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: The Next Great Transit Metropolis?
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 →
Illusions of Travel Time in Transit Promotion
Whenever you hear someone cite the travel time of a proposed transit line, your first reaction should always be: “Yes, but at what frequency?” Often, that fact is missing from these soundbites.
There’s a nice example in today’s Transport Politic. Speaking of the proposed Gold Line Foothills extension, which if built will someday extend from Los Angeles to Montclair: Continue Reading →
Streetcars vs Light Rail … Is There a Difference?
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.
Los Angeles Times Columnist Slams Transfer Penalties
Los Angeles Times columnist David Lazarus tried using transit recently, and what drove him crazy was not the waiting, the crowding, the delays. What drove him crazy were the fares:
For example, transfers. Switching from one transit provider to another is often a necessity in an area this vast. Some, such as Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus, make it relatively easy. Others do not. Continue Reading →
Quote of the Week
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.
UPDATE: I should add that while I am quoting this approvingly, I do have issues with the word convenient, which I explained here.
A Personal Note on Today’s News …
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 →
Does High-Density Life Have a Bigger Ecological Footprint? And Why?
Over at New Geography, Joel Kotkin has a new broadside against high-density inner city life. It’s called “Forced March to the Cities,” presumably to feed the right-wing talking-point that urbanism and planning are totalitarian. Here’s the part that’s supposed to scare you: Continue Reading →
Public Surveying: The Quicksand of Hypotheticals
A recent post looked at the challenge of surveying the public and identifying what mixture of taxes and fees they would be willing to pay to fund a widely desired infrastructure plan. In the Sydney Morning Herald‘s Independent Inquiry into public transport in Sydney, we did exactly that, using a survey team from the University of Technology at Sydney’s Centre for the Study of Choice. One commenter caught the crucial point about why polling is so difficult, and why its results are often hard to trust:
There’s always a difference between what people say they want, what they actually want and what they actually do.
The Most Important Blog Post You’ll Read This Year … (Updated!)
… may well turn out to be this one, by Michael Druker at Psystenance. It’s about a conceptual error that lies at the root of a lot of bad transit planning decisions, an error made, at one time or another, by most citizens, many political leaders, and more than a few professionals. It’s called (not very effectively) the Fundamental Attribution Error. It happens when we say or believe statements of the form: “My decisions are based on my situation, but other people’s choices are based on their culture, the kind of people they are.” Continue Reading →