Austin's Rail History & Route Choice Problem Part 1: History

This last week there have been flurries of articles and tweets about a subject that is near and dear to my heart.  Austin's push for rail transit was the reason I started thinking about these issues and part of the reason why I started this blog.  I even wrote my Master's Report (Source of some of the Timeline below) on the politics and history of this movement that has caused so much consternation to local advocates since the early 80s. 

I've written about these issues in Austin many times before. (Alignment, VMT Reduction, and Starter Technology Decisions)   Some of you might be getting sick of my Austin posts, but ultimately the point of this blog is to bring information to the forefront and get folks to think about the decisions they are making about transit and technology.

This is going to be a multi-post series so first let's go through the basics.  Let's do a timeline to catch you up quickly...


1960s -  In the 60's, as happened all over the country, major arterials in cities were slated to become freeways.  While many cities built an initial freeway network and loop roads, Austin's neighborhoods pushed back on getting sliced in half and limited freeway development to two major north/south corridors and East/West corridors that were far away from the city center, making arterial streets the major corridors.  Texas Freeway has historical pictures and documents. This meant that getting east to west in central Austin has to be done on surface streets. 

1973 - The Texas State Legislature, understanding that regions were growing and cities alone were too small a jurisdiction to support regional transit systems, passed a law allowing Metropolitan Areas over 600k people create a Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). At the time Austin did not have enough population.

1981 - Austin lobbies successfully to get State Legislature to allow cities over 325k people to get an MTA.

1983 - An interim agency named the Austin Area Rapid Transit System was created to be the predecessor to the RTA. A Transit service plan created in 1984 consisted of a short and long term plan.  The short term was for increases in bus service as the long term consisted of rail planning. As part of the long term rail planning for the RTA, the agency began discussions to purchase existing freight rights of way from Southern Pacific.  Additionally, there were discussions on forming a Metro Government and a bill was written by Representative Terrel Smith but never filed.

1985 - Replacing the Austin Area Rapid Transit System, Capital Metro Transportation Authority (Capital Metro) was created and given the ability to levy a cent sales tax, which was chosen instead of an emissions tax or a gas tax increase.  The first day of service and the resulting bus parade down congress made a lot of locals angry, and set Capital Metro off on the wrong foot with many at the local level as well as the state. 

1986-87 - Flush with cash from the cent sales tax, Representatives in the Legislature started trying to redistribute half the sales tax value that was being saved up for future rail construction.  Representative Terrel Smith sought to give the half cent back to relieve property taxes in the district.

1989 - Board members voted to reduce the sales tax a quarter cent to quell criticism.  While rail supporters wanted Capital Metro to keep saving for a future rail plan, others such as Travis County wanted the extra money to pay off road debts.

1990 - Funding was allocated to study rail in Austin and the board stated that a referendum would be had if they got a positive outcome from the study.  A referendum was pushed back but CAMPO put rail planning in its long range plan that year.  That very same year was the break out of Austin's growing environmental movement.  Tired of seeing developers ravage the land above the Edwards Aquifer and its recharge zones, Austinites came out in droves to an all night meeting that saw the end of a single Barton Creek Planned Unit Development, but a start to the environmental machine in Austin politics. 

1995 - Planning for a rail line, the board decided to raise the sales tax back up to a cent, which drew criticism from enemies still existing including Gerald Daugherty.  Even though an overwhelming amount of the speakers at the meeting spoke on behalf of the increase, the Austin American Statesman and others criticized the board for not having a referendum in place for rail before making the vote.  The general manager even decided to leave when the Statesman kept going after the agency. 

1997 - Because of accountability issues stemming initially from the board vote on the tax increase, the Legislature decided to restructure Capital Metro's board.  This would not be the only time the board structure would be changed. Instead of a citizen board, it would be populated by elected officials, who would be seen as more accountable to the public.  Additionally, Representative Sherri Greenburg passed a bill in the legislature that would require a referendum before the agency would be allowed to issue debt. At the same time, planning for a commuter rail line that looks like the current one would be studied, as well as others that look a little familiar.

