Friday, April 9, 2010

Thursday Night Notes

Here's some news I wanted to share:

I did a report on aerial ropeways once. The City Fix shows they are used for transport around the world and even in their favorite place, South America.
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The Cotton Belt rail line in Dallas might have an interesting funding mechanism.
The plan would most likely include much steeper fares for the Cotton Belt, paid parking, and the creation of special tax districts that would capture property tax increases associated with private development along the rail line.
I'm always dubious of using value capture to pay for infrastructure. There's just not that much of an increment on commuter rail I think.
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DFLers are going to start playing hardball with U of Minn. I don't really see how a mitigated train is any different than a few thousand cars and huge buses on the same road.
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Are we really going to be spending $3.7 billion or more for a subway stop in Livermore and (an overestimated) 34,300 riders? Have we learned nothing from any of the other transit lines we've built (or didn't build) in this region? If Pleasanton has 7,400 exits (14,800) on a weekday, how is Livermore going to add 30K more riders???

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Baseball and Streetcars were bff back in the late 1800s.
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One of my favorite things about the internet is all that it can do to break down international barriers. For example, this hungarian transport blog translated discusses the Salt Lake BRT line.

5 comments:

John said...

Even if the ridership estimate made sense (it doesn't), I can think of higher transit priorities for the $3.7 Billion

Anonymous said...

We all know BART(and its subsidiary MTC)'s highest purpose is NOT ridership generation but wealth transfer to construction firms.

Matt Fisher said...

The extension isn't a good idea.

Franco Marciano said...

Livermore definitely needs an extension, although like John, I too have a hard time justifying the price tag with the projected ridership numbers. Could the numbers be higher when factoring in potential ridership from over the Altamont? Maybe. Five years, ten years out? From the meetings I've gone to, participants want BART tech, not DMU's therefore reducing potential cost savings, and ACE doesn't yet provide BART-like frequency.

Pantograph Trolleypole said...

That's a great comment Franco, and it shows how people need more education on service levels instead of transit types. ACE could do a perfectly good job of bringing those folks to the BART station if it were as frequent. Folks see that it isn't and just assume the reason why BART is better is because it is BART, not because it comes every 20 minutes.