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Leadership from Columbus: A Great Transit Advocacy Website

Posted on January 5, 2010 in Basics, Columbus, Stop Spacing

As someone who designs transit networks for a living, it’s often lonely trying to promote good network design.  When changing services to create a better network, everyone who is negatively impacted complains at once, while those who would benefit (including people who care about the efficiency and usability of their city as a whole) tend not to tune in.  So the political process of getting change approved is often unpleasant to say the least.

I-71NExpressRoutes_GoogleMap-large It would help if every city had advocates promoting basic principles of efficient network design.  For a good example of what this might look like, have a look at the Columbus Bus Rapid Transit Plan.  This appears to be the work of a local advocate who signs comments as “John,” but like Shakespeare he seems to have completely submerged his identity under his work.  I can’t find out anything else about him, nor does he have an obvious place to get feedback. Continue Reading →

Chokepoints for Effective Transit: The Example of Seattle

Posted on January 2, 2010 in Basics, Seattle, Urban Structure

Seattleskyline1cropped In December, Alex Steffen wrote a provocative article at Worldchanging proposing that Seattle aim to become North America’s first carbon-neutral city.  I’m not an expert on carbon-neutrality as a whole, but I can certainly comment on the transport dimensions of it.  Here are some reasons to bet on Seattle, in particular, as a place that might get closer to carbon-neutrality in transportation than most other North American cities.  Ultimately, all of these are about geography. Continue Reading →

Good News on American Census Data

Posted on January 2, 2010 in General

The New Republic’s blog The Avenue notices some good news for US transportation planners and advocates:

Last week, President Obama signed the 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act, an amalgam of six separate appropriations bills providing $447 billion to an array of federal departments. A small fraction of this funding is devoted to supporting federal statistical agencies that generate the demographic, economic, and social data that will help metros better understand themselves. …

Continue Reading →

If You Like Intellectual Travel-Writing on Cities …

Posted on December 31, 2009 in Meta

If you like intellectual travel-writing on cities, you might enjoy some of the work that I do on the personal blog, Creature of the Shade.  Most posts there are on either cities or nature, and sometimes both.  My pieces on cities tend to dwell on architecture and urban form, and usually track unstructured long walks (what Baudelaire called flânerie) across the city in question.  Posting there is much more intermittent than here, so if you like it you’ll probably want to put it on a reader.

In 2009 I did fairly satisfying pieces on Berlin and Paris, and a short mood-piece on the Netherlands (which can be understood as one city, the Randstad, and its rural hinterland).  There are decent 2008 pieces on Delhi and Visakhapatnam in India.  And while I find it impossible to write as a traveler about cities I live in, a small piece on Sydney happened while the place was still new to me.  The 2006 Montréal post is not bad.

Happy New Year, everyone.  Back to transit topics tomorrow.

Holiday Greetings from a Post-Petroleum Moment

Posted on December 20, 2009 in Rail Transit, Sydney, Tourism

Downshifting into the holiday, here’s a bit of pure transit tourism.

Transit is often a source of frustration in Sydney, but no city I’ve encountered offers better transit options for getting into the natural world.  Sydney is ringed on all sides by spectacular national parks.   Most are served by the electrified outer-suburban train lines, which run usually every 30-60 minutes and deliver you to small stations right at a trailhead.  It’s remarkably easy to go for a long day of hiking, or even to launch a backpacking trip, without a car.  One of the longest day hikes I’ve ever done was 26 km along the coast of the Royal National Park just south of the city.  Using a train+ferry at one end of the hike and the train at the other, the whole trip was possible, and even pleasant, on transit. Continue Reading →

As Washington Shivers …

Posted on December 19, 2009 in Language, Public Outreach, Washington DC

Snowmap Anyone interested the transit effects of weather will appreciate this press release from WMATA in Washington DC, announcing the suspension of all above-ground transit services in the current snowstorm.

Metrorail trains will stop serving above-ground stations at 1 p.m.
today, Saturday, December 19, due to heavy snowfall that is covering
the electrified third rail, which is situated eight inches above the
ground. The third rail must be clear of snow and ice because it is the
source of electricity that powers the trains. Metro officials believe
that by 1 p.m. the exposed third rail will be covered by snow. All
Metrobus and MetroAccess service also will stop at 1 p.m. because
roadways are quickly becoming impassable.

Continue Reading →

Can Transit Perform Well in “Abandoned” Urban Cores?

Posted on December 19, 2009 in General

This post, which points out that transit can’t be judged on the low ridership of services where ridership isn’t the goal, drew this question from Rob:

I have a question about cities with weak urban cores. I don’t know much about Seattle, but the story that the numbers tell is that the city’s population is currently near its historical high. But what do you do in cities that are losing population, like many in the rust belt? In my hometown, Cleveland, the population is lower than it’s been since 1900. Many urban neighborhoods are no longer the densest areas (there are 3 inner-ring suburbs more dense than the city-proper). What do you think?

As I explained, if Seattle’s King County Metro were pursuing a pure ridership objective, it would cut almost all service in the low-density suburbs and put all those buses in Seattle as higher frequencies on dense corridors.  The principle is the same in any network:

If your goal is ridership, follow patterns of dense development with intense service.

Continue Reading →

Can Dial-a-Ride Get High Ridership from Low Density?

Posted on December 19, 2009 in Demand-Response

In this post, I argued transit can’t be judged on the low ridership of
services where ridership isn’t the goal, and explained that every transit system has “Coverage” services, designed to achieve a perception of equity and/or to meet the severe needs of small numbers of people.  Coverage services generally cover low-density areas where ridership will always be relatively low.

In the comments, David Marcus asked a really important clarifying question, one that I hear often from elected officials in low-density places:

Could the empty-running coverage-oriented buses be replaced with some sort of dial-a-ride system running full?

Continue Reading →

Why is New York’s Transit “Always in Trouble”?

Posted on December 17, 2009 in General

New York City transit supporters are on fire today as their transit agency, the MTA, announced deep service cuts.  Service cuts are happening all over the US this year, as the economic crisis has cut into most of the local funding streams on which agencies rely.  In many cases, including California and New York, the problems have been compounded by raids on state transit funding streams to help balance state budgets.

There seems to be plenty of blame to go around for New York MTA’s especially dire straits.  The New York Times offers three expert views on their “Room for Debate” forum, though the three don’t seem to be disagreeing.  Two emphasize the need for more secure government funding, while the third points out the need to push back harder on labor costs, and it sounds like they can all be right.  None of them says that service cuts are a good thing. Continue Reading →

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