Human Transit

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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When Expansion is Dilution

Posted on June 18, 2009 in Branding, Language, Los Angeles

My post on crowdsourcing bus stop design included a pitch for the importance of branding in making a particular quality of service visible. I cited the obvious example of the Los Angeles Metro Rapid, the region’s network of frequent and relatively fast buses. Integral to the Rapid product was a distinctive logo, colour scheme, and on the first lines at least, shelter design.

But Los Angeles commenters such as Wad pounced, reminding me that as the Rapid brand expanded, bits of it started falling off:

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The Revolution on Transit

Posted on June 17, 2009 in General

Amid the mounting civil unrest in Iran’s capital, when everyone fears that mass violence may be imminent, let’s pause to notice that the Tehran Metro is still running.

Andrew Sullivan‘s wall-to-wall coverage includes this cellphone-video record of a ride on the Metro on this exuberant and anxious day.

It’s an immense challenge to keep a transit system running in such conditions. Transit operations are a real-time collaboration of many people with different political views. The fierce disagreement inflaming the population must also divide and arouse the transit workforce. Some may even feel tempted to distort the operation in a way that benefits their side of the conflict. In such conditions the necessary teamwork becomes a real test of an operating company and its staff.

Obviously, there are baser considerations at work. I’m sure the government would have shut down the metro — which is clearly helping the opposition assemble larger crowds than the government can muster — if they didn’t need to maintain the illusion that life is normal in Tehran apart from a few hooligans.

But I just want to recognise the ordinary drivers and dispatchers and attendants who are keeping the Metro running in these days of terrifying uncertainty. It’s not just diligence, it’s courage.

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