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» Damage to the North River tunnels could cut off most rail service into the nation's center unless a new link is built soon.
There are many cities where rail lines serve an important purpose: They help connect important destinations; they reduce congestion on particularly intensely used corridors; they concentrate development and produce agglomeration benefits. These benefits are useful in making those cities more livable, economically vibrant places.
But only in certain cities — the largest, most densely developed places, particularly those with geographical constraints on growth — are those rail lines essential to making the metropolitan economy work. In New York City, there is no question that this is true; the region's subway and commuter rail lines carry the bulk of peak flow into the Manhattan business districts thanks to the ability of trains to handle upwards of 40,000 people per hour on each line. Without those lines, people simply wouldn't be able to get to work.*
Given the city's reliance on those rail lines,
Continue reading With no new rail tunnel on the horizon under the Hudson, New York faces a looming transport crisis »]]>
» Damage to the North River tunnels could cut off most rail service into the nation's center unless a new link is built soon.
There are many cities where rail lines serve an important purpose: They help connect important destinations; they reduce congestion on particularly intensely used corridors; they concentrate development and produce agglomeration benefits. These benefits are useful in making those cities more livable, economically vibrant places.
But only in certain cities — the largest, most densely developed places, particularly those with geographical constraints on growth — are those rail lines essential to making the metropolitan economy work. In New York City, there is no question that this is true; the region's subway and commuter rail lines carry the bulk of peak flow into the Manhattan business districts thanks to the ability of trains to handle upwards of 40,000 people per hour on each line. Without those lines, people simply wouldn't be able to get to work.*
Given the city's reliance on those rail lines, how much are we willing to pay to keep the trains moving? And, if we're willing to pay tens of billions to do so, how can the political system be convinced of the need to do so?
New York's dependence on its rail system is why Amtrak's announcement last week that damage from 2012's Hurricane Sandy would require the eventual renovation of the North River (Hudson River) tunnels, which connect New Jersey and New York, is such devastating news. The $700 million expected cost of the renovation, which includes improvements to tunnels under the East River, isn't the problem, for once, as the price is expected to be covered by insurance. Rather, the problem is that Amtrak noted that the renovation of the North River tunnels would require shutting down one track at a time (there are two), reducing peak capacity from 24 trains an hour to just 6 (there are four tracks under the East River so there is far less of a concern there).**
It's unclear how this problem will be handled. Passengers could switch to the already-crowded PATH subway into New York from Newark or Hoboken. Or one of the automobile tunnels could be converted to bus service, which isn't likely to make many drivers happy. Amtrak through-service from Washington to Boston will be dealt a severe blow. Either way, there are no happy outcomes to a tunnel renovation program other than a safer infrastructure.
Amtrak head Joseph Boardman noted that, because of the storm damage, the 104-year-old tunnels likely only have 20 years left of life in them. The public rail company's solution is to immediately begin construction of the Gateway Program, whose primary component is a new double-track rail tunnel under the Hudson. Once those new tunnels are ready for use, rehabilitation of the North River tunnels could commence by 2025 or so.
Amtrak's report could be seen as little more than a thinly-veiled threat; give us money to build a new tunnel, the argument goes, or you'll suffer from complete evisceration of your rail services. Indeed, the press release notes that "the report underscores the urgency to advance the Gateway Program," including the new Hudson tunnels. Who knows whether to believe Mr. Boardman's proclamation about the tunnel's life expectancy.
Yet it's hard not to come to the conclusion that, even had the storm not happened, a new Hudson River rail tunnel would have been necessary. Traffic along the rail corridor is expanding. New York City is expected to continue to grow in the coming decades. And resiliency is always a good idea (had Sandy been bad enough to destroy the tunnels, what would have happened?).
New Jersey Transit and the Port Authority had a plan to solve this problem back in the mid-2000s, when they successfully assembled $8.7 billon for the Access to Region's Core (ARC) project (it was the largest federally funded transit project ever), which would have added two new tunnels under the Hudson by 2018. In other words, it would have provided at least something of a solution to the problem Amtrak is now warning of.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who assumed office in January 2010, put the project on hold and then cancelled it in September and October 2010, citing the risk that the project's cost would escalate, putting the state's finances in trouble. In the process, he significantly delayed any investment in new cross-Hudson rail links.
It merits mentioning that ARC was far from a perfect project. The program's construction costs had bloated to $12.4 billion by the time it was cancelled. It would have brought people to a deep-cavern station many stories below the basement of Macy's, and it would not have connected to the existing tracks at Penn Station, meaning that the Long Island Railroad and Amtrak would be unlikely to be able to use it. And it failed to recognize the fact that improvements to regular service on New Jersey Transit could actually allow the system to carry far more people without having to invest in a new tunnel.
From several of these perspectives, the Gateway Program, which Amtrak revealed just months after ARC's cancellation, would be more effective. The project would connect to existing tracks, allowing all operators to use the tunnel. And it would bring customers to a station far closer to the surface than ARC would have allowed. Gateway also integrates several positive investments that were elements of ARC, including the replacement of the Portal Bridge east of Newark, which is more than 100 years old and a significant cause of delays, and the construction of two new parallel tracks that will allow faster trains.
These improvements won't come on the cheap; Amtrak estimates that Gateway will cost $13.5 billion, certainly no chump change. Amtrak has already attracted some funds for the project, including $185 million of Sandy-related federal relief money, to construct a "box" saving space for the future tunnel in the Hudson Yards redevelopment project in New York City (illustrated at the top of this article).
Yet there are reasons to believe that it will not be easy for Amtrak to find the rest of the funding to pay for its Gateway project. The State of New Jersey has invested much of the money it planned to spend on ARC on roads and bridges. The Port Authority, having given up on ARC, is directing $1.5 billion to the extension of the PATH rapid transit line from downtown Newark to Newark Airport, a project that would run just one mile and attract a few more than 6,000 riders daily. That would do nothing to improve the link under the river, and it constitutes a political choice to spend billions on a capital expansion rather than investing in improved operations on the New Jersey Transit commuter rail lines, which already run between downtown Newark and its airport on the exact same alignment.
Meanwhile, certain powerful interests in New York City are arguing for the extension of the 7 Subway line under the Hudson to Secaucus, an idea that was initially raised by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2010, right after ARC was canned. That project could relieve some of the pressure on the North River tunnels, but it would require a huge percentage of New Jersey Transit riders to transfer, likely reducing ridership.
No matter what other ideas may be raised, Amtrak's gambit is designed to force politicians at the local, state, and national levels to recognize that, in order for New York City and its region to continue to serve as the country's economic center, investments must be made in its mainline rail infrastructure connecting it to New Jersey. It argues that the country must, then, find the resources to spend at least $13.5 billion on a new tunnel program.
It is a large cost to bear when New York City cannot find the funding for half of its billions of dollars of necessary public transportation expenditures over the next five years. It is a large cost to bear when the federal government has failed to increase revenues for transportation for more than two decades.
But the cost of losing the rail link under the Hudson may be larger. Amtrak's leadership of this project is an acknowledgement of the national importance of this line (is it the nation's most important transit project?), as it is the essential rail link not only between New York City and points south, but also between all of New England, Long Island, and much of Upstate New York with points south — totaling almost 10 percent of the U.S. population. The next rail connection over the Hudson is more than 140 miles north, just south of Albany. It is also the connection that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of New Jerseyans to work in Manhattan.
In other words, this is a definitively federal issue that seems ripe for Amtrak's leadership. Yet New Jersey Transit, which would likely run just as many or more trains through the tunnels, will want to get involved, especially if it is to contribute part of the cost. The Port Authority, which contributed funds to the previous project, could do the same this time, though its ability to spend on new projects has shrunk due to the expense of the World Trade Center reconstruction. And the states of both New Jersey and New York depend on a cross-Hudson tunnel for their prosperity. In other words, what is clearly an essential national priority is likely to get bogged down in politics that cross state and agency jurisdiction, adding confusion and likely delaying construction. This is not going to be an easy process.
* In cities where rail exists but isn't the primary travel mode, it still matters, just not to the same degree. In Los Angeles, for example, a transit strike increased the length of the rush hour on nearby highways by 200%.
** This 75% reduction is a result of the fact that Amtrak is suggesting allowing trains to run in both directions during the peak period; this significantly reduces capacity since a train can't enter the tunnel in one direction until another train has completed its entire journey through the long tunnel in the other direction. One alternative that Amtrak did not mention would be running trains all in one direction for a half hour, for example, and then switching directions. This would likely produce much higher capacity, but still much less than is currently provided.
Image above: Hudson Yards, where a new tunnel under the Hudson would terminate, by MTA (cc).
» A new station on Boston's Orange Line prepares for opening, but infill stations of its type are all too rare.
Want to know a secret? One of the best ways to increase transit ridership at a reasonable price requires little additional service. It requires no new line extensions. And it can be done to maximize the value of existing urban neighborhoods.
This magic solution comes in the form of the infill station–a new stop constructed along an existing line, between two existing stations. Next week, Boston's MBTA transit agency plans to open a new stop, Assembly Station, along the Orange Line in Somerville, a dense inner-ring suburb just to the northwest of downtown Boston.