1998 - With a restructured board and possible bills that would strip Capital Metro of its cent sales tax coming at an even faster pace, rail was considered again and consultants came up with the idea for the Green Line, which would go directly through the heart of Austin.  The line was supported more than the Red Line, which would circumvent major destinations downtown but would be cheaper due to its route on existing rights of way.  It was at this point that Capital Metro started officially stashing away money to pay for future rail construction. 

1999 - Capital Metro promised legislators who continued to write bills to take funding away from the agency that they would have a referendum in 2000. Representative Mike Krusee from Round Rock and others including Representative Terry Keel continued to hammer the agency and push bills that would take away funding authority.  Krusee's bill would require a referendum on half of the sales tax, essentially stripping Capital Metro of its ability to save money for rail plans.  This was also the year that Austin Bergstrom Airport was completed and the Mueller Airport, a few miles outside of downtown on the east side was left open for redevelopment. Planning included future stops on a yet to be named rail line.

2000 - The decision was made to have the referendum during the 2000 presidential election, in which Texas' Governor George W. Bush was on the Presidential ballot.  The hard fought contest brought out the anti-rail groups in droves, with Texas getting special visits from Wendell Cox and others to push for the rail line's failure with the hope that the extra money would go to roads.  Kirk Watson, then Mayor even wanted to put road bonds on the ballot to satiate the Road Warriors but anti-rail leaders like Gerald Daugherty wanted rail money for roads, claiming other bond money would be insufficient.

Before the election, the Federal Transit Administration gave its stamp of approval, saying other cities would be in line for New Starts funding behind Austin in the process due to the high ridership drivers.  2025 estimates put the ridership estimate at 37,400 riders (17,000 new).  Consequently, some lines from that FTA PE class (no pun intended) have gone on to be super successful, including Minneapolis' Hiawatha Line, Cleveland's Euclid BRT Line, Denver's T-Rex Line, Houston's Main Street Line, Portland's Interstate Max, and Seattle's Central Link.

But even after choosing the correct route and a majority of City of Austin residents voting for the line, the Capital Metro service area voted against the proposal.  The rail vote lost by less than 2,000 votes in a Presidential Election which had over 300,000 voters.  By that time, Capital Metro had saved over $120m for rail construction. Mike Clark Madison (Who wrote many of the linked to articles above) documented the spatial approval over at the Chronicle.

2001 - After the election, to quell mounting pressure from the legislature, Capital Metro decided to rebate a quarter cent that had been saved up back to the cities for mobility projects.  The agency continued to plan for light rail and a deal was brokered between Representative Krusee, who was the Chair of the Transportation Committee, and Capital Metro which resulted in a bill that would require Capital Metro to rebate the quarter cent until a referendum was passed.  Additionally, Representative Krusee helped to get a bill pass that would establish Regional Mobility Authorities (RMAs) that would give locals more authority to build toll roads. 

2002 - Karen Rae, who had signed on to be Capital Metro's general manager in 1998 and make the push for rail stepped down and Fred Gilliam took on those duties.  Planning for light rail continued with a new name (Rapid Transit Project) however it was decided that a referendum would not be held in 2002 due to a lack of consensus for the project.

2003 -  Representative Krusee, who had been named Chairman of the State Transportation Committee,  had his own ideas about what the next rail plan should look like.  The Austin American Statesman suggested that he would like Capital Metro to stop studying the Green Line corridor and focus on the Red Line, which consultants had chosen against in planning for light rail in 1998.  In 2000, the Austin American Statesman, quoted Krusee as saying "I wish they would be open to alternatives to light rail"  We know now that meant planning for light rail along the best possible corridor would stop and planning for a corridor that went directly to his constituents in Round Rock (which doesn't pay into Capital Metro) would commence. At the same time, Envision Central Texas was having its coming out party as a way for the Austin region to organize itself.  Unfortunately unlike Utah's process, teeth were not present.

