Podcast: Christof Spieler Talks Holistic Transit Planning

At last month’s Rail~Volution conference I caught up with Houston Metro board member Christof Spieler. Hear from Christof about the progress on Houston’s bus reimagining and his tips for public engagement and transit system planning.

Podcast: Remixing Transit Planning in Cities

This week I’m joined by Tiffany Chu, co-founder of the transit planning software firm Remix, which helps agencies quickly assess the impact of potential changes in service. Tiffany discusses the response the company has received from the transit industry and what got it started. We also talk about the possible policy implications of Remix, as well as the movement towards open data.

 

Too Long for Twitter or Why We Lack Urban Vision in Transit

Reading this article by Conrad deFiebre I was struck by how the comments from streets.mn's David Levinson could be said about most regions around the country...

The council's draft 2040 Metropolitan Transportation Policy Plan "is not an urbanist vision," protests U of M transportation guru David Levinson in a new blog. "It is, unfortunately, not a bold vision. It is a fiscally constrained vision. It is a vision of an organization ... representing seven mostly suburban counties."

 It's too long for twitter, but too important to miss.

Double Vision

While it's great that the Chronicle and others are calling on Houston Metro to have a regional vision with goals, it means nothing without a tandem city land use and development infrastructure strategy. While Houston has no zoning in the usual sense, it does have everything else needed to regulate development (restrictive covenants, parking requirements, setbacks etc). The region can't just keep building HOV lanes and even light rail/commuter rail lines to chase development. Chasers never prosper, but leaders do.

Sunday Night Notes

I realize there has been much less posting here, but if you still want links you can follow me on twitter which seems to be more regular. @theoverheadwire

There are some interesting links today however:

I don't really think cities should compete to land new jobs. Especially for government funded jobs such as Northrup Grumman.
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Wal Mart doesn't create new jobs. Tell us something we don't know.
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So does this mean Smart Cars are PRT?

“Smart’s not a car in the traditional sense, it’s a high- style alternative to public transportation,”

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What does urban authenticity mean?

Four Two Through

Dave thinks there might be a correlation between the number of trains into a station and its development pattern. I think there is a bit more to do with it than that including market and available zoning allowances. But I think sometimes the market can be influenced by the amount of transportation available to an area over time.

For example I believe downtown Oakland was a little hamstrung when BART decided to split off trains to Fremont before going through a downtown Oakland station. With four lines instead of two going through downtown Oakland, it seems like it could have changed Oakland's equasion. Currently there is high frequency in the morning and evening rush, but at other times it could really use more trains into and from San Francisco. When there are opportunities to provide more service to a major destination, it seems like more service is a wise move that might be able to set the table for other improvements.

Redundancy

State Street in Salt Lake is looking to bring a better place making game to the city. Though when comments about rapid transit along the street state that its not needed because of an existing parallel line, I worry about not seeing the need for redundancies at different scales. There is a need for quality transit, perhaps it's BRT, on parallel streets. Especially if its a shorter stop than the line a few blocks over.

So far, "high-capacity transit" means bus rapid transit. Anything else, such as streetcars, makes no sense, since most of the 16 miles of State in the study run parallel to, and only a few blocks from, the existing TRAX line.

Thinking of Market Street, there is BART, Muni Metro, Buses, and the F Line. Certainly one of those is not needed right? Wrong. All of these lines serve a different travel function. I'm surprised at how much this is misunderstood when you talk about transit in other cities. But there you have it. On the major streets in a region, redundant service types are necessary to get people where they want to go.

Routesy 2.0

I have to agree with Greg on this one, Routsey 2.o for the iPhone is a brilliant application. It melds together real time BART information with Muni making it really easy to get around the city. The best thing in my mind is the ability to bookmark stops you visit often. That is worth the $2.99 right there.

One of the things that we found out BART does better than anyone else is releasing thier real time data into space. Anyone can have access to it which is rare for transit agencies to be that transparent. Kudos to the team there for such excellent foresight that other agencies don't even want to even think about.

Where's the Transit in Electric Grid Discussion?

I'm all about this rethinking of the national energy grid. But why are we not looking further into connecting the grid back into transit. Why not more money for trolley buses and that connection to the grid? It seems to me that it would be a great for two reasons... seeing the wires reminds you that you're being clean and we also forget that transit used to be directly tied to the electric companies. It's possible that this could be the way to fund transit as well. Back again to Scott Bernstein's guest post on how to bring back the streetcars:

As we've discussed on this list, only by switching from liquid fuels to non-motorized and electric transportation can we meet any of our energy independence or climate goals.

And only by reducing dependence on individual vehicles to a greater reliance on mass transportation can we transition to a nation of great cities and regions.

