We're looking for case studies in which:
If anyone's familiar with cases, or with studies of this issue, please let me know. Thanks!
From a correspondent in Portland:
Among my peer group [educated people in their 20s-30s] I see a "mono-modal" fixation on cycling, very similar to the attitude many drivers have that their primary mode should be everyone's primary mode. It really is remarkable how many young, affluent, educated folks living in inner Portland see cycling as the only legitimate travel mode for all people everywhere. My [peers] basically scoff at the idea that I might prefer to take the bus to and from school when it is rainy or dark out. I see walking, biking, and transit as three completely complementary modes that support a car-free or car-light lifestyle, but I'm realizing that in Portland at least there is a large group of people in the cycling community who see both cars and buses as the enemy, or at least not an option worth considering or supporting. This might help explain TriMet's underinvestment in the bus network, since politically active young people do not support transit.
I've been away from Portland too long to have my own impression, but if this is true it's certainly unfortunate. While there are some conflicts between bicycles and transit in road design, I have always tried to accommodate both. I don't necessarily believe bike lanes can be accommodated on every street, any more than transit is, but I do think both cycling and transit deserve and can have complete and functional networks.
How common is a monomodal fixation on bicycles? If so, why does it occur?
There's nothing wrong with cycling advocacy, or advocacy of any mode, until it becomes hostile toward other aspects of the full sustainable transport package. Wouldn't advocacy for the suite of sustainable transport options (walking, cycling and transit, supplemented by carsharing etc.) be more effective than endless conflicts among these modes?
This blog rarely goes on about interesting transit vehicles, since my main interest is in getting people where they're going in whatever vehicle makes sense for the purpose. But while working in Wellington last month, I made early morning ritual of climbing to the Botanic Gardens summit just west of downtown, and on one such walk I took some time to admire the cable car.
"Cable car" generally means any vehicle attached to a cable that provides the locomotion. The car has no engine, but an engine of some kind is moving the cable. The cable can be aerial (gondolas, aerial trams) or underground (San Francisco cable cars) or it can just lie on the surface in a special guideway, as in most funiculars. Wellington's is essentially a funicular: it runs in a dead-straight track up the side of a steep hill. The two cars are fixed to the ends of a single cable, connected at the top, so that they move in counterweight fashion, one car rising as the other descends.
Unlike most funiculars, though, it has more than two stations — five in fact. At Talavera station in the exact middle, tracks widen out so that the cars can pass. Everywhere else the cars share one track, but with two separate rollers for the two cables:
(In this case, the presence of just one cable means that one car is below us, the other above.)
The spacing of the other stations is limited by the design or the system, because when a car is at the station one up from the bottom, the other is stuck the same distance below the top. In Wellington, even spacing of stations — not always ideal for local geography — ensures that both cars are at stations whenever they stop.
But enough with technology fetishes. Why is this thing useful?
Easy: it's a straight line, running at high frequency, through high density, where competitors are at a disadvantage.
Cable cars (aerial or surface) can make sense in settings where you want a straight line up the side of a steep hill — especially if there's no straight road that a bus could follow. That's exactly what the Wellington line (marked by the five yellow pins) is:
The terminal stations are Lambton Quay in the heart of downtown and the Botanic Gardens summit. There's demand everywhere on this dense hillside. Botanic Gardens station offers a level walk into the fairly dense Kelburn district to the southwest, while Lambton Quay is right on the Golden Mile, where buses come every minute or less to take you north or south through downtown, and beyond.
The other stations are Victoria University, one down from the top, Talavera in the middle, and Clifton, one up from the bottom. Victoria University's campus is visible on the south side of the above image. It has its own bus services, but it's a short level walk along a terrace to its station.
And while climbing this hill is something I might do as early morning exercise, it's understandable that you might want an alternative to that. The climb is 120m of elevation gain in only 612m of horizontal length, a grade of nearly 20%.
But the real reason I thought to write about it is the interesting feature observable at the top.
The vehicles themselves are designed for their constant slope. The floor is always parallel to sea level while the car's structure is tilted 20% from the floor, to match the grade.
As a result, it's possible to open the car on both sides and produce a level boarding from the surrounding ground. Where the car dwells at the top, as in this image, you can even walk right through the car as though it were part of the sidewalk.
I'm always interested in ways to make transit feel more continuous with the pedestrian realm. I long for buses with precise docking for absolute level boarding — not just to eliminate the delay of wheelchair ramps but also to create a feeling that the bus is a moving piece of sidewalk, that you are not leaving the street to crawl into an oppressive enclosure. Local transit won't really feel effortless to use until we have this effect.
So that's why this image appealed to me, so much that I even indulged some uncharacteristic technology-fetishism. Because the effect in this picture in important, and if I need a cable car to get it, I'll take a cable car.