Assembly is the latest in a series of recent infill stations in the U.S. located along older heavy rail lines whose other stations were generally constructed decades ago. Washington, D.C.'s NoMa Metro Station opened in 2004; the San Francisco region's West Dublin/Pleasanton BART Station followed
Continue reading With infill stations, older transit agencies extend their reach »]]>
» A new station on Boston's Orange Line prepares for opening, but infill stations of its type are all too rare.
Want to know a secret? One of the best ways to increase transit ridership at a reasonable price requires little additional service. It requires no new line extensions. And it can be done to maximize the value of existing urban neighborhoods.
This magic solution comes in the form of the infill station–a new stop constructed along an existing line, between two existing stations. Next week, Boston's MBTA transit agency plans to open a new stop, Assembly Station, along the Orange Line in Somerville, a dense inner-ring suburb just to the northwest of downtown Boston.
Assembly is the latest in a series of recent infill stations in the U.S. located along older heavy rail lines whose other stations were generally constructed decades ago. Washington, D.C.'s NoMa Metro Station opened in 2004; the San Francisco region's West Dublin/Pleasanton BART Station followed in 2011. In Boston, new stations have been constructed along the upgraded commuter rail-becoming-regional rail Fairmount Corridor. And Chicago has had success with the opening of two infill stations in 2012, the Morgan Station in the city's West Loop and the Oakton-Skokie Station in the northern suburbs.
Yet those expansions are exceptions to the rule. Two infill stations are currently planned in Northern Virginia, at Potomac Yard along the Metro in Alexandria and at Potomac Shores along the VRE commuter line, and one new station is under construction along the Green Line in Chicago.
But few other cities or transit systems are even considering the possibility of investing in infill stops, even as line extensions are proliferating around the country. That's a big disappointment.
The advantages of infill stations result from the fact that people are simply more likely to use transit when they're closer to it — and from the fact that the older transit systems in many cities have widely spaced stations that are underserving potentially significant markets. Erick Guerra and Robert Cervero, affiliated with the University of California-Berkeley, have demonstrated that people living or working within a quarter mile of a transit station produce about twice as many transit rides as people living or working more than half a mile away. In other words, with fewer stations on a line, the number of people willing to use public transportation as a whole is likely reduced.
Assembly Station, which has been in the works for several years, promises significant benefits — 5,000 future daily riders taking advantage of a 10-minute ride to the region's central business district, at a construction cost of about $30 million. The station fits in the 1.3-mile gap between two existing stations and is the first new stop built along Boston's T rapid transit network in 26 years. When combined with the $1.7 billion Green Line light rail extension planned for opening later this decade, 85 percent of Somerville's residents will live within walking distance of rapid transit, up from just 15 percent today.
The cost-per-rider comparison between the two Somerville projects is indicative of the value offered by infill stations: While Assembly Station cost about $6,000 per rider served, the Green Line Extension will cost $38,000 per rider served — six times more. Both projects will provide benefits, but the cost-effectiveness of infill stations in terms of attracting riders is clear. While infill stations will reduce transit speeds to some extent, within reason the number of new riders they attract will more than make up for the change.
Assembly Station was made possible in part thanks to a $15 million contribution from Federal Realty Investment Trust, which is building a $1.5 billion mixed-use community adjacent to the station. This Assembly Row project will eventually include 2,100 housing units, 500,000 square feet of retail, and 1.75 million square feet of office space, in effect creating a transit-oriented mini-city in an area that was once home to an automobile plant and, after that, a strip mall.
The ingenious decision to combine the creation of a dense new development with a new transit station encourages the production of a virtuous cycle of more people living near transit who thus are more likely to use transit.
There are many other places throughout the country where there are similar opportunities for new infill stations. San Francisco's BART studied a new subway station at 30th Street and the Mission years ago but has done little to act on the idea. Other cities have the physical conditions that are right for infill stations but little momentum to implement them. Portland's light rail system, for example, has several long inter-station gaps: The distance between Lloyd Center and Hollywood/NE 42nd (east of downtown) is 1.7 miles, certainly long enough to justify a new station in between. In Atlanta, similarly, the gap between Arts Center and Lindbergh Center on the Red and Gold Marta lines is 2.7 miles, passing through a zone of potential redevelopment.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg; there are dozens of similar situations around the country.
Transit agencies looking for ways to maximize the use of their existing lines should look to literally fill the gaps between their existing stations. In doing so, they offer the opportunity to build additional ridership and spur redevelopment.
Image at top from MBTA.]]>
» All across the country, transit agencies are opening new rail lines with inadequate service.
At $37 million for two miles of track, Salt Lake City's new S-Line, sometimes referred to as the Sugar House Streetcar, was one of the cheapest rail transit projects recently completed in the United States, with per-mile costs equivalent to the typical bus rapid transit project. From a capital cost perspective, it's a great success.
Too bad the S-Line is such a dud when it comes to ridership. According to recent data from the local transit system, the project is serving fewer than 1,000 riders a day, far fewer than the 3,000 expected for the project. One explanation is that the short route doesn't attract many people. Another is that the line's frequency is simply too low to convince people to orient their lives around it.
The thing is, providing new rail lines isn't enough — service standards really matter when it
Continue reading A Call for Minimum Service Standards »]]>
» All across the country, transit agencies are opening new rail lines with inadequate service.
At $37 million for two miles of track, Salt Lake City's new S-Line, sometimes referred to as the Sugar House Streetcar, was one of the cheapest rail transit projects recently completed in the United States, with per-mile costs equivalent to the typical bus rapid transit project. From a capital cost perspective, it's a great success.
Too bad the S-Line is such a dud when it comes to ridership. According to recent data from the local transit system, the project is serving fewer than 1,000 riders a day, far fewer than the 3,000 expected for the project. One explanation is that the short route doesn't attract many people. Another is that the line's frequency is simply too low to convince people to orient their lives around it.
The thing is, providing new rail lines isn't enough — service standards really matter when it comes to attracting people to use transit. And on that front, too many transit agencies around the country are failing to offer the services people can rely on. The problem extends far beyond New Orleans and encompasses a large share of the cities that are investing in new rail lines today, ultimately limiting their effectiveness and cutting down on ridership.
We must commit our transit agencies to providing a minimum level of transit service on their lines, particularly those in which it has been deemed necessary to invest millions of dollars in capital upgrades.
Certainly part of the answer should be speeding transit up. In an urban environment where automobiles dominate, making sure that buses and trains can move as quickly as possible reduces commute times and, ultimately, reduces the appeal of driving by providing a time-competitive alternative. At an average of 10 mph, the S-Line is certainly no stunner.
But the streetcar's bigger problem is that trains only make the 2-mile, 12-minute trip every 20 minutes, or 3 times an hour.* If you miss a trip, you might as well walk, because you'll save virtually no time waiting for the train. As Jarrett Walker has noted many times, frequency of service can be just as important as speed, since the frequency at which a vehicle on a line arrives determines how long most people have to wait — especially when they're transferring between services, an essential element of any big-city transit network and one that cannot be significantly improved with real-time data.
An examination of the operations of 49 new or extended light rail or streetcar lines built in the U.S. after 2000, summarized in the table at the end of this article, suggests that the situation experienced in Salt Lake is hardly unique, particularly at off-peak hours. While the large majority of these services offer at least four trains per hour (one vehicle every 15 minutes in each direction) at peak hours, 35% offer fewer than 4 trains per hour at midday and 73% offer fewer than 4 trains per hour in the evening (indeed, 33% offer 2 or fewer trains per hour, or a train every half hour, in the evening).
The difference for a passenger using a transit service offering robust frequencies — 6 trains per hour, or one train every ten minutes — versus mediocre ones — 3 trains per hour, like the S-Line — can be dramatic. A hypothetical rider in the robust city who has to take two 15-minute train trips that involve one transfer between them will spend an average of 40 minutes commuting in each direction (30 minutes on both trains and 5 minutes waiting for each individual train). In the mediocre city, on the other hand, average waiting times of 10 minutes for each train would increase commute times to 50 minutes, or a 25 percent increase. In the worst circumstances, where a rider just misses each train, the rider in the robust city would require 50 minutes to commute while her peer in the mediocre one would need 1h10, a full 20 minutes more.
To create a transit system that is attractive enough to pull people out of their cars, high frequencies of service at all times of the day are essential.
Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Seattle, as the table demonstrates, have chosen to outfit their new rail lines with a robust level of service that befits the major investment that has been put into them and recognizes the time constraints of their riders. Others, from San Jose to Sacramento to San Diego and even to Portland, have simply chosen to give up on their passengers at night. What they've effectively decided is that only people who truly have no other choice should rely on transit outside of peak hours.
The poor service offered on these lines produces infrastructure that is massively underused. One of the frequent arguments made by proponents of investment in rail is that "people know" that the trains will come because of the fixed track and supposedly high quality of service. But inadequate operations make this benefit disappear.
