General

San Jose and Silicon Valley: Welcome to Your New Network

Posted on December 28, 2019 in General, Silicon Valley 25

Finally, the long deferred new network design for Valley Transportation Authority — which covers San Jose and much of Silicon Valley in the Bay Area, is going live as I write this, on December 28, 2019. The plan arises from a major study that we led in 2016.

[Implementation was delayed so long due to delays in completing the BART rapid transit extension from the East Bay into San Jose, which the plan is intended to complement. VTA planned on the line opening tomorrow, but a last minute delay (too late for VTA to postpone their plans) has pushed that opening into the spring, so express buses will be providing that link in the meantime.]

What’s new? A massive high frequency grid covering most of San Jose, where transit demand is highest, but also bit improvements for the “Silicon Valley” area to the west. A new frequent north south line runs through Sunnyvale and Cupertino. Routes are simplified and made straighter. The light rail system was redesigned at the same time, to make it more gridlike as well. Nothing new was built, but the service pattern is also more of a grid, with a new continuous east-west line across the north side of the region that will connect tens of thousands of jobs to BART for travel to the East Bay.

Here’s the old network, with red denoting high frequency. (Click to enlarge and sharpen.)

The old VTA network. Red = 15 minute frequency or better. Note the lack of a high frequency grid apart from the lowest-income area in the far east. Map by Jarrett Walker + Associates.

And here’s the new one, by our friends at CHK America. The style is slightly different from ours, but still, high frequency is in red, and the broad colored lines (black in our map above) are the light rail network.

The new VTA network. Red=15 minute frequency or better. Map by CHK America.

Also, an historic event about which I’ll write more: A two-segment very low-ridership light rail segment has been closed, between Ohlone/Chynoweth and Almaden stations in southern San Jose. I believe this is the first time that a modern US light rail segment — i.e. built since the 1950s — was permanently closed, with the exception of a single station in Pittsburgh. (Please correct me if I’m wrong!)

And yes, some low-ridership segments disappear, though very few people end up losing all of their service. Often, the deleted routes provided some link inside an area that already had other service, and while some of these routes were fiercely defended by locals, there was no way to justify them when they achieved neither high ridership nor unique coverage. Another important part of that story is that many of the wealthier Silicon Valley cities have their own transit services, and while of course they would prefer that the county pay for their service, they have the option of running some of these low-ridership links themselves if they decide it is important to them.

Meanwhile, the center of gravity of the network remains in the east, not just because incomes are lower there but also because the geography is more favorable to efficient transit, with fewer barriers to walking and a more regularly gridded street network. Google’s move into the Diridon station area of San Jose is a great first step toward bringing jobs and prosperity into a landscape that efficient transit can serve well.

All this resulted from a clear discussion with the VTA Board, and the community, about the ridership-coverage tradeoff. The old system was about 70% justified by ridership, while the new network is closer to 90%. Getting to the right balance of ridership and coverage goals was the result of a long conversation, in which we showed the public alternatives and got their feedback before the Board made a decision.

To all of Silicon Valley and San Jose, welcome to your new network. It’s been a long struggle (for VTA more than for us) but you can finally go places you could never go before, and soon.

Our Holiday Card

Posted on December 24, 2019 in General 3

Chile: Planning as Everything Changes

Posted on December 6, 2019 in General 1

Santiago resembles Los Angeles in geography and climate, but the mountains are much higher, the city is denser, and of course there is much more poverty (not pictured).

My planned week in Santiago, intended to be for the CEDEUS conference, was wildly rearranged by the civic uprising that’s transforming Chile, which until a month ago was famously the most stable country in Latin America. Bigger events than ours had to be cancelled, since nobody could guarantee security in the center of Santiago while the protests took their uncertain course.

You have probably heard about the appalling vandalism of the Santiago Metro and the destruction of businesses. You may not have heard that these are massive protests whose underlying grievances have broad public support, even though almost everyone deplores the destruction. Suddenly, the word on everyone’s lips is desigualdad — inequality.

But of course immobility is part of inequality, so around the edges I thought I might still have something to offer. Some low income people in Santiago are over 90 minutes travel time from their jobs, giving them no time to either seek a better life or care for their families. As always, this is both a transport problem and a land use problem, one I did my best to explain in purely geometric terms.