2004 - Planning for light rail on the Guadalupe corridor stopped sometime in January.  Campus planners at the University of Texas stated they stopped hearing from Capital Metro at that point.  Route choices considered at the time were down San Jacinto street, on the other side of campus from Guadalupe, because UT considered San Jacinto to be the center of an expanding campus.  The push for rail on the other side of campus would continue to today.  Later discussions from interim CEO Doug Allen in 2009 suggested that there was not enough time to get an adequate cost estimate and firm up engineering before having the election.  He also believed that the line should have been double tracked at a potential cost of $300 million per mile to build it out properly, likely to not have to worry about retrofitting the line at a future date. 

In March of 2004, Commuter Rail was announced the community and Capital Metro planned for a referendum during the Presidential election that fall.  Advocates pushed for streetcar connections and other alternatives, but changes to the commuter rail plan were set by Capital Metro and planners for the agency after a few discussions were not allowed to interact with staff as they wanted to keep the line as bare bones as possible to court a winning vote.  Lee Walker, then Chairman of the board, believed that going over $60m for the cost of the system would be too much for the voters and Representative Krusee hinted at the time that he would be able to get the voting requirements for extensions rescinded if the rail system was kept to just the commuter rail line.  The line passed in a referendum that fall with 62% of the vote (operations began in 2010).  Contrary to the previous election, neighborhood groups on South Congress and others were not as active in opposition because they wouldn't see transit construction on their streets.

Also after the election, the Mueller Airport Master Development Agreement was signed, which would determine the terms of the redevelopment of the airport property that left over a large amount of empty land proximate to downtown.

2005 - The thought in the transit community was that 2004 would be the last chance to pass a rail referendum in Austin.  Once the line was passed, it was believed whether right or wrong, that it could be fixed with extensions and additions such as streetcars.  Capital Metro went on to study streetcars. In addition the the commuter line which was the center piece of the 2004 election, the All Systems Go plan also included BRT corridors and enhancements.  Planning for those corridors began in earnest as well.

2006 - Streetcar planning continued and a route was chosen through an alternatives analysis.  Pushes to get the Mueller redevelopment into the mix created a route the connected downtown with the east side of the state capital full of parking garages, the University down San Jacinto street through the stadium complex and out towards Mueller.  As for Rapid Bus, some finally started to take note that getting the FTA to buy new buses and shelters without giving the line a dedicated lane was not really rapid.  Council Members Brewster McCracken and Lee Leffingwell pushed back on the idea and asked the agency more questions. 

2007-08 - CAMPO, the regional MPO for the Austin area decided to take major rail planning away from Capital Metro for the time by creating the transit working group (TWG).  The 15 member group would be made up of State Representatives, State Senators, Mayor Will Wynn, advocates, the University of Texas, and other groups.  This was on the heels of Wynn calling for a rail election in 2008, though as with most every other call for election in Austin's early rail history, that idea would not come to pass.  At this point the streetcar plan began its metamorphosis into the urban rail plan, with ROMA design taking up planning for alignments and continuing to push a Mueller alignment while also bringing in a Bergstrom Airport/Riverside alignment that was similar to other plans in the 1990s.  ROMA was attached to this planning because of their initial task of creating the Downtown Austin Plan.

2009-10 - Planning continued on Urban Rail and more alignments were discussed but it failed to go to the ballot again due to the lack of a financial plan.  Capital Metro, once rolling in cash, had drawn down its reserve to build the Red Line and thus stopped funding mobility projects with the quarter cent. (The sordid background tale is here).  Also, another state audit brought more news that the agency had been mismanaged under recently retired Fred Gilliam's watch and the board was restructured again to include someone with financial experience.  At this same time, Capital Metro did its first ever look at all the routes in the bus system calling it service plan 2020.  Ridership along the 1 route continued to outpace all others with over 17,000 including the 101 that will soon be replaced by 'Rapid Bus'. That is more than double the next highest ridership non UT line (7). The long awaited Red Line would open in 2010 to service just under 1,000 riders.