The federal government, which has funded the majority of these projects, has failed to enforce any sort of minimum level of service that these lines must provide. Rather than mandate that new services funded through grants offer service at least every 15 minutes, for example, the Federal Transit Administration simply requires agencies to "develop quantitative standards for all fixed route modes of operation" for issues like vehicle headway. In other words, if a transit agency provides service every three hours on a just-built rail line, that's fine — as long as that information has been submitted in triplicate to Washington in advance.
The federal government is throwing money at these projects with little supervision over how they are operated. The results are underperformance and relatively low ridership.
Certainly many transit agencies will suggest that the reason they do not offer better service is that they cannot afford to do so; as I wrote last week, the way that transit funding is allocated results in perverse incentives that encourage transit expansion over transit service. But local governments that commit to new projects should be required to identify adequate funding to cover operations if they are awarded federal money for construction.
Other agencies might argue that the service they provide simply matches the demand; there is no need to offer more than three trains an hour on the S-Line because only 1,000 people a day will even ride the thing. This fact raises questions about whether it made sense to build the project in the first place — if it's not serving many people, is it needed? Or it represents a self-fulfilling prophecy: Of course the line serves few people because the service it provides is so poor.
Choosing to invest in better services comes at a cost. But it's one that our political leaders and local transit activists should be fighting for. Now that we have some rail lines constructed, let's start running more trains on them before we rush out to build more track!
|Service levels for new or expanded light rail or streetcar lines in the U.S. since 2000
* This is the level of service provided all day. In its submission to the federal government in 2010, Salt Lake claimed it would provide service every 15 minutes at peak and every 30 minutes in off-peak periods.
Image at top: S-Line Streetcar in Salt Lake City, from Flickr user Paul Kimo McGregor (cc)]]>
» New Orleans fantasizes about new streetcar routes as its buses barely make the grade.
Public transportation expenditures are typically divided into two buckets: One for operations expenditures — the money that goes primarily to pay the costs of gas, electricity, and driver labor — and the other for capital investments, which sometimes means maintenance but often means new vehicles and system expansions. Because of the way in which these two buckets are funded, a transit agency that may be in dire straights in terms of paying for system expansions may be providing excellent, well-funded daily services. Or the opposite could be true. This is a consequence of the fact that federal transportation grant support, and also often local system revenues, are required to be spent in one of the two areas, with little ability to transfer funds between them. The division between capital and operations funding produces some strange dynamics
Continue reading When transit service is substandard, can we plan for capital expansion? »]]>
» New Orleans fantasizes about new streetcar routes as its buses barely make the grade.
Public transportation expenditures are typically divided into two buckets: One for operations expenditures — the money that goes primarily to pay the costs of gas, electricity, and driver labor — and the other for capital investments, which sometimes means maintenance but often means new vehicles and system expansions. Because of the way in which these two buckets are funded, a transit agency that may be in dire straights in terms of paying for system expansions may be providing excellent, well-funded daily services. Or the opposite could be true. This is a consequence of the fact that federal transportation grant support, and also often local system revenues, are required to be spent in one of the two areas, with little ability to transfer funds between them. The division between capital and operations funding produces some strange dynamics and perverse incentives for transit agencies, and the results are not always ideal for the typical rider.
Take the example of New Orleans. Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was one of the most transit-reliant cities in the country, with more daily rides per capita on its transit system than Philadelphia, Seattle, Baltimore, or Portland. Of commuters, 14% took transit to work on an average weekday in 2000. By 2010, the figures had been slashed; just 7.5% of commuters took transit to work, according to the Census. The following map shows that this change occurred across the city.
Drag vertical line from left to right to see before and after (if this does not work for you, view the article in a web browser). "Before" image is from 2000, "after" from 2010. Images from Social Explorer.
The change in transit use has a lot to do with the changes in the city's demographics before and after the storm; it has become slightly whiter and wealthier. But it also has a lot to do with the terrible transit service that the city has provided. A recent report from local transit advocacy group Ride New Orleans notes that only 36% of the transit trips offered in 2005 were available in 2012, despite a population that was 86% as large as it was in 2005. While in 2005, 80% of routes had scheduled headways of 30 minutes or less during peak hours (and 28% had peak headways of 15 minutes or less), in 2012, only 24% of routes were offered every at least 30 minutes and just 9 percent at least every fifteen minutes.
The result is the following map of service levels, from Ride New Orleans, which demonstrates clearly that service is simply unacceptable. The red routes in the map illustrate routes that serve customers with headways of more than 30 minutes. Only the green routes — which are the Canal-Cemetery and St. Charles Streetcar routes — come at least every fifteen minutes. Most of the city has truly insufficient transit options. Non-white neighborhoods have been particularly hard hit.
But people are streaming back into the buses and streetcars nonetheless. Trips per revenue hour, which measures service efficiency, are now almost as high as they were in the early 2000s and continue to rise. In fact, the New Orleans system now beats out what are considered respectable transit agencies in Miami, Minneapolis, and St. Louis on that count. And ridership continues to grow. Fortunately, Veolia — a private-sector* transport provider that runs New Orleans' transit system under contract — has been expanding service to meet demand. In January, it added some new routes; in September, it is restoring service to an additional 13 routes. Things are looking up on the operational front, but the system will still be far less effective than it was before Katrina. Yet the city's transport planners are also laying out plans for a different type of improvement: Many more streetcar lines running throughout the city, as illustrated in the map at the top of this article.
Last month, local planners revealed a $3.5 billion expansion plan that is contingent on securing funding from a number of sources. The proposal suggests 34 track-miles of new streetcar service by 2030, going far beyond the "Desire" streetcar that is currently partially under development along Rampart Street north of the French Quarter. A new line would extend north to the University of New Orleans; another east through the Lower Ninth Ward; a couple would flow through the central business district; and a connection would be made between the Canal and St. Charles Streetcars. It's an appealing vision, particularly when combined with three new bus rapid transit and two light rail lines planners have also envisioned. And, like most U.S. regions, New Orleans' transit investments so far have been substandard, so planning for the future is reasonable.
But it's also a plan that comes across as incongruous with the rather disappointing state of the day-to-day bus services that most people rely upon. New Orleans' plans for new transit expansions are in many ways the consequence of federal guidelines that guarantee that capital expansions will be pushed through whatever the state of regular operations. Because transit support from Washington, D.C. explicitly prevents spending on operations for most cities, it would be a mistake for New Orleans to pass up on the funds available for new construction.
Indeed, from a budgetary perspective, there is nothing about plans for new transit expansions that either prevent better operations or encourage it; operations and capital budgets might as well be coming from different agencies altogether. The Canal Street Streetcar is only ten years old, but its City Park/Museum branch only has trains operating every half hour, even at peak. The Loyola-UPT Streetcar, which opened last year, only provides service every 20 minutes, including at peak, not enough to allow people to rely on transit without having to consult a schedule, which should be a goal of transit operations planning.
What is the point of making the substantial investments in these capital projects if the city cannot guarantee that service on those lines will be offered acceptably? How can we be sure that all these new lines being proposed won't receive similar mistreatment for the day-to-day user? New Orleans' situation is not unique. Because local and state governments are expected to fund transit operations, the provision of service throughout the U.S. is highly inequitable; indeed, evidence suggests that poorer regions like New Orleans are simply unable to pay for the kinds of excellent day-to-day transit services that wealthier regions can. But both rich and poor regions are able to invest new lines, because the federal government commits to those projects. Whether these lines are funded to actually serve the people nearby, though, is another question.
One appropriate federal policy response might be to require that transit agencies receiving funds for major capital expansions guarantee that service on those new lines meets some minimum, such as headways of ten minutes or less during peak hours and fifteen minutes or less off-peak, as long as other system operations are not negatively affected. If transit agencies respond by suggesting that projected ridership doesn't justify such service levels, perhaps such lines shouldn't be funded at all.
* Confusingly, Veolia is a subsidiary of the French company Transdev, which is 50% owned by the French Caisse des Dépôts and 50% owned by Veolia Environnement. The Caisse is effectively a public bank controlled by the French government, and Veolia Environnement, which has some private investors, is also owned in part by the French state and in part by… the Caisse (9.3%). Which means that New Orleans' public transit, oddly enough, is operated by a company whose primary owner is the French state. Globalization is confusing.]]>
» Washington's Silver Line opened to acclaim. It is already being hailed as the pedestrian-oriented transformer for the suburban Tysons business district, but the project may not create walkable, urban neighborhoods.
After years of talk, the Washington Metro was expanded by more than 11 miles last month, finally connecting it to Tysons, a suburban, auto-oriented business district in the heart of Fairfax County, Virginia. The new Silver Line that will make the connection via the existing Orange and Blue Line trunk through downtown Washington is expected to serve 25,000 daily boardings at five new stations, providing service every six minutes at rush hours and 12 to 15 minutes off peak. A second phase of the more than $5 billion project will add another 11.5 miles and extend into Loudoun County, via Dulles Airport, in 2018.
This first phase is very significant from the perspective of expanded rapid transit service; it is the second-lengthiest single line opening in the history
Continue reading What kind of TOD can occur around Dulles Metro? »]]>
» Washington's Silver Line opened to acclaim. It is already being hailed as the pedestrian-oriented transformer for the suburban Tysons business district, but the project may not create walkable, urban neighborhoods.
