Well, my Welcome and Manifesto post is dated 10 April 2009, so I’ve been doing this for a year.
I started this blog to provide a source of commentary about transit planning issues based on two decades of experience in that business. I had no idea whether the blogosphere wanted such a thing. I wasn’t sure where it would lead. I wasn’t sure who the audience would turn out to be. Continue Reading →
The Public Transport Users Association of Australia has a great press release and analysis on the need to re-think the ideal of a “metro,” and to question why Australians should wait decades for them. Continue Reading →
A while back, Aaron Renn at the Urbanophile did an interesting post on Portland. Anyone who loves the city will find it engaging and challenging, as I did, and I wanted to expand on a comment I made there at the time. (I lived there from 1969 to 1980 and was later based there as a transit planning consultant, 1994-2003.)
Comparing Portland to his hometown, Indianapolis, he notices that the two cities score about the same on many metrics — job growth, domestic in-migration, GDP, etc. — even though Portland is a nationally renowned achievement in urban planning and lifestyle while Indianapolis is a pretty ordinary Midwestern city surrounded by lots of sprawl. The core of his observation is in this quotation from Alissa Walker at Good: Continue Reading →
The bilingual blog Straight outta Suburbia / Saliendo de las Afueras is not just an interesting read on Los Angeles issues, but it’s also a good way to practice your Spanish comprehension while reading interesting things. Each post appears in both languages, so you can check the English to see if you understood the Spanish correctly. (And vice versa.) Continue Reading →
Responding to my post on Los Angeles as a transit metropolis, Atrios on the Eschaton blog speculates that the fate of transport in Los Angeles depends on three things, two of which are matters of “the psychology of the place.” Continue Reading →
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s campaign to accelerate the construction of rail transit in his city is deservedly in the news, not just for his own persistence but also for the excitement it’s generating in the Obama administration, in Congress, and in other cities who would love to see a precedent-setting response. But it’s also very useful and inspiring to transit planners working overseas, like me. Continue Reading →
Whenever you hear someone cite the travel time of a proposed transit line, your first reaction should always be: “Yes, but at what frequency?” Often, that fact is missing from these soundbites.
There’s a nice example in today’s Transport Politic. Speaking of the proposed Gold Line Foothills extension, which if built will someday extend from Los Angeles to Montclair: Continue Reading →
UPDATE February 2016: While this post’s deep dive is valid enough, I would no longer agree with my past self that exclusivity of right of way is secondary in defining the difference between streetcars and light rail. I no longer agree with this post’s claim that exclusive right of way is more important for longer transit trips than for short ones. It is always a crucial driver of reliability, and its absence continues to be the defining features of what most Americans call “streetcars” as opposed to light rail.
Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic proposes a curious definition of the difference between streetcars (trams) and light rail:
The dividing line between what Americans reference as a streetcar and what they call light rail is not nearly as defined as one might assume considering the frequent use of the two terminologies in opposition. According to popular understanding, streetcars share their rights-of-way with automobiles and light rail has its own, reserved right-of-way.
But the truth is that the two modes use very similar vehicles and their corridors frequently fall somewhere between the respective stereotypes of each technology. Even the prototypical U.S. light rail project — the Portland MAX — includes significant track segments downtown in which its corridor is hardly separated from that of the automobiles nearby. And that city’s similarly pioneering streetcar includes several segments completely separated from the street.
Los Angeles Times columnist David Lazarus tried using transit recently, and what drove him crazy was not the waiting, the crowding, the delays. What drove him crazy were the fares:
For example, transfers. Switching from one transit provider to another is often a necessity in an area this vast. Some, such as Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus, make it relatively easy. Others do not. Continue Reading →
There is nothing inherently convenient about cars, or about any
vehicle. It is the system that makes them convenient, and that system
includes both the vehicle and the infrastructure. Provide unlimited,
subsidized “free” car infrastructure, and cars will be convenient. Run
buses often, everywhere, all the time, and buses will be convenient.
Put everything in a giant skyscraper with computer-controlled
elevators, and elevators will be convenient. Trains, walking, bayou
boats, swinging from vines, conveyor belts, scuba diving: whatever it
is, if you throw enough money at the infrastructure you can make it
convenient.
UPDATE: I should add that while I am quoting this approvingly, I do have issues with the word convenient, which I explained here.