2011-2012 - And here we are. Still planning for urban rail and still trying to figure out how to pay for it.  The TWG continues to look at different corridors while the city focuses on Urban Rail.  In February, Todd Hemingson laid out the process at the TWG for planning future corridors but still not much mention of the most congested and highest ranking ridership corridor in the region. 

Ok, so, I apologize in advance if I missed something about the history above.  It's totally possible (I know there must be something missing) that I did considering the number of years and number of times rail has been close to being on the ballot, new alignments were drawn out etc.

 But here is what we hopefully learned.

1. None of the alignments that Capital Metro or the City of Austin are now discussing are new.  They've all been around for a long time (see images below).  So it stands to reason that the best corridor will always be the best corridor from a ridership and therefore political perspective.  (Future posts will cover this issue)
2. Capital Metro has always been a target of regional and state ire, whether coming from state representatives who thought they had too much money, from Austin when it didn't have the money anymore, and from the Statesman, who ever since the sales tax increase in the mid-90's has hacked away at the agency, sometimes because of mismanagement, and others because of reporters that don't know the difference between a catenary and a pantograph .
3. Mike Krusee was a genius.  He was able to get rail service for his constituents in Round Rock without making them pay for it.

As for alignment histories, take a look at the maps below.  All of these plans below are from the Austin Chronicle's archives.

1995 No map. But a discussion of the Current Red Line and "Rapid Fire" buses that would bring people to the places they couldn't get.

1997 Red Line Plan and Airport Link

2000 Alternatives with Riverside Line

2000 Regional Plan - Consultants Deemed Green Line Most Bang for Buck and the Feds confirmed that point.

 

2000 Light Rail Plan

2001 Rapid Transit Project

2004 All Systems Go

2006 Capital Metro Streetcar Project

 2008 Roma Design Urban Rail

2011 Urban Rail Plan

Next up... Politics of the Current Urban Rail alignment seen above...

Bad Employment Location Decisions

Annoying me to no end are decisions to locate major new employment opportunities in areas that have no access to regional rapid transit.  The most recent of these is the idea that Berkeley Labs would take the Golden Gate Fields horse racing track and redevelop it to bring all the employees together that were once in different places. 

This is a laudable goal however it's right next to a major freeway and will basically add more transportation costs to the University, AC Transit district while also increasing auto traffic (A mention of 2,500 cars).  I'm sure my taxes will have to pay for that stupidity.  Apparently downtown Oakland isn't good enough. 

I think Auto Row might be a good location for this campus, right next to Pill Hill and Kaiser hospital.  There's plenty of space for a few tall buildings, its ripe for redevelopment because of all the parking lots, and its on a major transit route, and fairly close to BART.  Another good place would be downtown Oakland.  There's plenty of space if they really took a look.  People seem to be lazy and look for what amounts to an urban greenfield.  They really need to get an imagination. 

Livermore Again

I keep writing about Livermore because it annoys me.  Do these opposition people not realize how bad it looks to fund a line in the middle of a freeway that will cost a billion dollars and only get about 5k to 10k riders? (I don't believe the happy ridership estimates they give in the alternatives analysis)  If you spend $500m on the 30th street BART station you'd get 15k riders and greater VMT reductions. Not that the locally preferred alternative is that much better, at least it goes to the center of Livermore, giving the city an opportunity to build up around it.

This brings about the point that there needs to be a serious discussion about how many riders our investments are getting for the money.  I know it's a bit more complicated than just riders and funding, but ultimately Livermore shows that we need more education on why connecting actual places is so important.  It gets riders, and allows a place decide its future.

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.  

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.

Indianapolis Follows The Wrong Footsteps

In November an Indianapolis group called Indy Connect released their long range vision for transit in the region. It's chock full of all the stuff transit geeks love including lines on maps. I'm not going to go into the details of the plan as Yonah at Transport Politic has already got that angle. Additionally, the locals at Urban Indy have done a good job getting the initial reactions from folks on the ground.

