Podcast: The Future Is Not Far Away

Our guest this week is Sylvain Haon of the International Association of Public Transport ahead of the organization’s global summit in Montreal. We talk about big transit projects happening around the world, the transition toward mobility as a service, sustainable mobility planning in Europe, and how autonomous vehicles will complement transit in the future.

Seafarers of Scandinavia

Well maybe not, but we got rained on.  Every two years I try to go somewhere interesting for a vacation. Over the last few years I've been to Eastern Europe and Italy with my parents and sister and decided to go a bit further north in Europe to Scandinavia this time.  I try to share some photos and stories so here is my latest adventure!

First we flew into Stockholm, some of the highlights included the awesome train from the airport that took 20 minutes to downtown at 205 km/hr.  That's one fast ride. Over the course of two weeks, we flew, took intercity rail, tram, bus, commuter bus, metro, ferry, large ferry, taxi, and yes rental car.  It rained a lot so no bikes.  But its not all about transportation.  Here are some shots from Sweden and Denmark.  I'll get to Norway in another post.

Scandinavia is famous for bikes, but I was impressed also with the subways and trams. I would be remiss if I didn't start with the Trams. This lane is shared by Trams and buses and the vehicle is a Bombardier Flexity.



Here's Rush hour in Stockholm:



And one of the worst traffic nightmares in the city (Slussen Locks) protects cyclists with some colorful barriers



But even more fun in these cities is the old central city.  In Stockholm, this area is known as Gamla Stan. The Central Square known as the Stortorget has a fountain that is the center of the country.  Distances in different parts of the country are measured to it and it has been the location for some famous historical events.  It is said that the white stones on the red building in the photo represent each of the Swedish nobles that were beheaded in the square by the King of Denmark. 



Back in the narrow passageways behind the Stortorget you can see small Phoenix's over windows representing who had paid their fees for the fire department to save the house.



Across the lake from Gamla Stan is the 1700s Warship Vasa that sunk only a few minutes after launch and was only found again at the bottom of the lake in the 1950s. It is probably one of the most amazing things you'll see in the city.





On to Copenhagen, home of the bikes! It's a great city but I thought it felt a little less clean than Oslo, Bergen, or Stockholm.

In the Assistens Kirkegaard, half park/half cemetary, noted Danes including Hans Christian Anderson and Neils Bohr are buried. It's a beautiful place.



Off the main shopping street, a small back ally called the Pistolstrade will bring you to some Half Timbered buildings that are fun and brightly colored.



Back into the City, the City Hall is defended by a pair of fearsome looking Walruses (Walri?)



Across town at the Rosenborg Slot (Castle), the crown has been showing off the Jewels and living quarters of Danish Kings since the end of the 19th Century. These are some of the toy soldiers kept in the basement vault.



Christian IV was the major part of the progress of the Danes and there are a number of monuments to his movement to Lutheranism around the city including this history statue. The guy was pretty hardcore. At his castle Rosenborg, there is a room with his shirt bloodied after a battle and the shrapnel pulled from his eye that he made into ear rigns and gave to his mistress. That's love right there. Or something...



The first day we also took a train to Roskilde, home to a major music festival and the Viking Ship museum. I highly recommend it if you have kids, or even if you don't. The cool thing is that they show how the ships are built and how they used the wood to build them. This photo shows what parts of the tree they used for certain parts of the boat. Also, they've uncovered a number of viking ships including merchant vessels and warboats. Very cool.





I've got a lot from Norway as well. I'll post those later this week. Until then you can see them all on my Flickr page.

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.

Around the World: Argentina & Hong Kong

Fearless Overhead Wire correspondent and world traveler @nspicer just got back from his honeymoon in Argentina with @autgoff and took a few transit shots because he knows that I'm a nerd and I appreciate these things. He's also recently been to Hong Kong and rode the Star Ferry. Here are a few shots from his travels. Thanks Spicer and Anna!

Sunday Night Notes

Long Beach is looking at streetcars
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Quatar has a $22B deal with Deutsche Bahn to build freight, passenger, and Metro rail lines using Siemens technology.
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Having the last train leave at 6:30 is a ridership killer. Commuter rail lines with limited time tables make no sense to me.
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Major developments along the North Corridor Commuter Rail line in Charlotte. My question, will it actually be Transit Oriented?
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Is the housing bust going to actually halt suburbs? I feel like this will be short lived unless something bigger changes.

Tuesday Night Notes

It's just not like when we grew up. I remember riding my bike to school.

"The biggest problem presented in the report is the fact that cities are being planned especially for cars and for adults,"

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Redevelopers have tighter funding these days.
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Learning to live without a car. Moving from the burbs to the bright lights.