The graffito in yellow reads: “It wasn’t peace, it was silence.”

My host Juan-Carlos Muñoz of the Catholic University of Chile made an extraordinary effort to make good use of my time, even though nothing could be planned for certain.

We had planned an overnight trip to Concepción, for example, to speak at the university there, at the invitation of transport engineering professor Juan Antonio Carrasco. But Juan Carlos had to call me the day before to tell me there would be a general strike the next day, so while we could fly there tonight nobody knew if we would be able to get back tomorrow. Also, there would be no public transport and students would be in the streets, so nobody knew if anyone would come to my talk. He invited me to cancel, though he encouraged me to go.

The courageous, dashing consultant that I’d like you to think I am paused for effect and then said, in a gravelly voice: “Let’s do it.” In fact I leaned hard on Juan Carlos’s optimism, and I’m glad I did. Our spare time in Concepción was consumed by the work of getting around barricades and fires, so the only sightseeing we could do in that beautiful city was to gaze in shock at the looted and burned big box stores. In the end, I was delighted to see over 40 people, including journalists, show up for my talk, and asked great questions. Later I did a similar presentation back in Santiago (summarized in Spanish here) to a similar number. [1][2]

From left, Professor Juan Carlos Muñoz, I, Chile’s Minister of Transport and Telecomminications Gloria Hutt and Vice Minister José Luis Domínguez.

And there were great casual chats, including with activists from the sustainable transport advocacy group Muevete, and with dedicated and energetic staff from the government public transport authority, Transantiago. Finally, beyond my expectations, I had an hour with Chile’s Ministry of Transport Gloria Hutt to talk about immobility in the context of the dramatic transformations in public transit that they are trying to achieve. [3]

Finally, there was a series of conversations with Lake Sagaris, one of the most fascinating people I know. She’s now a Canadian-Chilean transport professor, but she was also one of the key journalists and authors who chronicled the Pinochet dictatorship and its aftermath. Today, she’s a leading expert in the now-urgent task of fostering a constructive and inclusive public conversation.

One of the most remarkable features of the current crisis is the spontaneous generation of many thousands of cabildos, locally generated groups of people, beyond the usual interest groups, who gather to discuss the crisis and paths forward. These groups, often organized by local government, are widely viewed as credible, and their ideas are strongly influencing the conversation as presented in the media.

Land use planning in Concón, Chile: a little too laissez-faire?

With such fractured but intense impressions, what can I say about Chile in this remarkable time?

The word revolution comes to mind but is too strong, and premature. The Chilean media tend to call the recent events el estallido (explosion, outbreak, shattering), which conveys the force and disruption without implying a point of view on the grievances or a belief about how things will turn out. The conservative government is showing openness to dramatic change, including a new Constitution, so perhaps things will evolve in a peaceful way.

Mostly, Chile is just deeply uncertain. Uncertain in daily life: Will we be able to travel tomorrow, and if so will we be able to come back? Can a meeting in inner Santiago be planned for next week? Will anyone come? Will a random strike close a national park, stranding all the international visitors staying nearby? And more deeply: How much more violence and destruction lies ahead? How real are the promised transformations? What will the new constitution say? What kind of country will Chile be five years from now?

Chile presents a rapid alternation of the utterly normal and the utterly disrupted, and nobody knows where the future equilibrium is. If there’s reason for optimism, it’s that there seems to be widespread consensus to deplore the violence but insist on the urgency of change. And as always, equality isn’t just about how much money people have. It’s also about mobility, access to opportunity, so land use and transport are at the center of it all.

Notes

[1]

The courageous, dashing consultant that I’d like you to think I am did all these events in fluent Spanish, despite not having studied the language at all until 6 months ago. In fact, I was at a stage where I could give a prepared speech in Spanish but not really take questions in it. [2] This is what I look like when I’m doing that. Walking a tightrope, basically, or trying to invoke any available deity to give me the next word when I need it. Note the heavily light of inspiration slightly missing me to my right:

[2]

A further challenge to comprehension is that the Chilean accent tends to omit vowels (which, to be fair, is a common complaint about the American accent in English.) Thus I had conversations like this:

I: A qué hora devolverán mi ropa mañana? [when will they return our laundry tomorrow?]
She: Awa owo.
I: Um. Otra vez? [again?]
She: Awa owo! Eight!
I: Ah! “A las ocho?”
She: Sí! Awa owo!