Here are some tools to think about in framing methods of getting there--

1. Local electric distribution utilities never lost the legal right to power electric transportation; all 50 states have a common method of enabling electric distribution utility financing of all or part of the necessary systems, which is a rate filing to help finance these systems. This offers opportunities for cities, transit operators, developers, metropolitan planning organizations and states to build new kinds of financing mechanisms to more systematically support local and regional surface transportation infrastructure. A similar case can be made for local governments and special service districts (which own and operate almost all of the nation's airports outside of NJ, MD, Alaska and HI) to partner with the electric utility industry to support the infrastructure necessary for inter-city high speed rail.

2. Deregulation of the electric utility industry has been a mixed bag, but in over a dozen states a fait accompli. So in a sense this is an opening to partner with contemporary holding companies too. These companies need to re-certify their "market-based" rate making authority every three years with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, another opening for the new administration to address potential urban consequences of energy and climate policies.

3. PUCHA was repealed in the 2005 Energy Policy Act ( one outcome has been at least 100 municipalization efforts, 20 successful, most recently Winter Park Fl, but the repeal also opens up the potential for other kinds of ownership too)

4. A national debate on the future shape and location and purposes of the electrical grid has started and needs an urban voice, no less than does the analogous debate about transportation infrastructure.

5. A push by leaders in the public accounting profession and in the investment community for more transparency in State and municipal accounting led to the creation of the Government Accounting Standards Board in 1984, and their rules on accounting for infrastructure investment, aka Statement 34, implemented from 1999 to present, lay a first-time basis for disclosure of the life-cycle costs associated with different types and patterns of major capital investments. More recently, a push for better state and local disclosure in the waning days of the Bush administration, has been taken up in the Senate and House Banking committees. This is a real opportunity to show well how the hidden assets of cities and urban places perform.

Practice What You Preach

Does anyone know if one of these transportation officials that doesn't take transit is Nat Ford? (CBK notes he takes the bus) It kind of makes me angry when people don't practice what they preach, especially in transit. If I didn't believe in what I was talking about, I wouldn't be living it, and I think that if you're going to be working for a transportation agency and saying people should be living a certain way there's really no excuse for living the opposite.

OTA Flashback: 1974 Sprawl Report

Thought this report was a bit interesting. It's buried deep in the weeds here but I was flipping through and found it on page 43. From the US Government Printing Office:

Several conclusions and findings are made in this report. The high density planned community consumed 40% less energy than the low density sprawl pattern. In annual terms this means 400 million BTU per dwelling unit in the low density sprawl pattern compared to about 210 million BTU per dwelling unit in the high density planned pattern. The high density planned community cost per residential unit was $21,000 compared to $49,000 per unit in low density sprawl pattern. This is for all community costs prorated.

Water and air pollution are substantially less and water consumption less in the higher density pattern. With 52% less travel time required in the snore(similar?) densely planned community, less accidents and other psychic benefits are described. Gas and electricity use ‘is a function of housing type and structural characteristics: no variation among planned and sprawl communities with the same housing mix is shown." But, ‘significant variation in consumption of gasoline occurs as a result of the differences among community types.. . ." The report concludes that significant energy savings can be attained through greater use of mass transit.

We never learn do we.

Absorbing Growth

If you have a robust transit system, it can absorb new travel.

Transportation officials say a new study shows a surprising trend: As New York City's population and job base grew during the recent boom, traffic didn't.

Instead, a report due for release Monday finds the transit system absorbed the influx of residents and commuters between 2003 and 2007.

City deputy transportation commissioner Bruce Schaller says that's a first for at least the years since World War II. Schaller wrote the study. He says improvements to the subway, bus and commuter rail network helped it handle the demand from 130,000 new residents and 200,000 more jobs.

Overlay the Past

Kevin at Fortworthology sent me this map of the streetcar lines of 1925 overlaid with the current plan. It's interesting to see what was lost in cities around the country who have done this exercise. Also note the street grids that exist around the former lines. Compared to the networks that the streetcar built, auto culture looks so messy. I'm sure there is some sort of analogy for that.

If you've seen one of these overlays somewhere, shoot a link in the comments and I'll append them to this post.

Forgetting Something?

It would be a nicer Transbay Terminal and more like Grand Central if when it opened it actually connected to some rail lines. Platforms deep under the are nice, but shouldn't they have reason to hold passengers? Perhaps a new subway line? Caltrain Extension? HSR? Here's a Fantasy Map I've shown before. The biggest white dot is the Transbay Terminal site.

Veins & Capillaries

Imagine if more of these bursts were high speed rail and intercity rail instead of airplanes.



Then check out all these flights up the Northeast Corridor from Atlanta.

$600 Million for Streetcars?

Perhaps in Seattle soon. Maybe they'll beat out Portland or Minneapolis for first streetcar network. Fort Worth is hot on the heels as well. It seems to me that this would be a really long term bonus project with new jobs coming from the construction of the line and the densification that will come along the lines for years after construction.

