Human Transit

brisbane: free fares for a week, ferries out of action

Posted on January 13, 2011 in Brisbane

As Brisbane's great flood of 2011 recedes, the Brisbane Times has this roundup of the flood's impact on public transit:

Premier Anna Bligh said travel on buses and trains would remain free for seven days, starting today.
CityCat and CityFerry services are out of action after the surging Brisbane River inflicted major damage to pontoons and terminals, but authorities have been trying to continue rail and bus services wherever possible.

If the river ferries are out for a while, it will be interesting to see how well buses take over their functions. As you can see on the ferry map below, or on Google Maps, Brisbane is defined by a squiggly river with a spectacular shortage of bridges. There are many bridges around the CBD but only three other bridges in the west and one in the east. The big CityCat ferries that ran the length of the river mostly served markets also served by buses running along the shore, but the smaller cross-river ferries made some connections that will be vastly longer by road (Bulimba to Teneriffe, for example, in the city's east).

Perhaps this will give some impetus to the idea of "green bridges" — bridges across the river exclusively for transit, bikes, pedestrians, and emergency vehicles. Brisbane already has one, in addition to two bike-ped bridges. Portland, a city much like Brisbane in many ways, is building it first.

From far-away Vancouver, Gordon Price shares his photos of some of what's been lost.

brisbane: the flood at its peak

Posted on January 12, 2011 in Brisbane

The great flood of 2011 has damaged many of Brisbane's riverside neighborhoods and destroyed the wharves of the CityCat river-ferry system. You can find plenty of images of the damage on the the websites of the Brisbane Times (Fairfax Media) and the Australian (Murdoch).

Here is footage (starting at 0:20) of the destruction of the floating section of the Riverwalk, which connected downtown to the dense New Farm district and carried thousands of pedestrians and cyclists per day. The huge piece of bridge was later intercepted by a heroic tugboat driver, who prevented it from crashing into the pylons of the Gateway Bridge. Many also have images of the Drift Cafe, a floating restaurant just a few meters from our office, breaking away and crashing into a bridge. And this jumped out from the Australian's coverage:

All buses to the city centre were cut off, trains continued to run but only sporadically, … Military demolition experts were dispatched to the Moggill ferry – still hanging on by one of the two ropes it uses to help ferry vehicles across the river – to determine whether the safest option was simply to sink it.

Commenter InBrisbane writes:

Yes, thanks everyone all over the world for their support.
Our beautiful CityCat [river ferry] network is ruined. It will have to be rebuilt. Some of the city's favourite places like South Bank are covered with water, and you need a boat to go down Coronation Drive.
The transit authorities have done a stellar job moving trains out of the yard and parking them nose-to-tail in giant "snakes" to get them out of … stabling which could be flooded. Skeleton bus and trains running. …

the river was full of logs, pontoons and luxury boats hurtling down like missiles. Not sure where any of the citycats are.

My understanding was that the CityCat ferries are safe, but that most of their wharves have been destroyed. UPDATE: Commenter Daryl Rosin advises that the ferries were moved out onto Moreton Bay, and berthed at Manly, where the river flooding won't affect them.

Image of Gardens Point CityCat wharf, Peter Wallis, Brisbane Courier-Mail.

brisbane: the 100-year flood

Posted on January 12, 2011 in Brisbane

The Brisbane River is expected to crest tomorrow at a level not seen for over a century. The state of Queensland has been enduring severe flooding for weeks, but only this week has the disaster arrived in the capital.

This ABC image from this afternoon is looking east toward downtown Brisbane, with the partly flooded Milton district in the foreground and Moreton Bay in the far distance.

Our firm's headquarters office is in the building under the orange arrow. We are on Park Road, which follows a little ridgeline surrounded by lower-lying land. So we are pretty fortunate, so far at least. Obviously, the power is out, and our offices are shut down as staff focus on protecting their homes and loved ones.

I am watching from afar in Canberra, following the ABC coverage. I'm thinking about my colleagues and clients, of course, but also about all the urban treasures of Brisbane that lie right along the river, including the major art museums, the State Library, the historic districts, the old botanic gardens, and many of the city's most vibrant and interesting inner-city neighborhoods.

