Portland

On the US Downtown Bus Plaza

Posted on June 8, 2010 in Architecture, Portland, Urban Structure

Lately, Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic has been riding the bus. We’re seeing more good press for buses lately, as more national commentators focus on urban mobility problems. Friedersdorf’s figuring out most of what I’ve long advocated …

I’ve already argued for simplified routes, system maps, and route numbering schemes. Other innovations that you should lobby your local bus agency/municipal government to adopt: dedicated bus lanes, express routes, GPS on the bus, estimated time of arrival signs on bus stops that change in real time, clear signage, and easy methods of payment that don’t require exact change.

But it’s interesting that this struck him as new: Continue Reading →

On Standard Street Grids

Posted on June 2, 2010 in Architecture, New York City, Portland, Urban Structure, Vancouver

Is it true that while everyone loves Portland’s regular 200-foot street grid, urbanists are turning away from it as something to emulate?

Daniel Nairn, who just wanted to make a nice nerdy poster about street grids, points me to a fascinating Planetizen article by Fanis Grammenos and Douglas Pollard. It argues that the standard street grid, an easily repeated pattern where most intersections are four-way, is and should be history. The future, they argue, lies in more complex grids where there are a lot of street connections but where 3-way “T” intersections are the rule. It’s an excellent article. Read the whole thing. Continue Reading →

Can Local Buses “Stimulate” Development?

Posted on May 11, 2010 in Frequent Networks, Portland, Streetcars (Trams), Transit-Oriented Development (TOD)

One of the troubling side-effects of the streetcar revival movement in North America is that streetcar advocates often need to argue that buses don’t stimulate development, whereas streetcars really do. But now and then someone says something like this:

Now, in Seattle, I picked my current apartment in large part because it was right next to a trolleybus (the 44).

Continue Reading →

Should We Plan Transit for “Bikeability”?

Posted on April 20, 2010 in Cycling, Portland, Seattle, Urban Structure

As cycling becomes more and more popular, how should transit planning respond? I’ve suggested before that better integration of cycling can be crucial to expanding the reach of rapid transit, and possibly eliminating some of the need for less efficient local-stop transit. That post also attracted great comments from experienced bike+transit riders hammering out the details.

But the details of whether and how much this can work vary a lot from one city to another. Continue Reading →

Honolulu: Grand Themes from the Rail Transit Wars

Posted on April 15, 2010 in Honolulu, Portland, Rail Transit, Streetcars (Trams)

Eight months ago, a freelance reporter asked for my views on the emerging argument over Honolulu’s proposed rail transit line, which would stretch most of the length of the populated southern shore, from west of Pearl Harbor through downtown to Ala Moana Center on the edge of Waikiki. The Transport Politic has covered the background here and here and here. A good blog on the subject is here. Continue Reading →

Streetcars vs Light Rail … Is There a Difference?

Posted on March 26, 2010 in Light Rail, Melbourne, Portland, Rail Transit, Stop Spacing, Streetcars (Trams)

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.

Continue Reading →

Portland: Another Challenging Chart

Posted on January 27, 2010 in Portland

A while back I posted some City of Portland data showing that in the past 12 years, during which four new rail transit segments were opened, the percentage of Portlanders who take transit to work, called the journey-to-work mode share, didn’t improve at all.

Several commenters wondered if data for the whole Portland region, as opposed to just the city, would look different. One also raised questions about the representativeness of the City survey’s sample.

So Portland reader Nathan Banks dug into the Census for similar data. His charts show census data for 1990 and 2000, plus American Community Survey (ACS) data for the years since 2000.

He’s done charts for all three of the Portland area counties. You can see a PDF of his charts here: Continue Reading →

Breaking News: Jack Saves Downtown Portland from Transit Blog

Posted on January 22, 2010 in Portland, Streetcars (Trams)

It’s a rite of passage for a blogger to encounter his first populist attack-link. The widely-read Portland blogger Jack Bogdanski had this to say about my post wondering if all-day parking in downtown Portland might be too cheap:

Let’s kill off downtown Portland once and for all

Jack up the cost of parking down there even higher. Jarrett, old buddy — a lot of us ain’t gonna ride your goofy streetcar, no matter how much you charge for a parking space.

Longtime Human Transit readers will find that streetcar reference pretty funny, considering this.

Three Paths to a Low-Car City

Posted on January 20, 2010 in Philosophy, Portland, Urban Structure

If you want to live in a city with fewer cars, how do you get there? What do low-car cities have in common? Anything? Or are there in fact different ways to reach low car-dependence, demonstrated by very different cities achieving the same high scores?

All these questions came to mind as I perused Wikipedia’s helpful list of the US cities over 100,000 population with the most zero-car households (thanks to commenter Alon Levy). I find the list so interesting that I’m just going to copy all of it here, then add some thoughts at the end. The figure given for each city is the percentage of households that do not own a car. Continue Reading →

Portland: Is Parking the Problem?

Posted on January 12, 2010 in Downtowns, Parking, Portland

In the last post I pointed to a set of data out of the City of Portland showing that in a 12-year period when the city added four new rail transit lines, including the globally marketed Portland Streetcar, the percentage of Portland residents who take transit to work (called transit’s “journey-to-work mode share”) seems not to have changed at all.

Commenter Pantheon dug into Canadian statistics and found that in the period 1996-2006, when Portland’s transit journey-to-work mode share was idling in the 12-15% range, Canadian cities posted these gains: Continue Reading →

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