The table of contents is now online here! The complete introduction is here.
The book will be released by Island Press in November or December 2011. For more or to preorder, see Island Press or Amazon, or my hometown favorite, Powell’s. (If you use Powell’s, be sure to chide them for filing it in the Automotive section!)
As those pages are closed to comments, feel free to comment below.
Below is the table of contents of my forthcoming book Human Transit: How clearer thinking about public transit can enrich our communities and our lives.
The book will be released by Island Press in November or December 2011. For more or to preorder, see Island Press or Amazon, or my hometown favorite, Powell’s.
Human Transit
Jarrett Walker
Island Press, 2011.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The complete introduction is available online here.
1. What Transit is, and Does
This chapter defines transit and its role in the city compared to other transport modes, and proposes the concept of personal mobility, a measurable freedom, as transit’s most fundamental product.
2. What Makes Transit Useful? Seven Demands and How Transit Serves Them
A customer’s expectations of transit can be boiled down to seven demands:
- It takes me where I want to go.
- It takes me when I want to go.
- It’s a good use of my time.
- It’s a good use of my money.
- It respects me.
- I can trust it.
- It gives me freedom to change my plans.
This chapter defines the main elements of the transit product (speed, frequency, span, reliability, etc.) and explains how each serves those various demands.
3. Five Paths to Confusion
An introduction to five of the most common conceptual mistakes in transit planning: map-reading errors, motorist’s errors, box errors, polarization errors, and choosing words with unfortunate connotations.
4. Lines, Loops, and Longing
The most basic geometric concepts in transit. Should transit lines be I-shaped or U-shaped? And why do people get so excited about loops?
5. Touching the City: Stops and Stations
How far apart should transit stops be? This chapter explores why this technical-sounding question is fundamental to almost everything you care about.
6. Peak or All Day?
Does your transit agency’s thinking begin with the peak commute, or with an all-day pattern of service? Why this matters.
7. Frequency is Freedom
Frequency is oddly invisible to the non-rider, yet it’s sits at the core of almost all transit outcomes. This chapter explores the urgent challenge of making frequency visible, in marketing, planning, and policy making.
8. The Obstacle Course: Speed, Delay, and Reliability
Transit speed is mostly the absence of delay. This chapter surveys the delay types, explains how planners address them, and how we might think more clearly about them in making policy.
9. Density Distractions
This chapter confonts recent claims that development density is not as important to transit as we thought, and sorts through some of the confusing ways density can be measured. Transit can do good work at many density levels, but density — properly measured — is still fundamental to transit outcomes.
10. Ridership or Coverage: The Challenge of Service Allocation
Every city or region has some areas where transit demand is high and others where it’s lower. How can transit agencies reach consensus on how to apportion service among these areas?
11. Can Fares be Fair?
An exploration of the hard choices around fares, and how smartcards are resolving some but heightening others. Can fares be “fair”? Are you sure you want them to be?
12. Connections or Complexity?
Nobody likes to get off one transit vehicle and get on another — an act known as transferring, changing, or connecting. This chapter explains why connections are inseparable from many other things we value, including frequency and simplicity.
13. From Connections to Networks, to Places
If we accept the need for connections (also called transfers), what does this mean for design? This chapter explores the common types of network structure that arise from this problem, and then considers how connection points can galvanize great urban places.
14. Be on the Way! Transit Implications of Location Choice
Whenever you choose a location, such as for your home or business, you largely determine what transit can do for you. When cities and developers decide where to build things, they profoundly impact the potential for transit in the city as a whole. This chapter explores how to make these decisions more consciously, as individuals, organizations, governments, and developers. The physical layout of a community or region is an overwhelming factor in determining how relevant transit can be, so in that sense, this is the most important chapter in the book.
15. On the Boulevard
The car-oriented suburban boulevard has much more transit potential than it seems. This chapter explores the special role transit can play in healing the most troublesome features of fast boulevards, and re-creating them as humane and functional places. The chapter ends with a vision of North America’s most boulevard-based city, Los Angeles, in a future when walking, cycling, and transit all have adequate space alongside the private car. It’s a nice place, and one where you can be sure of getting to a meeting on time.
16. Take the Long View
Clearly, the total planning problem requires synthesizing land planning and transport planning, including transit. It’s pointless to try to tear down the walls that separate these professions from each other, because each has unique expertise that must be valued. Instead, the key is to create clear conversations at the points where the professions intersect, and for each to provide just the right tools to support and inform the other’s work.
Epilogue: Geometry, Choices, Freedom
A summation of the book’s key themes.
The book is due out from Island Press in about two months.
The complete introduction is now online here.
The Island Press listing is here, and you can also preorder through Amazon. You can also order it from my hometown favorite, Powell’s, but be sure to chide them for filing it in the “Automotive” section.