As for transit, the wharves used by the popular river ferry network have been "smashed to pieces," according to the mayor. A heavily-used segment of floating walkway, which carried the riverside bike-ped path past the cliffs of New Farm, is gone. Still no word on the city's underground transit infrastructure.

Brisbane is often compared to Portland because in both cities, the urban renaissance began through a new engagement with the river. As a result, much of the revitalization and urban invention of the last decades has gone into riverside districts that are now in danger.

Loss of life in Brisbane is likely to be low, because unlike nearby Toowoomba and the Lockyer Valley, which saw devastating flash-floods yesterday, Brisbane has gotten some warning.

Still, for anyone who's admired Brisbane's romance with its river, this is heartbreaking.

notes on my day job

Posted on January 8, 2011 in Meta

One of my goals for this year is to connect this blog much more to my professional work as a transit planning and policy consultant. To that end, I've added a new page outlining my consulting services, aimed at cities worldwide but especially in North America, where I have the longest track record. If you like what you've read here, and you think your transit agency should talk to me, send them the link!

consulting services

Posted on January 8, 2011 in General

As a freelance consultant in North America, or as a Principal Consultant with MRCagney in Australia/New Zealand, I provide a range of advice and assistance to anyone who needs to think clearly about transit.

With the flexibility and low rates of a small firm, it’s very easy to engage me for even very small pieces of work, such as to be on call to advise on projects or provide expert review of a piece of work being done by your staff or another firm. I can also play an expert role in larger consulting teams.

My areas of greatest expertise include:

Network design, including not just the inductive geographical problem-solving required but also the process of explaining the work and building understanding of it. I have been designing transit networks for 20 years. Basic elements of my network designs still operate successfully in many cities, including Minneapolis/St. Paul, San Antonio, Spokane, large parts of suburban southern California, and Australia’s national capital, Canberra.
Transit goals clarification and policy development. For over a decade I’ve been innovating around the specific question of how to help elected officials, stakeholders, and interested citizens think more clearly about their goals for transit, and especially with how to handle predictable conflicts between different goals. I believe that clear thought about these inevitable tradeoffs is the basis of sound and resilient policy. Some of this work is summarized and explained in my 2008 Journal of Transport Geography paper “Purpose-driven public transport: creating a clear conversation about service goals,” which is here: Download Purpose-driven public transport creating a clear conversation about public transport goals-8
Land use planning with attention to transit opportunities and impacts. Land use planning, even for projects that claim to be transit-friendly, often contains mistakes that undermine transit. Sadly, an easy “rule-book” for how to avoid these mistakes is missing, though it’s something I’m working on. Considering transit’s geometry early and fully in a project can also form the basis for new design insights that produces a better outcome. My track record of such work includes new suburban areas as well as dense rapid-transit station areas, in both North America and Australia. An introduction to my approach to the subject is here, and you can find discussions of a range of cases in the category Be on the Way.
Strategic long-term planning for transit. Great long-term plans aren’t just a list of capital projects to build. They establish an inspiring vision and offer tools that help people act now in ways that will serve the long term goal. Because transit is so integrated with other aspects of urban life and infrastructure, strategic plans don’t have to be done by transit agencies; in fact, I’ve worked on several for city governments, including those of Minneapolis and Seattle, as well as the first comprehensive strategic transit plan for the Australian capital, Canberra. I discussed some of the big issues in strategic planning here.

Speaking and writing in ways that inspire and inform. A video that shows my speaking style is here. Browsing the blog will reveal a range of writing styles for different purposes. Note in particular the Basics category, which is devoted to explanations of the fundamental geometry of transit and the choices that it requires us to confront. I am currently working on a book expanding on these issues, for Island Press, due out in late 2011.
Fun, interactive short courses in transit network design. I teach a one- or two-day intensive workshop that gives participants the opportunity to wrestle with network design challenges in an interactive setting. It’s ideal for professionals and activists who are interested in transit but suspect they don’t know enough about how and why transit networks are designed the way they are, and how their own decisions may be affecting transit outcomes. It can also be great for young people interested in exploring the profession.