But I definitely approve of bringing down the bus headways to real levels that would start to make ridership equal that of other regions of similar size. Places like Austin, Columbus, and Charlotte are similar size with daily ridership much higher.

Austin - 108,300
Columbus - 58,400
Charlotte - 103,500
Indianapolis - 29,700

But that's not really the issue I wanted to address. Also in the plan are several commuter rail lines, light rail, and BRT that isn't really RT due to its lack of dedicated lanes in the plan. The light rail has been pushed back I'm assuming based on cost and the first rail corridor they want to build is the Northeast Line. While this looks like the deal of the century, they should really take advantage of the fact that they are late to the Transit Space Race by looking at what other regions have done and the consequences of their actions.

Politically it looks like a short term winner with a long term loser. Build the commuter rail line on an existing freight rail ROW on the cheap to get voters in suburban jurisdictions to buy into the plan. They'll vote for it because its cheap and the voters of the main jurisdiction will think they are getting a rail line because that's what you're selling with pictures of commuter lines in Chicago and Philadelphia and Austin. But the people that really want it will just get bus lines for their trouble.

Curious that last city I listed. Because they went first, Austin tested the waters with this type of plan. Back in 2000 there was a light rail election that lost by less than 2,000 votes because George Bush was on the ballot among other reasons. That line would have hit all the employment centers and gotten about 37,000 riders, more than all of Indianapolis' transit does now. But it lost, so in 2004 Austin got the politically palatable solution that is now a commuter rail line taking about 800 riders a day from Leander to the North to the outskirts of downtown Austin. Take a look at these cities aerial photos and let me know if you see something familiar.

Indianapolis - Left Yellow is the University, Middle Yellow is Downtown, State Capital and the red line is the commuter rail.


Austin - Top Yellow is University of Texas, Bottom Yellow is State Capital and Downtown


See a resemblance? Both lines skirt places people want to go. Austin's line gets around 800 riders a day. For the last 6 years Austin has been discussing urban rail to go places where the commuter rail line did not go. However the plan keeps getting pushed back for a number of different reasons that are mostly political. But if they would have done the right line first, neighborhoods all over the city would be begging for extensions to a current system. The politics would be a no brainer but as it currently stands, people are still a little hesitant to put their money where their mouth is in terms of an actual urban rail plan in Austin. That's not to say they aren't working on it, but it's a very uphill battle.

That's the political price that Indy is going to pay if they build the NE Corridor first. Forget all the good will of increased headways and higher ridership for the rest of the system. Charlotte has shown that people won't remember you for your increased ridership. I'm guessing that before the 1998 sales tax increase, Charlotte was in a similar place as Indianapolis is now. But the opposition picked apart the half cent mercilessly and focused on the train. Luckily the train was a success and Charlotte saved their half cent sales tax from repeal, but the attack was on right away. So in a place like Indy where people are much more afraid of taxes for these types of expenditures, if you're going to build a line, do it right or that cheap victory is going to end up being an expensive long term defeat.

But where should the line go? Well let's look at Austin's 37,000 expected ridership year 2000 alignment or Houston's line that passes 290,000+ jobs or even Phoenix which hits the major downtown corridor and Arizona State. It's about the job connections. These lines connected jobs to people. So where are Indy's jobs?

Looking at LEHD data from On the Map, we can see that employment is clustered around the CBD and State complex. The University is a major employer as well to the west of the downtown cluster with the big red dot. (Red = 10k jobs)


But take a look at where the Red line goes, which is the Northeast Corridor. The yellow line is my idea of where a transit corridor should be. And while there are is a fake BRT corridor that goes where the Yellow line is on the map above, it won't get the same type of TOD investment and revitalization they are hoping for unless they rig the headways really high to 5-10 minutes for Rapid service all day or build dedicated lanes for rail or bus.

