Livermore BART Extension

Driving home from Bakersfield today I was thinking about possible extensions to BART as I passed through Livermore. While I'm not sure expanding BART as a technology is a very smart idea because of expense, there are a few configurations where it might make sense. But might not. If you take a look at Pleasanton today, you'll notice that on the North side of Highway 580, there are some new very dense developments that might be well served by a good transit connection. You won't be able to see them on the aerial photo, but they are in the orange box below.

Planning for this extension has been on BART's mind for but studied seriously since at least 2003. The study initially looks at just going down the I-580 Median. Boooorrrrinnnggg and cheap. From the BART study done by Nelson Nygaard below...


The study also looks at connections to Walnut Creek, but we're going to focus on the Pleasanton area extension. Also, BART is building an infill station at Dublin. It's represented below as a black and white dot. The blue line is the Dublin/Pleasanton BART line which goes to SFO. The green line is the ACE commuter rail that goes to the Central Valley. This was also the route for the Altamont high speed rail alignment I believe.

But here are possible alignments. The yellow line is my favorite. It goes through the dense neighborhood being created to the north (orange box) and moves along vacant land that could be zoned for dense office and residential. It also passes the Livermore Airport, downtown livermore and gets right next to the Livermore National Labs facility which the north side of the station area could provide park and ride facilities for those driving over the Altamont who didn't use the ACE Train.

The red line uses the freeway until it gets to a crossover point. The cross over point allows the transit to move onto the ACE ROW and stop at stations up there. It along with the freeway median all the way out to Livermore plan are the cheap ways out. They might be cost effective but they do not provide opportunity for livable neighborhoods around the stations, since there is are 4 lanes of the freeway running on each side of the train. This will make the stations fairly auto/park n ride oriented. Also, if

Any thoughts? (The right side is cut off. Click on the picture to get a full view)

Charlotte Light Rail Open for Business

On Saturday Charlotte opened its first light rail line to huge fanfare. 60,000 people rode the train on Saturday, 34,000 of them in a 4 hour period. The local paper had this to say:

That puts our region in a select group of metropolitan areas by welcoming a critical new resource that expands local transportation options. It's a far-sighted step, one that positions this community for an increasingly urban future.

It's amazing that some cities get it, and people in other cities still don't.

Bakersfield California

Every time I visit my sister's house for Thanksgiving I'm mortified by the autocentricity of the City of Bakersfield. Every time I come back there are more former agricultural fields turned into sprawl and more awful auto oriented commercial strip centers. I wish I could say that there could be transit here but there is no hope for this community it seems. There is a bus system but everyone has a car and the roads are huge. New roads are constructed to be 6 lanes at some point in their lifespan even though at the moment they only carry 2 lanes. It's gross actually. Every road is a speedway basically and the sidewalks that are built are devoid of pedestrians.

There isn't a building higher than 3 stories anywhere except for perhaps one or two and those are surrounded by huge parking lots. Elevators are an obvious rarity. I'm not sure what good having high speed rail down here would be. I know that it would be good for transportation but wouldn't it just be aiding all this crap that gets built down here? I'm sure though that in a few years when water runs short and there get to be too many people, things will change, but will it catastrophic or a slow bleed? I guess we'll have to wait and see. In the mean time, I'll be here at Christmas and Thanksgiving, traveling by car, and stuck on I-5 during if there is a wreck.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone.

Denial Isn't Just a River in Africa

They lost by 70% of the vote, yet they still have a bit of internal transit conflict. Council members in Huntersville had this to say about the commuter rail line. From the Charlotte Observer:

Jeter and Lucas said they're willing to discuss options with CATS because they're not against the train, just the funding plan.

Swain said those on her board opposed to TIF financing are "wrestling with their ideological philosophies and the mandate of the people."

Two weeks ago voters approved keeping a Mecklenburg County half-cent sales tax that funds transit projects, such as the train.

Jeter said the 70 percent support of voters for maintaining the tax wasn't a "mandate from the Huntersville residents that they want commuter rail in Huntersville."

He said the train is part of the town's future transportation solution, but that roads should come first. The town doesn't spend any of its money on road building, but it should, he said.

How soon is the future? Most have said its now. The transit opponents all said "This is a referendum on the trains". How quickly things change. My feeling is that, if they don't want it, start on the downtown streetcar. The black community in Charlotte who rallied for the transit tax and were promised a sped up streetcar construction timeline will be more willing to build now than these folks.

Second Avenue Gets FFGA from FTA

They've been waiting a while for this $1.3 Billion cash infusion from the FTA. Seems as though they might finally get what they've been seeking all these years. Check out Second Avenue Sagas, a great blog about New York Transit in general and their discussion about this.

RSS Feeds and Information Sharing

Much of the information I use for this blog comes from Google Alerts or RSS feeds. However there are a number of sites that still don't have feeds. In order to give some encouragement to these folks, I'd like to list them in no particular order to introduce people but also in hopes that they'll slide into the information age.

