Sucking the News Out

Does anyone else notice that transit news has been pretty thin lately? I blame the presidential election. With that being said, whatever your political stripe, go and vote if you haven't already. Happy Election Day! See you with the results!

The BRT Week or Biggest Rant This Week

Peter over at SF Bike Blog has been ranting about BRT all week. I just thought I would point you all over there to take a look at the weeks commentary.

Problems with BRT Part 1
Problems with BRT Part 2
President Bush Loves BRT
The Case Against BRT Melbourne
Dehli BRT Mows Down Peds
No Proof BRT Works
Giving Cities to Cars a Big Mistake
BRT Not a Stepping Stone to Light Rail
Transmilenio in Pictures and Words
True BRT: Bike Rapid Transit

Now while I agree with some of the points in his posts, there are a lot of things I don't. But I invite everyone to take a visit to the largest anti-BRT rant I've ever seen in one week and on one blog. If anything, it will create some interesting conversation.

NIMBY's With Rabies?

Rabid! says the New York Times via HugeAssCity. Perhaps a new group to call foamers?

File Under Peg Round, Hole Square

Decreased driving could threaten road and bridge projects. Now I have to wonder if that is true, or if the building of new capacity that is speculative in nature is getting in the way. What do you all think?

Waiting for Guffman or TOD

As I read this article about Developers in Austin who are postponing their development because the street they are adjacent to might have light rail, I think of all the wasted opportunities, such as the building of a Home Depot on the Central Corridor in St. Paul. But I also think back to if the light rail would have passed in 2000. It would be built by now and expansions would certainly be planned because ridership would more than likely be above projected ridership. And one of those could have been a Riverside line.

But the opportunity lost for smart redevelopment on Guadalupe and other streets was huge. My most hated project was the one on the corner of 38th and Guadalupe, a stupid Starbucks built by notorious rail hater John Lewis. What a waste of an acre. Instead of ground floor retail and 20+ housing units, they got a Texadelphia and a Starbucks in a single story building. That development was a direct result of the 2000 light rail loss.

Now in the current instance, the developer pausing is ok, but its likely the project as a whole won't be transit oriented like it should be. It's not like they need permission to build a dense transit oriented development on Riverside. There are University of Texas buses as well as Capital Metro buses that run there. At some point in the future their should be higher capacity transit. The last thing that irks me is that they are waiting for the city instead of being more proactive in pushing for the rail line. If they realized the value it would create for thier property they should be the ones pushing on the city, not the other way around. And it would benefit them to wait a bit for the market to get better as well. Apologies to my friends who are transit oriented developers, but your colleagues need an education.

Subways Expanded

I was going to write this comment in the last subways post but I thought it might warrant its own post.

Folks have been asking why we need subways or why surface transit expanded won't do the trick. I think Zurich, Budapest, and Vienna for example have excellent surface transit systems. As 295bus points out in the comments, Zurich has been very progressive with their que jumping tram systems. But I don't have that kind of faith in San Francisco to do it right. Everything seems to get messed up in engineering. But even if what they say about the signal priority is true on the T Third, something like a 10% increase in travel time on the whole line, that still doesn't do much for me. That trip from end to end is still makes you budget an hour for your trip. It still gets caught up in lights and there are way too many stops because of crossing streets. Same with the N, same with the L etc.

I know you all have probably heard me complain about this before, but here is the basic comparison and reason for my angst on this subject.

I live by the 24th and Church J Stop. It's exactly a half mile from my door to the 24th street BART. Now, in the morning going to work, I walk down the hill to BART and get on a train. They come every 4 minutes to Oakland which means I almost never have to wait very long. I take the train 18 minutes (almost never changes) to the 12th street station and walk up the stairs to my office. That trip of 11 miles takes me 30 minutes every day. That means I'm going 22 miles per hour.

Now let's say I'm going to Union Street to watch the game. I watch Next Muni to see when the J is coming, I go and hop on the J and take it to Church and Market. At Church and Market I switch to the 22 trolley bus which then travels down Fillmore. This whole trip is three miles and takes about 40 minutes.