But the other reason I think that Yellow line is key is because if you look at where the downtown workers actually live at densities that might warrant transit capacity like that, it's not on that red line but up the yellow one. Again LEHD data:

You could also make a strong case for the light rail line if it were a bit north on the West side and crossed downtown and hit the University. While the commuter rail line might be a good idea for a mature transit system, it's future political suicide for expansion prospects. The reason being is that the region is not going to get any worthwhile excitement in terms of sheer ridership numbers for a starter rail line. Houston got ~40,000 riders to start. Charlotte got ~16,000 riders to start and Phoenix is at ~35,000 by connecting major destinations on the corridors. If this line is like Austin and so far its looking like that is the case, I'm going to bet on an anemic 500-2000 riders at most.

Again that is a short term win looking for a long term loss. If I were Indy, I would start pushing hard to have that North BRT line dedicated ROW, or do a tram-train to Noblesville. The tram-train is likely to get killer ridership and suburban support. There is the benefit of learning from those who have gone before and made the mistakes. No need to make them again so that you're hamstrung into the future. I'm all for trains as people who have read this site over the years know, but do it right, or don't do it at all.

Pushkarev & Zupan on Employment & Ridership

This is always a chicken and egg fight but I'm starting to believe that the residential density argument is a bit misstated in terms of its impacts on transit ridership. Specifically since you're talking about housing density and not employment density. Charlotte's Uptown development had a larger part to do in transit ridership than residential density does along the corridor. And ultimately the cycle of building housing is going to create more demand, the employment was the initial draw. The transit agency just figured out how to serve it.

Over 60% of transit trips are for work (See Commuting in America III). This is compared to just under 20% of overall trips. This means that the focus on where people work is important in monocentric cities such as Nashville. I'm not saying that residential density is ultimately unimportant. But I believe its less important for starting a transit system and more important for growing it. There are lessons on this in previous research works that we tend to ignore.

To be honest I hadn't really read Zupan in full until more recently on account of there is just too much to read in general. But when I caught up on it, the findings are quite interesting and get you wondering if we've been looking at this whole transit and development thing all wonky. In their seminal work Public Transportation and Land Use Policy (1977), Jeff Zupan and Boris Pushkarev made the following observations based on the existing data at the time:

Pushkarev & Zupan Pg 174-175:

1. Clustering or dispersing nonresidential space. Suppose 10 million square feet are to be added to a growing urban area. One option is to put the floorspace into two highway oriented non residential clusters, each 5 million square feet in size. Another is to create a new downtown of 10 million sq ft. In the second case, per capita trips by transit within a 3 to 5 mile radius will be 50 to 70 percent higher than in the first case, keeping residential density the same.

2. Enlarging downtown size or raising nearby residential density. Suppose the options are to double the size of a downtown from 10 to 20 million square feet, or to double the residential density within a few miles of it from 15 to 30 du/acre. The former will increase per capita trips by transit three to four times more than the latter.

3. Increasing residential density near downtown or farther away. Suppose the options are to double non-residential density from 5 to 10 dwelling units per acre either within one mile of a downtown of 10 million square feet or at a distance of 10 miles from it. In the first case, public transit trips per capacity in the affected area will increase seventeen times as much as the second case.

4. Scattering apartments or concentrating them near transit. Suppose a rapid transit station is located 5 miles from a downtown of 50 million square feet of nonresidential floorspace (the 1976 size of Newark). At a density of 15 du/acre, the square mile surrounding the station will send about 620 trips a day downtown by transit. Suppose speculative development scatters apartments throughout the square mile, raising its density by 20%. This will increase transit ridership at the station by about 24 percent. Yet if the apartments are clustered within 2000 feet of the station, preserving the rest of the neighborhood intact, transit ridership will increase by 34% or more; at least a car load of 62 people a day will be added not from any increase in average density within the square mile, but only from a new arrangement of the new development within it.

