Tanking Revenues; Monorail’s ads urge forgoing of new car purchases, but the agency’s funding depends on auto sales
Seattle Weekly
April 28 — May 4, 2004
People ride the old monorail, cars will build the new one.
One of its two potential construction teams is reorganizing at the last minute, and its tax revenues have consistently come up millions of dollars short in the first 11 months. But just so no one gets the impression that the new Seattle monorail’s ongoing $5.1 million advertising blitz is a feel- good promo for a project in trouble, officials are calling the campaign “educational.” Among other things, it suggests potential riders might want to put off buying that new car and instead opt for a lift on the new high rails. As a radio ad claims, the monorail will be arriving “soon” (2007, the scheduled opening date of a mini line from Interbay to downtown).
The catch is, if Seattleites take the monorail’s educational ads and environmental advice to heart, there won’t be a monorail. The nasty little secret of the city’s mass-transit dream is that the family Smogmaker XL is critical to the monorail’s success. The $1.6 billion project’s funding comes solely from an excise tax on Seattle’s 400,000-plus registered vehicles. Without revenues from the automobiles, the proposed 13.7-mile Green Line can’t be built. Actually, the more costly and perhaps bigger the car you own, the better for mass transit. New cars will in fact be providing most of the monorail’s tax revenue.
To put it in the form of a slogan you won’t be seeing in the monorail’s ads: Help fight pollution and gridlock — buy an SUV.
Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) Deputy Director Anne Levinson agrees “it appears on its face to be mutually inconsistent” to rely on an income source the monorail theoretically wants to supplant if not replace altogether. And while it might not look good for the green monorail to quietly pin its hopes on Glen Grant and the Huling Bros., Levinson thinks a happy medium can be found. “We feel we can change the pattern of having multiple cars in a household,” she says, “and still produce the revenue we need.”
SMP’s theory is that the monorail may inspire a drop in Seattle car ownership, but any loss of its tax base will be offset by ownership of more expensive cars, based on inflationary costs and America’s love for that new-car smell. Levinson describes it as “a growth pattern for vehicle values that far outweighs any loss from a downturn in car ownership.”
It’s clear the monorail needs that new-car value to survive. Under state law, the taxable valuation of a vehicle drops from 100 percent for a new one down to 10 percent for a vehicle 13 years or older, as it depreciates.
The current taxable value of all eligible personal and commercial cars, vans, and trucks in Seattle is $3.2 billion. The monorail expects that current value to increase to $15.8 billion by 2030.
That projected 6.1 percent annual growth in value — based in part on SMP’s assumption that car prices will rise faster than standard inflation — is what monorail officials say they need to make it all work.
The SMP tends to emphasize this $12.6 bil- lion increase as added value, not added vehicles. But there almost certainly will be more cars. Population increases alone are expected to continually boost ownership, new or used, in Seattle (although at a relatively lower rate if there’s a monorail option, along with the new Sound Transit light-rail system). National trends also reflect a relentless climb in car ownership despite the expansion of mass transit systems.
Of course, de-emphasizing any dependency on the car is a politically strategic position for SMP. After all, its new ads on radio and TV and in print, including Seattle Weekly, promise the electric-powered monorail will improve lifestyles and the environment, cutting out 5 million local car trips a year and helping unclog streets and clear the air. However, there’s a catch to that, too. The cutbacks would be in the growth of gridlock and emissions, not a decrease from their current levels. A major, lasting environmental reversal would likely require a corresponding abandonment of the car, and mean less revenue for SMP.
Under the financial plan approved by voters in 2002, the 1.4 percent annual monorail tax is tacked onto license plate tab sales within Seattle. For the past year, the monorail has been collecting at a sort of introductory rate of 0.85 percent, based on the value of the vehicle. On June 1, the fee jumps to the full 1.4 percent ($140 for the owner of a $10,000 car). The tax was supposed to last until 2020 but may be extended to 2030 or longer.
SMP originally overshot its revenue estimates by as much as a third. That shortfall, in the hundreds of millions, led to design changes, spending cuts, and a crackdown on supposed scofflaws who try to avoid paying the tax by claiming an out-of-town address when registering their cars. As of Friday, April 23, a new administrative rule by the state Department of Licensing adds a potential prison sentence to such evasions. At SMP’s request, the DOL has made false registration of an address a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Monorail officials are promising creative financing efforts and other measures to fully fund the project. Exactly what their plans are isn’t clear — though they’re promising an educational campaign on that topic, too. There is yet no sign, however, that the tax gap is being shortened. SMP expected an average collection of more than $3 million a month from the car tax in the first, lower-taxed year, but has averaged only $2.2 million in the first 11 months, state figures showed last week (though the monorail’s March take, $2.5 million, is its largest so far).
At the same time, SMP has been rocked by the “repositioning” of one of its two construction bid teams as the deadline nears. The teams, one headed by Hitachi Ltd., the other by Bombardier Transit Corp., are scheduled to submit bids June 15. Builders Peter Kiewit Sons’ Inc. and Granite Construction quit Bombardier’s Team Monorail as major contractors, not wanting to shoulder the liability, says Team Monorail executive Tom Stone. Though he says his group determined in December that the project could be built with the money available, he’s scrambling to reposition other companies into the lead roles to firm up his bid. Says SMP’s executive director, Joel Horn: “It’s quite common for that to happen. We’re still on track to break ground this fall.”
SMP officials are likewise optimistic about funding. One of its new tax studies notes that as evolution of the features and technology of automobiles occurs, it’s likely the average vehicle price “will continue to grow at a rate greater than other goods and services. . . . The logical extension of this [rising price] perspective is that it is very unlikely that the Monorail’s finances will be impaired significantly over the long term by its own success.” Just keep those weekend blowout sales a-comin’.
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A landmark for rail
Portland Oregonian
May 1, 2004
The opening of TriMet’s Yellow Line adds an important link to the metro area’s transportation system
Today marks another landmark for TriMet’s successful mass transit system, with the opening of the Interstate line of the MAX light-rail network. TriMet and its supporters have planned a number of activities to observe the occasion.
We think it’s notable that the 5.8-mile addition to the rail system opened sooner than expected and at a cost of $20 million to $25 million below its $350 million budget.
We also think it’s notable that by combining the rail project with urban redevelopment efforts, TriMet, the Portland Redevelopment Commission and the city of Portland are off on the right foot in terms of making the project be what light rail should be — a catalyst for development and economic activity.
It has been 18 years since the first light-rail line of the modern era opened in Portland. If you’ll recall, the MAX line between downtown Portland and downtown Gresham was seen primarily, at first, as an alternative to building more freeway on the east side of the metro area. It’s hard to know whether the line really served that purpose or simply suppressed development in East Portland and east county. The worst traffic congestion on the Banfield begins at Interstate 205 and the Glenn Jackson Bridge to Vancouver, after all. Whether that’s because light rail goes to Gresham or doesn’t go to Vancouver is an open question, it seems to us.
But it’s clear that MAX has become a popular alternative for transit riders on Portland’s east and west sides and that it works well.
As the metro area grows, this is important because it means the community has more, and cheaper, options than adding expensive freeway lanes. Where rail lines exist, the system can add rail cars, which are cheaper than freeway lanes by several orders of magnitude.
Light rail’s role as a smart-development tool, of course, is much debated. In other parts of the system, the record has been spotty. Critics like to point to the checkered history of the Beaverton Round development. They are less likely to mention the successful Gresham Station project, though. In any case, investment from PDC and decisions by a couple of major retailers to build along the Yellow Line seem to be leading the Interstate Avenue area in the right direction.
We continue to believe that light rail offers this region a vital tool to cope with growth. It helps focus development, which ultimately lowers the cost of public infrastructure. It has less negative impact on communities than freeways and large thoroughfares have when they bisect neighborhoods. It keeps cars off of the roads, which reduces air pollution.
Light rail isn’t problem-free. It will be a challenge for TriMet to manage its growth in rail traffic, as The Oregonian’s Randy Gragg pointed out in a story Friday. It will be a challenge to find the capital to expand the system, even if Vancouver and Clackamas County voters come to see rail as valuable to them. And it will be a challenge to make rail as convenient and as speedy as possible for commuters.
The new Yellow Line has attracted a lot of national attention because it was innovative and a well-managed project. But the entire system attracts deserved national attention because it has turned out to be far more than that. It has helped keep our metro area moving, while knitting it together.
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Monorail team replaces its lost partners; That means there will be two construction groups bidding for the job after all
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
May 1, 2004
One of two teams expecting to bid for the job of building and running Seattle’s new monorail Friday said it had found new construction partners to replace three that had departed, and monorail officials were scrutinizing the new group.
The move could save the Seattle Monorail Project from having only one bidder for its 14-mile system, part of which the agency wants to open by late 2007.
But even the losing bidder stands to earn $2 million. “We’re in,” said Dick McNamara, a member of “Team Monorail,” a group of contractors and consultants including monorail train manufacturer Bombardier Transit Corp. “We believe in this project completely.”
The group has found civil contractors of sufficient size and experience to replace three departed partners — Granite Construction Co., Kiewit Construction Co. and Wilder Construction Co. — who pulled out of the team about three weeks ago, McNamara said.
One, Kiewit, cited the press of other business and its lack of experience in monorail projects as the reason for leaving. Granite and Wilder declined comment.
McNamara declined yesterday to reveal what companies had replaced the three departed ones, except to say they are “highly qualified to bid effectively on this project.”
The Seattle Monorail Project, builder of the proposed system, was notified yesterday of the new team. Its construction director, Tom Horkan, also declined to disclose details but said his agency must approve the changes and plans to complete a review of them in the next two weeks, though the review could take longer.
He said the agency will examine each new member’s experience, their ability to meet financial requirements, previous projects completed and the key managers before approving them. Team Monorail originally had 19 company members; McNamara declined to say how many are in the new team or where they’re from.
The second team, a group of 29 companies organized around Hitachi monorail trains, has not reported any defections in its ranks.
If the second team is approved, the two groups will have until June 15 to submit bids for designing and building the 14-mile system and operating and maintaining it for five years after it begins running. Monorail officials hope to begin construction of the system this fall, open an initial segment in late 2007 and have the full system running by 2009.
Once one team is declared the winner, the losing group will receive a $2 million payment for its proposals, in effect selling the rights to the bid information to the monorail agency, which in turn could use some of it in the system built by the winning companies.