After years of talk, the Washington Metro was expanded by more than 11 miles last month, finally connecting it to Tysons, a suburban, auto-oriented business district in the heart of Fairfax County, Virginia. The new Silver Line that will make the connection via the existing Orange and Blue Line trunk through downtown Washington is expected to serve 25,000 daily boardings at five new stations, providing service every six minutes at rush hours and 12 to 15 minutes off peak. A second phase of the more than $5 billion project will add another 11.5 miles and extend into Loudoun County, via Dulles Airport, in 2018.
This first phase is very significant from the perspective of expanded rapid transit service; it is the second-lengthiest single line opening in the history of the Washington Metro, and it will dramatically speed the commute of people using transit to travel to and through the western suburbs.
It is also, in theory, going to produce a revolution in the physical environment of Tysons, turning it into a new, walkable "downtown." As Robert Puentes has said, the line "is the catalyst for the transformation of Tysons from an exclusively auto-oriented 'edge city' to [a] modern and vibrant live/work community." That's certainly the vision to which the local business partnership and Fairfax County itself have committed. The goal is to quintuple the area's population to 100,000.
What is true is that the project is producing major new real estate projects near the four stations planned for the business district. The availability of excellent transit service will undoubtedly increase the number of people taking the train to and from work. Yet the manner in which the rail line was constructed — elevated, in the median of large roads — and the existing built environment should put into question whether Tysons will ever become the sort of "livable" downtown for which new urbanists articulate the need.
The difficulty of making Tysons look like a traditional urban environment isn't necessarily a bad thing, though! With careful thinking, the neighborhood could become a model for a different kind of urbanism, one that recognizes the monumental scale of the existing roadways and the new transit system, which has added an infrastructure of significant proportions to the neighborhood (just take in the scale of the station and associated track structure pictured at the top of this article). Combined with pedestrian-focused islands pulled away from the road and transit system, Tysons could adapt to its new transit accessibility not by becoming another downtown in style but by adapting its existing suburban environment into a unique new place. If successful, it could provide a model for suburban business districts across the country.
Current plans for the district's renovation
Like many suburban, car-dominated business districts, Tysons is reliant on few, widely interspersed arterials that are overwhelmed by traffic at peak hours and incredibly hostile to pedestrians. These are roads that are simply inconducive to the livability principles that have become the standard lexicon of the planning profession because they make small-scale retail, mixes of uses, and walking nearly impossible. Unfortunately, these arterials are also the roadways chosen for the placement of the Silver Line and its stations; Metro trains enter Tysons from the east along the eight-lane Virginia Route 123, run southwest before turning northwest along the eight-lane Virginia Route 7.*
Fairfax County planners have prioritized the radical reconstruction of the district's road network, moving it from a neighborhood of a few arterials (on the left in the image below) to a hierarchy of streets on a much more complex grid (on the right below). This hierarchy would incorporate the major arterials (now referred to as "boulevards") but also bring in smaller streets identified as "avenues," "local streets," and "service streets."
The smaller streets would provide the pedestrian-friendly atmosphere that is at the core of the idea of transforming Tysons into a "downtown." By "downtown," we're clearly meant to envision a tight, walkable grid of mixed-use buildings with retail on the ground floor and either apartments or offices above.
Certain major projects underway in the district will include new, small streets, but it will take decades of transformations to make the neighborhood into a full grid. What we're likely to get in the meantime, given the fact that Tysons is huge and development is hardly coordinated, are tiny areas of gridded streets, surrounded by auto-oriented parking lots and the same old arterials the area is known for.
Downtowns rely on a grid of streets that connects to the broader city's grid of streets, creating walkable districts that allow people to live and work in places without a car. Where the gridded areas are created in Tysons, most people will continue to rely on their automobiles to get elsewhere in the area.
More problematically, the Metro entrances themselves will all be located on the "boulevards," which sound nicer than they actually are. The state's Department of Transportation, like many similar agencies around the country, tends to favor cars in its designs, and it will continue to run the boulevards. Certain of them have actually been widened in association with the construction of the Metro extension. It's no wonder that the right side of the diagram above shows such as much space devoted to "boulevards" in the future (those big white voids) as the existing situation on the left.
Progressive planning suggests that the area that must be pedestrian-oriented, more than anywhere else, should be the areas right next to the rapid transit stations. These are the areas that need road diets, because they're the areas where people do not need to be driving. But in Tysons, those areas are handicapped by wide roads that are unlikely to be shrunk anytime soon. The hostility of those roads is clear enough to Metro planners, who have built pedestrian overpasses on both sides of most stations to ensure that riders do not have to make the mistake of actually trying to cross the "boulevard," as shown below.
There is little chance that this kind of environment can ever be at the heart of a future "downtown," because it simply isn't designed for street-level walkability. What kind of message does it send that the areas closest to the stations are the most hostile to pedestrians who want to be at ground level?
Fairfax County, however, addresses this problem not by recognizing the inherent deficiencies of retaining the automobile orientation of the "boulevards," but rather by optimistically hoping that street-level retail and pedestrians will line up along the edge of these almost-highways, as shown in the following rendering.
Suffice it to say that given the current condition of the "boulevards," pedestrians won't exactly be swarming to enjoy the atmosphere along these streets — particularly when there continue to be gaps in the area's sidewalk and crosswalk networks. The big buildings are likely, since the county has zoned for significantly larger structures, particularly for areas within a quarter mile of stations, and the demand for living in areas near the region's Metro system are strong.
But a "walkable downtown," in the traditional sense, this will not be. Even if the sidewalks are improved over time, the large "boulevards" throughout the district will continue to be enough of an obstacle to make the transformation of this area into a place like Ballston, Virginia difficult to imagine.
Potential for an interconnected series of "island" neighborhoods
The fact that Tysons is unlikely to become a "downtown" doesn't mean that dense development won't occur. It just means that the type of development around stations will be different. As Washington Post architecture critic Philip Kennicott noted last week:
"The decision to elevate the stations — a far less expensive approach than burying them — may well presage this sleek new world of elevated plazas and public areas, disconnected from the ground. A new office building across from the Tysons Corner station is built atop a parking garage, so that at ground level one faces a seemingly impenetrable plinth. Already, a web of pedestrian bridges — some built by Metro, others by private developers — is emerging, keeping us safely above the world of machines and hydrocarbons and asphalt."
What Kennicott is describing approximates the modernist urban idea, whose premise was that it was necessary to separate people from automobiles by either placing them on different levels or by dedicating areas for pedestrians only or automobiles only.
On the other hand, much of the premise of the more recent new urbanist and livable streets movements has been that the idea of separating people and automobiles has failed, resulting in urban environments that are unsafe, uninteresting, and generally designed without normal people in mind. Those movements have articulated the importance of mixed-use environments with tightly spaced streets designed for pedestrians but that still accommodate automobiles. This is the type of environment Fairfax County planners hope Tysons will become.
But, as Kennicott notes, the physical facts of the Silver Line's stations through the area suggest the area's future will be far more like the the modernist vision of a city than that of the new urbanists. Indeed, some of the major new developments planned for the area, such as Tysons Central 7, propose a series of structures connected to the Metro station pedestrian bridge but also turned inward, away from the "boulevards." The result is something close to a pedestrian-focused "island" refuge that attempts to ignore the automobility of the surrounding area.
Note that in the following illustration of Tysons Cenral 7, pedestrian life is shown to be almost entirely concentrated around the Metro pedestrian bridge or in the interior of the scheme. On the outside of the project are curb cuts, automobile entrances, and parking.
For Tysons as a whole, this model could produce a new district made up of "island" neighborhoods disconnected from one another by the "boulevards" and the Metro stations but nonetheless quite walkable in their interiors. A more advanced version of this concept would make the interior of this type of development entirely pedestrian-only.
The general approach taught in contemporary planning suggests that the modernist movement "failed" and that replicating its elements — such as pedestrian-only spaces surrounded by car-only spaces — will not function. Yet the design of Tysons' roadways and Metro stations mean that the primary streets of the district will continue to be principally oriented towards automobiles for decades to come; that's half your modernist ideal there. The complement to those spaces should not be semi-automobile oriented, as the current Tysons plans envision. Rather, planners and developers should take advantage of this unique transformation to create viable, interesting and pedestrian-only areas in the interior of the "islands." This approach would truly differentiate the district.
For suburban business districts examining the possibility of retrofitting themselves for transit or for more walkability, Tysons may well become a model. Certain areas may decide to eliminate their big roads entirely, a decision Tysons may have been wise to make many years ago. But others, like Tysons concerned about maintaining the ability of large numbers of drivers to get around, may choose that the alternative — islands of pedestrian orientation surrounded by highways — holds the most promise.
* The name Tysons is a shortening of the former name Tysons Corner, which is the intersection of Route 123 and Route 7.
