I’ve seen some great rail stations on my just-completed Europe trip, and some problematic ones. It’s brought me back to an old point about station design that not everyone understands: Through-stations and end-stations are completely different design and planning problems. They generate completely different kinds of space and completely different sensations of arrival and departure. It’s pointless, for example, to compare New York’s dreary Penn Station, a through-station, with magnificent Grand Central, an end-station. They are apples and radishes. Consider:
Getting Beyond Paris (or Your City)
Angus Grieve-Smith has posted a translation of an intriguing Le Monde interview of architect Roland Castro, one of the leading architects on a project for re-envisioning the suburban belt around Paris.
Paris Rapid Transit: The Four Levels of Nomenclature
A continuation of this post.
The core branding idea of the Paris RER is a really powerful one. Here’s
how it used to be presented, as a consistent citywide product
(click to enlarge; full-size map here):
Paris: Do We Have Enough Logos Yet?
A lot has improved about transit in Paris since I was last there in 1991, and certainly since I lived there in 1986. But I’m having trouble finding any positive angle on the partial re-branding of the crucial commuter rail and long-distance metro service, the RER. Because Paris does everything on such an operatic scale, the new RER brands may offer a useful parable about the perils of agency-centered communications, especially in an era where European public transit operating companies are expected to act like private businesses. Continue Reading →
Welcoming Guests to Your City: A Reader’s Checklist
On my post on failed welcoming, commenter Pantheon suggested an excellent checklist for transit agencies who want to care about newcomers to their city:
The March of the Centipedes: Amsterdam’s Bus Rapid Transit Line
Throughout the Thredbo conference on transit competition in Delft, Netherlands last week, the various Dutch speakers and hosts managed to keep up a continuous theme of national self-reproach. The message was something like: “We know everyone thinks we’re the closest thing to an urban transport paradise on earth, so the best service we can offer is to show you all the ways that even we can screw up.” The conference began with a plenary presentation by Hugo Priemus of the Delft University of Technology on collusion and price-fixing in the Dutch construction industry, and wrapped up with a study tour that included the Zuidtangent Bus Rapid Transit system, giving particular emphasis to its most embarrassing feature.
Failed Welcoming
I arrive by train in a major European city. As usual, the main rail station contains a rapid transit or ‘metro’ station. For the transit system, such a station obviously requires a high level of fare sales equipment or staffing, as most of the customers are newly arrived in the city and therefore won’t be holding its transit system’s tickets or passes. It’s also an opportunity for an act of welcoming.
Viaduct Love in Berlin
The current generation of urban designers may like to complain about NIMBYs, but urban designers and NIMBYs can be counted on to agree on one thing: Elevated transportation infrastructure is a bad thing in an urban setting. Urban design today focuses on activating the ground plane and maintaining its visual connection to the sky. Even pedestrian bridges are out of fashion, while a new continuous elevated structure would be hard sell in the urban core of almost any major city. The Seattle Monorail Project (1996-2005) proposed a very thin elevated structure, but even this was a flashpoint of controversy when it got close to existing buildings.
It may be true that we don’t know how to build viaducts anymore and that the freeway era has traumatized a whole generation into reacting badly to absolutely anything new up in the air. And I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, but …
But before we decide for sure, take a walk with me along Berlin’s Stadtbahn.
What I’m Seeing in Europe: Service Before Technology
Given the passions that surround the streetcar in North America, it’s interesting to travel in Germany, where there are lots of streetcars, and lots of buses, and not as much focus on the difference between them.
Berlin: A New Use for the Brandenburg Gate
You’ve seen pictures of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. It’s Germany’s equivalent of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, but in a Neoclassical style.