I used to make a big grocery shopping trip just about every Saturday, driving several miles to a store and throwing half a dozen shopping bags into the trunk. Now I can walk to a supermarket three blocks away

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Suburbanization and climate change. They are linked.
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Apple will spend some cash to revitalize a Chicago Subway Station.
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I couldn't agree with Ryan more on this point.

There is a terrible chicken-and-egg problem to transportation planning, in which planners express regret that there is so little transit demand and so much traffic before building new roads. They have to accommodate the demand they've got! But you can't have transit demand if you don't have transit, and if you don't recognize that, then you're doomed to keep building roads forever. No one in the mind of the planners has yet invented a substitute for the automobile.

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The electric transit revolution is upon the British. Trolleybuses return.

Monday Night Notes

Have you ever had a picnic on the grass on a major bridge?
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Officials in India are calling for high rises. I'm surprised they didn't go up before.
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Businesses in the UK are starting to use carshare companies instead of keeping their own fleets.
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Integrating BRT with a Metro should be a no brainer.
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I can see why folks in East LA wanted a subway. Its a dense area and it would have been nice. But whining about it and getting upset right before it opens seems a bit lame to me.
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Lots of regulation of safety on commuter rail are causing a strain.

Abu Dhabi Moving on Tram Plan

When I think of Abu Dhabi I think of Nermal. You know, the cat that Garfield always wanted to get rid of and send to the middle eastern region.

Jim Davis, Garfield via Photobucket

But soon you might be thinking about tramways as Abu Dhabi looks to potentially build 340km of tramways.

The project, known as the Abu Dhabi Light Rail Transit/Tram study involves 340 kilometers of tram lines and is one of several major transportation projects that make up the Surface Transport Master Plan. The department expects the LRT to start operating in 2014.

What I'm wondering about with these tram plans in middle eastern cities is are they connected to urban development plans that focus on walkability? It seems that a common complaint about the system in Dubai is that buildings aren't really in sync with how the transit operates. But that is likely a building design issue with urbanism in the area around the line. I say this mostly because it looks like there is a good grid pattern in the city.

Thursday Night Notes

They don't want a tram, they want a subway. via (GGW)
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Paz takes a look at TOD at Castle Shannon. I agree with him that transit agency parking lots often get in the way of good place making.
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Siemens has built high speed trains for Russian winters, they hope they can build them for America as well.
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The GAO has a report out on affordable housing and TOD.
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Is there just a little bit of cognitive dissonance on the issue of growth boundaries in Portland? People understand that they save farmland by doing infill development and over 80% in a recent survey support that. But when asked if they want higher densities near them, it's 42% no. Perhaps if they were told how much it would save them in taxes?
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Yup, no one is in charge. Politics, not intelligence governs Bay Area transport policy.
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Circle line BRT is dead. That's kinda good, maybe they'll do it right next time.

Tuesday Night Notes

Fun in Calgary:

The industry has warned targets are market interference and will limit home builders' ability to provide as many single-family homes as buyers want.

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Recent zoning code increases allow value along the light rail line in Tempe to increase at a greater rate than similar areas in the region. It's interesting because similar areas in Phoenix are limited in their growth potential.
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I'm really excited to go to Italy next month, especially Turin.
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Orinda might be up for medium density around the BART station downtown. I think it would be cool if they made it look Tuscan.
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Freeways are big priorities, especially those big beltway gifts to sprawl.

Tuesday Night Notes

Tram trains in are starting in England. It would be interesting to see if cities in the United States start looking at tram trains as a model.
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Kemper Freeman really doesn't get the gold mine he could be standing on.
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Apparently the Lehman collapse has slowed Caltrain's electrification. From house testimony:

Losses in our county alone, for example, include: $25 million in San Mateo County Transit Authority funds that will stall planned electrification of the Caltrain Peninsula Commuter Rail Service

Is This Backwards?

If you wanted to see the tram, wouldn't you go try and ride it, instead of watching it from your car?

So many people turned out in their cars to watch the dazzling blue and silver trams, traffic jams lasted well past midnight in downtown Dubai, notorious for congestion, in the 40-degree heat.

New Metros Abound

Looks like we have new Metro segments in Dubai and Sofia. Trinidad could put theirs on hold. But funny regions are building Metro lines and in Sofia, they are cheap!

Construction of a further extension from Mladost 1 to the International Exhibition Center on Tsarigradsko Shose began on July 2 for completion in 2012. The €94m project includes 2·5 km of tunnel, one station and a car park.

Night Owl Links

Here's a little something to keep you going:

Edmonton planners hope a TOD plan in the suburbs will reduce the need for driving every trip.
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When is Mayor McCrory or Charlotte gonna realize that their transit goals aren't compatible with this loop obsession?
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Crosscut now talks about how to do density right. Hugeasscity links to all the times they were against it.
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The Green revolution in Iran will continue with available subway operations.
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HNTB is part of the dinosaur establishment in transit engineering that thinks the cost effectiveness measure is going to be the end all be all for capital transit funding. Wake up, it's gonna change. Ray LaHood has been telling you over and over and over again.