Top image and site plan from Fairfax County (cc); walksheds from the Tysons Corner; pedestrian bridge from Flickr user Matt' Johnson (cc).]]>
» There are another four years to go before Crossrail 1 opens, but consultation is advancing quickly on Crossrail 2. London is ready for more fast cross-town links.
As Paris begins construction on a massive new program of circumferential metro lines designed to serve inter-suburban travel, London has doubled down on its efforts to improve links within the center of the metropolitan area. The two approaches speak to the two regions' perceived deficiencies: Paris with its inadequate transit system in the suburbs, London with a core that is difficult to traverse.
There's one thing both cities deem essential, though: Much faster transit links to reduce travel times around each respective region. In London, that means growing support for additional new tunneled rail links designed to bring suburban commuters through the center city while speeding urban travelers.
Since the conclusion of the second World War, London's Underground network has grown very slowly: The Victoria Line was added in 1968
Continue reading For London, one Crossrail isn't enough »]]>
» There are another four years to go before Crossrail 1 opens, but consultation is advancing quickly on Crossrail 2. London is ready for more fast cross-town links.
As Paris begins construction on a massive new program of circumferential metro lines designed to serve inter-suburban travel, London has doubled down on its efforts to improve links within the center of the metropolitan area. The two approaches speak to the two regions' perceived deficiencies: Paris with its inadequate transit system in the suburbs, London with a core that is difficult to traverse.
There's one thing both cities deem essential, though: Much faster transit links to reduce travel times around each respective region. In London, that means growing support for additional new tunneled rail links designed to bring suburban commuters through the center city while speeding urban travelers.
Since the conclusion of the second World War, London's Underground network has grown very slowly: The Victoria Line was added in 1968 and the Jubilee Line extended in 1979, but that's about it. In some ways, that made sense: London region's population peaked in 1951 at 8.1 million and declined precipitously until the 1980s. It only recouped it losses in 2011. But the region is now growing quickly, adding an estimated 100,000 or more people a year, reaching a projected 9.7 million 20 years from now. The number of commuters entering the city is expected to grow by 36% by 2031.
That growth has put incredible strain on the city's transit network, with ridership growing by 40% in fifteen years. Through direct government grants, the support of the pseudo-public Network Rail, and the commitment of Transport for London, the local transit organizing body, the city has two major relief valves under construction. The Thameslink Programme, which will open for service in 2018, will improve the existing north-south rail link through the city by allowing for trains every two to three minutes; the Crossrail 1 project, also opening in 2018, will create a new, 21-km northwest-to-southeast subway corridor that is expected to increase overall transit capacity by 10% while significantly reducing east-west travel across the city center.
Those projects, which cost more than £21 billion ($36 billion) between them, will allow the system to accommodate new growth, but they won't resolve London's most significant transit bottleneck, the Victoria Line, which carries far more riders per mile than any other Underground Line. That's where Crossrail 2 comes in.
Crossrail 2, as the following map shows, would extend from the southwest to the northeast of the city, connecting Victoria with Euston, St. Pancras, and King's Cross Stations, roughly paralleling the alignment of the Victoria Line. The project will allow certain trains on the West Anglia Main Line to the north and the South Western Main Line to run through the city. The project was submitted to a public consultation process that ended last week that examined several options for line routings; a preferred route is expected to be selected this year, with construction beginning at the earliest in 2020 at a cost of £12 to 20 billion ($21 to 34 billion). Last year, a separate consultation for the route selected a "regional" option (allowing through-running commuter trains) over a "metro" option, which would have been an automated subway.
Like Crossrail 1, Crossrail 2 is expected to increase the transit capacity of central London by 10%, possible thanks to 10-car trains running every two minutes, allowing 45,000 passengers per hour per direction. As the following map illustrates, that capacity increase will be needed by the early 2030s if the project is not implemented. Major sections of the Victoria, Piccadilly, Northern, and District Lines are all expected to be crowded at more than four passengers per square meter at rush hour, enough to make much of London Underground a truly inhospitable environment.
The opening of the the high-speed rail line HS2, which will link London to Birmingham by 2026, makes the capacity bump provided by Crossrail 2 even more important because of the influx of passengers expected at HS2's terminal, Euston Station.
The result of the new connection will not only produce less crowding on other lines, but it will significantly reduce journey times. To Tottenham Court Road, where Crossrail 1 will will meet Crossrail 2, the latter project will reduce travel times from Kingston in the southwest from 49 to 27 minutes and from Tottenham Hale in the northeast from 27 to 16 minutes.
There is little about Crossrail 2 that has been easy thus far, and certainly there is plenty more work to be done, particularly in assembling the project's financing. The project has been studied since the 1970s (as the "Chelsea-Hackney Line") and was considered as a serious alternative to the initial Crossrail project in the late 2000s. In other words, its necessity isn't exactly a new idea.
Extensive support from business groups, including London First, however, is new. The organization has proposed funding the project, in part, with £3 billion in fare increases on all transit services, £2.4 billion in revenue from allowing denser development along the corridor, and £1.8 billion from expanded business taxes. In addition, the line — like Crossrail 1 — is expected to be operationally profitable and therefore able to raise some its capital funding by bonding on the back of future fares to the tune of an additional £3 billion.
If these seem like huge sums, they are. But London transit proponents have successfully been able to make the case not only that the city's residents rely on its transit system, but also that investing in a better transit system produces overwhelmingly positive benefits to the economy as a whole. Crossrail 2's advocates note that, even with a £16 billion price, the project's benefits to cost ratio is 4.1 to 1 when wider economic benefits, such as agglomeration, are considered. This is a message that American transit promoters, who are unable to effectively make the argument for new lines, should practice making, because while London's a great town, there's nothing particular about the benefits of fast transit there versus anywhere else.
Image at top: Crossrail station at Canary Wharf, almost complete, from Flickr user George Rex (cc); Crossrail 2 map from Transport for London; Crowding map from London First.]]>
» Thanks to political initiative and the need to serve a growing region, Toronto's GO Transit is increasingly making its commuter rail services not so commuter-oriented.
In North America, "commuter rail" has come to mean something very specific: Large, heavy trains operating almost entirely at peak, providing services to downtown in the morning and away from it at night along corridors that extend into the suburbs. It's a definition that makes sense for a world where regions are structured with one central business district whose workers live in the suburbs and work nine-to-five jobs on weekdays.
Of course, that's not the world we live in. Of the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, only two have a majority of their jobs located within three miles of their downtown, and most suburban workers don't work in city centers. A sizable share of the population doesn't work a "normal" workweek.
Yet most commuter rail providers continue to operate as
Continue reading Make the effort, and commuter rail can be as effective as rapid transit »]]>
» Thanks to political initiative and the need to serve a growing region, Toronto's GO Transit is increasingly making its commuter rail services not so commuter-oriented.
In North America, "commuter rail" has come to mean something very specific: Large, heavy trains operating almost entirely at peak, providing services to downtown in the morning and away from it at night along corridors that extend into the suburbs. It's a definition that makes sense for a world where regions are structured with one central business district whose workers live in the suburbs and work nine-to-five jobs on weekdays.
Of course, that's not the world we live in. Of the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, only two have a majority of their jobs located within three miles of their downtown, and most suburban workers don't work in city centers. A sizable share of the population doesn't work a "normal" workweek.
Yet most commuter rail providers continue to operate as if nothing has changed since the 1950s, and for their clientèle, it hasn't, because the people who ride commuter trains are mostly the people who work "traditional" jobs at "normal" hours downtown. In the process, commuter agencies have ignored the progress made elsewhere to convert these traditional services into frequent, two-direction, all-day services similar to rapid transit. And they've lost out: While ridership on American heavy and light rail systems — which feature the service characteristics of rapid transit — has expanded by more than 90% overall since 1995, ridership on commuter rail systems has increased by only 35%.
In Ontario, GO Transit is piloting a new approach that could serve as a model for commuter rail agencies that need to be brought into modernity. GO has seven commuter lines that feed into Toronto's Union Station along 280 miles of service, carrying about 200,000 daily train riders, and until recently it's been primarily focused on the core, peak-hour, peak-direction commute shared with most agencies.
But thanks to the electoral pledge and eventual budget plans of former Premier Dalton McGuinty and current Premier Kathleen Wynne, combined with progressive thinking from agency leadership, the agency has shifted its priorities.
In the 2007 strategic plan, GO chairman Peter Smith emphasized that the agency needed to "grow into an even more comprehensive system that links multiple activity centres and communities," spreading its mission beyond just serving peak travelers into central Toronto. The plan specified the goal of expanding service to every 15 minutes during the peak hours and every 30 minutes off-peak. In the post recent five-year strategy of GO's overseeing agency (Metrolinx), the agency lays out its plan to transition to an "all-day regional transit service." You can be assured that the largest U.S. commuter agencies have no such plans on their radar.
One year ago, GO took the most significant step yet in that direction, bringing all-day, half-hourly, two-directional service to the Lakeshore commuter lines, up from one-hour headways. The change has already increased ridership by 30% on those lines.