"Thus land use policies which will do most for public transportation are those which will help cluster nonresidential floorspace in downtowns and other compact development patterns. Downtowns of 10 million square feet of gross non residential floorspace, if confined within less than one square mile, begin to make moderately frequent bus service possible and to attract an appreciable proportion of trips by transit. By contrast, downtowns of 5 million square feet can support only meager bus service. Spread suburban clusters of nonresidential use can only occasionally support meager bus service, if they contain shopping centers, or if they are surrounded by residential densities in excess of about 7 du/acre.

Residential density is less important for transit use than residential location, ie proximity to a downtown of substantial size or proximity to a rail transit line. If greater transit use is the goal, it is more important to put housing close to a downtown than make it high density. In fact, moderate residential densities in the range of 7-15 du/acre can support moderately convenient transit service by any of the transit modes reviewed in this book. Of course, densities higher than this will support better service, as well as more trips on foot. Thus, a strongly transit-oriented city such as Montreal has an average density of 35 dwellings per acre; attached two-family houses form an important part of its newly developed neighborhoods. Evidence from New York suggests that the shift from auto to transit diminishes, and reductions in total travel per capita cease, at densities above 100 du/acre. This density can be represented by 13 story apartment houses covering 20% of their site; on transportation grounds, there appears to be no need to exceed this density. It is important to emphasize, though, that a 13 story building located amid open fields will make no contribution to transit; it will only make a contribution if embedded in existing urban fabric, close to downtown or a rail station.”

All of this says that increasing your downtown size, and putting dense housing near downtown is likely to increase transit ridership. Now this goes so far when we're talking about polycentric regions and employment clusters that we see today such as Tyson's corner etc. But ultimately I think this work has lessons for those places as well. It will be interesting to see where the next decade of TOD research heads because ultimately I think this is a part of the research that needs to be explored in greater detail.

What is Austin Thinking?

Ok. I guess I should come clean. In 2004 I held my breath and voted for the Capital Metro commuter rail line when I lived in Austin. Given my small coalition of activists couldn't quite push the commuter rail line away or spark greater talk than a study of streetcars I just closed my eyes and voted for the commuter rail line hoping that it would all work out in the end. At the time there was some despair that if it didn't pass there wouldn't be another rail election for a very very long time. The 2000 loss still stung and though we kept fighting for light rail down Guadalupe during the Calthorpe led public input and other avenues it just wasn't going to happen if the leadership didn't want it to.

Ultimately all of this led to me writing my graduate school thesis on the politics of rail in Austin where I concluded from lots of reading of past articles about the process that Mike Krusee basically manipulated the system to get transit to his part of the region, even though he wasn't even a representative inside the service area. Since then he's had a "come to jesus" on New Urbanism and left state office but every time I think of what happened it makes me sick to my stomach what could have been. But it turns out that it wasn't just him. It was former GM Fred Gilliam and a whole host of people that just didn't want to push for the right route down the center of the region for fear of political retribution. And apparently they still don't because the Red Line has sapped the energy out of any forward movement and other regional entities keep proposing suburban serving lines that do nothing for the constituencies that actually voted for rail in that 2004 election.

So color me annoyed when regional planners start talking about spending $340M on a line that might get 5,800 riders to Round Rock. The current line is under 1,000 riders a day and cost $120M. This is in contrast to the 2000 plan which was $740M for 37,400 riders. I still can't believe that no one in the city looks at these numbers and wonders, why the heck do we keep proposing to spend money on these lines that won't have ridership until we have a good core connection line. Sorry for the crude paint map, but the blue line is 2000 and the black line is the current commuter rail line. Always go where the people are, not where the freight line happens to go.


M1ek has been harping on this for a long time and he's always made some good points. Obviously I don't agree with everything he says and I do wish that he'd be a bit more diplomatic and less in people's faces about it because it seems like once he annoys someone, they tune him out. But at some point folks have to start thinking about whether they are continuing to throw good money after bad and just swallow their pride. Anything less than a line down Guadalupe is the city selling itself short. And if you don't believe me, take a look at the FTA document linked above. You want riders for cheap? Connect places where people are. It's not rocket science.