Update: There is an RSS Feed here for Progressive Railroading.
Update 2: Railway Technology has a feed here.

Progressive Railroading - News compilation organization.
Railway Age - More railroads than transit but it would be nice to get feeds on articles that are in the most recent edition
Light Rail Now! - I know a lot of folks get info from Lyndon and Dave. I've pestered them about feeds a few times as have others.
APTA Heritage Trolley - Updates news about streetcars and heritage streetcars around the country.
CFTE - Election central for transit ballot measures
Citizens for Modern Transit St. Louis - Tom Shrout and Co are doing a great job in STL.
CfPT Atlanta - Folks doing good work in Atlanta
FTA - A feed needed please
Journal of Transport and Land Use - Not publishing yet, but when they do...
LRTA - International Light Rail News
Railway Technology - Updates from around the world.

And many more. If anyone wants to send any of these folks in email asking them nicely to get an rss feed that would be awesome. I've already emailed a few with mixed results. Also, if anyone has any other sites to add let me know.

Creating Demand for Office TOD

Recently Microsoft has started its own bus service to its campus in Redmond. Google and other companies have these bus services and I've discussed before why they annoyed me. But there might be a small consolation bonus in this that wasn't previously realized. Because of companies such as Google, office space is at a premium making it possible to build more office space near transit stops. According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal:

Demand for quality space in Google-land is strong, and market rental rates now justify the costs of redeveloping obsolete industrial structures into higher-density modern offices, observes veteran Silicon Valley commercial broker Gregory M. Davies at CPS/Corfac Intl. in Santa Clara.

Planned commercial projects are taking advantage of the neighborhood's attractive transit service, including not only the VTA light-rail system but also Caltrain's Baby Bullet express service whizzing commuters from San Francisco in well under an hour, Davies adds.

This also brings up another point about San Jose. The office park sprawl there with all the tech companies is probably the worst I've ever seen. I don't get why our buddy Randal O'Toole calls San Jose a failure in Smart Growth when there is none. The land use around light rail is the worst in the country and never focused. Just junk buildings that should be destroyed and reoriented towards the streets and given a grid.

Check out the aerial below to see what it looks like. Tons of parking spaces and wasted land. Its amazing this system gets over 30,000 riders a day. The green and blue lines are the San Jose Light Rail. Looks like its going through a bunch of industrial warehouses, but they are just single use offices.

So What Pencils?

In every city in America right now there is a fight between a community and a developer. It's happening in Austin as M1ek and AC are discussing at the moment. In this instance the community is asking for something that the developer could, but does not want to give because really why should they? The rules were laid down and the developer followed them.

So when cities come up with extensive plans for the area around a light rail station that won't be there for a few years, what is a developer or city to do? The City of Aurora south of Denver is in that predicament right now. So what are citizens who want good development to do?

One way to go is to bank the land and do something that can be easily be turned when the market changes or when the rail line extension comes. Community land trusts and affordable housing funds could possibly do this or the city could buy it to hold although thats almost like the third way below. Another is to let them develop the junk they were going to, which in the case of Aurora, like Austin, is the much hated Wal-Mart. A third and sometimes unpopular way to go is to provide incentives to make the development pencil. This is what Aurora is thinking about as well.

Bob Watkins, Aurora's director of planning, said Aurora hopes the vacant plot will be developed into "a special place that would be unique and help establish an identity for the city."

The city is currently trying to develop an incentive package for the project.

"It probably is going to require some kind of incentive package ... I think the time is right. We have things happening with FasTracks, with RTD, everything that's going on," Hogan said.

RTD plans to extend light rail from the Nine Mile Station at Parker Road along I-225 and then swing away from the highway with a station planned at the location.

A big problem is figuring out where that is going to be since engineering on LRT projects and other improvements might take years. This is where developers can take issues into their own hands if they decide to help build these transit lines. Perhaps we'll start seeing more of that soon. So when a piece of land is scoped for future development, better make sure that everything people want is in order (coding, zoning, plans, affordable housing, etc) so you don't get unlucky and stuck with Wal-Mart or providing incentives.

Update: Here is a map of the area. The line will take an angle and go right.
Update 2: Had the wrong line. Better picture below.

Electric Transit Anyone?

Money is going to our buddies in Venezuela, Russia and Iran because of our addiction. Is anyone going to stand up now for good electric transit, solar panels, wave power and so on? Well, maybe next year.

In the United States, the rising bill for imported petroleum lowers already anemic consumer savings rates, adds to inflation, worsens the trade deficit, undermines the dollar and makes it more difficult for the Federal Reserve to balance its competing goals of fighting inflation and sustaining growth.

I've always wondered what would happen if the road builders just retooled for trolley buses and light rail and the car companies started pumping out streetcars. I know that would never happen but it would be interesting. Perhaps alternative energy competitions and innovations are in order.