The benefits of thinking more broadly about potential riders are very significant. Commuter rail improvements create an opportunity to provide a far faster transit option that traverses the region at commuter rail speeds (which average above 30 mph) at arrival frequencies similar to rapid transit lines (which average 15 to 20 mph). These improvements open suburban markets to transit, giving people who live near stations the kind of service that people who live in denser, urban areas expect as a standard element of city life. They reduce the need for a car for commutes that require traversing large sections of a large region.
Perhaps most importantly, upgrading commuter rail can be done at a reasonable price, since improvements are made on existing corridors.
This year, the governing Liberals (led by Ms. Wynne) promised to bring a service improvement to the Kitchener line by 2016, and more lines will be converted. They also raised the possibility that more frequent service, potentially on electrified lines, could be coming within 10 years thanks to investments in smaller, lighter vehicles. Regional officials committed to transforming GO into "Regional Express Rail"* by providing electric service every 15 minutes (though there is still a need for additional traditional subway service, costs for the GO conversion are not yet clear, and this idea was brought up as far back as the 1980s). The idea was not just supported by the Liberals; Conservatives at the provincial level also indicated their support for the idea. Now the leader in Toronto's upcoming mayoral election, John Tory, has said he'd like to convert two GO lines to rapid transit standards.
The sudden interest among Torontonians in the improvement of service along the city's commuter services is partly a reflection of the fact that the region is growing quickly, adding about half a million people every five years, and partly a reflection of the fact that politicians are willing to support big transit projects because people vote for politicians who support using government funds to pay for them. But it is also a reflection of the fact that GO has spent a decade and a half preparing for this transition, notably by increasing its ownership of track miles on which its trains run from 6% in 1998 to almost 70% today. It is no longer at the mercy of freight rail operators in making decisions about how to operate services.
Other American commuter rail operators should closely examine Toronto's work in improving its commuter rail operations. These transitions will help make the system far more useful for more people, and help adapt commuter rail as a mode to changes in commute and population patterns.
Fortunately, several other cities look like they might be headed in the right direction already. Caltrain, connecting San Francisco and San Jose, is planning a major modernization project that will bring electrified trains and more frequent service along its tracks. Boston's MBTA and New York's Long Island Railroad have proposed, though not yet funded, using lighter diesel multiple units on several corridors to increase service.
Many other agencies will continue to resist the change, playing on the argument that their core mission is to serve the peak-hour, peak-direction rider. But if the transportation network as a whole is to make a difference in giving people who live along commuter rail lines faster, more frequent access to transit, thinking about "non-traditional" users is essential.
* The name is clearly a reference to Paris' RER, which is a network of rapid transit lines running through the city at very fast speeds and onto formerly commuter rail tracks in the suburbs.
Image at top from Flickr user Perry Quan (cc).]]>
» Coupling real estate investment with the construction of new transit lines is the future, but the conditions need to be right.
Public development and ownership of the transportation system in the United States provided some broad, important social benefits that would not have been possible had our governments left it in the hands of the private sector. The downfall of the public transit and rail industries between the 1930s and 1970s throughout the country (itself partly a consequence of government investment in roads) was due to the fact that those services were no longer profitable. Government intervention through takeover of bankrupt lines kept those services operating and ensured the continuing existence of what is truly an essential public service in our major metropolitan areas.
Yet with the governments takeover of transit services, our regions lost a powerful skill that private transportation providers a century ago used well: Connecting new development with transit investments. The history of Continue reading How broadly applicable is the All Aboard Florida development strategy? »
Continue reading How broadly applicable is the All Aboard Florida development strategy? »]]>
» Coupling real estate investment with the construction of new transit lines is the future, but the conditions need to be right.
Public development and ownership of the transportation system in the United States provided some broad, important social benefits that would not have been possible had our governments left it in the hands of the private sector. The downfall of the public transit and rail industries between the 1930s and 1970s throughout the country (itself partly a consequence of government investment in roads) was due to the fact that those services were no longer profitable. Government intervention through takeover of bankrupt lines kept those services operating and ensured the continuing existence of what is truly an essential public service in our major metropolitan areas.
Yet with the governments takeover of transit services, our regions lost a powerful skill that private transportation providers a century ago used well: Connecting new development with transit investments. The history of New York City's Grand Central Terminal is often told, but it bears repeating. The New York Central Railroad, which built the terminal, decided to submerge the tracks under Park Avenue north of the terminal in order to create a massive new business district surrounding the station. That neighborhood remains the nation's most important commercial center.
The railroad understood that the land it used to build its line was valuable, and that allowing new investments in the area near its station would produce a virtuous cycle that built ridership, which, in turn, increased the value of the surrounding land. It's an understanding we must absorb if we are to ensure that our transit investments are most effective.
After decades of simply ignoring the land use-related effects of transit investments, over the past two decades local governments have made halting efforts to take advantage of this fact, encouraging transit-oriented development by private investors in areas near new stations through the sale or lease of land or the altering of land use regulations to better accommodate denser growth. The most dramatic version of this is the Hudson Yards program on Manhattan's West Side, where millions of square feet of new office and residential buildings are under construction or planned. Parts of this land was sold to a private bidder by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which will run a new subway station on the 7 Line, and parts were rezoned to allow big buildings by the city.
Altogether, this represents an intentional effort by New York City to repeat the lessons of Grand Central Terminal by merging transportation investment with a real estate program. But, unlike previous private sector development programs, the MTA and city have not been directly involved in the surrounding projects themselves, relying instead on third-party developers to make the choices and, eventually, reap the rewards.
All Aboard Florida's $1.5 billion investment in new intercity rail services between Miami and Orlando suggests that the private sector is, in part, picking up the slack by taking advantage of the same forces that the private sector used to build its rail lines a century ago. The rail line will run 235 miles from downtown Miami to Orlando airport in around three hours (compared to five hours on Amtrak today). All Aboard Florida is investing in massive new station complexes in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach. The Miami terminal, which will be located on company-owned land downtown, will include two million square feet of office or commercial space, and one million square feet of residential space, as shown below. The project is coming along more slowly than initially planned, but company officials insist they will not need government aid other than a large, low-interest loan from the federal government which it expects to pay back from ticket revenues.
Why has it taken so many decades for the private sector to get back into the development game? The growing demand by individuals to live in urban centers is attracting interest in monetizing the benefits of transit-oriented development, and that's particularly true for large urban markets like Miami. All Aboard Florida will not need its real estate investments to subsidize its rail operations, which it expects to be operationally profitable, but those developments will certainly help justify the investment in the rail service. They'll also build the rail line's ridership, as they'll create major destinations right at the stations.
Government transit agencies focus on the provision of good transit service, and if you ask management at most agencies, they'll let you know that they need to focus on "what they're good at," i.e., running buses and trains. Yet that approach has repeatedly produced projects with mediocre ridership and little nearby development. Transit agencies are reliant on surrounding land uses to support their operations and whether or not they want to, they must make real estate development something they're "good at." It is in the public interest to make our transit system not only well-used, but also the foundation for a sound urban development strategy.
The idea of melding new transportation infrastructure with real estate investments does not have to be a strategy reserved to the private sector. For decades, Hong Kong has used its metro system (76% owned publicly) to invest in surrounding developments, which include properties as diverse as towers and shopping malls (this is known as the "rail plus property" model). Similarly, the Grand Paris Express program I profiled earlier this week will integrate its stations into large new developments directly planned by the government implementing agency ("Completed by private developers, the connected project takes into account the technical and functional prescriptions defined by" the agency, with a program "defined by municipal land use plans"). A special tax on property near stations on the line will help pay for the construction of the metro project.
Of course, the All Aboard Florida, Hong Kong metro, and Grand Paris Express projects are exceptional programs that cannot be repeated in most regions. All rely on strong local real estate markets where there is significant demand for major new development. All Aboard Florida takes advantage of that company's prior ownership of the tracks used for the trains and of the land where its stations and surrounding real estate will be completed. Meanwhile, the transit investment programs in Hong Kong and Paris have been supported by major infusions of government grants that are not available in most American cities and by considerable political will to invest in the creation of denser, more transit-oriented regions.
Most U.S. regions are too sprawling, too auto-dominated, or too poor to expect this kind of transit-oriented development to occur simultaneously with new rail or bus links, particularly if that means that the transit agency has to take on some risk that a project will fail financially.
Nonetheless, major U.S. cities with significant demand for dense living and working environments like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, and Washington should evaluate their transit investment programs to ensure that they're taking the greatest advantage of surrounding land to develop large real estate projects. These developments will not only increase system ridership but also bring decades of future revenue from office, residential, and retail rent, all of which can be used to improve transit system finances. Recent system expansions in Los Angeles, Seattle, and Washington — none of which have included major development projects on land owned by the transit agencies — suggest that there is significant work left to be done.
Images above: Proposed Miami station, from All Aboard Florida.]]>
» We have failed to come to terms with the fact that the transit we're building is too slow.
Residents of the Twin Cities greeted the opening of the new Green Line light rail link last month with joy and excitement, finally able to take advantage of a train connection between downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul. The 11-mile rail line runs through a relatively densely populated area, serves two business districts, and travels through the heart of a university.