My complete CV is here: Download JW CV 2012-1

Please contact me if you’d like to inquire about how I might assist your work. I’ll be happy to provide additional references and suggestions specific to your needs. Just use the contact button up on menu bar, or click the link to my firm’s website.

deadly journalism alert: “planners say” tunnels cost money

Posted on January 6, 2011 in Advocacy, Journalism, San Francisco

James Fallows of the Atlantic has been pushing back on the habit of journalists to resist all statements of objective fact:

In today's political environment, when so many simple facts are disputed, journalists can feel abashed about stating plainly what is true. With an anticipatory cringe about the angry letters they will receive or the hostile blog posts that will appear, they instead cover themselves by writing, "according to most scientists, the sun rises in the east, although critics say…."

How does this play out in transit journalism? Very, very often, journalists present a transit expert stating a fact and someone else expressing a desire, as though this were a "he said, she said" disagreement. For example, here's Mike Rosenberg of Bay Area News Group, about the routing of California High Speed Rail through the suburb of Burlingame just south of San Francisco.

Burlingame officials want their entire stretch of planned high-speed rail track buried underground … State rail planners say it would be several hundred million dollars cheaper to build aboveground tracks, which locals fear would tower 30 feet in the air, produce more noise and create a physical divide.

Note the tension of the two stem verbs. "Burlingame officials want" and "state planners say." It's set up to sound like "he said, she said."

But these two sentences don't describe a disagreement at all. Burlingame city officials are stating a desire, to have the line underground, to which state rail planners are responding with information about consequences, namely that undergrounding would be more expensive. That's not a disagreement; that's staff doing its job.

The disagreement is actually about who should pay for the undergounding that Burlingame wants. The state says that if a city wants high speed rail to go underground, it should pay the difference. The article quotes Burlingame mayor Terry Nagel's response:

Nagel said Burlingame could spend the city's entire $33 million annual budget on funding the tracks and barely make a dent in the price tag.
"It's not even a possibility," Nagel said Wednesday.

Note that mayor understands that building the line underground through his city will cost more than building the line on the surface. In fact, he's clear that it will cost massively more, more than his entire city budget. The cost is not in dispute. So why did we need "state planners say" in this sentence?

State rail planners say it would be several hundred million dollars cheaper to build aboveground tracks …

All other things being equal, underground construction is more expensive than surface. This is a fact about the universe, readily found in any transport engineering textbook, so it's misleading to describe it as a claim or allegation.

Even if the journalist were thinking like a divorce lawyer, for whom there may be no verifiable reality outside of the fevered imaginations of the two parties, he still could have said that "all parties agree that undergrounding costs much, much more than surface." The journalist knows this, because he has quoted the Mayor of Burlingame displaying a complete grasp of that fact, even though the fact is inconvenient for his side.

So let's read that whole passage again:

Burlingame officials want their entire stretch of planned high-speed rail track buried underground … State rail planners say it would be several hundred million dollars cheaper to build aboveground tracks, which locals fear would tower 30 feet in the air, produce more noise and create a physical divide.

Look again the three main verbs: want – say – fear. Emotion – alleged fact – emotion. And both emotions are on the same side! It's as predictable as the structure of a pop song. The people of Burlingame get their emotions recorded twice, while in opposition we hear only a fact about cost, presented as though it were the voice of some oppressor, crushing these honest folks who are trying to defend their homes.

Journalists! If you want to help people form coherent views that bear some relation to realty, ask yourself these questions:

What facts are agreed on by all parties to the dispute, and by experts in the field? State those as facts.
If facts are not agreed to by all parties, are they agreed to by people expert in the subject? If so, say "experts generally agree that …" This can still be wimpy, like "experts agree that the sun rises in the east," but even that is vastly more accurate than "state planners say …"
Are there widely shared values motivating both sides? If so, make them visible. You may or may not agree that High Speed Rail is a good policy, but its motivating purpose is not to torture the people of Burlingame. Drop in a standard sentence about the larger economic and environmental purposes High Speed Rail advocates claim the line will serve. We know what values the burghers of Burlingame are defending — "home" — but what values are those on other side defending, and might these also matter to the reader?
Are there strong emotions on both sides? If so, describe them. In this case, don't just quote "state planners," who are professionally compelled to be balanced and judicious. Quote a committed and informed High Speed Rail advocate making a stronger, more vivid statement about the actions of cities like Burlingame, and the cumulative burden they place on getting a line built. In today's world of expert blogs, you don't even need to pick up the phone; just quote Robert Cruikshank off his California High Speed Rail Blog, for example …