This endless humiliation had its uses, of course. It kept me from feeling that I could figure out the place too easily, and so slowed the inevitable slide from curiosity into judgment.

[3]

Chile is going through the same process that I was part of in Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland: bringing over-privatized bus services together into a single network that government controls and markets, while private companies still compete to operate the services. It’s the only way to get a coherent and efficient network design that maximizes mobility while also yielding the benefits of competition in operations.

I Am Not a Bus Advocate

Posted on December 2, 2019 in General, Mobility, Technophilia 12

What, you say? But you wrote an article in the Atlantic called The Bus is Still Best! You redesign bus networks for a living! You’ve been a skeptic about all kinds of new alternatives to the bus, from monorails to streetcars-stuck-in-traffic t0 “microtransit.” Have you changed your mind?

I am a freedom advocate[1], which means that I like it when people can go places, and therefore do things, and therefore have better lives more rich with choice and opportunity. And when I analyze how to deliver freedom cost-effectively, the fixed route bus turns out to be the right answer in a huge percentage of cases. It’s not right in all cases, and where it isn’t I don’t recommend it. (Where a community has other goals, that too can yield a different answer, which is fine. It’s their community.)

But it’s increasingly common to read things like this

Entrenched beliefs that the bus or rail is best, period — and that ridership and scalability are all that matter — stop us from seeing all the places where we can leverage technology and new ideas.

[UPDATE: This article has since been revised in response to my objections.]

The word “bus” was a link to my Atlantic article, whose headline, “The Bus Is Still Best,” I dislike but could not control.[2] The implication of this link is that I am “entrenched” in an emotional attachment to buses the way that many people can be emotionally attached to trains or airplanes or Porsches or whatever.[3]

Such attachments may also just be financial interests. For example, huge amounts of venture capital are being spent making it sound like microtransit is a world-changing idea, and to attack those of us who honestly can’t make mathematical sense of that claim as being rigid, stuck in our ways, “entrenched.”[4]

In fact, I feel no emotions about transport technologies. My shelves are not full of cardboard model buses.[5] And where the right answer to the problem of efficiently providing freedom isn’t a bus, I don’t recommend a bus. I have recommended all kinds of technologies in different situations. I want to achieve goals, and I look for tools that do that in each situation.

Above all, I hope I’m known for suggesting that our thinking should start with goals rather than emotional excitement about technologies, and that this requires some serious effort, because every technology salesperson wants us to do the opposite: first, get excited about a technology, then try to come with a goal that could justify it. As soon as “innovation” becomes a goal in itself rather than a tool, we are headed down that slippery slope.

So I’m not surprised that I get attacked now and then, and now here’s a post as a ready-made response. Next time you see someone say that I am (or you are) a “bus advocate,” or “entrenched,” just send them a link to this. Thank you!

Notes

[1] Or, if you prefer, a mobility or access advocate.

[2] Never, ever link to something based only on the headline! Headlines express the attitudes of the publication, not the writer. (I am slapping my own wrist as I write this, because I’ve been guilty too.)

[3] … which is not to criticize emotional attachments. I have them too about many things. As always, I am describing myself, not judging you!

[4] This assumption about financial interest also gets projected onto me sometimes, so for the record: I have no financial link with any bus manufacturer, bus operating company, etc.

[5] … though if yours are, that’s wonderful! As always, I am describing myself, not judging you!

Santiago: I’m Coming Anyway

Posted on November 5, 2019 in General, Santiago 4

Photo: Carlos Figueroa, Wikimedia Creative Commons.

For months I’ve planned to be in Santiago next week, with a brief side trip to Concepción. I was to speak at the annual joint conference of the Centre for Sustainable Urban Development and the Centre for the Study of Conflict and Social Cohesion. I had visited the country in 2004, and looked forward to returning to one of the most stable and peaceful countries in Latin America.

So it goes. Stability can always mask horrors that eventually have to come to light. Chile’s extreme inequality had reached a point where a small increase in Santiago Metro fares sparked a broad social revolt. The initial outburst was violent, including looting of stores, burning of buildings, and terrible damage to the magnificent Santiago Metro. The conservative government briefly tried out a confrontational response (“Chile is at war“) but backtracked the next day, apologizing, sacking much of the cabinet, and promising reforms. Today the protests continue as they should, mostly peaceful but with the inevitable scatterings of violence, and the country is debating profound reforms that Serious People deemed impossible even two weeks ago.