McNamara and Horkan said such an arrangement is common for larger transportation projects.
Similar “stipends” were paid to losing bidders for the Interstate 15 expansion project in Utah, a 1.6-billion highway and light rail project in Denver and a major state toll road construction project in Texas, Horkan said. Such payments usually cover only a portion of what it costs to prepare and submit a bid.
Horkan said the $2 million paid to the losing monorail bidder could cover less than half of a bidder’s cost, which could range from $4 million to $5 million.
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Light rail comes to Minneapolis: commuters get set to greet the 12-mile Hiawatha Line; Planning Practice
Planning
May 1, 2004
Fifty years after the last streetcars ceased service in the Twin Cities, light rail is getting ready to begin again in Minneapolis. Originally scheduled to open last month, the 12-mile Hiawatha Light Rail Transit Line has been delayed by a bus drivers’ strike that began March 3. The strike interrupted the bus drivers’ training to become train operators.
When fully operational — in December if all goes as planned — the line will connect downtown Minneapolis with the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and the Mall of America, the giant shopping center in suburban Bloomington.
Like other light rail systems recently built in the U.S., this one has required considerable preparation and planning to accommodate expected land-use changes along the line — including increased housing densities and new retail opportunities. “Through the planning process,” says Mike Larson, a senior planner for the city of Minneapolis, “we are developing an understanding of the issues. We are seeing little changes already, but we are laying the groundwork for future change.”
Nuts and bolts
The January 2001 groundbreaking for the Hiawatha Line was generally greeted with applause, although not by everyone. Various routes and alignments had been batted about for years. In the end, Hiawatha Avenue was chosen because extensive right-of- way had been acquired along the west side of the corridor.
In fact, light rail almost didn’t happen in the Twin Cities. APA’s executive director, Paul Farmer, AICP, recalls the rampant skepticism about any sort of urban rail line during his tenure as Minneapolis planning director in the 1990s.
“State highway advocates had been advancing their own version as part of a back-door deal to expand a freeway. David Sonnenberg, the city’s public works director, and I got the mayor to consider this project instead,” he says. Farmer credits the planning commission — and particularly the late Dick Little — with playing an important role in bringing light rail to Minneapolis.
According to Farmer, what’s now light rail was originally promoted as a bus rapid transit line, with a possibility of later conversion to rail. When rail advocates saw that it was possible, “it became the fastest conversion of BRT to LRT in history,” he says.
From downtown Minneapolis, the line follows Hiawatha Avenue (Minnesota State Highway 55) diagonally across the southeastern portion of the city. It then tunnels under the airport to the eastern part of the suburb of Bloomington, with a station at the Mall of America.
By 2020, according to a forecast by the Minnesota Department of Transportation, the ridership is expected to reach 25,000 a day.
There is an obstacle, however. In much of south Minneapolis, the Hiawatha Line runs just to the west of Hiawatha Avenue, a four-lane divided arterial with a 40-mile-per-hour speed limit. The east side of the street is lined with industrial uses, creating an additional barrier for riders walking to the station from that direction. However, redevelopment of the industrial uses is a long-term potential for the area.
Two tunnels, each 7,400 feet long, will carry trains north and south, with an underground station at the Lindbergh Terminal, the main passenger terminal at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
The cars, built by Montreal-based Bombardier, Inc., are 94 feet long, with a capacity of 187 passengers. They are fully ADA compliant and equipped with luggage racks and bicycle storage hangers. Trains will operate at an average of 30 to 35 miles per hour, with a top speed of 55 miles per hour. Rush-hour trains are expected to run at seven-and a-half-minute intervals, with 15- to 30-minute service in the early morning and late night.
Costs
Total construction costs will be approximately $ 715 million, with funding to come from a variety of sources. They include the Federal Transit Administration ($ 334 million), the state of Minnesota ($ 100 million), the Metropolitan Airports Commission ($ 87 million), and the Hennepin County Regional Rail Authority ($ 84 million).
In addition, the project received a $ 50 million federal congestion mitigation and air quality grant, a $ 20 million grant from the state transportation department, and a $ 40 million transit capital grant from TEA’s New Starts program.
To encourage rail ridership, the Metropolitan Council and its subsidiary, Metro Transit, which will operate the light rail systen, will reroute and retime some bus routes to connect with the Hiawatha Line. Forty-six bus routes will serve 13 of the 17 rail stations.
The Metropolitan Council and the city of Minneapolis have also proposed (but nor yet received funding for) a new downtown bus circulator route; a connection to the University of Minnesota from the Downtown East station; a connection to a tram at the main terminal of the airport; and a link to the largest transit center in the Metro Transit system, located at the Mall of America.
Stations in downtown Minneapolis will serve the Warehouse District (an entertainment area); the high-density office core, the Minneapolis City Hall and the Hennepin County Government Center; and the Metrodome stadium. Outside downtown, the line will serve the West Bank area of the University of Minnesota; a commercial district at Lake Street; and residential areas in southeastern Minneapolis.
Each of the 17 stations was individually designed by different architects to fit into the surrounding neighborhood. The Downtown East station clearly imitates the Stone Arch Bridge, an historic pedestrian bridge spanning the Mississippi River. Other stations, such as 38th Street, echo the architecture of nearby homes.
Several stations will have “kiss and-ride” lanes for passenger dropoffs, and others, like the Mall of America, with its immense parking ramps, will offer park-and-ride service.
A complex process
Way back in 1998, when planning started for the Hiawatha Line, city planners set forth five goals for the system: to “preserve the livability of all adjacent neighborhoods through careful planning for land use and station area development”; to “strengthen neighborhoods by reinvestment in housing, multi-use facilities and renovation projects”; to “attract new employment opportunities throughout the corridor”; to “improve alternate transportation options [including bus service]”; and to “promote the continued growth, accessibility and economic vitality of downtown Minneapolis.”
Working with the Metropolitan Council and Hennepin County Commission, the city initiated a planning process for six areas that will be particularly affected by the new line. The plans are being created by neighborhood residents and business groups, aided by consultants hired by the city. They are designed to serve as a guide for changes that will occur after rail service begins and to ensure that each station is a positive influence on the neighborhoods affected.
“What is striking,” says Mark Garner, a planner with the city, “is that the more planning that has been done, the more engaged the neighborhood has been.” The plans assess land uses within a half-mile of each station. Recommendations range from proposing new pedestrian connections to the stations to identifying specific sites for redevelopment.
The plan for 38th Street is in progress, while the 50th Street plan has not yet received funding. But three station-area plans were approved in 2001, including the combined Franklin-Cedar/Riverside transit-oriented development plan, which was prepared by a consulting team led by the SRF Consulting Group of Minnetonka with considerable community in put. This plan grappled with some of the greatest challenges along the Hiawatha Line.
For one thing, both station areas are almost entirely built up. They are also divided by two interstate highways and a major intersection at Franklin Avenue that created a no man’s land. “Considerable design effort and community attention was focused on how to recapture that area,” says Monique MacKenzie, AICP, a former Minneapolis planner who is now with SRF. The plan calls for realigning the intersection and reducing lanes on Franklin. Little has happened to date, however.
So Far, no specific development proposals have emerged for the Franklin Avenue station area, but at Cedar/Riverside, a new restaurant abuts the station.
The plan for the Hiawatha/Lake Street station area, by Calthorpe Associates in Berkeley, California, and the IBI Group of Vancouver, British Columbia, was also approved in 2001. It covers an automobile-oriented retail center that includes a new YWCA, a tired-looking retail mall, and assorted industrial uses.
The plan recommends streetscape improvements to Lake Street; the establishment of pedestrian connections to the station from the surrounding neighborhoods; and a public plaza adjacent to the station. “We encouraged mixed use in a pedestrian-friendly environment,” says Gary Andrishak of the IBI Group.
The aging mall, the Hi-Lake Shopping Center, is a focus of the plan, which recommends relatively high-density development — up to 450 residential units (at a floor-area-ratio 0f 2.5 to 3.0), with retail uses moved forward to front on Lake Street. No proposals have been submitted to date, Andrishak says, bur a recent change in ownership could bode well. The area’s long-term potential is significant, and “the LRT station is the key to start,” he says.
Slow to change
Forty-Sixth and Hiawatha is another auto-dominated area. The 46th Street station area plan, created by a team led by Farr Associates of Chicago, and adopted by the city council in December 2001, calls for a variety of changes ranging from a town square to mixed-use development in three- and four-story buildings. So Far, little has happened in this relatively prosperous area.
In addition to these plans, another document, the Downtown East/North Loop master plan, by the IBI Group and the Hoisington Koegler Group of Minneapolis, was released last June, and has since been adopted. It encompasses all five Hiawatha Line stations in the downtown,
This plan was not commissioned specifically to address light rail service. But since the light rail was under construction and was sure to affect future land use, the plan recommended that development be concentrated near the slatterns. It also encourages high-quality public spaces and streetscapes and recommends that a new “downtown mixed-use district” be added to the zoning code.
TOD potential
The 38th Street station area master plan should be finished within a few months. Public meetings began last summer with SRF Consulting as the lead planner on the project.
Potential changes include creating active street life along 38th Street; improving landscaping; making walking and biking to the station easier; and maintaining and rehabilitating older buildings. “The plan foresees a compact core of activity around the station site, up to one-quarter mile east and west of the platform,” says Monique MacKenzie, leader of the SRF team.
This area also includes an early example of a small transit-oriented development project, this one on the site of a former gas station. Hiawatha Square, which includes 16 residential units with a small amount of retail space, is under construction a block west of the 38th Street station.
The Hiawatha Square project is typical of other small infill projects in the Minneapolis area, but its proximity to the Hiawatha line is an added attraction. It’s an encouraging sign that developers understand the attraction of light rail nearby.
A December 1999 market study completed by a consulting team estimated development potential for transit-oriented development in each station area, and recommended four “catalyst stations” for development. They are: Downtown East, Lake Street, 46th Street, and Bloomington Central. (The consultants were ZHA, Inc., of Annapolis, Maryland, and Zimmerman/Volk Associates of Clinton, New Jersey.)
In fact, infill development has been occurring near the proposed Hiawatha Line for years, in part because of renewed interest in the central city. The presence of light rail service connecting the downtown employment and entertainment center, the airport, and the Mall of America makes the idea even more attractive.
Bloomington blossoms
To date, there has been substantial interest in development along the Minneapolis light rail corridor. Numerous housing and mixed-use projects have been proposed, and some are even under construction.
