San Francisco

Earthquake and Transformation

Posted on October 17, 2009 in San Francisco

The San Francisco Loma Prieta earthquake was 20 years ago today. (I believe I’m the only person who spent the entire quake inside Stanford’s Memorial Church, my closest brush with death to date. I wrote about that experience, in a more self-consciously literary voice, here.)

What would the Bay Area look like today if the quake hadn’t occurred? I’m almost sure the Embarcadero and Central Freeways would still be towering over the city, and the cars that they delivered into Chinatown and Hayes Valley would still be there, circling, looking for parking.

Oakland wouldn’t have Mandela Boulevard, formerly Cypress Street, but nor would there be a new freeway looming over West Oakland BART station. We might not have seen the permanent modal shift to BART and AC Transit buses triggered by the temporary closure of the Bay Bridge, or at least not so suddenly.

What else do you think would be different? What would be the same?

Photo of Memorial Church by Michael Connor from http://www.connorphotography.net

Transit in the Fast Lane: The Access Challenge

Posted on September 11, 2009 in Berlin, San Francisco, Streetcars (Trams), Vienna

When you’re trying to run quality transit in a mixed-traffic situation, and you have a street with two lanes of traffic in each direction, the best practice is for transit to run in the faster lane, the one further from the sidewalk. We see this most commonly with streetcars, but it’s true of any mode of street-running transit. That’s because the lane closer to the curb is often delayed by random car movements, including cars turning, or trying to parallel-park, or doing pickup and dropoff. So long as the fast lane is separate from any turning lanes, it’s the lane where you’ll get the best travel time in mixed traffic.

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Prague and San Francisco: On Communist vs Capitalist Modernism

Posted on September 3, 2009 in Architecture, Prague, Rail Transit, San Francisco

In November 1973, a new subway station opened whose walls looked like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hyperbolation/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Just six months later, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, a subway station opened whose walls looked like this:

Is there any essential difference between communist and capitalist modernism?

Why Isn’t Through-Routing More Common?

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

A 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?

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Legibility as Marketing: The “To-Via” Question

Posted on July 30, 2009 in Legibility, Portland, San Francisco

From Portland’s newly rebuilt transit mall, here’s a great example of the idea that clear information is the best marketing.

Every transit line goes TO some endpoint VIA some street or intermediate destination. But which matters more, the TO or the VIA? Which should be emphasized in the naming of a route and the signage on buses and stops? Both, if you can do it succinctly. But if you have to choose, think about where on the route you are and what information is most likely to be useful there. Continue Reading →

Streetcars: An Inconvenient Truth

Posted on July 3, 2009 in Mobility, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Streetcars (Trams), Technophilia

It’s a big day for streetcars. Portland has released its draft Streetcar System Concept Plan, an ambitious vision for extending the city’s popular downtown streetcar all over the city. There are similar plans underway in Seattle, Minneapolis, and many other cities.

I love riding streetcars, and I don’t want to shock anyone, so let’s start with a warning: This article contains an observation about streetcars that is not entirely effusive. It may provoke hostile reactions from some streetcar enthusiasts. It would probably be better for my transit planning career if I didn’t make this observation, but unfortunately it seems to be true, and very important, and not widely acknowledged or understood. So I’m going to say it.

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Frequent Network Maps: An Obvious Idea That Took Forever to Happen

Posted on June 25, 2009 in Branding, Frequent Networks, Maps, San Francisco

If you know San Francisco at all, take a look at Steve Boland’s new map of its high-frequency “main lines.” It’s quite deservedly copyrighted, so I’ve shown just a taste of it here.

For years I’ve advocated that transit agencies need to produce clear maps of their high-frequency networks, so that people can quickly see where they can go without waiting long. I also argue that these maps should be on the wall of every planner, everyone making decisions about social services, indeed everyone who decides where to locate anything. Because ultimately, the most effective public transit is what happens when the city grows in response to the transit network — just as all cities did until about 1945.

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Rail Rapid Transit Maps, to Scale

Posted on May 27, 2009 in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Maps, New York City, Paris, Rail Transit, San Francisco

Neil Freeman recently posted a great collection of rail rapid transit maps, all drawn to scale, and all at the same scale. The image at right, of course, is New York City,

He calls them subway maps, but of course that term suggests that the service is all underground, which few “subway” systems are. What matters is that they’re rapid transit. In this case, they’re specifically rail rapid transit, which is why Staten Island’s rail line in the lower left appears disconnected from the rest. In reality, it’s just connected by rapid transit of a different mode: the Staten Island Ferry.

(By “rapid transit” this blog always means transit services that run frequently all day in an exclusive right of way with widely spaced stations — linking centers to each other, for example, rather than providing coverage to every point on the line as local-stop services do.)

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