[Burlingame expects] the rest of the state to essentially subsidize their property values. I cannot emphasize enough how absurd and out-of-touch that view is. At a time when property values have crashed hard in other parts of the state, why on earth would anyone in Riverside or Stockton or San Diego or East LA believe that Burlingame property owners deserve state aid to maintain their land values?

Bottom line: If your story sounds like passionate people are in conflict with soulless bean-counting bureaucrats, you probably don't understand your story yet. You may in fact have a story about venal, conniving bureaucrats, or about frightened or lazy bureaucrats blowing smoke, but the rules above will help you figure out if that's the case. You may also have a story about expert public servants doing their jobs, and if you want any honest and dedicated experts to be willing to work in those jobs, you owe it to them to consider that possibility.

I would welcome some push-back from professional journalists on this. (Email link is under my photo in the next column to the right.) Please forward a link to any journalists in your life! Me, I'm just a consumer of the product, and often not a very happy one.

email of the week: thinking pedestrian thoughts

Posted on January 6, 2011 in Advocacy, Cycling, Minneapolis – St. Paul, Pedestrians, Philosophy

Is it useful to talk about "pedestrians" as a group the way we often talk about cyclists or transit riders? All these category terms are problematic, as I discussed here. Riordan Frost of Minnesota 2020 asks:

A recent article in a local paper and its connection to one of your previous blog posts has inspired me to write to you. The article is “Thinking Pedestrian Thoughts”, and it covers the recent adoption of a ‘pedestrian plan’ by Edina, which is an inner-ring suburb of the Twin Cities [of Minneapolis and St. Paul]. One of the points made in the article is that people don’t really advocate for themselves as pedestrians. This made me think of a post that you wrote back in October, which was entitled “should I call myself a ‘transit-rider’?” and discussed labels given to people using certain modes of transportation. In the post, you quote Michael Druker, who advocates for switching from ‘cyclist’ to ‘people cycling’ and from ‘pedestrian’ to ‘people walking’.
You agreed with him, but pointed out that these new terms were cumbersome, and you would probably still opt for the shorter terms in your writing. I write blogs and articles for MN2020, and I feel the same way. I understand the importance of what language we choose, and I try to be conscious of it in my writing, but I have a need for brevity and I have an editor. There is a more significant question apart from brevity, however: how do we avoid labels (which may carry negative connotations and/or stereotypes) while advocating for improvements of certain modes? …
Is it possible to cut down on lumping people into categories and still have effective advocacy for certain modes, like better crosswalks or more bike lanes? The cycling community is pretty well established in the blogosphere, which sometimes contributes to their ["cyclist"] label and its connotations, but pedestrians have no blogs or personalities specifically tailored to them – mostly because we are … all pedestrians at some point in the day, and there is nothing terribly distinctive about walking. I n a perfect world, we would just design our environments for all modes of transportation that people use, with people (not cyclists vs. motorists vs. pedestrians) in mind. This doesn’t seem terribly viable, however. What are your thoughts on this?

I think that the potential for organized activism and fellow-feeling is easier among a group of people who all wield the same tool, because tools are such powerful symbols. Think about the role of the hammer and sickle — archetypal tools of manufacturing and agriculture, respectively — in the imagery of Soviet communism, for example.

The possession of the tool, and the knowledge of how to use it, becomes a feature by which a group defines itself and sets itself in opposition to other interests.

If you don't think this still happens, look at all the clubs and forums for people who own and cherish a particular tool — a Linux-powered computer, say, or a certain musical instrument. If you read an online forum about such possessions, you'll see the practical work of exchanging troubleshooting tips also builds a community in which people love hearing each other's stories about life with the cherished tool.

