General

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 →

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 →

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.

      — Cap’n Transit, “On the Supposed Convenience of Cars“

UPDATE:  I should add that while I am quoting this approvingly, I do have issues with the word convenient, which I explained here.

My decision in 2005 to leave the USA had many motives.  But whenever I’ve contemplated returning permanently, the single strongest reason not to has been the nation’s barbaric, anti-competitive, and stupendously inefficient approach to health care.

The plight of the uninsured and underinsured was bad enough; more than one relative has told me that the great thing about turning 65 in America is that you can finally go to the doctor.  I couldn’t contemplate living in a place where I could be trapped in a toxic job for fear of losing my health care, or where the appalling burden the system places on employers would prevent me from starting a small business, should I want to do that.  I have always been amazed that Americans tell themselves they value entrepreneurship.  Taking on your first employees is a much easier decision in Canada or Australia, where you’re not taking on their health care needs as well. Continue Reading →

Why should a growing city with high ambitions for sustainability host a big blockbuster like the Olympics, with all the risk and nuisance that it entails?

So that everyone can see exceptional transit ridership, and exceptional volumes of pedestrians, and exceptional limitations on private car traffic, and can ask: “What if that were normal?”

Continue Reading →

I told you I thought Vancouver would be lucky.  From Vancouver reader Meredith Botta:

We have had spectacular weather over the past few days, cold enough at night to preserve the snow (and to make new snow) at the outdoor Olympic venues, and warm, sunny and clear in the day.

Trust me, you have to have lived through a Vancouver winter to understand how miraculous this is.   Gordon Price even caught some cherries blooming, a good month ahead of schedule.  Meredith goes on:

The feeling downtown amongst the crowds is unbelievable …. lots of smiles punctuating the rainbow of nationalities everywhere.  I even bumped into a quartet of singing Russian women in a crowded Canada Line train the other day.  TransLink announced today that they hit a new record with 1.7 million trips made in one day, yesterday.  Ridership is about evenly split between rail and buses, with SkyTrain exceeding 600,000 / day for the first time in its history.  I hope the politicians are paying attention.

Continue Reading →

The US National Transit Database (NTD) is out for 2008! (Yes, a one year lag counts as fast in this business.)  For those of you who aren’t compulsively drawn to spreadsheets, Cap’n Transit tries to get to the bottom of farebox recovery, the percentage of operating costs paid by fares.

Farebox Recovery Ratio	Agencies
70-200%	Lincoln Tunnel buses, inclined planes, Hudson River ferries, SEPTA [Philadelphia] trolleybuses
40-69%	Big city rail, college town buses
30-39%	Big city bus and light rail
0.1-29%	Small and medium city bus and light rail, plus assorted boondoggles
0	Free services

via capntransit.blogspot.com Continue Reading →

Tory Gattis at New Geography argues that mobile computing products such as the new Apple iPad will be a boon for transit, but not for trains: Continue Reading →

On the phenomenology of crowding and reliability, from Alon Levy:

People’s perception of utilization is always going to be skewed upward. There are always more people to witness crowding than emptiness. If half the trains run at 100% capacity, and half run at 20%, then five sixths of passengers will see 100% crowding rather than 20%; therefore, real utilization will be 60%, while perceived utilization will be 87%.
Continue Reading →