But the conference venue is right in the centre of Santiago, where protests are continuing, and the organizers have decided to cancel the conference, because, they write, “at this moment we do not have the conditions to complete the conference as it was planned.” Instead, “we believe that the efforts of academics should lie in understanding and engaging in dialogue on the problems that confront our country, as well as cooperating to open paths to a more just country.”

I’m coming anyway. I’ll meet with some transport officials, and speak to a class at the university. In Concepción I’ll face the challenge of giving a talk in Spanish, a language I knew almost nothing of six months ago. I look forward to experiencing something even better than stability: a country transforming itself, as few countries dare imagine.

On Flying Cars

Posted on October 16, 2019 in General 21

A journalist asked my opinion about flying cars. I wrote this. Please tell me where I’m wrong.

For every technology pitch, you must ask not just “what is this like from the inside?” but also “what is it like from the outside?” All vehicle technologies are sold based on how cool or useful it will be to ride them. And most of these pitches do not want you think about what it will be like to be outside of them, or to share a city with them.

The issues with air taxis are obvious. Even if they are much quieter than helicopters, they will introduce a new type level of noise to the city, anywhere near where they takeoff and land. Their presence overhead in any numbers will have physical and emotional effects on the population. They will introduce entirely new kinds of accidents that make everyone fearful of the space above them. And in the end, by allowing elites to opt out of the transportation problems that everybody else in the city is having, they will encourage elite disinterest in solving those problems.

They will be cool to ride, though.

Cleveland: See Where You Could Go

Posted on October 14, 2019 in Cleveland, General, Network Redesign 6

We’re excited to share the next stage in our work in Great Cleveland, where the transit agency, GCRTA, has hired us to help think through their goals and different ways that their transit network can be designed to meet these goals in the next few years, and to help imagine what the possibilities may be with modest increase in operating funds in the future. For our readers in Cleveland, our last system redesign survey on is now open. Learn more about the networks and let us know what you think!

In May of this year, we made a post about two budget-neutral alternative networks that illustrate what the transit network could look like if the agency shifted its focus more towards attracting higher ridership, and what the network would look like if shifted towards maximizing coverage. You can find out more about these alternatives here.

We surveyed the public on these alternatives, and RTA conducted a series of public meetings throughout the county. The result of the public process suggested that many people saw the value of the frequency improvements of the High Frequency Alternative, but that most people would not be in favor of a reduction in coverage to achieve the frequency improvements.

Based on this input, we worked with RTA staff to design two network concepts that illustrate how the network could look if it were designed with a slightly greater emphasis on generating high ridership, but without reducing the overall coverage area from today. These networks illustrate for the stakeholders and the agency’s Board of Trustees the potential outcomes of this policy choice using only today’s funding levels and illustrate what sort of network those same design priorities could produce with additional funding for bus service.

You can click each map below to explore a larger annotated version.

RTA Existing Network

Current Funding Concept

Expanded Funding Concept

Remember, ridership and coverage and the opposite ends of the same spectrum so at the same funding level and without reducing coverage areas, opportunities to add ridership-focused service are very limited.

The Current Funding Concept tries to do this by minimizing duplication in the network, and by making some difficult tradeoffs about where to increase and reduce frequency. While everywhere that is served today would continue to have transit service with this concept, some lower-density places would see their frequency reduced (usually from every 45 minutes to every 60 minutes). Some key improvements include frequent service on busy corridors like Detroit, Lorain and Kinsman (all currently every 20 minutes), and frequent crosstown service on E 93rd and E 105th (Route 10).

These and other improvements are possible by reducing service levels elsewhere in the network. For example, the Center Ridge corridor on the west side of the county would be served every 60 minutes by a branch of Route 26 (which continues via Detroit towards downtown). Today, this corridor is today is served every 45 minutes, so this is a reduction in frequency, but it does come with the benefits of a one-seat ride downtown, and an extension to the new community college campus at the edge of the county (Tri-C Westshore).