So this is another thing that's going on behind the obsessive attachment to transit technologies. People who love aerial gondolas or whatever can now network worldwide with every city that runs one, compare notes about each other's problems and achievements, and thus form a global community based on love of that particular tool. Psychologically, it's just like a club of guys who all own a particular kind of car, or computer, or electric guitar, or whatever.

Pedestrians don't have that. So I doubt we'll ever see a pedestrians-rights movement that has anything like the shape and force of the cycling movement. Nor do we need to, really, because the best urban planning thought today is all about the primacy of the pedestrian.

Ultimately, the strongest case for "pedestrian rights" is that we are all pedestrians. Even the guy who loves his Porsche has to walk across parking lots, and can thus see the value of having protected paths between rows of cars instead of having to walk in the lot's roadways where a car can back into you. Even he has a sense of what makes a shopping center or major downtown pleasant or unpleasant to walk in. Maybe he's even broken down on the freeway and thus experienced what those places are like when you're out of your car. So it's not hard to make anyone understand a pedestrian issue on analogy to the walking that everyone has to do. That's how you win these arguments, I think.

chicago: asking the right question?

Posted on January 5, 2011 in Chicago, Public Outreach

Alex Davies in Treehugger looks at a Chicago campaign seeking public input on what would make people use sustainable modes:

Over the last few weeks, Chicagoans have been asked a simple question: "What would encourage you to walk, bike and take CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) more often?" Ads posing the question in buses, subways and public spaces invite the city's residents to respond with their ideas, via text message. This mass call and response is part of Give a Minute, a campaign created by advocacy group CEOs for Cities and media design firm Local Projects, which looks to take public dialogue out of town meetings and into the streets. The idea is simple: by making participation as simple as sending a text message, Give a Minute will bring more people, and ideas, into the debate.

We've long known that this kind of outreach is needed to have a useful conversation about new transit projects. The old solution — inviting people to attend public meetings — has always produced highly skewed responses, over-weighting the angriest feedback. Anything that can broaden the conversation is useful.

But for reasons explored here, I generally advise against grand hypotheticals: "What would you do if …?" or "What would encourage you…?" Nobody can answer those questions accurately, so the answers are a poor guide to what investments would really pay off.

What's really needed is to engage the public in thinking about real tradeoffs, such as the choices built into budgets. What are your priorities, this or that? Those hard choices are the real work of elective government. If we ask people to think about those questions, we not only get more reliable answers, we also encourage citizens to ask smarter questions themselves.

do roads pay for themselves?

Posted on January 5, 2011 in US Federal Policy

In the US, the answer is no, not even close, according to new work by USPIRG:

Gasoline taxes aren’t “user fees” in any meaningful sense of the term – The amount of money a particular driver pays in gasoline taxes bears little relationship to his or her use of roads funded by gas taxes.
State gas taxes are often not “extra” fees – Most states exempt gasoline from the state sales tax, diverting much of the money that would have gone into a state’s general fund to roads.
Federal gas taxes have typically not been devoted exclusively to highways – Since its 1934 inception, Congress only temporarily dedicated gas tax revenues fully to highways during the brief 17-year period beginning in 1956. This was at the start of construction for the Interstate highway network, a project completed in the 1990s.
Highways don’t pay for themselves — Since 1947, the amount of money spent on highways, roads and streets has exceeded the amount raised through gasoline taxes and other so-called “user fees” by $600 billion (2005 dollars), representing a massive transfer of general government funds to highways.
Highways “pay for themselves” less today than ever. Currently, highway “user fees” pay only about half the cost of building and maintaining the nation’s network of highways, roads and streets.
These figures fail to include the many costs imposed by highway construction on non-users of the system, including damage to the environment and public health and encouragement of sprawling forms of development that impose major costs on the environment and government finances.

quote of the week: elevated rail vs elevated freeway

Posted on January 5, 2011 in General

John A. Miller was one of the few Americans who was puzzled by the construction of elevated highways. “Elevated railways with a capacity of 40,000 persons per hour in one direction are [being] torn down,” he wrote in amazement in 1935, “while elevated highways with a capacity of 6,000 persons per hour are being erected.”
Robert Fogelson, Downtown, via Market Urbanism

For more on how beautiful transit viaducts can be, see here.

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