What’s surprising is that the most notable project along the Hiawatha Line to date is at the Bloomington Central station. It is notable because, unlike Minneapolis, the city of Bloomington has not undertaken a formal planning process for the area.
The proposal, by McGough Companies of Roseville, calls for a $ 600 million, 45-acre pedestrian-oriented town center development, including a 400-room hotel, an indoor water park, 1,000 condominium units, and 1.2 million square feet of retail and office space. The first 250-unit condominium development is proposed to be completed by mid-2005. Great Northern Resorts will be the developer of the hotel component.
The advantage of the Bloomington Central site is that it is essentially a greenfield development, with one existing office tower, some one-story industrial uses, and several acres of surface parking. The project would be completed in phases. A major draw is the site’s proximity to the Mall of America, only one mile to the west. The airport and Interstate 494 are also just minutes away.
There has been no station-area planning for Bloomington’s Mall of America. In 2003, however, the mall owners agreed to allow Metro Transit to locate the light rail station near the entrance to the mall and next to the existing bus station, the most heavily used in the Twin Cities area. Originally, the station was to be beyond the mall’s east parking ramp, requiring riders to cross a major arterial to reach the shops.
Looking ahead
Clearly, Minneapolis’s extensive station-area planning has been useful, but the ongoing cooperation of private and public entities is critical to create transit-oriented development. “Master plans must be well-coordinated to achieve success,” says Mark Garner. “When you are talking about intensification of land uses, phasing and implementation need to be discussed at a much higher level of detail. There are lots of pieces that have to be worked out together, but it will become easier as we go forward.”
Looking ahead, one thing is certain. Light rail will change land-use and travel patterns along its route. Says Gary Andrishak, “Minneapolis is in for a pleasant surprise with regard to how light rail brings development and fits into the streetscape.”
To this end, the collective planning processes of neighborhood groups, the cities of Minneapolis and Bloomington, along with guidance from the Metropolitan Council, have helped to prepare areas along the Hiawatha Line for future changes.
National Update
Nationwide, light rail lines are up and running in numerous cities. In many cases, ridership is higher than expected, and service continues to expand. Among the cities:
Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Metro Transit Authority last July opened the 13.7-mile Gold Line, serving downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena. The light rail line adds to an already successful local transit system. The Blue Line, connecting Los Angeles and Long Beach, serves 64,000 riders a day. The Red Line subway, connecting downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood, serves 130,000 a day. The Red Line is a heavy rail line; it connects to the light rail system.
Development response has been substantial, with transit-oriented development popping up near many Red Line stations, including the glamorous Hollywood & Highland retail-entertainment complex, and several projects are completed or under way near Gold Line stations as well. Just a short walk from the Mission Station, for instance, a project called Mission Meridian Village sold all its condominium and townhouse units even before prices were firm.
Denver. The Denver Regional Transportation District is building a 19.5-mile, 13-station light rail line, the city’s third. It will serve the southeast sector, along the Interstate 25 corridor. Light rail has been well-received in Denver, with the existing lines serving major sports facilities and the downtown. A fourth line, serving the West Corridor, is undergoing preliminary engineering and environmental assessment.
The area’s most notable TOD project is the suburban Englewood City Center, a mixed-use development with more than 500 residential rental units, retail space, a public park, city hall, and library. Other rail service has been proposed to connect downtown Denver to Boulder and to the Denver international Airport.
Portland. A leader in light rail service (MAX) and TOD, Portland, Oregon, is in the process of adding a 6.5-mile line that will run along the Interstate 205 corridor, connecting north Portland neighborhoods to the downtown. The Interstate MAX Yellow Line is expected to open this month, bringing total light rail trackage in Portland to nearly 50 miles. In 2001, service was extended to the Portland International Airport.
Portland’s 2.4-mile trolley line, which opened in 2001, has stimulated residential construction in the Pearl District just south of downtown. A mile-long extension, planned to open in 2005, will serve Portland State University.
St. Louis. An eight-mile extension of the St. Louis light rail system, called the Cross-Country Line, is under construction. When finished in 2006, the system will cover 46 miles and will connect East St. Louis, Illinois, the St. Louis International Airport (Lambert Field), the Central West End, and southwest suburbs to downtown St. Louis.
Phoenix. The 20-mile Valley Metro Rail will begin construction this summer, serving downtown Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa. It’s expected to be complete by 2007, Along the route are connections to Sky Harbor Airport and Arizona State University. Substantial planning has gone into station areas, including TOD overlay zoning to help guide growth along the line.
Houston. Houston opened its first 7.5-mile light rail line in January. Called METRORail, the line connects downtown, Midtown, the Museum District, the Texas Medical Center, and Reliant Park. Long-range plans call for over 50 miles of track by 2025.
Dallas. Light rail has gained popularity in Dallas and Fort Worth since the first line opened in 1996. The 44-mile system presently serves downtown Dallas, Plano, Richardson, and Garland. The Trinity Railway Express, a commuter rail line, connects downtown Dallas and Fort Worth, 30 miles to the west.
Transit-oriented development projects include downtown Plano and the South Side at Lamar, located just south of downtown Dallas. The most notable project is the heavily publicized Mockingbird Station, with shops, offices, loft apartments, and an eight-screen movie theater. Several additional routes are in preliminary engineering in Dallas and Fort Worth, with extensions planned to the cities of Carrolton and Irving.
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What’s happening with TEA-21: how much will the federal government invest in transit and planning over the next six years?Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century
Planning
May 1, 2004
The answer to that question is at once unclear and critical to determining the outcome of the congressional reauthorization of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century.
Eight months after TEA-21 expired last September, House and Senate leaders and Bush administration officials continue to wrangle over transportation spending. Some House members are pressing for an 18-month extension in hopes of a better political and fiscal climate for transportation spending after the upcoming election.
The administration outlined its priorities last spring in the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, and Efficient Transportation Equity Act (SAFETEA), which called for $ 256 billion in transportation spending over six years. The immediate response from Capitol Hill was a resounding “no.”
But while House and Senate leaders agree that the administration’s proposal was insufficiently funded, there has been no immediate consensus on an alternative. Even after TEA-21 expired, jockeying continued over various funding mechanisms, including a gas tax increase and bonds. As a result, Congress was forced to extend TEA-21 until February 29. Meanwhile, the budgetary climate worsened.
Finally, in mid-February, the Senate passed its version of reauthorization. Days later, just hours before the deadline, when federal transportation agencies would have been forced to shut their doors, the House approved another extension, to June 30. This extension, like the first one, includes a provision that prevents funds from being transferred from special programs, such as air quality and enhancements, to highway construction. Numerous groups, including APA, had lobbied for this provision.
Senate action
The Senate’s $ 318 billion version of the bill takes the administration’s SAFETEA title, but differs in a fundamental way. S.1072 would generally preserve existing programs, but funding increases would be provided by capturing revenue from ethanol and other gas tax subsidies, using trust fund interest, and closing various tax code loopholes.
In the middle of the Senate’s floor debate, the administration released a letter threatening to veto any bill that violated one of three conditions: no gas tax increase, no use of bonds, and no use of general funds.
Senate leaders, including James Inhofe (R-Okla.), chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the Finance Committee, maintain that S.1072 meets that test. But Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and others in the administration characterize the proposed revision of the tax code as contrary to the prohibition against the use of general funds.
Senate drafters of the bill proposed to repay the highway trust fund for revenues lost from ethanol discounts and a variety of fuel tax exemptions (e.g., for school districts). Users could still benefit from the exemptions and discounts, but the trust fund would be reimbursed from the general fund.
In addition, the bill shifts revenues resulting from closing tax loopholes into the trust fund, not the general fund. The White House views these techniques as violations of its position on using general fund revenues for transportation.
Lost in the very public debate on funding were the bill’s important policy provisions. The measure would establish a number of new programs, notably a $ 70 million safe routes to school initiative and a two percent set-aside of Surface Transportation Program funds for stormwater mitigation projects. The bill also creates a new program designed to promote innovative transportation in national parks.
Metropolitan planning organizations would also get a boost in the Senate version. A provision advanced by Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) would raise the set-aside for MPOs from the current one percent to 1.5 percent. An increase in MPO funds was among APA’s key reauthorization objectives. Road builders and state transportation departments have signaled their opposition both to this provision and to the new stormwater program. Both are sure to come up again in the House.
The Senate rejected an administration effort to consolidate the Transportation Improvement Program with the Long Range Transportation Plan, but it did make some changes. For one thing, it requires TIPs to be updated every four years. LRTPs must be updated at least every four years in designated non-attainment and maintenance areas and every five years in areas that have met clean air goals.
The bill also requires that determinations of conformity with the Clean Air Act be based on the first 10 years of a long-range plan. The current standard requires examination over the LRTP’s full 20-year time frame.
The legislation also calls for better coordination with habitat and wildlife plans, and it provides new language for integrating land-use and transportation plans.
In addition, the bill retains the Transportation and Community and System Preservation Program, funded at $ 50 million. TCSP is a grant program designed to support projects that improve the link between transportation and land use. The program is widely supported by planners, smart growth advocates, and local governments, and has long had many more applications than available funds.
The Bush administration wanted to turn TCSP into a formula grant, with each state receiving an equal share. This approach, opposed by APA, was rejected by the Senate.
Gains and losses
To its credit, the Senate bill maintains several key transit provisions, including guaranteed funding. Some senators initially proposed to make much of the transit program dependent on often uncertain general fund revenues. Guaranteed funding was restored by the bill in response to an outcry from transit advocates.
The bill retains an approximate 80 federal-20 local ratio of highway spending to transit spending. The administration had proposed increasing the local match to 50 percent.
It also establishes a Small Starts program for transit projects under $ 75 million, including bus rapid transit. It provides $ 9.6 billion for the New Starts program, which funds fixed guideway transit investments, and it reauthorizes the Jobs Access and Reverse Commute program at $ 835 million.
Several provisions have raised hackles. One is Section 4(f), which protects historic and natural resources. Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) had called for drastically shortened 40) reviews. A compromise led to the idea of a new “de minimus” impact standard for transportation projects that would have a limited impact and allow shorter reviews. The National Trust for Historic Preservation agreed, but some environmentalists charge that the compromise leaves natural resources unprotected; they hope to alter the language in the House.