Station Locations and Employment Centers

I don't quite get why folks in Bellevue are so set on keeping transit out of the center of the employment district. For some reason many of them irrationally believe that the line will end life as we know it, yet in all respects the line will improve the center's economic standing by providing more access to the jobs for the regional workforce. The solution of one Bellevue council member is to place a station along the freeway and provide a long walkway to the center of the district.

Others argue that Denver has a bus connection, so why should it be that big a deal that the employment center is connected to the train station by a bus? For one thing, Denver's bus mall is dedicated to transit alone and has buses coming so often that you can always see the next one approaching. I seriously doubt that a place which has fought against light rail so hard would put dedicated bus lanes downtown and run such a service. But really what is the point of rapid transit if it doesn't go into the center of activity? The more apt comparison is Bellview station in Denver (funny how the names are the same) right next to the tech center, which we have discussed in previous posts. That should be used as an example of what to avoid when locating a station near a major employment center.

Apparently there is a lot of research that discusses the issue as well. Robert Cervero has looked at this issue in a paper called Office Development, Rail Transit, and Commuting Choices. Ultimately the findings show that the further the station is away from office buildings are, the less likely workers are going to use transit. If the station is near the office, workers are three times more likely to take transit to work.

Also employment density matters as well. The greater the employment density, the more people will take transit. In the Bay Area, the Cervero paper cites statistics that for every 100 workers per acre more, 2.2 increase in commuting by transit. In the Twin Cities, Professor Gary Barnes of the University of Minnesota found that the central city and CBD were greater attractors of transit ridership than suburban offices. So for every increase in 1000 people per square mile in residential density, CBD ridership increased by 2.43%, central city destinations increased by 1.15% and suburban job locations increased by .63%. Ultimately where you are going matters just as much if not more than where you are coming from.

For light rail lines, transit ridership increases the more jobs are within a half mile of the station. Using LEHD data, if you look at recently constructed light rail lines and employment within a half mile of the station, the number of jobs is related to the number of riders that a line gets. Here are a number of recently constructed lines charted against workers.

So with all this evidence why would anyone ever think about running a line outside of an employment district instead of right through it to capture more riders? The goal should be to boost and improve accessibility for workers, who make up 60% of transit ridership, not make it harder for them to use transit.

Previous posts on this subject:

Importance of Employment Centers
When Road Engineers Do LRT

Do Not Count Here

A lot of what I do at work depends on the census. I need data to make accurate maps and analyze trends in TOD and employment and other things. My current favorite dataset is the LEHD. Apparently though the folks at the census know that its hard to count. I don't doubt that it is. But I really wish that Michelle Bachman's district would have a big green dot on it. Perhaps one that says don't count at all. That way we would get rid of her and her census idiocy all together. I also hope the rolling averages work out from the ACS. It would be really annoying if they skip the long form in 2010 and then we were stuck with lackluster data until 2020. We already have to suffer 10 year old data. Think about where you were and what you were doing in 2000. Things changed a bit since then?

Radical Transformation?

I didn't find this so radical. It's not like this isn't done elsewhere. Perhaps it was just a way to spin the story so folks would read it but I think it's a great look at what job centers that are on the suburban fringe need to start thinking about. They need to become real communities instead of just a place for your computer and brief case.

Some 120,000 people work in Tysons, but only 17,000 live here. "Every morning, 110,000 cars arrive, and they all leave at 5,"

There are plenty of other places just like this in need of a retrofit around the country. It would be nice if they were getting 4 metro stops as well. If the businesses in these types of places see the future and ask for change, it is much easier to retrofit them and build more density than neighborhoods who have vested interests to stay as they are. In any case, check out the article. It's a good one.

Subway to SoMa

We've been telling you for years! My favorite comment:

And after we ritually sacrifice whoever decided to dig up the Muni B Geary line back in the 50's.