Tram Trains

This is something I'd like to see more thought on in the United States. The Tram Train:

Netherlands has been building a intercity light rail network for the past years, reusing previous sections of tram lines, metros and heavy rail and extending them with new sections of elevated rail and tunnels. The RandstadRail currently operates on the southern region of the “round city”, namely connecting the Hague to its suburbs and Rotterdam.

Check out the photos at the link. I think it's a great idea to have regional railways that turn more into light rail in city centers. This is what Austin would have had to a certain degree with the first light rail proposal in 2000. A light rail line with limited stops in the burbs with greater connectivity in the center city.

Grass Track on the T Willie?

This post got me thinking, what if they would have put in a grass track on the T-Willie? Could we do it on Geary?

Flickr Photo by SFCityscape

Vs.


Photo from Mellow Monk.

Some of my favorites from Tram photog Neitech in Nordbrand Germany.



Via CNU

A Different View

It's generally known that places like San Francisco, New York City, and Europe draw the ire of conservatives for their "liberal" tendencies. But do they really hate those places? Or is it a reflexive action based on the views projected from a southern base?

It would seem to me that this views of these places also translates to modes of transportation that are seen as "european" or basically foreign as well such as light rail. Which to me makes it all the more amazing that Charlotte has been able to move itself towards transit expansion that is seen as the cutting edge in cities around the south, even those that have existing systems such as Atlanta. The amazing thing there is the changing political will towards a more transit centered, urbanism. I would argue that Charlotte in particular is a function of outsiders from the Northeast. The Urbanophile has laid out why outsiders have a way of making changes to a community because they can see something different.

Outsiders are willing to imagine things being different in the first place since they already experienced and indeed grew up in an environment that is different. It's sort of like visiting a foreign country for the first time. We notice how all sorts of little things are different, prompting four reactions. The first is, "Hey, things are different here." That can be a revelation itself. When we grow up and experience only one way of doing things, we tend to think everybody must do it that way or that there is only one way to do it.

A possible function of the Southern feeling towards San Francisco or Europe is that they haven't been there before and their impressions are based on what they are told rather than what they experience. How many people do you know have changed their view of their own places after seeing a foreign country? I also have to wonder how much of the south is bigger cities as well and how much the lack of cities might lead to a similar feeling.

I remember visiting my parents from college when they lived in Rotterdam for a year and being amazed at the different transportation types, streets for people instead of just cars, and the fact that my dad could just walk to work. I was amazed and I believe it was one part of how my views changed towards the ones that I have now. Before that, I just hadn't been exposed to anything like it and didn't know it existed.

It's not that they aren't open to the experience, they just haven't had it. Not sure how that could be fixed, but it might explain some of the reasons for the San Francisco and New York bashing from the South. We're generally afraid of what we don't know. What do you all think?

Don't Lecture If You Can't Change Yourself

In an article on the new Indian auto sensation, Projjal Dutta calls for the United States to and other countries around the world to invest more in transit to change the future land use patterns that we know will result from all the automobiling that is in front of the Tata Nano. But he calls out the government for just doing the same as it always has in the stimulus package at 80/20.

As with many other issues, the world will expect America's "talk"--say, urging China and India not to become auto-centric--to be accompanied by "walk," at home. That, unfortunately, despite early glimmers of hope, is not happening. The stimulus bill has allocated about 8 billion dollars to transit, compared with 30 billion to highways. This is roughly in keeping with the traditional 80/20 split of federal transportation funds that have been enshrined since the Eisenhower days.

I agree. We can't just lecture other countries about what they should do when we continue to fund the same levels we always have. How are we supposed to solve the problems in the world if we can't lead by example.

The president's stimulus package has put dollar commitments behind promises about promoting green-jobs and increasing renewable energy generation capacity of the U.S. Yet, despite the concern and awareness within the administration, American lifestyles are inextricably linked to very high automobile usage. Until that bull is taken by the horns, climate change cannot be properly confronted.

This is why I keep harping on the folks at SF city hall in the Emerald Aristocracy. Fake green and gizmo green is not leading by example, its just delaying the inevitable. Check out the Forbes article, it's a good read.

Government Work

I always find it a tad funny when photos show up of other countries in official government publications (web or paper). Take for example the web site of the United States Senate Banking Committee. Senator's Shelby and Dodd look quite content on each side of a line of foreign LRVs. Now I still can't tell where they are from, but I know it's not within the United States. Anyone know where this is? The best guess from some knowledgable folks so far is Helsinki. Perhaps we're going socialist afterall.


Via wikipedia

Russian Subway Dogs

I bet you didn't know that stray dogs in Russia had gotten so smart that they have become accustomed to riding the subway to and from "work". I think this is a bit of a spoof and hilarious. What do you think?