One of the joys of Vienna’s transit system is that some key pieces of it were built in 1898, mostly designed by Otto Wagner. It was the era of Art Nouveau (called Jugendstil in Vienna) which later grew into full-blown Deco. A few examples are over the top, such as the Karlsplatz station house:
Vienna: Weaving A Total Network
In talking about transit planning I’m constantly stressing the need to think in terms of interconnected two-dimensional networks, not just the one-dimensional “corridors” that are the focus of so many transit studies. It’s a hard point to convey because (a) interconnectedness implies connections, also called “transfers,” which people supposedly hate, and (b) networks are complicated and abstract and hard to think about, which is why I’m always trying to create and promote tools for making them simpler.
What’s more, network effects are really hard to photograph. The closest you can come is a photo of a really smooth cross-platform connection, such as this one I observed in Vienna:
Vienna: Do the Wires Ruin It? (contd.)
Continuing from my last post on the overhead wires of Vienna, here are some additional images. (Click to enlarge.) Decide for yourself when and where they’re unacceptable.
Vienna: Do the Wires Ruin It?
Next time someone tells you that a light rail or streetcar or trolleybus would ruin the beautiful streetscape with their overhead wires, show them a picture of Vienna, where I am now.
Environmentalist Critiques of Strategic Transit Planning
How should environmentalists engage with long-range transit planning studies? What should you focus on? What should you object to?
On Monorails
Like a Cheetah
Last night, on the treadmill at the gym, I watched a bit of a National Geographic Special on the maglev train that connects Shanghai’s airport with its city center. Most of it was about the engineering challenges of the project, and the many small dramas of solving them. At the end of the piece, we viewed the train from above as it rushed away on its elevated guideway, while the narrator said something like: “But the future of the maglev train is very much in doubt.”
And I thought: “Like a cheetah.”
Words I Deleted Today
A client has asked me make the following deletions in a report I’d prepared for them on a public transit planning issue:
“… serious issues of bus access …”
” … to flow through these critical points …”
” … without extreme and circuitous deviations …”
The deleted words are all “emphatic adjectives,” words that mean nothing more than “Hey! This bit here is important!” Serious, critical, and extreme are all-purpose emphatic adjectives, while circuitous becomes emphatic if it’s used redundantly as I did here, “circuitous deviations,” because of course all deviations are circuitous.
A Silver Medal for the Silver Line?
Everyone should peruse the comment thread on my last post, “Should we ride mediocre transit?” If the post and its thread helps you clarify and explain your own view on the question, then this blog is doing its job. (Yes, there’s still no tip jar; I still have a salary as a transit planning consultant, but you’ll be the first to know if I don’t!)
Among the comments, Brian suggested that we need a system
… to “certify” transit systems on a Bronze-Silver-Gold scale according to criteria like frequency, operating hours, accessibility, travel time and so forth.” (Emphasis mine.)
Certification schemes such as Brian proposes function just like those notorious “rankings” — whether for cities or universities or transit lines. They sort a bunch of disparate data and somehow reduce it to a single score. To get there, they do two very different things:
Hard Questions: Should We Ride Mediocre Transit?
We are constantly told that if we want to support transit, we need to ride transit. Current ridership figures are routinely cited by both supporters and opponents of transit as evidence justifying a proposed level of transit investment. This implies that by riding transit, or not, we are effectively voting in a consequential poll.
Yet there’s also a lot of mediocre transit out there, especially outside the biggest cities. Sometimes transit really isn’t the cost-effective and time-effective way to get somewhere. Even if you don’t own a car, you may be able to afford a taxi for, say, 30% of your travel in your city and at least 30% of your trips require using transit that doesn’t work very well. Should you use transit anyway, because it needs your vote?