Off the Line in Houston

Houston has been studying constructing a commuter line down the 249 corridor but if it plays out as usual, it's going to skip a number of employment centers because the freight right of way just skirts them.  Currently the study done by the HGAC states that its not one of the main corridors and that ridership will only be about 5,000 riders.  This is a miniscule amount but the reasoning is simple, it doesn't connect the center of the most important trip destination on the North End, the former headquarters of Compaq computer.

 

Via Houston Business Journal

Since these buildings are going to be the central piece of a redevelopment strategy for the area, it would also be good to start thinking about how to develop the rail line to connect this place.  

But how would that even be possible?  They are so close yet so far apart.  This is part of the problem with focusing on commuter rail in existing freight rights of way.  In this instance, is a freeway alignment better than the freight?  It sure looks like it, because it then becomes at least a little walkable, meaning more workers would use the line.  I'm not holding out hope that this will actually happen though.  

Loop Roads or Bust

It's been open season on long term capital improvements for fixed guideway transit.  First there's Minnesota Republicans looking to hack into transit by stealing operating money.  Then you get the fun times in North Carolina where Republicans are trying to cut out funding for the North Corridor light rail line.  But I found the article a bit funny, especially when they were saying, we don't have enough money for transit but more than enough for a completely un-needed beltway.  

...it would kill Gaston County's proposed Garden Parkway toll road, using money from that project for urban loop roads, perhaps including Interstate 485.

You know, that loop road that developers really want for their sprawl. And then...

"We wanted to target more dollars to maintaining the system we have - as opposed to building new roads, new bridges, new parts of the system," said Senate Leader Phil Berger, a Rockingham County Republican.

How the reporters didn't see this and do a double take on the building loops and not spending on new roads is beyond me.

How to Free the Market and Reduce VMT - Austin's West Campus

When I lived in Austin I ate dinner and lunch every day at a place called the University Towers. Rather than paying $10 a meal at the athletes dining hall my teammates and I could get a meal plan at the private dorms for about $4.50 a meal. For athletes that ate a lot this was an amazing deal and also good time for teammate bonding. It was such a great deal that I ate there with my old teammates all the way through grad school. I had the choice so why not take it?

To get there I had to walk through West Campus every day. I often thought that it was underdeveloped and a bit ragged and would dream about how things could change with a little development on my ride home either on the #1 or the #5. That dream seems to have come true, perhaps a bit more than even I thought possible.


In Austin if you heard West Campus in the first half of the 2000s, you might automatically think of the dense neighborhood West of the University full of frats, sororities, and kids with extra money to spend in order to live closer. If you had less cash, you lived North, South, or on Riverside. By the time I left, the city had finally upzoned the neighborhood, much to the chagrin of some neighbors that lived in the area, to allow redevelopment of properties that had fairly poor upkeep due to the captive audience of students and the very limiting height restrictions against heavy demand. I found that a post by the Old Urbanist was very informative on this point and I didn't realize it matched that until today.

Basically, the rent was high but much of the quality was horribly low. When looking for an apartment one time I remember this one place called the Sandpiper. It was one of those old motel looking complexes. For $850 a month you could get the worst two bed room in West Campus. And that was back in 2002.

As Chris Bradford at the Austin Contrarian shows, there was a lot of development that took place and the census shows that the area had really high growth rates. So high in fact that recently there have been rumblings as to whether the infrastructure could handle all the development. Well after the rezoning it seemed like there was a new crane in the sky each month. This led to around 3,700 new residents according to Chris' calculations.

At that same time, Riverside which was a popular area for students when I was in school seemed to be declining in population as a whole losing over 2,000 residents. Additionally, ridership on the West Campus bus has gone up while overall Riverside ridership has dropped.


According to numbers provided by Capital Metro, (thanks to JMVC) ridership in the fall, which has greater ridership than spring, has increased for the West Campus bus by ~1,200 students a day between 2006 and 2010 while the Riverside buses have lost about ~880. Obviously correlation is not causation but you can make a pretty good bet that there was some sort of shift happening. And it wasn't just coming from Riverside, but probably all areas of the city where students were living. Given the rise of 3,700 residents in West Campus, you would think there would be an even greater ridership bump on the West Campus Bus. But a lot of the new folks probably now just walk or bike.