TransLink in Vancouver has a great opportunity for a manager of service planning (10+ years planning experience, including some in management). They do more junior hiring as well, so keep an eye on their careers site. This one, though, is especially critical for the agency, so I wanted to feature it.
I'm under a long-term contract with TransLink doing work on their Regional Transit Strategy and similar planning tasks, so I hope to be working a bit with this person.
To apply see the "Manager of Transit Planning" item here. Full job description is attached. Move fast; it closes on Oct 14.
TransLink, and Vancouver in general, is a great place to work on transit and sustainable urbanism. Even more remarkable, their colleagues in city governments mostly share that vision, though the usual tensions arise as you'd expect anywhere. The agency's position as a single regionwide authority makes it relatively easy to think across boundaries. Few metro areas in North America have such a strong pro-transit consensus as metro Vancouver.
Their regional long-term plan, Transport 2040, is also the only one I've seen whose fundamental goals refer to the extent of a Frequent Transit Network. It's Goal #3. To me this is especially strong evidence that despite all the thrills of their extensive driverless rapid transit, the agency's thinking is focused on mobility outcomes, and their urban livability consequences, but not on technology for its own sake.
If you'd like to work in a region where suburban cities compete over who can build the most vibrant high-density centers around transit stations, but where you can still, as they say, ski in the morning and sail in the afternoon, Vancouver's the spot.
Fine print: If my experience in 05-06 is any indication, the days when you can ski in the morning and sail in the afternoon will be heavily overcast and drizzling, but you will still be enjoying the warmest winter weather in all of Canada. Think of it as the Canadian Riviera!
Deep inside the Atlantic magazine's Cities section, an article on restructuring a bus network! The city is Tallahassee, and the redesign team included Samuel Scheib of StarMetro, who comments here now and then. The redesign took an all-radial system, reduced the number of lines but increased their length, and introduced some new non-downtown connection points and even some lines that don't go downtown at all.
Few journalists would consider the topic interesting, but the article by Emily Badger takes the lay reader through the issues, highlights the relationship to city-building concerns, and generally helps it make sense. I wish every journalist — or even every New York Times reporter — took this kind of care to understand a planning issue. Given how well Badger explains the issue, I wouldn't have minded if she'd also interviewed some riders who are personally inconvenienced by the change. But most journalists cover only the latter, as though their goal is to maximize rage rather than understanding.
This quote from Scheib was interesting:
“If you talk to a land-use planner, typically they would want you to keep … service focused more on the downtown because they want more people to live downtown, in that dense environment. I’m all for that, I’m all for urbanization, I’m all for denser places,” Scheib said. “But the reality is that people need to get to work. And you’ve got to go where the jobs are."
I can assure you that this change won't damage downtown. I was hanging around Portland's TriMet in 1982 (in the indispensible role of teenage transit geek) when they totally restructured the inner city bus system, creating a grid pattern with many crosstowns that don't go downtown at all. Several of those crosstowns are now among Portland's most productive lines. But downtown Portland survived, to say the least.
The University of Minnesota's David Levinson wrote a bracing article last week arguing for a new approach to how we decide what transit lines should exist. In its emphasis on "not losing money," it may remind you of some of the broadsides of the anti-transit right, but Levinson is not one of that crowd, as far as I know.
So I thought I'd quote the juiciest parts here, and provide some counterpoint. Levinson and I use very different frames, but if you look beyond those, there's some agreement here.
Mass transit systems in the United States are collectively losing money hand over fist. Yet many individual routes (including bus routes) earn enough to pay their own operating (and even capital costs). But like bad mortgages contaminating the good, money-losing transit routes are bogging down the system.
This "profitability" or "breaking even" frame may alienate many on the left from the merit of Levinson's idea. Currently, transit agencies are not trying to break even, so they are not failing if they don't. If we propose a free-market view in which transit should be breaking even, well, I'd like to see this as well in a perfect world. But that would be a world in which government isn't heavily subsidizing transit's competitor, the private car — not just through road expenditures but through such interventions as minimum parking requirements and petroleum-based foreign policy. I would further suggest that current environmental crises argue for government to be biased away from the private car and toward modes that do less environmental harm, and that subsidies toward transit (i.e. accepting that transit "loses money") are one valid way of doing that.
We can divide individual systems into three sets of routes:
Always be suspicious when a transit network is analyzed as though it were a pile of routes, because a good network is more than the sum of its parts.
1. Those routes break-even or profit financially (at a given fare). This is the "core".
These tend to be of two types: commuter express routes that run only when they're very busy, and all-day high-frequency lines in dense urban cores with all-day demand. In my work, I describe these services as having a "Ridership Goal" or "Productivity Goal."
