Human Transit

Today’s “Car Street,” Tomorrow’s Rapid Transit

Posted on July 15, 2009 in Portland

Last week Portland’s Metro released a High Capacity Transit study, which identifies the region’s next priorities for rapid transit. Rapid transit, as explained here, encompasses high-frequency services that serve widely spaced stations rather than local stops. It’s typically implemented by “metro” heavy rail, light rail, or Bus Rapid Transit, though the first of those is unlikely at Portland’s scale. The official US term is “high capacity transit (HCT),” a term I like less because it’s more removed from the customer’s point of view.

Since we all look at the pictures before we read the words, here’s a picture of the long term Portland vision (click, as always, to enlarge):

I want to notice a couple of really smart things about this plan, plus a curious one:

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The Problem with Downtown Shuttles

Posted on July 14, 2009 in 3-newbasic, Basics, Frequent Networks, Oakland, Shuttles (Circulators), Streetcars (Trams)

A common misconception about downtown areas is that great things can be achieved by “shuttles” or “circulators,” short routes that just run around in downtown. The problem with these lines is that they save time for the customer only if they are very, very frequent. This is an issue that separates people who need only a symbolic service (such as a line on the map or a photo of the transit vehicle in front of the development they’re trying to sell) from people who want actual mobility. [2015 update: I’d no longer use the term “mobility” here. I’d use “abundant access.”]

Frequency is really important, but it’s also really expensive. Doubling the frequency of a service (i.e. halving the “headway” or elapsed time between consecutive trips on the line) comes very close to doubling its operating cost. If you double your peak frequency (i.e. the highest frequency you run) it also doubles your fleet, which doubles your fleet capital cost, your ongoing mainteance cost, and the size that your storage and maintenance facility needs to be. So it’s not surprising that we see a lot of downtown shuttle services that offer a line on a map, a photographable vehicle, and even some mobility for people who aren’t in a hurry, but that don’t really compete with walking. Continue Reading →

Learning, Again, From Las Vegas

Posted on July 11, 2009 in Architecture, Las Vegas, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD)

Tired of arguing about streetcars? Let’s take a break and talk about something we’re more likely to agree on — Las Vegas!

While the city plays a crucial role in American culture as a test-site for exotic street names, I suspect we’d mostly agree that it’s not going to be a leader in sustainable urban form anytime soon. While the grid pattern of the city has some advantages (more on grids soon), Las Vegas has a particularly bad habit of building blocks of apartments in places where efficient transit will never be able to serve them and where basic commercial needs are still too far to walk. Thus achieving all of density’s disadvantages and none of its benefits.

But there are surprises. I just completed my annual trip to Las Vegas, to see family there, and thought I’d update this 2007 item from my personal blog about this capital of churn:

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Streetcars: An Inconvenient Truth

Posted on July 3, 2009 in Mobility, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Streetcars (Trams), Technophilia

It’s a big day for streetcars. Portland has released its draft Streetcar System Concept Plan, an ambitious vision for extending the city’s popular downtown streetcar all over the city. There are similar plans underway in Seattle, Minneapolis, and many other cities.

I love riding streetcars, and I don’t want to shock anyone, so let’s start with a warning: This article contains an observation about streetcars that is not entirely effusive. It may provoke hostile reactions from some streetcar enthusiasts. It would probably be better for my transit planning career if I didn’t make this observation, but unfortunately it seems to be true, and very important, and not widely acknowledged or understood. So I’m going to say it.

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Muscular Whimsy: Southern Cross Station, Melbourne

Posted on July 1, 2009 in Architecture, Melbourne

Last time I was in Melbourne, my hotel room looked out on a sea of churning metallic waves. Forty years ago they would have been called psychedelic.

The waves are the roof of Southern Cross Station. It’s one of five stations on Melbourne’s City Loop, the hub of the city’s extensive electrified urban rail network. It’s also the Melbourne terminal for the remarkably extensive V-Line system, a network of intercity trains linking Melbourne to the smaller cities all over the surrounding State of Victoria. I usually arrive here on a bus from the airport, which comes into an adjacent bus terminal. Southern Cross thus serves as part of the arrival experience at all scales, from daily commutes to flights from overseas.

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Frequent Network Maps: An Obvious Idea That Took Forever to Happen

Posted on June 25, 2009 in Branding, Frequent Networks, Maps, San Francisco

If you know San Francisco at all, take a look at Steve Boland’s new map of its high-frequency “main lines.” It’s quite deservedly copyrighted, so I’ve shown just a taste of it here.

For years I’ve advocated that transit agencies need to produce clear maps of their high-frequency networks, so that people can quickly see where they can go without waiting long. I also argue that these maps should be on the wall of every planner, everyone making decisions about social services, indeed everyone who decides where to locate anything. Because ultimately, the most effective public transit is what happens when the city grows in response to the transit network — just as all cities did until about 1945.

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Unhelpful Word Watch: Convenient

Posted on June 24, 2009 in Language, Public Outreach, Words, Unhelpful

A Transport Politic post on US high-speed rail today contains this quotation from Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman:

With high-speed rail, speed is not the issue. Convenience and trip times are.

What does he mean by convenience? For that matter, what do you mean by convenience? I’ve been hearing this word in conversations about transit for more than 20 years, and in this context, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean anything.

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Meanwhile, in Tehran

Posted on June 20, 2009 in Meta

Today seems to be the climax of the conflict in Iran, and I’m up far too late following the news. What’s it about? The truth. Huge numbers of citizens are risking their lives to create a more truthful society, one needing fewer lies. If we think about what we advocate as environmentalists or urbanists or transit advocates, it’s ultimately just that, I hope. We’re looking for clarity, truth. We’re trying to see through the murk (some natural, some man-made) and give others the courage to do the same.

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Mundane Things That Really Matter: Defining “On Time”

Posted on June 20, 2009 in On-Time Performance, Washington DC

A great piece by Michael Perkins in Greater Greater Washington highlights a perennial problem with on-time performance measures for urban buses. He cites the policy of the Washington area transit agency, WMATA, which says that a bus is considered on-time if it’s no more than two minutes early and no more than seven minutes late. Perkins explains, with diagrams, that under this policy you could wait 19 minutes for a bus that supposedly ran every ten minutes, and yet the bus (and the one 19 minutes in front of it) would both be considered on-time.

(By the way, the WMATA standard sounds lax to me, though I haven’t done a survey. Few agencies I’ve worked with accept anything more than five minutes late, or one minute early.)

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Slippery Word Watch: Express

Posted on June 19, 2009 in Language, Stop Spacing

A good post at Greater Greater Washington on Washington DC priority bus corridors reminds me of an old question about the word express:

Metro is working hard to develop “priority bus corridors,” with express buses that run more often, more quickly, and more reliably than existing service

What does express mean in that sentence? It’s not clear, but it seems to be the everyday meaning: “fast, with a dash of coolness, compared to local-stop service.”

Like a lot of transit planners, I use the word express in a more precise sense, as one of three kinds of stopping pattern that seem to encompass most successful transit services:

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