Another point of debate centered on provisions to speed some reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The bill allows the Federal Highway Administration to be a lead project sponsor for certain projects. The FHA may also transfer this status to state agencies. Under the new provisions, lead project sponsors are not bound to consider adopted MPO plans when making NEPA-required “purpose and need determinations.” MPO advocates, including APA, urged that the provision be amended to require consideration of these plans.
Rail advocates nearly succeeded in attaching a reauthorization of Amtrak and securing funding for a variety of rail infrastructure projects through a new bond program. Despite bipartisan support, their efforts failed.
What’s ahead
Still unresolved is the hotly debated question of how much funding states receive compared to their contribution to the highway trust fund. TEA-21 guaranteed a return of at least 90.5 percent for all “donor” states. The Senate bill creates a new “equity bonus” formula that would raise to 95 percent the minimum amount guaranteed to all states by the end of the six-year reauthorization period.
Overall funding levels for the transportation program will have an impact on these minimum guarantees. The funding levels proposed by the administration ($ 256 billion) and the House leadership ($ 275 billion) are too low to meet the 95 percent threshold set by the Senate.
It is uncertain when the House will act on the legislation. A mark-up on the bill was scheduled for late March, but numerous other such targets have been delayed repeatedly.
The situation in the House is murky on several fronts. The planning section of the bill, dubbed the Transportation Equity Act — Legacy for Users, has not yet been made public, leaving in doubt many critically important provisions. Observors speculate that significant portions of TEA-LU will be changed in light of downward funding adjustments.
Meanwhile, debate continues. House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) is insisting on the $ 275 billion. But Don Young (R-Alaska), chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, originally proposed $ 375 billion. Whether he will be willing to drop $ 100 million is still an open question. Many advocates of transit and other non-highway programs fear that, as negotiations push funding lower, programs such as enhancements, CMAQ, transit, and planning funding will suffer disproportionately.
Key senators insist they will hold fast to their goals in conference committee negotiations, regardless of a veto threat — or the proposal to simply adopt an 18-month, $ 90 million extension. The debate’s fiscal contours have frustrated many transportation advocates, who fear that policy issues will continue to get short shrift.
With a June 30 deadline looming and a record deficit and campaign politics already influencing the debate, the immediate future for reauthorization is anything but clear. APA will continue to monitor the debate and final negotiations.
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Gold Line add-on detailed
Long Beach Press-Telegram
May 1, 2004
A long-awaited study on the proposed $1.3 billion Metro Gold Line Foothill Extension was released Friday, detailing the 24-mile light rail that would run between Pasadena and Montclair. The Gold Line route would pass through Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Irwindale, Azusa, Glendora, San Dimas, La Verne, Pomona and Claremont.
The light rail’s inaugural 13.7-mile stretch, from Union Station in Los Angeles to Sierra Madre Villa Avenue in Pasadena, opened last July. Construction will soon begin on a 6-mile second leg of the Gold Line, from Union Station to Atlantic and Pomona boulevards in East Los Angeles.
The report examines the proposed Montclair route “mile by mile,” said Habib Balian, interim CEO of the Gold Line Construction Authority. Sites have been picked for 12 train stations, one in each city — plus an additional stop near the proposed Monrovia Nursery development in Azusa, a 500-acre property on which as many as 1,250 houses and condominiums may be built. Azusa voters will decide that matter in a city special election Tuesday.
Like the Pasadena Gold Line, the light rail will travel to Montclair along a Burlington Northern Santa Fe right-of-way — but parts of these tracks are still periodically used by freight trains. Much of the Montclair route will run at ground level, as compared to the construction challenges of the Pasadena Gold Line: its long elevated portion through Chinatown, its “street-running” stretch down the middle of narrow Marmion Way in Highland Park, and its underground sections below Highland Park and Old Pasadena, Balian noted.
Unlike the Pasadena Gold Line, the Montclair extension would have passenger parking at all of its stations, Balian said. The environmental impact report must take into account four options for the corridor: that nothing would be built; that only bus system and surface street improvements — such as traffic signal synchronization — would be implemented along the route; and that the light rail would be built only to Irwindale; or that the passenger train route be constructed all the way to Montclair.
All 12 cities along the route have officially backed that fourth option as their “preferred alternative.” The construction authority’s board of directors also will have to approve the environmental impact report before the agency could seek federal government certification and funding. The draft environmental impact report, which is several hundred pages long, is available online at www.metrogoldline.org
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Orange County; Rail Line Doubt Arises; O.C. officials must decide whether the nine-mile CenterLine proposal qualifies for $340million raised by the Measure M sales tax
Los Angeles Times
May 1, 2004
A government committee that monitors transportation spending in Orange County is raising new questions about whether $340 million in local sales tax revenue can be spent on the controversial CenterLine light-rail system.
If the panel finds that CenterLine does not qualify for funds from Measure M — a 1990 ballot initiative that provided sales tax revenue for transportation projects — a rail proposal that has been scaled back from 28 miles to nine miles because of political opposition would suffer another blow.
For almost three months, the Measure M Citizens Oversight Committee has been grappling with the nuances, vagaries and wording of the initiative and its criteria for funding projects.
Passed by voters after three attempts, Measure M established a 0.5% sales tax to raise billions of dollars for local transportation projects until 2011. It provides general guidelines for a variety of highway, street, rail and transit projects undertaken by the Orange County Transportation Authority and local cities.
The initiative also created the oversight committee with nine members selected by the Orange County Grand Jury. Panel members review projects funded by the sales tax to make sure they conform to Measure M’s requirements.
The committee began looking into CenterLine after a group of light-rail opponents complained at the panel’s Feb. 10 meeting that the proposal was inconsistent with project descriptions in Measure M.
Among the speakers were Orange County Treasurer John M.W. Moorlach, Supervisor Chris Norby, Tustin Mayor Tracy Worley Hagen, Mission Viejo Mayor Gail Reavis, a representative from Assemblyman John Campbell’s (R-Irvine) office and several transportation activists.
“We want to see what the project is now and compare it with what was presented in Measure M to the voters,” said county Auditor-Controller David E. Sundstrom, who chairs the oversight committee. “CenterLine was not drawn up when the initiative went to a vote.”
As now envisioned, the $1-billion street car system would run from John Wayne Airport to the Santa Ana Regional Transportation Center. The line, which is in the engineering phase, would pass through the South Coast Plaza area and proceed up Bristol Street.
OCTA contends that the project has always met Measure M’s requirements to develop existing rights-of-way and to initiate what the initiative calls a “high-capacity urban rail system” in Orange County. Authority officials say the line meets requirements to make “primary improvements” to the county’s main north-south railroad route, the so-called LOSSAN corridor that runs from Los Angeles — through Orange County from Buena Park to San Clemente — to San Diego.
Plans show that CenterLine will connect to the rail corridor’s tracks at the Santa Ana train depot, which is also used by Metrolink and Amtrak trains. The measure also talks about developing extensions from the corridor using so-called people-movers or trams and fixed guideway transit lines.
Although Measure M does not mention CenterLine or even a general description of the project, a map contained in the ballot materials shows the proposed path of an urban rail system. It is similar to CenterLine’s route.
Just as significant, OCTA officials said the oversight committee has ruled repeatedly that Measure M funds used for the project have been spent properly. So far, CenterLine has received about $25 million in sales tax revenue.
“Before Measure M was passed, there was a rail plan for the county” that included many of the elements of CenterLine, said Monte Ward, OCTA’s special projects manager who helped draft the ballot initiative. “There have been explicit discussions about this at OCTA, with the oversight committee, and in countless public hearings,” Ward said.
But this week at the committee’s April meeting, the discussion focused on opponents’ claims that CenterLine’s receipt of $340 million in Measure M funds would contradict the thrust of the initiative’s rail component.
Committee members pondered whether the benefits of a nine-mile line that served Santa Ana and Costa Mesa would benefit the county and the north-south rail corridor, which is a priority of Measure M. The initiative states that “the primary improvements will be along the LOSSAN rail corridor and designed to provide frequent train service between north and south Orange County.”
About $257 million in Measure M funds helped to establish the Metrolink commuter rail service along the rail corridor in Orange County. Opponents have claimed that if CenterLine gets $340 million, it would mean that the “primary improvements” would shift improperly to the extensions described in Measure M.
The project “has morphed a few times. Today it is (nine) miles long through Santa Ana and Costa Mesa. It is not LOSSAN oriented,” Sundstrom said. “There might be an inconsistency on the primary improvements language.”
Sundstrom mentioned, however, that the wording of Measure M might be so vague that the committee cannot make a decision. In that case, he said, the panel might recommend CenterLine be put to a countywide vote.
The panel is scheduled to continue the discussion at its June meeting. If the committee rules against CenterLine, the OCTA board of directors, which has overwhelmingly supported the project, is not compelled to comply with the finding. Nevertheless, Ward said such a decision would be a serious defeat and open the way for possible taxpayer lawsuits. “If the committee has misgivings, it would be a significant issue from a public perception and public relations standpoint,” Ward said.
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Monorail foes file suit to halt project
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
May 1, 2004
The battle over the city’s proposed monorail system, steadily heating up in political circles, has ended up in court.
Opponents, under a deadline, have asked the King County Superior Court to throw out both an environmental impact statement done for the system and a decision by the Seattle Monorail Project board to accept a 14-mile route between Ballard and West Seattle.
The suit, filed Wednesday, said the environmental study didn’t adequately address the effects of the new line. The suit also alleged that the board’s approval of the corridor “prejudiced and pre-empted” two administrative appeals of the study filed several days before the board approved the corridor March 29.
Filing the suit were On Track, a group of monorail opponents, and 10 real- estate companies that own or manage properties along the route downtown. Attorney Melody McCutcheon said the group sued because the monorail agency filed a notice that forced it to.
Ross Macfarlane, the monorail’s legal and environmental affairs director, said the suit is “premature” because a hearing examiner hasn’t completed a review of the administrative appeals.
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CCTV Today
May 1, 2004
If ever there were any doubts left about using digital images as evidence, then the new surveillance system an the Tyne and Wear Metro has blown them away. Over 7 million [pounds sterling] of government money has helped fund one of the largest transport surveillance schemes in the UK. Images from every one of the 550 cameras — covering the Metro stations and approaches, car parks and public transport interchanges — are digitally recorded.