It's also alarmingly slow. Green Line trains are taking up to an hour to complete their journeys, and even optimistic schedules released by the local transit agency put running times at 48 minutes, or less than 14 mph on average.
Of course, the Twin Cities are hardly alone in their predicament. Recent transit lines elsewhere in the country feature similarly leisurely travel times. The new Houston North Line, for example, is averaging 17 mph.
Continue reading The value of fast transit »]]>
» We have failed to come to terms with the fact that the transit we're building is too slow.
Residents of the Twin Cities greeted the opening of the new Green Line light rail link last month with joy and excitement, finally able to take advantage of a train connection between downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul. The 11-mile rail line runs through a relatively densely populated area, serves two business districts, and travels through the heart of a university.
It's also alarmingly slow. Green Line trains are taking up to an hour to complete their journeys, and even optimistic schedules released by the local transit agency put running times at 48 minutes, or less than 14 mph on average.
Of course, the Twin Cities are hardly alone in their predicament. Recent transit lines elsewhere in the country feature similarly leisurely travel times. The new Houston North Line, for example, is averaging 17 mph. Los Angeles' Expo Line is slightly quicker at 18 mph. Bus rapid transit and streetcar projects popping up virtually everywhere are often significantly slower. Only the Washington, D.C. Metro Silver Line, which will extend that region's subway deep into the Virginia suburbs, will speed commuters along at an average of 32 mph. It will do so while only stopping at 5 stations, all of which will be located in the middle of expressways.
With speeds like those light rail lines or services like the Silver Line, it's little wonder that it's so difficult to convince people to get out of their cars in so many places. The fact of the matter is that services like this often do not provide much mobility improvement over the bus services they replace. That's particularly true for large regions where too many destinations are simply too far away to be accessible by transit that averages such slow speeds.
With its Grand Paris Express program announced in 2009, the Paris region is proposing an alternative. With 127 miles of metro lines and 72 new stations planned, the program will completely alter the landscape of this large metropolitan area, offering new circumferential connections around the city center, making it possible to travel between suburbs without having to pass through the city center. The project entered the construction phase this summer and will eventually serve two million daily riders by the time it is completed in 2030 at a cost of more than $35 billion; it is the second-largest single transportation project in the western world, after the California high-speed rail project.
And it will provide trains running at what are, for transit systems, wildly fast speeds — particularly considering that the system's stations are planned to be located reasonably close to one another and in the heart of existing developed areas. Current projections suggest that the average speeds of the project's three new lines (15, 16, and 17) will be between 34 and 40 mph. That may not sound like a lot, but it's enough to blast open access to the region as a whole.
Consider these isochrone maps produced by Paris regional planning agency APUR:
|Parts of the region accessible by transit in 45 minutes or less from Bry Villiers Champigny (left) or Pont de Sèvres (right) stations. For context, the maps are roughly 35 miles across.
In 2030, with Grand Paris Express and other funded transit projects
The Grand Paris project, in association with several other suburban transit investments, will massively expand the ability of people to get around the region by public transportation. It doesn't take any specific knowledge of the Paris area to understand the size difference between the yellow areas indicated on the maps above (where you can currently get in 45 minutes by transit from two specific points) and the pink areas (where you will be able to go, in addition, thanks to the new transit investments).
As shown in the following chart, the project will double or, in some cases, quadruple, the area of land accessible in 45 minutes from stations along one of the project's components, Line 15 (a map of whose alignment is shown at the top of this article). Places in the region that today may be simply too far to get to in a reasonable amount of time by transit and are therefore either required to be accessed by car or avoided all together will suddenly be made accessible.
|Parts of the region accessible by transit in 45 minutes or less from stations along the future Line 15 (stations are positioned around the chart, such as Noisy-Champs, etc.).
In 2030, with Grand Paris Express and other funded transit projects
The replacement of bus services with light rail lines, the typical American approach to improving transit, would not provide nearly as significant a benefit for the inhabitants of this region in terms of their ability to access the opportunities available along the public transportation network. Slower transit effectively makes it impossible for regions to operate as a unified economic or even social entity; indeed, it is not uncommon to hear people from one side of a large city talk about the fact that they "might as well" live in another region to people who live on the other side of the city. Riverdale in the Bronx, for example, is all but unreachable for people 20 miles away in Jamaica, Queens who rely on transit and the slow, almost two-hour trip option it provides. Both places are in New York City, but the transit offered is too slow to make the two areas feel like they are in the same city.
Faster transit services begin to address this problem, but the lack of fast transit able to span entire metropolitan areas in short periods of time does not necessarily result in lower transit ridership. Indeed, it is usually the largest metropolitan areas that feature the most extensive use of public transportation systems. That's primarily a consequence of poor access by automobiles, which are stuck in traffic and sometimes as slow or slower than even a pokey transit service, and of the diversity of uses present in the neighborhoods of large, dense cities. For people who live in Manhattan or central Paris, the relatively slow speed of the Subway (average speed is about 17 mph) or the Métro (average speed is about 15 mph) doesn't matter so much because there's so many things to see or do within a short distance.
But a failure to provide faster transit options is reducing the quality of life of residents in large metropolitan areas. Commuting times are longer, particularly for transit users, because most people do not work in the neighborhoods where they live and jobs may be anywhere in the region. Trips to local amenities such as museums, theaters, or large parks require more time. Solving these problems requires investments in faster transit options or abandoning the conceit that large regions can be understood as a single entity.
Of course, building fast transit — which typically requires burying trains underground or elevating them in the air — is quite expensive. Thanks to a significant increase in national government contributions to transport infrastructure, the Paris region has been able to advance its fast transit plans; with the U.S. Congress hostile to even keeping the gas tax indexed to inflation, we're unlikely to see anything similar occur on this side of the pond anytime soon.
Image at top from Société du Grand Paris; isochrone chart and maps from APUR.]]>
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to chat with Anthony Foxx, who became the U.S. Secretary of Transportation last year and was previously mayor of Charlotte. I wrote an article on the interview's major focus points on the website of my employer, Chicago's Metropolitan Planning Council. The transcript of the full interview is posted at the bottom of this post.
In addition to the conclusions I noted on MPC's site (and please read those; they are relevant to the discussion here), I want to note a few points about the interview that reflect my personal sense of the administration's progress on moving forward with a new transportation bill.
It was evident in Secretary Foxx's responses
Continue reading An Interview with Secretary Foxx »]]>
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to chat with Anthony Foxx, who became the U.S. Secretary of Transportation last year and was previously mayor of Charlotte. I wrote an article on the interview's major focus points on the website of my employer, Chicago's Metropolitan Planning Council. The transcript of the full interview is posted at the bottom of this post.
In addition to the conclusions I noted on MPC's site (and please read those; they are relevant to the discussion here), I want to note a few points about the interview that reflect my personal sense of the administration's progress on moving forward with a new transportation bill.
It was evident in Secretary Foxx's responses that he remains committed to the Obama Administration's push to increase funding for transportation. Of course, the Obama Administration has been promoting increased funding for transportation since 2009, beginning with the stimulus (which roughly doubled federal expenditures for transportation for a short period), and continuing with a number of proposals over the years, each of which promoted the idea of a huge infusion of funds for transportation but which ultimately produced little change. From that perspective, Secretary Foxx's determination to pass a new four-year, $302 billion program for infrastructure (a plan that would increase expenditures by roughly 50%) seems rather unlikely to result in much of anything.
This is particularly true in light of Senator Barbara Boxer's proposal to simply extend the funding levels provided for in MAP-21, which themselves were little changed from the previous level of spending. At the heart of the problem, as we all know, is that the transportation user fee model (premised on fuel tax revenues) has collapsed and no one is willing to do much of anything about it. It's not Secretary Foxx's fault, but the Obama Administration's decision to propose funding transportation by using "business tax reform," which is essentially premised on one-time repatriation of foreign assets, is a half-empty call for change, neither likely to pass Congress nor a long-term solution. I'm skeptical. It's not that the Administration has done anything terribly wrong, but there certainly has not been much courage coming out of the White House on this issue.
No one with particularly significant power is willing to simply say, "I will increase the gas tax," or "I will institute a vehicle-miles traveled fee." It's not an easy demand, certainly, but it is a necessary one if we want to move forward with more funding for our road and transit systems.
In this context, it is frustrating to watch Secretary Foxx, like Secretary Ray LaHood before him, extol the values of high-speed rail (I confess I hold them dear as well), without making any progress in actually paying for it. Foxx pointed to Florida and Texas as models of interest in high-speed rail even in relatively conservative states — a fair point — but he failed to note that those states are hoping that the private sector will chip in for most or all of the cost of those lines. Certainly conservatives will support transportation investments that are fully paid for by someone else, but what happens when the Florida or Texas projects require public subsidy? Will they face the same resistance as has California's heavily contested project has?
On the other hand, what other options does the Administration have in the face of a recalcitrant House of Representatives?
Nevertheless, Secretary Foxx's answers about the Department of Transportation's willingness to expand the possibility of local funding options were positive. States and cities should be able to toll their local highways if they so desire, but right now they're stymied by federal regulations that make tolling impossible on most Interstate highways. His willingness to consider Transportation for America's new policy proposal that would encourage local and state competition in awarding transportation funding is potentially exciting.