But what else does the shift mean? Well for one thing I think that West Campus gives us a perfect example of how zoning close to Downtowns in major cities can stifle what the market actually wants to provide. Given the choice, I don't know of any college students that wouldn't love rolling out of bed five minutes before class (8am or otherwise) with the ability to get to class on time because they just had to walk or bike quickly. Additionally, there are a lot of people that want to live in proximity to great neighborhoods just outside of downtown in most cities.

But that's also another piece of the regional and national puzzle, if there was a shift from Riverside to West Campus of 800 former Riverside riders or so, that is likely a huge reduction in VMT. Mostly because if you live on Riverside, you own a car and have to drive everywhere. Though the grocery store is close to many of the apartments aimed at students, you couldn't just walk to the library on campus to study or go to parties in West Campus Friday nights. Driving was the only option. Not to mention that the bus passenger miles were much higher going to school.


Checking the Walkscore for Riverside and West Campus, you get an idea of what happens. As you can see below, the Walkscore for Riverside is 56 with the neighborhood the 40th best in Austin. That means lots of driving. Over in West Campus, the Walkscore is 86, second highest in the region. Imagine the VMT difference of those 3,700 new residents now living in West Campus who probably walk to Double Dave's for some pizza rolls rather than driving there.


And I didn't have a lot of time to look at it, but if those 3,700 residents moved out of housing in Riverside and other student areas, and the demographics of those areas changed. Does that mean that these areas became more affordable? Did the rents change? That would be interesting to look at as well.

Ultimately I think this is a lesson for other cities as well. Folks like Lydia DePillis in DC arguing against the height limit should not look to Austin's future plans, which looks like more skyscrapers on the way, but rather to what they've already done with changes in zoning that freed up the market in West Campus. Additionally, the Georgetown folks could learn from this as well.

Austin can learn from itself too, as Chris discussed in his post about the Suicide Pact. Not only is it about schools and kids, but its about quality of life for the region as a whole. Reductions in VMT will come when people are able to live where they want. There's a high demand for walkability and proximity to work and less time spent in cars. In that sense, people already want to do the right thing, we're just not letting them.


Capital Metro UT Shuttle Data Extra...

BART to Livermore a Horrible Idea

There I said it, BART to Livermore is a bad idea. Even if we could make the line downtown less expensive, it would still get minimal riders unless Livermore decided that they were going to make a massive push to make downtown an employment center. We know that's not going to happen, so we shouldn't even be building a BART line there. It's just not worth it.

That's not to say you shouldn't build transit, but if you want to spend 3 billion dollars to get 30,000 riders, why not build infill stations at 30th street and San Antonio? I bet that would cost less than a billion dollars. Then take the extra two billion that you would spend and put it towards a regional Geary Subway and second tube that would end up getting 100,000 riders a day and perhaps allow commuter rail lines from around the region to get into San Francisco's Transbay Terminal. You know, make it more Transbay than just bridge buses.

But it looks like we might not need to even try to kill this line, because the NIMBYs who only want a freeway alignment will do it for us. The only way that a line would have worked out there is if it picked up the employment centers and dense housing in Pleasanton and Livermore.

50 Years for a System?

The Twin Cities finally signed its full funding grant agreement(FFGA) with the FTA for the Central Corridor. This just 7 years after the completion of its first light rail line, the Hiawatha. In the meantime the Northstar Commuter Line was completed. Now they are planning for the Southwest Corridor and gearing up for that long haul fight as well. With any luck, that line will be signing its FFGA in less than a decade. But why does it take so long to build these transit lines and why are regions doing them one by one? Well, the answer as usual is money.

However of all places, Los Angeles has provided a discussion spark. The 30/10 program now nationally renamed America Fast Forward has pushed the Transit Space Race forward at least an inch, giving hope to regions tired of doing things one line at a time. Salt Lake City has proved expansion can be done on time and on budget and now other regions are starting to think, why not us? The Twin Cities is no different, with local leaders seeing the possibilities.

I'm hopeful that this will push the discussion along as to why it took ~40 years to build a network of national freeways but it seems like building out real transit networks in cities might take over 100 at the current pace. It's not like there aren't a lot of projects out there (complete excel sheet on the page). In fact, there are over 600 fixed guideway transit projects and that doesn't even count all of the frequent bus and trolley bus service that is being planned. That's not to say that all those lines are good lines, but they are out there.