But it was not always so. The initial Home Office acceptance of the bid was subject to various conditions about the digital recording and other aspects of the scheme. Officials needed to be convinced that the proposed system could produce recordings that could be used reliably in prosecutions. So in 2001, the Home Office agreed to a 750,000 [pounds sterling] pilot scheme, covering just three stations, in order to test the viability of the full scheme. Its success not only led to the full funding award early in 2002, but as the scheme progressed, the scope of the project was increased with the addition of bus stations in the Tyne & Wear area.
The relatively short timescale for installing such a big surveillance project meant that the traditional contract approach of detailed tender documents was dispensed with, Instead, there was an overview contract with an activity schedule for the work at each station. This identified all the main elements of the work, but not the specific detail, such as cable routes. These exceptional items were covered by a separate contingency schedule. The contract also placed a big emphasis on team working and regular communications between the various contractors, as contractors could not just turn up at any time on an operational railway.
The size of the installation — carried out by SDA Protec with consultancy WS Atkins — is quite breathtaking and, according to Tyne and Wear Metro operator Nexus, made a conventional analogue system impractical. All images from the 550 Bosch and Panasonic cameras are recorded locally at each of the 58 stations on the Metro system. In addition, monitoring of live images takes place at control rooms in the five local authority areas the Metro covers (North and South Tyneside; Gateshead; Sunderland and Newcastle), as well as at Nexus’s own central control roam in Gosforth. The local authority control rooms monitor the Metro cameras in addition to their own town centre schemes. This helps provide a seamless monitoring operation, where suspects can be tracked onto the Metro system. Conversely, operators con track suspects who get off the trains and head for the town centres.
The recording system consists of Mitsubishi’s DS recorders. A digital recording server is situated in a secure equipment room at each station, with images stored onto level 5 RAID systems. The unit also has a removable hard drive with the last 48 hours worth of images, should the police require access to them. Recording rates vary according to the area being monitored; reasonably static areas such as fire doors are recorded at 3 images per second, while busy areas are captured at higher rates and incidents are recorded at 25 images per second. It is no surprise, therefore, that over 100 Tbytes of storage is currently provided system-wide.
Kevin Boal, senior project manager at operator Nexus, does not feel that update rates have been compromised to save on bandwidth. Rather, he sees the variable frame tales as being fit for the purpose of each area being monitored, “The quality is very, very good because we have such a big bandwidth available. It was a condition of the project that we had to have images that could be used in the court system. It’s so good there isn’t even any latency in the system.”
Each local authority control room has principal responsibility for stations within its own area, but can view images from stations on other parts of the network if needed This is managed by a series of password-protected access levels, so that managers, for example, are able to access all other areas. Images from each station are transmitted over dedicated 36Mbit Ethernet networks to the six control rooms, where operators have access to recorded images via a remote access review workstation. They can also trigger real time recording of incidents they see, and these authenticated images can be downloaded to CDs for evidence.
Control of the whole system is centred around Meyertech’s ZoneVu and Fusion graphical user interface, which allows direct access to all camera set up parameters and configurations. The system also enables the integration of existing local authority town centre control and switching systems, to provide seamless monitoring of those areas and the Metro network.
A fully distributed control system with 64 networked ZoneVu controllers provides a hierarchical network structure Stations are grouped into sub-networks, which are in turn linked to a top level network consisting of the control rooms, Full access is provided from all points on the system so that in case of individual control room failure, monitoring of the entire system need not be compromised.
The backbone of the system is an optical fibre-based transmission system known as OTN (Open Transport Network) from Siemens. Metro had an existing 600Mb/s network and this was initially to be upgraded. But due to it being a live system carrying critical information, additional fibres were used to allow a 2.SGb/s network to be installed in parallel. The OTN allows transmission of video, LAN and voice data, effectively being able to interconnect a whole host of electronic devices over a single network It also incorporates a distributed digital CCTV network and has embedded real-time switching capabilities. According to Siemens, the 2.SGb capacity of the network makes it fit to integrate additional Metro communication services like audio, access control, passenger information systems and voice applications.
Although it’s too early to claim success for the system in terms of crime figures, the signs are that it is having an impact on detecting incidents on the transport system and in the surrounding areas “We’ve had a lot of good results — the difficulty is keeping track of all the incidents from all the control rooms,” says Kevin Boal. But he is realistic enough to acknowledge that like many new surveillance systems, crime figures may at first rise, as more incidents are detected and therefore reported. “The police now realise that their resources are an issue because they are getting all these incidents to which they can respond, if this requires more resources, they will now have the evidence to help get them.” As an example of the ‘joined up’ ability of the new system, he recalls an incident which was monitored from the North Tyneside control room. Operators were able to track a suspected shop thief from the town centre onto the Metro system, and then when he got off from the trains, from the station right up to his home (the estate in which he lives is also monitored by CCTV), where he was arrested.
Now, it’s true to say that not all potential network installations would have the budget for anything like the bandwidth and speeds available for the Nexus system. And it should be noted that the 2.5 Gb/s OTN system was over and above Nexus’ existing 600Mb/s system, somewhat taking the shine off one of the often-stated benefits of IP video — that of residing over existing network capacity. Having said that, the degree of technical and operational integration achieved by the project must go a long way to dispel many of the doubts still held in some quarters about the potential of network video.
INSTALLATION AT-A-GALCE
The 7 million [pounds sterling] scheme for the Tyne & Wear Metro comprises over 550 cameras covering 58 stations, as well as car parks and transport interchanges. All images are recorded digitally and can be viewed at any of the five local authority control rooms, which also monitor their town centre cameras. Transmission is via a 2.5Gb fibre backbone and them is 100Mbpa Ethernet access to the locally recorded images.
Installer SDA Protec
Consultant WS Atkins
Cameras Panasonic and Bosch
Recording and servers Mitsubishi DS digital
Control and management Meyertech Zone Vu and Fusion
Camera mounts Altron Communications
Fibre transmission Siemens OTN
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Parents could pay for childrens’ offences
Bath Chronicle
May 1, 2004
The cost of clearing up graffiti in Bath has topped the £5m mark. The figure has been revealed as police warn that parents could be forced to foot the bill for their child’s criminal damage in a new crackdown on vandalism in the city.
Officers say families may even have to consider the prospect of having to re-mortgage their homes to pay for the actions of their offspring.
Youngsters aged 17 and over can be sent to a juvenile detention centre for defacing buildings and structures. But recent legislation aimed at tackling anti-social behaviour also puts their parents in the legal line of fire.
Pc Darren Taylor, of Bath police, said that the total cost of graffiti damage to the city in recent years was “easily” £5m, with just a few individuals responsible for most of it.
“In one case we have amassed more than 750 photographs of different locations, which equated to hundreds of thousands of pounds damage. “Parents could well be faced with assisting their children in paying fines and compensation orders awarded against their offspring.
“The court can turn to the parents for payment of the compensation order if their child is aged between 14 and 16 years under parental responsibility.” Pc Taylor added: “Because of the fines that may be handed out by the courts, parents may feel the necessity to take out loans or remortgage their properties to, effectively, bail out their kids.” Last week, a 19-year-old man received a two-year conditional discharge for criminal damage in Bath city centre. He was also given a £4,500 compensation order to be paid within 28 days. If he fails to pay he could find himself facing a jail sentence instead.
Pc Taylor said: “This gives out a very strong message that graffiti vandalism will not be tolerated in the city of Bath and that offenders will be made to pay for the damage caused. “We have arrested a number of suspected offenders we believe to be individually responsible for between £10,000 and hundreds of thousands of pounds of damage,” he said.
A large amount of the damage was committed on or around the city’s railway lines and major trunk roads, which brings with it the added risk of serious injury or death to the vandal.
The 12-month police operation using undercover officers has already seen five vandals put behind bars.
Pc Taylor said: “There is a moral obligation on parents to know what their children are doing and to contact us if they think their son or daughter is committing graffiti. “A failure to do so may become very costly and could ultimately result in these young offenders receiving a custodial sentence.”
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Vienna’s new Airport Express; All Aboard
International Travel News
May 1, 2004
After officials finished making speeches and congratulating themselves, on Dec. 14, ‘03, the first big, 3-carriage double-decker Vienna Airport Express train took passengers from Vienna’s new City Airport Terminal within Mitte Station in the heart of Austria’s capital city to the International Airport at Schwechat, and it took only 16 minutes.
The owners, the Austrian Federal Railroads and Vienna International Airport), had branded it “City Airport Train”, applied a green, white and gray livery and hired designers to specially modify the trains with extra-wide, 2+1 seating and luggage racks for half-hourly fast service plus half-hourly stopping service between Schwechat Airport and downtown. Fares are 8 [euro] (near $ 10) one way or 15 [euro] round trip. Children ages six to 15 pay 5 [euro] and 8 [euro], respectively.
You may cheek in your luggage on the City Airport Terminal’s new platform. Mitte Station is the hub of S-Bahn lines 1, 2, 3 and 15 and U-Bahn lines U1, U3 and U4, so any place in Vienna is easily Within your reach. Vienna Mitte has been issued an airport code so that you can ticket your flight right into the center of Vienna.
The project cost 350 million [euro], due in part to the 1.5 miles of tunnel. Between Mitte and the airport you pass through Rennweg Station, which engineers completely rebuilt with a central platform replacing side platforms; all-new Geiselbergstrasse Station, with connections to tram line 6; the rebuilt Zentralfreidhof Station, and oberlaa.
When you arrive by plane at Schwechat, follow the pictographs illustrating a train to the station below. At the ticket office on the train platform buy single or roundtrip tickets for downtown Vienna, validate your European East Pass, Eurail product or Austrian Railpass, or buy ,a Vienna Card.
OBB’s “Vienna Airport Lines” bus services continue to serve Vienna Airport from the West Train Station, with a pickup at the South Train Station, daily between 5:30 a.m. and 12:15 a.m. They take 35 minutes to the airport from the West station.
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Greek Olympics gets Swiss rail cars: visitors to the 2004 Olympics in Greece this August will probably ride through Athens in new Swiss-made light-rail cars. Swiss News reports on this timely delivery.
Swiss News
May 1, 2004
The Roman poet Virgil’s epic masterpiece ‘The Aeneid’ tells us of a great exploit of military stealth: the Greek conquest of Troy, staged by Athenian soldiers hiding in the belly of a huge wooden horse.
Now the Swiss — in a show of modern peacetime engineering — are supplying a twist to the saga. It’s a whole herd of “iron horses” built by the Swiss to serve Athens and its 2004 Olympic games visitors on the Peloponnesus peninsula. Its delivery deadline: July 1 — hardly a month before the games begin.