2. Those lines which are necessary for the core routes to break-even, and collectively help the set of routes break-even. These are the "feeders".
Levinson is acknowledging here that it's not actually possible to classify all lines cleanly, because in a well-designed transit network designed for anywhere-to-anywhere travel it is the network that yields ridership, not just individual services. It appears Levinson wants to distinguish a set of lines as individually unprofitable but necessary for the overall profitability of a network — as opposed to the third category below. OK, but this is the same as saying that there is no meaningful line-by-line measurement of "profitability" in an interdependent network; only the entire network (except for the weakest services discussed below) can be judged as profitable. That's true in my experience.
3. Those lines which lose money, and whose absence would not eliminate profitability on other routes. These money-losers are a welfare program. We might politely call them "equity" routes.
Many people don't want to talk about this category, but these routes exist in any network. They tend to be circulator services in low-density areas — including rural areas — that provide lifeline access but have little or no potential to compete with the car. You can identify them because they don't contribute substantially to the performance of the main network (though this is of course a matter of degree with no hard edge).
If an hourly circulator carrying 5 boardings per hour connects with a major trunkline carrying 100 boardings per hour, and half the circulator's ridership makes a connection with the trunk, then at worst deleting the circulator (and losing all its ridership) would cost the trunk 2.5% of its 100 hourly boardings, which will barely be noticed. If the service spent on the circulator were spent instead on even more frequency on the trunk, you might well make up the difference.
On the other hand, if the trunk weren't there, the circulator would lose 50% of its boardings, probably a fatal blow. So while connecting lines are always interdependent, some are so weak that the relationship might as well be viewed as a one-way dependence.
Levinson's right about all that, but since I don't share his "profitability" frame I can't share his derision about "welfare" or "equity." In working with transit agencies, I try to educate about these "Coverage" routes, the equivalent of Levinson's third group. I define these as "predictably low-ridership services motivated by goals other than ridership — goals generally including social service objectives, expectations of "equity" between different subareas of the region, and a generalized desire to cover the whole service area with some kind of service." In my work, I encourage public transit authorities to make a conscious choice about how much of this service they want to operate, understanding that every dollar they spend on Coverage service is a dollar they can't spend on Ridership goals or related outcomes of mode share and fare revenue.
So given Levinson's "profitability" frame, here's his solution:
Mass (or public) transit agencies are transportation organizations first, not welfare organizations. They should be considered public utilities rather than departments of government, which provide a useful service for a price to their users.
The conflct between Ridership and Coverage goals needs to be resolved by government. This doesn't require removing transit authorities from government, as there are many needs (especially land use integration) that argue the opposite. Even if transit operations were considered a "utility," policy and planning functions of transit very much need to be part of government, in my experience. Many Australian states, for example, gave away too much policy and planning control to operating companies, and are now undergoing reforms to take this authority back.
My thesis is that the local transit systems should identify and propose to retrench to the financially sustainable system, and present local politicians with a choice.
If local politicians want additional "equity" services, they should be presented with a cost of subsidy per line, and then can collectively choose which lines to finance out of general revenue, as this is primarily a welfare rather than an transportation function. In other words, public transit organizations would present the public with a bill for these money-losing services (the subsidy required in order to at least break even on operating them (i.e. the difference between their revenue and their cost), and not be expected to pay for them out of operating revenue.
If the cost of those lines is deemed too expensive (i.e. the politicians are unwilling to pay for them with general revenue tax dollars), they should be canceled. Transit agencies would no longer be losing money, they would now be break-even or slightly profitable. They might even pay a dividend to their owners (the general public).
General revenue (the treasury) would of course now be losing money, we didn't pull money from thin air, but since this is a social welfare/redistribution function, that is perfectly appropriate. This would entirely change public and political perception of transit services. It might also result in fewer bad routes being funded, since it would be crystal clear where the subsidies lay.
Levinson's tone here is needlessly divisive in my view. I prefer to work from a position of respect toward the users and defenders of low-ridership services, understanding that other valid public purposes are being served. I also respect the notion that a community that pays into a transit system should expect some service in return; this "equity" impulse has nothing to do with "welfare."
But Levinson is right that a choice must be made. There really are two competing goals for transit: Ridership (which leads to high mode share, sustainability outcomes, and "profitability") and Coverage (which provides social inclusion and equity benefits in low-density areas that a Ridership-based system wouldn't serve.) These two goals lead network design in opposite directions. So transit agencies should have guidance — from those who fund them — on how much to spend on one goal or the other.
I agree with Levinson, too, that transit policy would be much clearer if we had budgets definitely allocated to the purpose of maximum ridership — with other budgets that funded the Coverage services.
For more, see this paper of mine on the same topic, and Chapter 10 of my forthcoming book.
UPDATE: Professor Levinson responds here.