I can only hope that we move past the one line a decade mentality and build lines that matter.

Transit to Empty Fields

In the United States we haven't been able to talk a lot about transit creating new neighborhoods whole cloth since the early 20th century. Now places like Portland have been able to take abandoned rail yards and turn them into new neighborhoods with a walkable street grid and amenities.

In Europe now, it's being taken even further. Eco suburbs in places like Freiburg are popping up and development is happening as tram lines are planned. The map below from a paper written by Berkeley student Andrea Broaddus shows the expansion of the network.

As an interesting side note, Broaddus' study noted that two ecosuburbs were the same except for parking provisions:

Travel behavior data showed that residents of Rieselfeld had higher rates of transit use in an otherwise typical modal split, while Vauban’s residents had extremely low car share and high bicycle share. These differences were attributed in part to more Vauban’s more restrictive parking policies.

But back to the Reiselfeld. Of interest here is how the development was conceived. The tramway was built before the development and historical Google Earth images show this development happening.

Reiselfeld in 2000


Similar image from a different angle, from The Modern Tram in Europe.

And a more recent image in 2006


To me this is awesome. This is true transit oriented and development oriented transit. Could we ever do something similar here in the United States? It's already happening. Though perhaps not as eco-friendly or dense as would be most sustainable.


Salt Lake City is building the Mid Jordan Trax line into the Daybreak Neighborhood drawn up by Calthorpe. While all the houses are planned to be a five minute walk from local shopping and destinations, there are still a lot of single family homes. Additionally, there is a freeway that is being constructed up the left edge of the valley that will just make Utah's air pollution and inversion days that much worse in the future.

Image courtesy of Calthorpe Associates:


Salt Lake City Suffers from Wicked Inversion Days



Flickr Photo via UTA



Daybreak Under Construction - Flickr Photo via Jason S



Daybreak Completed - Flickr Photo via Brett Neilson



All the negatives aside, I think its an interesting experiment and one worth watching. And watch from the air we will...

2003


2005

2006

2009



More Flickr photos at Daybreak from UTA





And finally a little easter egg for LRT Vehicle nuts.

Planners Using Twitter

As many of you know I tweet as @theoverheadwire. Same planning stuff with a bit of personal mish mash. It's interesting to see how we use blogs and twitter differently. As of late, I've stopped posting a lot of my Notes posts and left most of the articles to twitter. Sometimes that's annoying as it doesn't allow much editorializing due to the character limit, but it allows me to do more generally.

In any event, I think twitter can be used effectively. I recently had a phone chat with Kristen Carney (@cubitplanning) about how I got started on Twitter and why I use it. I'll admit, it's not for everyone, but it certainly is useful at finding lots of quality information and news. And no, you don't have to know whats going on with Britney Spears or Ashton Kutcher because you can choose not to follow them!

Also, Kristen has a post about twitter happenings at the APA conference.

No More Commuter Rail Starts

If there is one thing we've learned over the last few decades, suburban political forces are a drain on cities. For everyone wants to be connected into the downtown and its vibrancy but at arms reach. So the wall was put up many years ago, you must have a car to get there. Now many are wondering if there is an easier way to get back downtown, wherever downtown is. And then they say, well it's too congested to drive, how can we get downtown to pay and appease the folks that want transit but aren't quite sure what it is they need. Then the answer comes, commuter rail.

It's a perfectly acceptable form of transit and has its place in the hierarchy, but for some reason regions get stuck on building rail and they look at what it will cost to do the first part right and they balk. How can we appease our overlords in the suburbs so they will give us something we in the city want in the future? Why do I say overlords? Because Metropolitan Planning Organizations and transportation providers as well as the congress is stacked with people who want to suck money out of cities and into their suburban and rural districts. The safe bet is to appease them right? Wrong.

What we've seen over the last ten years is the monumental failure of commuter rail to do any regional work of value as a first line. The millions of dollars for a couple thousand riders at best is disheartening to those of us who want to see regional transit systems, not just a one and done. I've started to think about this with more clarity as the research comes in and I believe that the places who really are in it to win it will build destination based regional transit that connects a major employment corridor in the region. The headways need to be frequent and the line must run up the gut, not on the perimeter.

