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Cul-de-sac Hell and the Radius of Demand

Posted on May 12, 2010 in Basics, Be on the Way, Canberra, Seattle, Urban Structure

This is interesting:

Research by Lawrence Frank, Bombardier Chair in Sustainable Transportation at the University of British Columbia, looks at neighborhoods in King County, Washington: Residents in areas with the most interconnected streets travel 26% fewer vehicle miles than those in areas with many cul-de-sacs. Recent studies by Frank and others show that as a neighborhood’s overall walkability increases, so does the amount of walking and biking—while, per capita, air pollution and body mass index decrease.

I especially appreciate this graphic, because it’s a nice illustration of a crucial transit concept: the radius of demand: Continue Reading →

Line Numbering: Geek Fetish or Crucial Messaging?

Posted on May 3, 2010 in Basics, Las Vegas, Philosophy, San Francisco

Commenter Mike recently laid out a nice explanation of the line numbering system in Aachen, Germany, and then asked, fatefully:

How do professionals assign line numbers?

The answer is:  Much as geeky amateurs do, when drawing imaginary networks.  It’s a process of (1) imagining beautiful systems of order, and (2) willing them in to being.  Unfortunately, real-world professionals have to proceed through the additional steps of (3) clashing with proponents of competing systems, (4) enduring the derision and sabotage of anarchists, and finally (5) resigning to a messy outcome where only traces of beauty remain, visible “between the lines” so to speak, for those still capable of enchantment. Continue Reading →

Illusions of Travel Time in Transit Promotion

Posted on March 28, 2010 in Basics, Frequent Networks, Light Rail, Los Angeles, Rail Transit

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 →

The Power and Pleasure of Grids

Posted on February 23, 2010 in Basics, Frequent Networks, Los Angeles, Paris, Philosophy, San Francisco, Sydney, Urban Structure

Why do transit planners love grids?  Now and then you’ll even hear one muttering about “grid integrity” or “completing the grid.”  What are they talking about?

Suppose you’re designing an ideal transit system for a fairly dense city where there are many activity centers, not just one big downtown.  In fact, you don’t want to give preferential treatment to any point in the city.  Instead, you want people to be able to travel from literally anywhere to anywhere else by a reasonably direct path, at a high frequency.  Everybody would really like a frequent service from their home to everywhere they ever go, which is pretty much what a private car is.  But money isn’t infinite, so the system has to deliver its outcome efficiently, with the minimum possible cost per rider. What would such a system look like? Continue Reading →

Leadership from Columbus: A Great Transit Advocacy Website

Posted on January 5, 2010 in Basics, Columbus, Stop Spacing

As someone who designs transit networks for a living, it’s often lonely trying to promote good network design.  When changing services to create a better network, everyone who is negatively impacted complains at once, while those who would benefit (including people who care about the efficiency and usability of their city as a whole) tend not to tune in.  So the political process of getting change approved is often unpleasant to say the least.

I-71NExpressRoutes_GoogleMap-large It would help if every city had advocates promoting basic principles of efficient network design.  For a good example of what this might look like, have a look at the Columbus Bus Rapid Transit Plan.  This appears to be the work of a local advocate who signs comments as “John,” but like Shakespeare he seems to have completely submerged his identity under his work.  I can’t find out anything else about him, nor does he have an obvious place to get feedback. Continue Reading →

Chokepoints for Effective Transit: The Example of Seattle

Posted on January 2, 2010 in Basics, Seattle, Urban Structure

Seattleskyline1cropped In December, Alex Steffen wrote a provocative article at Worldchanging proposing that Seattle aim to become North America’s first carbon-neutral city.  I’m not an expert on carbon-neutrality as a whole, but I can certainly comment on the transport dimensions of it.  Here are some reasons to bet on Seattle, in particular, as a place that might get closer to carbon-neutrality in transportation than most other North American cities.  Ultimately, all of these are about geography. Continue Reading →

Arrival by Train: How End-Stations Differ from Through-Stations

Posted on October 8, 2009 in Architecture, Basics

I’ve seen some great rail stations on my just-completed Europe trip, and some problematic ones.  It’s brought me back to an old point about station design that not everyone understands:  Through-stations and end-stations are completely different design and planning problems.  They generate completely different kinds of space and completely different sensations of arrival and departure.  It’s pointless, for example, to compare New York’s dreary Penn Station, a through-station, with magnificent Grand Central, an end-station.  They are apples and radishes.  Consider:

Continue Reading →

Why Isn’t Through-Routing More Common?

Posted on July 31, 2009 in Basics, Connections, Transfers, New York City, San Francisco, Urban Structure

All-new-york-rail-lines-3A reader asks:

[Alon Levy’s] post on The Transport Politic about through-routing commuter rail in New York brought up a question I’ve had for several years regarding transit systems. Why isn’t through-routing more common? This applies to rail, BRT, regular bus, etc. It seems that through-routing all or most of a city’s lines via a central transit center provides all the benefits of the “hub-and-spoke” model but also eliminates the need for transfers for a significant minority of people. Is there a downside or cost that isn’t apparent at first?

Continue Reading →

Symbolic Logic for Transit Advocates: A Short but Essential Course

Posted on July 29, 2009 in Basics, Language, Monorail, Philosophy, Portland, Seattle, Streetcars (Trams)

Part of our job as informed citizens and voters is to sift through the political claims that we hear and arrive at our own sense of what’s true.  I’ve been listening to such claims in the transit business, and sometimes making them, for almost 30 years now.  It occurs to me that one of the most important tools for evaluating these claims is something you probably learned in high school math and forgot.  (Yes, some of you remembered, but I’m really talking to the ones who forgot.  To those of you who just don’t like math, don’t worry if you don’t follow this next bit; just skim ahead to the example.  This IS really important.)

Here it is.
Consider a statement of the form “If A is true, then B is true,” [A –> B]
IF that statement is true, then:
  • The Converse, [B –> A] is not necessarily true.
  • The Inverse [NOT A –> NOT B] is not necessarily true.
  • The Contrapositive [NOT B –> NOT A] IS true.

Continue Reading →

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