Monday Night Notes

Hartford has been brutalized by parking. The loss of tax base to the virus of surface parking is staggering.
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Can you reduce GHGs and still grow?
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Is Paris more accessible than London? Some physicists say yes because the ants told them. Via Price Tags
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Can space be found for affordable housing in New York City?
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An interesting thought, the city as a living machine. How can we bring cities back to a pre-city natural state while still growing? This is an idea that is being explored in many places. A variant on this was discussed last year when discussing plans for the Lloyd district in Portland. It opened up some interesting discussion in the comments.

Streetcar Weekend

Quite a few streetcar articles over the weekend if you want to read about these 19th century monstrosities with horrid visual pollution and gentrification causing awfulness.

Lexington
Hartford
Waco
Patrick Condon in the Globe and Mail

Just Like Light Rail, Only Cheaper?

Not so much. $60 Million a mile. This is based on ripping up track and laying down a new road and running buses on it. But here's some quotes from Hartford, which has been planning this project forever and where some people are having second thoughts.

Legislators have begun to wonder, not irrationally, if a rail connection might be the better alternative.
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When well-executed, bus rapid transit isn't much different from light rail. It is a transit vehicle — an articulated bus — running on a fixed path, a roadway instead of rails.
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The advantage of rail is that it feels more permanent. But good busways also feel like they'll be there for a long time.

Ughh. You mean isn't much different since light rail is transit too? I agree with Richard.

I think it's fine to explore BRT, but at the same time, let's not argue that it can do the job as well as fixed-rail transit.

Let's get real and stop trying to think that these buses act like trains. There is a reason we don't call buses trains. Just because you have an articulation doesn't mean you can couple. Anyway, we shouldn't have to keep repeating how rail is better than bus on the necessary rail corridors. It's annoying this even has to be discussed anymore.