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Author Archive | Jarrett

u.s. transit capital funding: a big picture?

Posted on July 8, 2010 in Philosophy, Strategic Transit Planning, US Federal Policy

An email asks a seemingly eternal question, from reader Aaron Brown:

I … wanted to reach out to see if you’d be willing to provide any thoughts on the massive capital funding backlogs that major transit systems face here in the US. The latest reports I’ve seen throw around numbers above $50bn just to bring systems into a state of good repair, excluding any expansion. Given the current condition of local, state, and federal budgets, this number seems extremely daunting to me.Here in Chicago, for instance, we have a pretty solid transit system (relative to most US cities), but one that is old and badly in need of repairs. Again, however, the amount need just to bring the system to a state of good repair ($7bn for the CTA alone) seems overwhelming. We have aging buses and railcars, tracks and ties in need of replacement, and an L system with structures over 100 years old that are all competing for limited funds. And this is in a city and transit system that is seeing record ridership and will need to expand over the next few decades to serve one of the largest (and growing) metro areas in the country. Continue Reading →

Amsterdam: Victory is Orange

Posted on July 6, 2010 in Amsterdam

Hello from a hotel room with a great view of Amsterdam’s Central railway station, and of the intricate tangle of tram loops, canals, roadways, taxi queues, bike lanes, and subway construction sites that make up Stationsplein (“station square”).  The Netherlands triumphed over Uruguay in the World Cup semifinal about fifteen minutes ago.

There aren’t many cars in Amsterdam, because the city simply doesn’t make room for them.  But every car in my field of vision, maybe 20 or so on all sides of the square, is honking.  (It is the sort of moment when you wonder why carmakers couldn’t tune all horns to an agreed set of standard pitches, so that when everyone honks at once we’d at least get a pleasing chord.)  I can also hear a lot of happy shouting, a few things that sound like brass instruments, and the occasional vuvuzela.  Continue Reading →

Singapore: Mysterious, Providential Buses

Posted on July 2, 2010 in Branding, Legibility, Singapore

[Slightly revised 22 August ’10 to eliminate some innocent mistakes.  The overall naive tone of this post was intentional; this was, after all, my first full day in Singapore, so I was seeing as one sees when first trying to figure out a network.]

My first transit adventure in Singapore began in at the remote wetland reserve, Sungei Buloh, in the northwest of the island.  It’s adjacent to a curious area called the “Kranji Countryside,” billed as Singapore’s “homegrown agritainment hub.”  It’s a small patch of farmlands and vineyards designed to serve all the agrarian tourism needs for the 5 million people living just down the road.   Continue Reading →

Singapore: A Walk with Paul Barter

Posted on July 1, 2010 in Architecture, Singapore

One of this blog’s earliest fans was Paul Barter, a transport policy scholar based at the National University of Singapore.  Paul’s blog, Reinventing Urban Transport, is always worth a look.

Paul and I met for dinner in Singapore last week, a long rambling evening that ended in an outdoor Islamic (no alcohol) cafe, where we watched the Germany vs. England World Cup game amid a crowd who all seemed to have surprisingly strong feelings for one side of the other.  (Perhaps, given colonial history, this boiled down to strong feelings for or against the British.)  We started with a walking tour of a Singapore that most tourists won’t see, but that covers a huge percentage of the island: the regular, repetitive, but efficient world of the Housing Development Board, the single government agency that provides housing for a majority of Singaporeans. Continue Reading →

Now, Anyone Can Monitor Reliability

Posted on June 30, 2010 in On-Time Performance, San Francisco

Can you think of a better way to measure service reliability than the ones your transit agencies use?  Can you develop ways to analyze the system’s performance that will reveal more precisely where and why things go wrong?  Now, any transit geek with a head for statistics can try out these ideas, and share what they discover, for any transit agency that publishes a real-time information feed. Continue Reading →

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