Curiously the all-Swiss consortium’s delivery of some 29 light-rail vehicles (LRVs) occurs due to a Greek partner’s shortcomings — a lapse retailing Euripedes’ harsh advice: “Put not thy faith in any Greek.”
According to Virgil — as well as his Greek counterpart Homer — the Trojans in 1250 BC unwittingly wheeled the horse within their gates, thinking a retreating enemy had left it behind as a useless souvenir of a failed 10-year siege. But the concealed soldiers slipped out by night, opened Troy’s gates to the Athenians, and helped sack and burn the mighty fortress.
This led Virgil to write the damning line that translates “I fear the Greeks even when bearing gifts” or its shortened version “Beware Greeks bearing gifts.”
Worse: No Gifts At All
The Trojan wars are all ancient history to the three-firm Swiss team now finishing and shipping its LRV order to Athens. But the prime contractor, Stadler Bussnang AG in Canton Thurgau, still smarts from a no-show performance by its original Greek partner, Hellenic Shipyards (HSY). HSY offered no gifts at all.
As Stadler spokeswoman Silvia Baer recalls, her firm entered into its original contract with the Greek State Railways (OSE) by agreeing that 20 percent of the work would go to HSY. “That was the rival reassembly part. It was to create local jobs. It’s often that way,” Baer tells Swiss News in a phone interview. “So we provided the prototype chassis to HSY as agreed, but it merely stood there two years in Greece without them doing anything else.”
After long discussions, Baer says, Stadler managed to reclaim the casing and reorganise the contract — this time as an all-Swiss job. The “last minute” rescue partners: the Swiss subsidiary of Canada-based Bombardier (responsible for electrical and electronic work) and the Chur-based Rhaetian Railways (RhB). The RhB — operator of Canton Grisons’ semi-private Alpine railway network — tackled the crucial mid-project tasks at its yard shop in Landquart.
Work on the shiny OSE rail cars remains on schedule, according the Stadler project manager Peter Egolf. The first eight articulated train cars had already arrived in the Greek port for local testing and commissioning in mid-February. OSE officials had accepted seven of these cars. Plans call for acceptance of a new unit every week. Some 17 of the 29 trains are being built for normal-gauge tracks, the remaining 12 for metre gauge.
That’s where the Grisons’ partner role becomes crucial. Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) trains roll on normal gauge, the RhB on metre gauge. Since both the SBB and RhB pass through Landquart, it makes the RhB shop and yard an ideal testing site for either type of car. But the experience and worldwide repute of RhB rail engineers also makes them coveted partners.
UNESCO Plaudits
For more than a century, RhB press spokesman Peider Hartli points out, RhB network’s engineers have earned a reputation as the cream of their crop — especially in designing and maintaining routes for the shiny red trains in the Grisons Alps. Acknowledging this, the United Nations Economic, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) may soon declare the rail network’s spiralling tunnels and viaducts in the Albula valley a world cultural heritage. A second RhB stretch into the Engadin valley may also gain this UNESCO “protected” status.
But the Rhaetian Railways face a tight budgetary situation these days. It described its 2004 budget outlook as “unsatisfactory” after downward trends worsened in 2003. That’s why the RhB’s recently retired former deputy director of finance, Helmut Bauschutz, says his railway especially welcomes the CHF5 million it will earn as a Stadler partner on the Athens project.
“We see this contract as one of many interesting partnerships with Stadler and other firms,” he tells an interviewer. “We’ve worked with such Swiss partners on various domestic rail projects, but this one with a foreign customer is practically unique for us. It has already proved itself as a pilot project, and we’d like to do more work of this sort.”
Such orders could emerge. This one has given the mixed group of Stadler, RhB, and Bombardier engineers and technicians an upbeat team rapport. As they worked shoulder to shoulder on the order’s final production in Landquart, RhB officials pointed out another plus in what they call a “win-win” situation. During its off-season the railway has excess shop room. Orders like the Greek project allow the RhB to exploit it.
The fairly flat terrain the Greek LRVs face in Athens and the Peloponnesus peninsula has offered few new technical challenges to the Swiss team — certainly not to a RhB staff used to coping with rugged Alpine geology and climate.
“We didn’t really learn anything we didn’t already know,” Hartli says. “We’re used to coping with heavy snow, avalanches, and rock slides. In that sense this has been an easy task. But when you gain your design and maintenance expertise in the Alps, anything seems easy.”
Still the ability to master such demands of nature makes an impressive calling card when a consortium offers rail customers its joint proposal. Stadler and Bombardier Switzerland, for instance, have worked as partners on foreign projects in the past. A current one — 20 articulated LRVs destined for a New Jersey Transit line in Camden — casts Bombardier as prime contractor, Stadler as its subcontractor. A recent Slovak Republic job involving 14 cars and local partners reversed the prime/sub roles.
“The Greek project Involved an unusual situation,” Baer admits. “But we’re on schedule, and the RhB has been a good partner. They’ve worked extremely well and with great efficiency. I can see us working with them again.”
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Euclid Corridor: boondoggle or benefit? $200 million to revive shabby avenue
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio)
May 2, 2004
A bulldozer’s teeth will bite into Euclid Avenue this summer to launch the most expensive public transit project in Cleveland’s history. It’s a $200 million gamble to revive the city.
As part of the Euclid Corridor project, more than $80 million in federal transportation money will flow into Cleveland for a five-mile bus route that connects Public Square with University Circle. About 4,000 construction workers will be on the project before it is done in four years.
In time, proponents say, sprucing up the city’s once-grandest thoroughfare could lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in residential, retail and other development, generating jobs and reviving a shrinking tax base.
The whole look of Euclid Avenue will change. A parade of trees will march along the route. Their leaves will mingle with modern streetlights, shading new sculptures and sidewalks.
Longer buses designed to look like train cars will make faster trips and stop at sleek stations.
The face-lift might restore beauty, and maybe even hope, to Euclid Avenue, whose shabbiness symbolizes the city’s struggles. The question is whether it can spark new development.
Compared to their hype, expensive transit projects often fizzle. For example, nearly empty trains ride the Regional Transit Authority’s Waterfront Line, which daily snakes along the east bank of the Flats.
There are other reasons to question whether the Euclid Corridor project can turn hype into reality: The route, which blends aspects of bus and rail travel, introduces a new and largely untested mode of transportation. Few other U.S. cities have launched similar projects, and new development has lagged so far in those areas.
Will locals use it? Clevelanders cling to their cars. Only 6 percent of Cuyahoga County residents ride public transit to work.
RTA’s Euclid Avenue line is now the most heavily traveled bus route in the region, with 15,000 riders a day. But the project hinges on attracting new riders, and the RTA’s surveys show that half of the people who don’t use the system regularly say nothing could persuade them to climb aboard.
New zoning regulations, needed to change how buildings and land get used, are not yet on the books. Without the changes, Euclid cannot lure the development that supporters crave: a plush urban carpet of offices, multifamily housing and stores criss-crossed by pedestrians.
This is especially relevant in the section known as MidTown, from East 30th Street to East 79th Street, where a century has passed since developers erected new housing for sale.
The project, and the federal government’s contribution to it, has been dramatically scaled back since it was conceived. Some wonder whether its impact will be, too. “This is exactly the kind of catalytic project that could spark a surge in population,” said David Beach, director of EcoCity Cleveland, a nonprofit planning group that promotes the design of cities in balance with nature.
Still, he added, “It’s an open question whether they’ve watered it down enough that it’s not going to have the spin-off and the development impact.”
Planned for decades, reworked dozens of times and shrunk to one-third of its most ambitious size, the project hasn’t even kept its original name.
The concept was first dubbed the “dual hub” because it would link the employment centers of Public Square and University Circle. Supporters pictured trains that ran underground for part of the route. That idea was eventually abandoned because of its price tag.
Revised later as a trolley guided by overhead electric wires, that plan also got scrapped because it was not likely to attract enough federal money. Over time, the federal government lowered its funding share from 80 percent to less than half, and planners finally settled on a system that features large, sophisticated buses — called “bus rapid transit.”
The state is kicking in $70 million for the project, with Cleveland adding $25 million and RTA contributing $18 million.
Hopes for development remain strong
One thing hasn’t changed since the project’s inception: high hopes that it can spur development. “These dollars are hard to come by, and we want to make sure that we invest them in things that we believe will pay dividends for us,” says Sen. George Voinovich, Republican of Ohio, who has supported the plan since he was a Cuyahoga County commissioner in the 1970s. “This project stands on its own two feet.”
The face-lift will include replacing sewer and water lines, widening sidewalks and installing $1 million worth of public art. The changes will add 1,500 trees along the street and create a 5-foot-wide bike lane between Cleveland State and Case Western Reserve universities. Imagine pedestrian pathways graced with paving stones, stores with new awnings and cafes with outdoor seating.
A fleet of quieter vehicles that use diesel and electricity will replace regular buses along Euclid. They will run on rubber tires but look like train cars, with riders boarding at platforms that resemble those at train stations.
Sections of nearby streets will also be improved. Buses that cross Euclid will run more frequently, allowing for smoother passenger transfers. And a 5,000 square-foot transit center will be built at Prospect Avenue and East 21st Street.
Paul Volpe, an architect and former RTA board member, was an early critic of the project. But he was swayed by plans to blend streetscape improvements with transportation efficiency. The result, he believes, can boost ridership and trigger development. “The more I learned about it, the more I understood the potential,” he said. “I became a believer.”
Advocates claim that some development has already happened, influenced by the project’s promise, though it’s hard to determine how big the influence has been. Developers are not buying land solely because of the project. And some that have developments along the route say it was not the driving force behind their decisions.
For example, the first stage of a 400,000-square-foot MidTown Technology Center is going up in the old Ohio Knitting Mills building on East 61st Street. After the building is rehabilitated in about a year, it will house budding technology companies.
The developer, John Ferchill, said the Euclid Corridor project was not a factor in his decision to re-do the building, though it affected the design. “Once we zeroed in on a site, we did do some planning to fit in with the [bus] stops, but we really tied the project to the [Cleveland] Clinic and University Circle,” he said.
Officials from MidTown Cleveland Inc., Ferchill’s partner in the tech center and a community development corporation in the neighborhood, believe that the Euclid Corridor can attract major development. James Haviland, MidTown’s executive director, dreams of a district with 92,000 square feet of residential space, more than 100,000 square feet of office space, stores and restaurants. “There’s no question the Euclid Corridor project is going to be a key component,” he said.