Closer to downtown on the east side, low-frequency crosstown services on E 55th and E 79th would be discontinued with this design. Today, because of the crosstown routes’ low frequency and proximity to downtown, many trips along these corridors can be made more quickly by traveling in and back out along more frequent radial services (such as the HealthLine BRT, or routes 1 and 3). Yes, that would mean having to transfer, but as we’ve explained in a past post, “transferring” can be good!

These hard choices are characteristic of a no-growth redesign; in this case, the network was designed to improve ridership potential and expand the frequent network, within the constraint of maintaining the current coverage area.

The Expanded Funding Concept deploys about 25% more bus operating resources that today’s network. With this greater resource level, this concept can increase the usefulness of the transit network in almost every part of the county that is served. Some key improvements include frequent crosstown service on W 117th in the west and Warrensville Center in the east, and on key radials like St. Clair, Superior, Quincy and Cedar. 30-minute service would be provided on corridors like outer Lorain, W 130th, and Granger where only infrequent or no service is available today.

More Information

RTA is conducting a survey in English and Spanish and public meetings on these concepts now, so if you are in Cleveland, head on over to their website to find out more: http://riderta.com/systemdesign.

We’ve also put together an interactive webmap (similar to what we were able to deploy in Dublin in 2018) that you can use to explore the network and compare some travel time isochrones for each concept: https://rtanetworkconcepts.com/viewer/. In these maps, blue areas are newly reachable with the network concept, purple areas are reachable with both the existing network and the concept, and red areas are where you can travel with the existing network that is no longer reachable with the concept. You can also click the “View Routes” button to explore the network structure of each concept.

Here’s a quick comparison for the Tri-C Western campus showing the area that would be reachable in 60 minutes with the Expanded Funding Concept:

With the Expanded Funding Concept, 30-minute service would connect TriC’s western campus to the W 130th, Pearl, Ridge and State corridors. Since the campus is only served with hourly routes today, this produces a big expansion in the area reachable from the college (the blue area shown on the map).

Finally, much more detail is available in our mini-report, which you can view here: http://www.riderta.com/sites/default/files/events/RTASRSPresentation201909.pdf

A Fine New Guide for Transit Activists

Posted on October 13, 2019 in Books, General 2

Steven Higashide, Better Buses, Better Cities: How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit. Island Press, 2019.

Why are American cities finally taking buses seriously? Because, as Churchill famously said, “Americans will do the right thing, after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.”

I’ve been following transit in America for 35 years, and working in the field for 25. During that time, cities have growh frustrating to get around in, with dire consequences for people’s access to opportunity. But throughout that time powerful people have always been telling me that buses just don’t matter. Development interests cared only about rail or ferries. Technology marketers have always shiften the conversation to new patented things, of which some are useful but many are tragic distractions. To the extent that buses have mattered to the powerful, it’s often been as a social service — a charity that they give pennies to out of pity but whose functionality they barely care about.

And that’s not even to mention the active hostility to bus service that transit planners encounter daily: the shopping mall or hospital that refuses to let a bus get anywhere near the building, the communities that want buses out, the urban businesses who think that motorists are the only customers who matter.

But having exhausted all the alternatives, American cities are finally rediscovering this essential tool. No remotely functional city in the world lacks a transit system, and the bus is always a critical layer – the thing that goes to all the high-demand places that rail can’t go. As we enter the inevitable hangover from the mid-2010s sugar-rush of tech boosterism, people are finally doing the math to see why, for a city to function for everyone, buses simply must be allowed to succeed.

Steven Higashide has written a great little book charting the current and incipient bus revolution. In a skillful balance of facts and stories, Higashide explores what successful bus services look like, and how to overcome the barriers to bus service reform. He interviews the architects of some of the most impressive achievements, and also delves well into the deep challenge of equity and public engagement.

Do I have quibbles? My only serious one is that I wish the book were clearer about where activists should direct their constructive rage. US transit agencies are less powerful than they appear and are often not the source of the biggest problems. Much of what they do is defined by their poverty and by the great mass of regulations and labor contracts that form the boundaries of their world.

At times Higashide understates the danger of telling transit agencies to do so many things that everything they do suffers from lack of focus. Transit agencies desperately need to focus on designing and running good transit systems. Demanding they take on other battles often comes at a cost to that core business, by dividing staff and elected attention.