Houston's LRT Line

Here is the political reality facing regions today that don't have transit, especially in conservative or timid parts of the country. There seems to be this weird wishfulness that somehow commuter rail taking 2,000 people a day is exactly the way to cure congestion or spruce up economic development. However its basically a ticket to political backlash. Sure the line might have met ridership expectations but who cares? That's only 2,000 voters a day. How much induced voting demand did you create by freeing up room for 2,000 others cars on that freeway carrying 100,000 a day? Zero. It just means 2,000 more freeway voters can move into that district.

Here's what you can do. Put a light rail line down a major arterial between major destinations and all those haters that work downtown have to see the train pass them full at rush hour every day. When I was little my dad liked to play a joke on me that there were no boxcars in Bakersfield California. He still to this day will not acknowledge their existence because he knows it gets me really worked up. But the reason it got me really worked up is because I saw them in the yard downtown next to the high school ever single day. I saw them every day we would go pick up my sisters at school. If you saw a light rail train full of people at rush hour every day wouldn't you start to believe too? Once entrenched as something that works, no one pushes back, rather they want it in their part of town too. That is how systems get built.

But let's look again at why commuter rail is not the start.

1. It's got low ridership. These lines don't have that many people on them period. So people don't see the effects and they don't want more because they don't feel like they are missing anything. Lines like the Music City Star, Capital Metrorail, and Northstar are all carrying minuscule amounts of voters.

2. It's got low ridership because the schedules are bad and the schedules are bad because you're second fiddle to freight lines. If you're not giving commuters priority, why should they give you priority?

3. It was too easy. If a region builds a line because it was cheap to do, don't you think people are going to see through that and understand that you're not really putting a full effort in? I know I do. Indianapolis wants to build a cheap line because its politically feasible now. What about in 5 years. The harder the fight and the more work you put in, the more likely you'll be in good shape down the road. In running, you get out of your training what you put into it. I think the same applies here.

4. You're enabling the enemy. Same as the last point, but if you're not putting voters and supporters on the trains, you don't have a constituency for extensions or stopping service cuts.

Look at these lines according to the Q4 ridership numbers, you can quibble with these a little bit as the agencies have different numbers in the news recently but 500 +/- riders isn't going to make a huge difference.

Recently Opened Commuter Lines

1. Northstar Twin Cities - 2,000
2. Capital Metrorail Austin - 800
3. Rail Runner New Mexico - 3,800
4. Music City Star Nashville - 800
5. Frontrunner Salt Lake - 5,400
6. Portland WES - 1,400
7. Oceanside CA - 4,100

Some of these places like Portland and Salt Lake City already have regional light rail systems so a Commuter Line connecting in isn't as bad of a decision for later when you have the internal network.

Single Destination Connecting Lines Opened in Last 10 years. Again the ridership differs due to gas prices but these are in the rough area of current reality

Houston - 34,600
Phoenix - 40,300
Minneapolis - 30,000
Charlotte - 14,000
Seattle - 24,700

Now the difference between people packed into trains running downtown as well as the number of carried voters is huge. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell you which ones are going to be more palatable for expansion. So instead of looking at the "cheapest" alternative, let's find the two major destinations in a region that need more capacity and need to be connected. This is what we should be thinking of when we're starting a system. No more commuter lines as regional rail starters.

Lego Train Has Automatic Opening Doors

From the cool department at Brothers Brick. I like legos, I like trains, and I like them together.

Bay Area TOD Policy Might Work

We've had lots of discussions about freeway running light rail and transit and some folks say its ok as long as the major nodes are connected. I probably subscribe to that version, but when it comes down to it I'd rather have the ends of lines not be parking lots. That's why I was glad to see that the BART to Livermore extension was actually going to end in downtown Livermore, not along the freeway. This was thanks in part I believe to the MTC TOD policy, which states that you need to have a certain amount of housing units to build certain technologies like BART. Now of course that policy in itself isn't as powerful as it should be but at least its a good start.

However that won't stop some folks in Livermore from arguing that they thought the line was going down the freeway median all along. What's the point of building a rapid transit line like BART if you're just going to park cars around the stations?! Apparently some people don't get this.

"I guess the thing that's hardest for me to comprehend is that they're putting this train right down the most populated part (of the city) they could come up with,"

Because that's the point! Going to the most populated places so the $3.8 billion line will actually have more riders than parking spaces is the goal. I would personally do it a little differently, but that's just me.