Supporters predict the system also will help RTA better serve riders and attract new ones. The improvements will entice one-fifth more riders and cut travel time by about 10 minutes from end to end, says Michael Schipper, RTA deputy general manager. “Euclid is like a conveyor belt,” he said. “It’s our best bus line, and we’re going to make it 20 percent better.”
Businesses and developers will target Euclid because of the public investment, Schipper reasons. Employers will be more inclined to locate there when travel is quicker and more pleasant. “The challenge will be can we get users to feel that this isn’t an ordinary bus,” said Joe Marinucci, executive vice president of the Downtown Cleveland Partnership. “If that’s successful, the effectiveness of the system will draw people to it.”
Such projects so far unproven
Proponents of the project have little proof to back their claims. Bus rapid transit in this country has a scant record.
The Euclid Avenue project is one of the first approved by the Federal Transit Administration, although the agency is a staunch supporter of the mode. Bus rapid transit costs about half as much as light rail and is more flexible because it doesn’t rely on tracks and can accommodate on-street parking.
Construction of a 4.5-mile long project that will use the same vehicles as Cleveland’s is just starting between Eugene and Springfield, Ore. That project is most similar to Cleveland’s: It links two employment centers and runs past a university, a hospital and office buildings on the region’s best-traveled route.
However, it has not pulled in private investment, according to Stefano Viggiano, director of development services with Oregon’s Lane Transit District. That agency, which constructed a 5,000-square-foot building connected to the Springfield station, wants to lease two-thirds of it to one retailer. A consultant hired to help find a tenant is still searching.
Springfield is encouraging development on available land that runs between the two cities. “We haven’t had developers come to us,” Viggiano said. Bus rapid transit, he admitted, is “really an untested mode in a lot of ways. And how it affects redevelopment is yet to be seen.”
Curitiba, Brazil, is held up as the best example of bus rapid transit. But it took 40 years to get thriving development there.
In Cleveland, some critics aren’t optimistic about the prospects for the Euclid Corridor. “I don’t think it’s going to be a stimulus,” says Greg Pfister, who runs Rossio & Pfister Fine Jewelry at 850 Euclid Ave. The street “looks like a bomb hit it,” he added. “But I don’t think that sticking a bus in the middle of it is going to change anything.”
Pfister points to the RTA buses that frequently ply Euclid, passing discarded lots, abandoned houses and boarded-up businesses. “The vacancies are caused by the fact there’s no employment,” he said. “It’s not because they need a new transportation system.”
In Cleveland, one recent transportation project has failed to live up to expectations. RTA’s Waterfront Line opened seven years ago, $20 million over budget. Since then, the 2.2-mile line that runs north from Tower City along the east bank of the Flats and ends in the municipal parking lot near the Shoreway has not attracted the expected 1 million riders a year.
Last year, 222,500 people rode it, less than a third of the peak in 1997. Even Joseph Calabrese, RTA’s general manager, has referred to the line as “a transportation manager’s nightmare.”
Massive transit projects raise vital, big-picture questions. Are they worth the investment? What’s the impact? And who are they being built for? “Typically, these questions are answered with, ‘Don’t you worry, little lady. We’ll take care of it,’ “ said Ethan Seltzer, director of the school of urban studies and planning at Portland State University.
Success also hinges on zoning changes
The success of the Euclid Corridor project also depends on sweeping land-use changes. To improve a project’s impact, cities must attract development by coordinating the policies governing land use and public transit. Unless changes occur to affect how nearby land is zoned and used, new transit projects can fail to draw significant private investment.
Bureaucracy blocks some of the broad, urban rebirth that the Euclid Corridor project is supposed to encourage. “Right now you can do just about everything but what we want,” Volpe says.
Working with community development corporations, including MidTown Inc., Cleveland is zeroing in on “transit zoning,” says Planning Director Chris Ronayne. The idea is to make the street friendlier to pedestrians and re-create more of a downtown feel with, for example, buildings that hug the sidewalk instead of being set back, parking spots tucked behind buildings and ground-level shops and cafes with housing on floors above. “It’s essentially the antithesis of what you see in suburban shopping centers everywhere,” he said.
Ronayne pictures the Euclid Avenue of yesteryear instead of “anywhere USA: drive up, drive through, pop in and pop out.”
Zoning changes don’t come quickly, however. They involve public meetings, City Council debates, amendments to the citywide plan and legislation. “I think we could do it this calendar year,” Ronayne said.
Research cautions against selling new transit investments on the basis of land-use changes yet to come. By itself, new zoning might not be sufficient. If development is taking place very slowly throughout the metropolitan area, no transit project will reverse the regional trend.
David Goldberg, the co-chairman of Ohio Savings Bank, is leery of promising too much. He has three planned developments around the bus route, including an apartment complex and a retail and parking tower.
He says the Euclid Corridor project is an important factor in reviving Cleveland’s economy, but he knows that patience will be required. “We are at the beginning of the revitalization of our city,” he said. “This is a long-term plan.”
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Ride To Remember
The Sunday Oregonian
May 2, 2004
Summary: More than 20,000 flock to MAX’s new Yellow Line for a free excursion
TriMet opened the latest addition to its growing electric train set on Saturday, drawing thousands of riders for a free day of fun, sun, hot dogs, hope and history in North Portland.
The new 5.8-mile Yellow Line between downtown Portland and the Expo Center proved that it can handle high volumes of riders including bicyclists, infants in strollers and passengers in wheelchairs. “The stations are impressive and the artwork is very nice,” said Michael Kolibaba, a Northeast Portland resident who has ridden all four Portland light-rail lines on their opening day dating to 1986.
The opening day attracted sightseers from around the region, as well as confirmed transit riders scoping out new rail destinations and commuting options. “We take the MAX everywhere,” said Leona Soto, a Gresham mother, with her son Konane, 2. “It’s our source of transportation and entertainment.”
Josh Berezin, a North Portland resident who was stumping for a political candidate, said he was thrilled with the new line. “I’ll be using it a lot,” he said. “This is perfect for me. I do wish it would go to Vancouver, though.” “This is still the best way to get around town,” said Larry Babich, a Clark County resident who said he likes visiting Portland and riding MAX.
Although Vancouver voters in 1995 killed a plan to extend light rail across the Columbia River, Babich predicted that it will happen someday, “when Vancouver wakes up and comes to its senses.”
The Yellow Line is expected to carry about 13,900 riders per day when it begins its routine operating life early Monday. The line will operate for free again today, but the stops won’t offer the community events, food, drink and music that greeted opening day.
TriMet estimated Saturday’s ridership at more than 20,000, peaking at about 3,000 riders per hour in late afternoon.
Mary Fetsch, a TriMet spokeswoman, said there was no way to estimate how many additional people attended events at seven of the line’s 10 stops between Expo and the Rose Quarter. She said rail operations went smoothly even with the crowds.
“I’d rather be doing this than selling lipstick,” said Rosalinda Risner, a Vancouver guitarist and singer who performed a set of jazz and blues songs at Patton Park near the Killingsworth Street station.
Risner, a student in a Portland Community College music program, isn’t the only one hoping for new opportunities in the North Portland corridor served by the Yellow Line. “It brings back a community that was underappreciated,” said Harold Williams, a 45-year resident and businessman in North and Northeast Portland. “It enhances the city and this area. It will be a good boost for business in the Northeast.”
Tim Hills, a historian who has studied Albina, the heart of Portland’s African American community after World War II, said the neighborhood “has gone through the cycle of boom and bust and renewed life on several occasions.” He said Albina was starting to rebound before light rail, and he thinks the transit line will provide even more impetus for the area and the Mississippi Avenue historic district.
Visitors to the Expo Center station can get a crash history course on the internment center that housed Japanese Americans for five hot months in 1942. “I can see everything as clearly as when I was there,” said Alice Sumida, whose family was one of the first to arrive at the fly-infested livestock barns under federal orders during World War II.
The experience was so grim that some Japanese Americans have refused to visit the Expo Center. “It’s part of your history,” Sumida said. “It will never go away. It was a part of the times. Everyone was so hysterical about the war.” Sumida said she was pleased that TriMet elected to present the historical information at the rail platform. She said the artist, Valerie Otani, “did a wonderful job.”
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Griffin Plan Reaches End Of The Line
Hartford Courant
May 3, 2004
Let’s put the Griffin Line out of its misery.
For decades, proposals for the Greater Hartford rail corridor’s future have embodied well-intentioned wishful thinking rather than hard-bitten pragmatism.
Once considered, then rejected, for light rail service, the Griffin Line’s latest proposed incarnation was a busway that would have provided a one-seat trip from downtown Hartford to Bradley International Airport and points in between.
Nice concept, but don’t get attached to it. Quoth the 1980s-era band Crowded House: “Don’t dream, it’s over.”
Members of the Capitol Region Council of Governments’ (CRCOG) transportation committee conceded as much when they accepted a consultant’s report last week that reluctantly advised shelving the busway proposal for the foreseeable future. The report says a busway there would be the best way to “improve mobility, preserve roadway capacity, and support both economic and smart growth development in the area.”
Supporters say it’s still the best long-term option, combining the permanence of a commuter rail line with the flexibility of a bus system.
The logistics are indeed daunting. The plan would require ripping up miles of track, paving the route and designing safety precautions at the new intersections where the route would cross existing city streets.
More importantly, the Federal Transit Administration said the potential ridership and the fares generated would not justify the project now, so the federal government won’t help fund it. So either it’s done with state money, or it’s not done at all. Case closed.
David Kilbon, first selectman of East Granby and chairman of the CRCOG transportation committee, said panel members believe deferring the project is frustrating but unavoidable.
“It’s understandable from the rational side, but it’s disappointing,” he said. “We see it as an important component of the overall transit strategy for the region.”
Meanwhile, the CRCOG committee recommends improvements in existing CT Transit service in the Hartford/Bloomfield/East Granby region — no word yet on how that would be funded — and will watch to see whether the New Britain-Hartford busway is successful.
The Griffin Line’s glory days occurred between 1871 and 1927, when its passenger rail service ended because it could not compete with the inexpensive, convenient trolleys crisscrossing Greater Hartford.