For example, Higashide suggests that transit agencies lead on pedestrian infrastructure around stops, a massive task that falls in the city (and sometimes state) role in managing streets. Cities must be pressured to adopt their own transit goals that lead to those kinds of investments, as leading ones like Seattle have done for years. Just because transit is connected to everything doesn’t mean transit agencies should have to solve every related problem with their own meager budget, as they are often told to do. That just leads to ever-lousier bus service.

But this book is so good in so many ways that I don’t mind disagreeing with it here and there. The messages are critically important. The writing is lively and fun. You can read the whole thing in a couple of hours, and it’s short and logical chapters support easy snacking. It’s a great tool for giving you hope, and focus. Buy it, read it, give it to people who need it. It will make a difference.

We’re Hiring in Portland!

Posted on October 9, 2019 in General, Jobs 0

Once again, our firm has an opening for a transit analyst in our Portland office. We require strong analytic and cartography skills, but interest and in transit planning is also valuable. So this can be a great place to start a transit career, especially if you like our work or my approach to transit planning.

See the listing here! Deadline is November 1. Please spread the word!

Miami-Dade: Dinos que piensas sobre estos conceptos de transporte público

Posted on September 16, 2019 in General 0

This page is available in English here

Nuestro trabajo más reciente en el sistema de transporte público de Miami-Dade ya está disponible en línea, y estamos buscando gente de la región para que nos cuenten su opinión a través de esta encuesta.

El respetado grupo de abogacía, Transit Alliance, está llevando a cabo el proyecto Better Bus en nombre de Miami-Dade Transit y varias ciudades clave. Transit Alliance y el condado nos contrataron este año para que ayudemos a desarrollar alternativas para el sistema de transporte público que ilustren como este podría cambiar si el sistema de trolleys estuviese mejor integrado a toda la red del condado y si el balance entre las metas de un sistema de alta frecuencia y uno de alta cobertura fuese a cambiar.

El periódico local, el Miami Herald, publicó un buen artículo sobre las redes conceptuales y las opciones que pretende ilustrar.

Anteriormente publicamos un Informe de Opciones que destaca las deficiencias del sistema actual, especialmente la falta de una red de alta frecuencia. Los dos conceptos que desarrollamos intentan construir una red de alta frecuencia, por lo menos en el centro del sistema. A continuación, pueden ver secciones de la red existente, la red de alta cobertura, y la red de alta frecuencia.

La leyenda:

Los dos conceptos cuestan lo mismo que el sistema existente y se pueden implementar en su totalidad. Si todos prefieren uno de estos dos conceptos, Miami-Dade y las ciudades pueden hacer los cambios necesarios e implementarlo dentro de 6 a 9 meses. Pero no estamos haciendo que a la gente elija uno o el otro. Les estamos pidiendo que nos digan hacia cuál concepto se inclinan para que la Junta del Condado y la Comisión de la Ciudad reciban información sobre la decisión que deben tomar para Miami-Dade.

Otras preguntas clave sobre estos conceptos incluyen:

¿Se deben cambiar las rutas de los trolleys para que formen parte del sistema del condado entero? Ambos conceptos proveen rutas de mayor frecuencia en más calles porque los sistemas del la ciudad y el condado están diseñados para complementarse mutuamente.
¿Se debería aumentar el espacio entre paradas para que los autobuses puedan ir mas rápido y así la gente puede llegar a donde quieren ir más rápido? Hoy, el espacio entre paradas es aproximadamente un 1/8 de milla. Ambos conceptos asumen un espacio de 1/4 de milla entre paradas.
Y por supuesto, ¿cómo la región debe balancear las metas contradictorias de alta frecuencia y alta cobertura.

Si conoces a alguien en el Condado de Miami-Dade, enséñale la página del proyecto para explorar y expresar sus opiniones. Anímalo a leer atentamente el Informe de Conceptos. Y si tú estás interesado en la reforma de sistemas de autobús en general, mira las conversaciones sobre los conceptos y la decisión final que tomarán los líderes electos. Como con todo rediseño que hacemos, estos conceptos están para ayudar a la gente decidir que valores quieren priorizar con el transporte público. Podemos ayudar a que la comunidad entienda sus opciones y los efectos de esas opciones, pero al final es tu decisión.

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