Here's another trip I take. Take the J downtown then get on the 45 or the 30 to go into North Beach to meet friends. That trip takes me 40 minutes as well. That's about a 4 mile trip made faster by the Market Subway but I still have to crawl through Chinatown on Stockton Street. That is about 6 miles per hour.

But imagine if we had a subway. That trip to Union Street would take about 15 minutes. Wow. That would be amazing! I wouldn't have to budget an hour each way just in case a car stopped in front of the bus or the signals were having a bad day. It would be the same time every time we took it. I could go to the Richmond for Dim Sum or North Beach for Italian deli meat.

This is not Houston or Austin where we can say, 'we're not as dense as San Francisco or New York'. We ARE San Francisco. The city IS dense. We should have a Metro system just like DC or Vienna or Prague. I realize its expensive but so will be cleaning the air and allowing people greater mobility. Imagine not having to worry about places to park ever! When we make people have to budget an hour for what should be a short trip, we are making them choose thier car. Because our streets are narrow and we need to start thinking about giving bicycles and pedestrians space as well, our precious street space should be used for that and surface transit with many stops, and people should be able to get across town in a timely fashion underground. Just my opinion.

DC's Dead

Some of these ended up in Sarajevo. The rest were scrapped.

HT ASD

San Francisco Fantasy Map & Investment

We're a bunch of wimps. Why is investing in infrastructure a luxury when people go out and spend so much money on their cars. A commenter (btw, please stop posting as anon. I don't care if you want to be anon, but make up a name so I can tell between commenters) in the post below called High Speed Rail a luxury we can't afford and wanted the money spent on local transit. Why the hell isn't anyone logical out there? Why are we pitting a long distance mode that will decrease airplane trips, the most dirty climate change inducing trips out there, versus a short distance mode that everyone knows is needed?

This isn't about one or the other, it's about both. Stop pitting HSR against the budget. Stop pitting HSR against schools. And stop pitting HSR versus better local transit. If we didn't pass this bond, it's not like the state will toss up $10 billion for a local transit bond. They have already stolen $3 frakin billion!!! in the last 3 years.

Then I started thinking about it. If the County of San Francisco asked me for an extra $100 a year for better transit, I would give it in a hearbeat. Heck I would give $500. Because it would make my life and everyone else's life in the city so much better. Think about it. If every citizen in the city gave $500 a year, this would be $41 per month. That's ~$383 million per year. Over 30 years, that is ~$11.5 billion. What could we do with $11.5 billion here? Well we could build 46 miles of subways at $250 million per mile. That is 4 north South Subway lines and 3 east west subway lines. We'd have a real freakin metro here! $41 per month is all it takes. That is one tank of gas per month. What could we get? Something like this:


Who would want anything like that? That's just a luxury.

Friday Night Linkage

Time to figure out which route is best for the Southwest Corridor in Minneapolis.
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Pelosi for HSR. Major firepower will make sure that this project gets its federal funding in the next congress.
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A Streetcar for Middletown Connecticut?
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Is a DDOT Streetcar ever going to get built?
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More on Denver's property increases near light rail:

As I've mentioned previously, many of the people that I've talked with on my trip have mentioned that transit is not good where they are, and it's a deciding factor not just in what neighborhood they move to, but what city they move to. We don't have any data yet on the West Corridor, but anecdotally, I have seen a lot of competition for properties on the west corridor. We lost a bid on a property that was listed for around $100,000, even though we bid $25,000 over the list price.

Property Near Light Rail Weathers the Storm

While housing values around the country are falling, there has been anecdotal evidence of value near rapid transit staying high or even going up. Now we have empirical evidence in Denver that this is true:

Homes near light-rail stations along the southeast line, which opened in November 2006, have increased by an average of nearly 4 percent over the past two years, according to an analysis by Your Castle Real Estate. But the rest of the Denver market declined an average of 7.5 percent.

"I know that it's always been a good neighborhood, but I didn't think it was like that," said Humphrey, who doesn't drive and frequently uses public transportation.

The closer a home is to the station, the more its value increases, according to the Your Castle analysis. Homes less than a half-mile from a station increased an average of 17.6 percent, while those 1 1/2 to 2 miles away increased just 0.1 percent on average. The data varied widely among stations, however.

17.6% is no slouching in this economy. I'd love to see the study in more detail, but the initial findings reported look very promising.