Vienna was once a medieval city surrounded by a wall that was later torn down by the Hapsburg King Fraz Joseph who built a ringed boulevard around the city. Today that boulevard is known as the Ringstrasse and carries people, cars, and trams around the medieval center city.
At the same time, Charlotte's freeway has cut off the city from its surroundings and could possibly learn from Vienna's teardown of the moat and walls as well as other cities who have decided to tear down thier freeways in search of a better life. Here is downtown Charlotte as it stands now:
and here is the center of Vienna:
The Vienna ring U shaped is 2.5 miles while the Charlotte U ring is 3 miles. This makes them strikingly similar in size and Charlotte very adaptable to the possibility of creating a ring road that actually ties Uptown together with the rest of the city versus the freeway which separates each area.
Here is what this might look like if Charlotte finishes its transit plan and adds the ring. The cool thing about this would be that it would open up a lot of the land that was taken by the freeway off the tax rolls and put it back on as well as increasing the value of land inside and just outside the loop tremendously over time.
In thinking about this through the network paper from the streetcar planning effort in Portand, it's likely that this could end up being an integrated circle line with radial streetcar lines pushing out from the center ring.
This would also be highly dependent on a rapid transit network that moves to the center. The Vienna system can be highly dependent on the U Bahn which connects to points in the center city with three minute headways. Charlotte already has one piece of this with another in the Silver Line rapid transit coming in from the east. It's an interesting excercise and something that could sit at the back of people's minds because it won't happen anytime soon. This might also be another good reason to go visit other cities and you know, learn from them.
15 comments:
I would probably put a heavy rail line in the freeway ROW.
I agree, given the curve radii and potential volume, put heavy rail in. The problem is to make it not also cut the space in half like the freeway does (rail is less worse than freeways because it is much narrower, and until it is heavily used, has plenty of time to cross on the level).
Why Heavy Rail? That would create the same split in half issue the freeway did? Why not a long tram with minute headways like Budapest on the 4/6?
Because trams sit at traffic lights, move slower, and carry fewer people. Trams can only go in 4 cars max, while for heavy rail there's no limit (ideally trains would be 7-10 cars). And it wouldn't split the neighborhood in half considering you need maybe 30 feet of ROW as opposed to, say 120-130 feet of a freeway (freeway lanes should be 12 feet wide ideally, plus you have to add shoulders, whereas heavy rail with standard gauge (NOT BART) requires about 7-8 feet per track, and I'm assuming this is going to be a two track line (no express service). The excess space is enough for buildings and plazas. Don't tell me places like Astoria and Jackson Heights are cut in half by trains, or Flushing-Main Street, which has an elevated LIRR line above it (they put shops under the bridge where it passes over; they can do the same with this). And the main advantage light rail has over heavy rail, allowing grade crossings, is moot here because the grade separations are already in place.
The Ringstrasse looks like close to my favourite types of examples. I would like the Southeast Corridor to be LRT.
Here's a correction I would suggest: Vienna's Ringstrasse is 5.3 km (about more than 3 miles) long. So, it appears to be the same distance as what you're talking about. You're off the mark, but I apologize. :)
Adam, 7-8 feet is too little. A more typical figure is 10 feet plus some distance to separate trains moving in opposite directions.
Even still, it's much less than what a freeway would do. And open space for plazas (peds and bikes) will keep that shadow off the streets.
Whether it's heavy or light, it must operate at street level, people lose interest in going up or down (with or without lifts/escalators). c.v. the fact that people don't interact without colleagues two floors away.
Yeah, Njh, that must be why nobody takes subways and elevated trains.
CT: given a choice, people prefer surface level transport. People in Melbourne will prefer to catch a tram, despite the lower speed (and longer expected travel time) because it doesn't have the mental cost of going down and up, and through 'gates' than to go to the subway. The subway takes 12 mins to go around, and a train arrives about 1/min compared to half an hour for the same journey and probably on 5 minute gaps.
Sarcasm is very unbecoming and tends to reduce the quality of discussion.
Well, Njh, it also tends to reduce the level of discussion when you very obviously ignore well-known facts, like the vast popularity of grade-separated rapid transit. If you had acknowledged that millions of people around the world use subways and els, I would have had no cause for sarcasm.
Sure, people prefer at-grade transit to separated transit, all other things being equal. But all other things are not equal.
Paris had the same situation as Vienna. Under the Grands Boulevards where the Charles V wall was, they built a two-level, four-track subway. Under and over the former site of the Farmers General wall, they built two rapid transit lines, forming a two-track ring that is partially elevated and partially cut-and-cover.
If we assume that the 770 expressway will be removed, digging a cut-and-cover subway in its place would be relatively easy.
Calm down guys. You two both are on the same team. Cap'n, there is an urban design sensibility that comes from a surface tramway. The Grand Boulevards in Budapest show that you can have huge capacity tramways in the center of a street on their own right of way. NJH has a certain point that having the tram visible makes people see it and realize its there. It also makes it easier for those with disabilities.
At the same time, you probably don't even need to dig out a ditch for a subway in that loop because its already depressed in some parts. Though I have my doubts as to whether Charlotte would ever need such a high capacity mode as a 10 car metro on that loop. A light subway could work there I think as well, but I have to agree with NJH that a surface, or at least a somewhat visible railway with easy access is advantageous, especially for urban designers.
But I think you could do either and have it be successful.
Doing both is of course better, and if you could get approval it would probably even worth digging the cut and cover tunnels without laying track, leaving that for later.
Ideally you use the surface transport as the short hops and the underground as long hops. The subway should then tie into existing suburban rail.
But I don't get the feeling charlotte is quite ready for that...
I know you have a huge, huge, huge hard-on for the Budapest megatrams but the only reason they exist is that BKV hasn't been able to build heavy rail fast enough and they had to do SOMETHING.
They're a bug, not a feature. And are not worth emulating when you could just build a metro system in the first place.
LOL @ cjh. Thanks for that.
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