In addition, where the executive branch of the federal government may have an easier time producing positive results is in the implementation of regulatory changes within agencies of the Department of Transportation. One issue that has been of particular concern to those interested in improving American rail service has been the Federal Railroad Administration's (FRA) rules about train weight and strength, which effectively make lighter, more efficient European and Asian trains impossible in the U.S. Stephen Smith noted last year in Next City that the FRA was considering changes to these rules by 2015, when positive train control (PTC) is supposed to be implemented.
Secretary Foxx, however, was far less direct on the issue than this change would imply, noting that "Whether that issue or how that issue comes up in the context of that is still an open question, but we'll take a look at any issues put out there." It's hard to know based on that whether the Department of Transportation or the Obama Administration in general will take these issues seriously in the coming months, but the issue is important, and we can only hope they'll notice.
Full interview transcript follows below
Yonah Freemark (YF): What do you see as the role of the federal government in the national transportation system?
Anthony Foxx (AF): The role is very critical. If you think about the foundation of a house, the federal role is one of the cornerstones of how transportation is built. It involves our role as safety regulator across all modes of transportation. It gets into our role as part of the funding mix that supports everything from bridges, roads, highways, transit, rail, so many modes of transportation we all depend upon. The role of the federal government is very important to transportation.
YF: Given the President's ambitious proposal for a new transportation bill but the declining revenues produced by the existing fuel taxes, what are appropriate new revenue sources for the federal government?
AF: We are proposing to use a funding source from business tax reform to support a $302-billion, 4-year package for transportation. This is an area where there is at least bipartisan interest and significant bipartisan support for moving the country forward using transitional revenues from business tax reform to plow into our infrastructure and move America forward. Clearly there are some long standing issues with the gas tax and some forward-going issues with our sustainability over a much longer period of time. We believe this package is the appropriate way to go with the Congress we now have, and we also believe that there is ample opportunity to hear other ideas now, and to consider other approaches, which is what we've been saying for months.
YF: Are you willing to endorse a potential other source, such as an increase in fuel taxes or the creation of a vehicle miles traveled fee?
AF: We feel like the pay-for that's contained in our package is the right pay-for based not only on our analyses but also the efforts we've made to reach out to members of Congress on both sides of the political aisle to achieve agreement. If there are other ideas that emerge along the way towards an agreement on this very important issue, we certainly will listen to those ideas and consider them.
YF: One local issue that is relevant to the federal government is the issue of tolling on the Interstate Highways. This is particularly relevant to the Chicago region, where there are a number of Interstate Highways where tolling is currently not allowed on because of a historic decision about what is free and what is not on our roads. Senators (Mark) Kirk and (Mark) Warner have introduced a bill that would allow Interstate tolling in a number of states such as Illinois. Are you in favor of that bill?
AF: Given the situation at the federal level with the uncertainty of funding the Highway Trust Fund, once again veering to the brink of insolvency, we do believe that part of our responsibility is to help states and local project sponsors develop new options, new sources of revenue, including, for example, public-private partnerships. We would never tell a state or a local project sponsor to toll but that optionality is increasingly becoming something that states are interested in, and we'll consider finding ways to help when that's an option that states want to consider.
YF: I know that one big item of your agenda as Secretary of Transportation has been the idea of expanding access to jobs through our transportation system, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what transportation investments can really encourage access to jobs.
AF: Well, there are several ways to look at this question, and it's a good question. One way is, what are we building, and what kind of economic growth is it creating. For instance, we have a freight advisory committee that is looking to do a first of its kind freight strategy for the nation. We have 47 people from all over the country who are helping us look this through. But at the end of it, they're going to have looked at where freight actually moves in this country, where some of the gaps are, and choke points, as well as helping us figure out approaches to getting those issues addressed.
Our framework, to take the point a little further, would take $10 billion and target it specifically to freight over four years and encourage not only states but groups of states to work together to get scale out of the federal investments that would be provided to support the freight system. So the freight issues are ones that are directly tied to manufacturing and other types of job creation. Many times we find that when the appropriate road improvement is done — or the last mile connection to a port or any number of investments that support the movement of commerce — that instantly makes the area that has made the investment more attractive to manufacturing and distribution types of jobs, which are really good jobs for American workers. So that's one frame.
The other frame to look at this question is through not just what we're building, but how are we deciding what to build. Increasingly, as our country experiences exponential population growth — I'm told we're going to have another 100 million people by 2050, and we'll be moving $14 billion more tons of freight by that time — our economy is increasingly becoming tied into regions, and these regions make up not only urban centers, but also suburbs and rural areas that surround even those suburbs. An astounding percentage of our population is contained in those places, and an astounding amount of our gross domestic product is produced in those areas. So one of the questions that we're also asking is how do we organize our transportation decision making around these areas of growth, and again, we're working through some of that thought process in the design of our package.
YF: One issue that's been increasingly relevant to a lot of our big cities is this issue of encouraging transit-oriented development (TOD). There was some mention of TOD in MAP-21 (the 2-year transportation law passed in 2012), but I wonder if you've considered expanding the role of the federal government in encouraging TOD through the transportation bill or through other means.
AF: First of all, transit-oriented development is clearly a trend in this country and we have many success stories all over the United States on transit-oriented development. One of the most important ways that we can support the growth of transit-oriented development is to ensure that we have not only stable funding in our transit system, but also that that investment is matching the kind of population surges that we're seeing in many of our metro areas. When the federal government invests in transit and communities at the local levels that have good land use plans attached to that, you really start to see the multiplier effect of the federal investment on the ground. We will continue to push for multimodalism and ensuring that the federal government is paying due attention to our growth centers, our job centers and connecting those areas to not only our urban and suburban communities, but also our rural communities.
YF: Transportation for America has advocated for the creation of state-level TIGER grants, and I'm wondering if that's something that you've discussed at the Department of Transportation as a possibility.
AF: That's a case of first impression for me. I know that TIGER has been marvelously successful, and we've had both state project sponsors as well as local project sponsors and I know that local governments are hungry for opportunities to have direct investment in their priorities. I hadn't heard of that idea, but it's an interesting one, and maybe one that we'll study.
YF: One important program that was created in MAP-21 that is being taken advantage of in Chicago and perhaps some other cities is the Core Capacity program and it seems to be providing some excellent new revenues to pay for these renovation projects. But will it provide enough for all of the transit systems that need to upgrade their older train lines?
AF: The truth of the matter is we don't have enough funding to match the needs of this country in general. By definition, a very successful Core Capacity effort is going to fall short of the mark in terms of meeting every single need that's out there. That's unfortunately true across the board in transportation right now, which is why we're making a push for a much stronger reauthorization effort.
YF: Your predecessor, Ray LaHood, was a very strong advocate of high-speed rail. I wonder if you feel the same about the importance of high-speed rail in our transportation system.
AF: I do. I think high-speed rail is the future for passenger movements in our country. What's so interesting is that for all of the fire and brimstone that's been cast out there on high-speed rail, we're now starting to see states like Florida and Texas actually studying approaches to getting it done in those places. That says to me that it's an idea whose time has come and that it's only a matter of time before it takes an even stronger hold in this country. The great thing about rail travel is just how — particularly high-speed rail — is how the travel times can be compressed to such an extent that it creates a choice for the passenger, whether they want to drive someplace, or fly someplace, or ride a train someplace, it makes it more accessible to more people, and it makes transportation accessible to new markets, and it certainly is a clean way to travel in relative terms, so I think there are lots of reasons why this is an inflection point for high-speed rail. There'll be bumps and bruises along the way, but it's a really important step in the progression of transportation in the U.S.
YF: One thing that's interesting about the Florida and Texas example is that they've had significant private sector involvement. Do you see more examples like that around the country?
AF: I think there's so much private capital sitting on the sidelines looking for long-term safe investments that we'd love to see more of it flowing into infrastructure, so whether it's high-speed rail or expanding highway capacity or something else, we certainly want the private markets thinking about ways to plow their assets into American infrastructure.
YF: My last question is about the reforms that FRA (Federal Railroad Administration) has planned for 2015, under congressional rulings about the implementation of positive train control (PTC). I wonder to what degree that that implementation will change the nature of our commuter rail systems and perhaps our inter-city rail systems.
AF: Well, it certainly is one of the vanguard technologies to improve safety and it requires a lot of coordination between federal agencies to get it done. We're working as much as we can as an agency to support the rail companies getting PTC compliant as soon as possible. It's a really big deal and we're doing everything we can to be helpful.
YF: Have you considered the possibility of changing the FRA rules about train strength and train heaviness that currently make American trains far heavier than European or Asian trains?
AF: You know, in Washington, there are several issues that are on the plate right now. There's a water bill pending, and there's also the rail title that expired last September. Part of what we're hoping to do, with our reauthorization effort, is to include rail in that conversation and to have a vigorous conversation about the future of rail in America. Whether that issue or how that issue comes up in the context of that is still an open question, but we'll take a look at any issues put out there.]]>