Streetsblog.net Launches

For fans of our City Transit Advocates blog, you'll love Streetsblog.net.

Missing Something?

Something is missing from all this talk of Climate. We keep talking about it but how can we educate the rest of the country that just building electric cars is not going to solve their problems. Grist has a post up on the Grand Climate Plan. See what's on the list.

1. Carbon pricing
2. Efficiency standards
3. Carbon-free electricity
4. Smart electrical grid
5. Electric cars

The author, Adam Stein notes there are gaps. Most glaring to me, nothing about land use or transit. Nothing about walking or cycling. These are some of the best ways you can personally reduce your carbon footprint. I personally drive only once a week now to visit my Grandmother. When I lived in Austin I drove three or four times a week even though I lived next to the Number 1 bus, the most frequent in the city. Land use matters. But what happens when everyone gets electric cars. Are the freeways all going to suddenly free up?

But how come no one talks about it? Is it really because its not that sexy as Rachel Maddow thinks it is?



Or is it something more? What is the deep seeded want not to take transit or build denser? Part of it I know is our entrenched non market based land use system. It's not like your ultimate mobility is compromised by driving less and walking/biking more with optimal land use. Why are the livable community groups so separated from the enviros on this? I can't quite make it out.

Colleges Are Good Destinations

If you want ridership and transit trips increased, connect to colleges and Universities. Because of their centrality and concentration of students and jobs, it's a win win for both the city in which the University resides and the University itself. Urban campuses can save money by building space for students instead of the car and bringing students to a central place by transit can very seriously reduce all day trips that increase congestion. College campuses have people coming and going at all times of the day and are not a simple commute pattern, making congestion in the area worse.

In Defence of Background

Two posts on very progressive sites I have come to trust have popped up lately about the High Speed Rail line in California that are very disturbing. First is one by Ben Adler who writes for Campus Progress (and Politico) which is an offshoot of Think Progress, a progressive organization with such valuable insight from writers such as Matt Yglesias who I read and link to often. The second one is from The American Prospect which links to the first article.

The opinion is that the $10 Billion raised for the High Speed Rail line should be spent on local transit instead of intracity transit in part because money was not raised this election cycle for local transit. He mentions that HSR was the only progressive smart growth measure on the ballot in California. What?! I must have made up all of those measures in the California section of my election night post. Dana Goldstein at the Prospect calls it light rail which of course immediately turns me off to anything any article says if it isn't light rail. Apparently everything counts as light rail today to reporters, including people movers, commuter rail, HSR, and now laughably bus rapid transit(ie: light rail like!). But Dana's commentary is based on the same idea that no money was raised for local transit in the election.

What this does to me is shows that they don't get transit at all and aren't really paying attention. That's ok, I understand, it's not everyone's cup of tea. But what annoys me about it is that the lack of research to formulate an opinion that a lot of people read and trust. This makes me less trustful of the blogosphere in general. If people can't get thier facts right or understand a little bit of history (ie: they should be upset that $3 Billion has been funneled away from transit by the state but don't seem to bring up that fact) when they write opinions on something I'm deep into, what is to say that they aren't doing this when its a subject I don't quite understand?

I know that there are places I can trust. I love Grist, and I know they know about the environment and will put a lot of effort into facts. I trust them to get it right. I know Ryan and AC will get economics stuff right. There are also a ton of transit and livable communities blogs out there that I don't know what I would do without too. Here on this site I try as much as possible to back up my opinion with numbers and opinion from other smart people but it really bothers me when two organizations and bloggers write something that a lot of people read with background that is completely wrong and using tactics I come to expect from the Reason Foundation. But I also appreciate when commenters call me out for something dumb I said. We're not all immune to stupidity sometimes.

In addition, a poster gave Robert a hard time on Dana's post since they felt he was getting snotty because someone had a separate opinion than he did. He was rather pointing out what I was saying above about facts. I would usually say ok if they were defending quality work, but getting your facts wrong is not grounds for defending diversity of opinion. Having an opinion is fine with me, but let's get the background straight first.

I'll leave with a good comment from frequent commenter Bruce McFadden about the false spending dichotomy that has been set up in this country and in the initial post by Adler.

It is not unreasonable to ask the question of spending priority, but it is always unreasonable to ask the questions in terms of setting priorities between different transport modes that happen to use the same technology.

That is, the following system makes no sense at all:
1. $X set aside for rail. Allocate between light rail, mass transit, regional passenger rail, and freight rail.
2. $Y set aside for roads. Allocate between city streets, industrial parks, state highways, federal highways, freeways.

And in perpetuating that process of proposing to establish a priority rankings within pools based on technology instead of based on transport task, that is precisely what Ben Adler is supporting.

When divided up by transport task, the money required for the HSR line is substantially less than the money required for the available alternatives ... road and air.