparently there is a locomotive buried in Cincinnati. Who knew there were locomotives buried all over the United States like treasure.
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There are a lot of high speed rail concern trolls out there. This one in the Boston Globe.

"We have tremendous distances compared with Japan or Europe," said Carlos Schwantes, a professor of transportation studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. "We're just much bigger, and in so much of the country it's so low a population density that we'd have to ask the question: Is it worth spending our dollars for the infrastructure in those areas?"

How many times do we need to kill this argument. There wasn't enough population density in the Roman Empire for paved roads to the British Isles either.
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The Beltline is safe for now.

Have You Heard of the N Judah Heist?

This was the story back in 1955. Can you imagine a bunch of high school kids hoping on an N and going for a ride, picking up passengers and evading the Muni Managers today?

H/T SF Muni History List

An Honest Question

Seattle voted against roads and transit last year and then turned around and overwhelmingly voted for transit. It was a big fight to get it back on the ballot but now the road warriors know that people didn't want the roads and are dreaming up ways to steal the money as we speak. But it begs the question in other regions, should people have to vote for roads? We see that residents are always asked to build transit, even if the funding exists, but never asked to build roads. They just do it. Do you think if they had a vote that they would approve of their hard earned money being spent on sprawl roads?

Years & Years

It would be a shame if Houston had to ditch its plans for a crosstown line that would connect downtown with two other major job centers. My guess is that it won't happen since its a major connector and an important link. But my first question is why does it take so long to engineer and build a line? I have been blogging about this line for over 4 years now (my previous blog in Austin discussed this line as well) and the FTA still hasn't approved the environmental document?

Previous projections had put a price tag on the 10-mile University line of about $750 million, roughly in line with the $73 million per mile cost Metro estimated for the North, East, Southeast and Uptown lines.

The Metropolitan Transit Authority will look to the Federal Transit Administration for help funding the University line. The FTA has yet to approve Metro’s environmental impact study for the line, a key element in moving the project forward. “I’m feeling the frustration of a lot of people in this organization who are trying to get through this process,” Metro spokesman George Smalley said Thursday.

This is why things are so messed up. It takes so long to get to environmental studies, no wonder nothing has been getting done. This will change because it has to change. No longer can roads that fuel sprawl be built for future capacity. The federal transportation bill allows cities to use flex money for transit projects. However only a few regions take advantage of this and places like Houston need a bit more nudging. The money is out there, we just have our priorities towards an unsustainable method of moving ourselves.

New Leasebacks?

Houston Metro signed a $600 million contract to build 4 of its 5 planned light rail lines. The total cost would be almost $1.5 billion and would include a 29 LRV order from Spanish manufacturer CAF which built LRV's for Pittsburgh and Sacramento. Perhaps they got a better price(Probably not at $4 M a vehicle) but wouldn't you want all of your vehicles to be the same so spare parts are easier to come by? Currently Houston uses the Siemens S70 Avanto we've been talking about alot here recently. It's not like they couldn't have hopped on Salt Lake City's order. In fact, at that price, they could have saved $13.6 Million

But the dumbest thing I think I've seen is for a transit agency to do a leaseback deal when many of them have almost lost thier shirts recently because of the AIG collapse. Really guys?

The transit agency also will rely on $150 million in lease-back agreements to help get the first phase of the project under way. The lease agreements allow agencies like Metro to sell railcars, buses and other assets to banks and lease them back at a lower cost. The banks then can claim depreciation of the assets in tax deductions.

This seems like a whole lot of bad decision making rolled up into this project. More expensive LRVs and possibly bad bank deals during a time when banking isn't exactly healthy.

Sticky Fingers

Legislatures just can't keep their hands out of the honey pot. It's not just Seattle, but places like Austin as well. We really need a metropolitan system that takes power away from states to do things like this. Judy should be ashamed of herself.