State officials started reviewing the Griffin Line again in the 1970s and 1980s, buying portions of the line and proposing in the 1990s to create light-rail commuter service there. But in 1998, CRCOG’s policy board dropped the project after opposition by the state Department of Transportation and the Hartford City Council.
The Griffin Line is still used as a freight route, primarily for deliveries to the Home Depot distribution center in Bloomfield.
Now that we’ve had our Griffin Line history lesson, here comes the part of the column where I eat my own words. Quoting from my Jan. 26, 2004, column: “Let’s not write off the Griffin Line forever, though. Maybe light-rail service or a busway wouldn’t work there right now, but it could be an obvious route someday for service between Hartford and the airport.”
I take it back.
In a state where census data show that four of every five commuters drives alone, I’m growing increasingly skeptical about whether people will give up that independence in favor of mass transit. They haven’t so far. The number of people who say they drive alone increased 12,000 between 1990 and 2000, even though the workforce dropped by more than 32,000.
Are we wedded to our cars because there aren’t enough mass transit options in Greater Hartford, or vice versa? Smarter folks than I have struggled to answer that question for years.
But until Greater Hartford traffic becomes unbearable — envision I-95 in Fairfield County — or other factors, such as skyrocketing gasoline prices, make driving alone unpalatable, pitching another mass transit service like the Griffin Line Busway will be a hard sell indeed.
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UTA on track
Salt Lake Tribune
May 3, 2004
The Utah Transit Authority brought light rail to Salt Lake Valley residents. TRAX gets them to work, to Jazz games, to school. Now UTA is proposing a heavier version, a commuter train able to carry 1,400 people on each 10-car train, every 20 minutes during peak hours.
The transit authority released its environmental impact statement and evaluation of the commuter rail project between Salt Lake City and Weber County on Friday, asking for public comment. On a light-to-heavy scale, this document is definitely not light reading. The Table of Contents alone is 13 pages long, and it takes four more to explain all the acronyms used in it.
But the content is worth the time it takes to digest it.
A heavy-rail commuter line on 44 miles of existing rights of way, connecting Weber, Davis and Salt Lake counties, has been on planning maps for decades to help the three counties meet an expected 76 percent increase in travel as population in the area jumps 54 percent in the coming 25 years.
It seems to make sense, for several reasons.
Existing highways are clogged every morning and afternoon with 114,000 vehicles heading to Salt Lake County to work (with a third that many commuting northward during the same hours, primarily to Hill Air Force Base). Getting thousands of vehicles off the road would improve daily traffic flow, easing slow-moving, bumper-to-bumper commutes, while taking a step toward less pollution in the air.
Vehicles account for 83 percent of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and volatile organic compounds in Salt Lake County and nearly 80 percent in Davis. The American Lung Association has listed Salt Lake City-Ogden as No. 6 on its list of U.S. areas most polluted by air particulates in 2000-2002. Reducing pollution substantially will require a major shift in driving habits among many thousands of residents. Commuter rail is only one step, but it would at least be in the right direction.
Nevertheless, there are downsides. Moving trains create noise and some air pollution of their own; traffic at the rail stations would be increased; just over 18 acres of wetlands would be destroyed or affected by the new line.
Utah County is conspicuously absent from the plan. Officials there decided against the most recent quarter-cent boost in sales tax to pay for public transit, and residents are paying the price in staggering volumes of highway traffic. UTA is counting on another half-cent increase in Salt Lake, Davis and Weber to pay for the commuter rail plus TRAX extensions, highways and improved bus service.
But deciding how to pay for it all comes later. Right now, citizens should put on their reading glasses, look over the proposal and its impacts and attend one of the four public hearings scheduled this month. It is an investment of time that could yield a solid return.
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Half ton of coins found at Muni mechanic’s home
The San Francisco Chronicle
MAY 3, 2004
Twelve years ago, Muni mechanic Anthony Camilleri took a special training course in how to fix the bus system’s often out-of-whack fare boxes.
In March, prosecutors say, investigators found out just how good a job he’d been doing — when they hauled nearly half a ton of coins out of his Lafayette home.
According to search warrant records, the coins — which totaled $28,000 — were crammed into 22 plastic tubs, plus a dozen boxes and assorted bank bags authorities found stashed around the house.
San Francisco district attorney’s investigators also seized $22,000 in paper money, including a Nordstrom’s bag filled with $100 bundles and envelopes containing stacks of $2, $20 and $100 bills. Plus, there were envelopes with at least $35,000 in savings bonds — mostly purchased in the past year — and thousands of dollars worth of Municipal Railway tokens.
Total stash found: more than $80,000.
And that may be just the tip of the take, authorities say. Investigators hauled an additional $20,000 — mostly in $1 bills — out of the San Francisco home of Tan Huynh, 42, another alleged Muni fare box bandit who may or may not have been working with Camilleri, authorities say.
Camilleri and Huynh — each of whom was earning $82,395 a year — have been charged with theft of public money, possession of stolen computer parts and unlawful access to computers. Neither man has entered a plea.
Investigators are trying to determine whether Muni money was pumped into real estate that the 54-year-old Camilleri accumulated in recent years. A Chronicle check of his holdings found:
— A three-story duplex on Diamond Street in San Francisco that the 30-year Muni veteran bought in April 2000 and is now valued at $602,000.
— A $465,000 Geary Boulevard duplex that he bought in September 2001.
— A 3,779-square-foot, four-bedroom Lafayette home where Camilleri has been living with his wife, son and stepdaughter since March 2002. It’s valued at $1.5 million.
— And a small Concord condo worth $106,000 that he bought in December.
Real estate records show Camilleri has investments in Texas property as well.
Camilleri’s attorney, Doug Rappaport, denied that his client had used Muni money to underwrite his real estate fortune. “He has been a very shrewd investor and has been for a number of years,” Rappaport said.
According to Rappaport, Camilleri is a self-made man who started investing in real estate in 1979, then leveraged his profits to buy additional property. And Camilleri didn’t just limit himself to real estate — he’s also a silent partner in a number of Northern California restaurants and other businesses.
As for all those coins? Rappaport says Camilleri is a collector.
The bottom line, Rappaport said: If his client was stealing, it wasn’t for personal profit.
He certainly is generous with his friends. A Redwood City police officer, in a letter asking the judge not to raise Camilleri’s $105,000 bail, said Camilleri had given him an interest-free loan so he could attend college.
Another Camilleri friend wrote that the fix-it man had repeatedly bailed his business out of financial trouble over the years. “Without exception, Tony has helped me by loaning me money with no interest charge — even when one was appropriate,” the friend, Joe Renice, wrote. “I have seen him help complete strangers.”
And that, lawyer Rappaport said, may be what the thefts — if there were any — were all about. “He’s like a modern-day Robin Hood,” Rappaport said. “He is an extremely kind-hearted individual, compassionate and trustworthy.”
That’s not exactly how investigators see it. Court records show that Muni security officials suspected Camilleri of raiding the fare boxes as early as 2002 after they received an anonymous tip. But a sting at the time proved inconclusive.
Then, last year, Camilleri and fellow fare box repairman Huynh were spotted separately showing up at the bus yards before the start of their shifts to work on the Muni fare machines — machines that the security team had determined were in perfect working condition.
Soon, the Muni and the district attorney’s office had the two workers under surveillance. Authorities say they got quite an eyeful.
In Camilleri’s case, court records say, investigators repeatedly saw the repairman leaving bus yards in his city van, black bag in tow, and making stops at any of five different Bank of America branches around town. Surveillance cameras showed Camilleri conducting business at a teller’s window.
Curiously, Camilleri and Huynh have not been charged with conspiracy — suggesting investigators don’t have any real evidence that the two were operating in cahoots. But then, according to David Pfeifer, head of the district attorney’s special prosecutions unit, “Our investigation is continuing.”
Investigators are still trying to figure out how much money may have gone missing — but that might not be so easy. Prosecutors recently told the court that, in addition to all his holdings and bank accounts in the Bay Area, Camilleri has a bank account in his native country of Malta.
Speaking of Muni: Muni riders have been catching an odd sight these days — Willie Brown riding the bus. The 1-California bus, from his Nob Hill apartment down to his new Embarcadero office.
Reason: “Have you seen how much parking costs in this town?” the former mayor asked. “They want $40 a day — $53 with in-and-out privileges.” Welcome to the real world, Mr. Mayor.
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Channel Tunnel’s Decade Of Difficulties
Press Association
May 3, 2004
Ten years old this week, the Channel Tunnel has had a decade of turmoil and trouble.
Ever since The Queen and France’s President Francois Mitterrand inaugurated the tunnel on May 6, 1994, the longed-for fixed link has existed in a state of perpetual difficulty. So fed up did French shareholders get at seeing no return on their money that last month they staged a coup that removed the board of tunnel operator Eurotunnel.
For decades, the idea of a fixed link between England and France had been discussed, only for plans to be discarded on security grounds. Many years of peace in Europe following the end of the Second World War finally encouraged UK and French leaders to go ahead with the project.
But from the start the tunnel was dogged by controversy. Ten years on, Eurotunnel has debts of £6.4 billion and original traffic forecasts have proved to be wildly optimistic. Last year Eurotunnel made losses of £1.3 billion and the company must begin making capital repayments in 2006.
After the recent boardroom coup, Eurotunnel was hit by the resignation of chief financial officer Roger Burge. Also, it now appears likely that the new board could well adopt some of the old board’s Project Galaxie recovery plan.
Some French shareholders would be only too happy to see their government put money into the project. But from the start both Britain and France have been determined that financing had to come from the private sector. While Eurotunnel fought battles with contractor TML in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the cost of the project doubled to £10 billion.
“The financial framework and operating conditions for the Channel Tunnel were flawed from the outset,” said International Rail Journal editor-in-chief David Briginshaw. He went on: “There was an assumption that the Channel Tunnel would put the cross-Channel ferry operators out of business, which it has not.”
Although officially opened on May 6, 1994, the tunnel did not open to freight traffic until the following month and it was not open to passenger services until December 1994.
The devastating fire in the tunnel in 1996, which led to the suspension of freight services for many months, was a big blow to Eurotunnel, as was the problem of asylum seekers boarding trains in the early part of this century.
Just as the tunnel has been hit by the continuing popularity of cross-Channel ferry services, the success of the low-cost airlines has also provided strong competition.
Another part of the tunnel story that has proved far from satisfactory is the drawn-out saga of the high-speed rail link which would enable Eurostar trains to cut the journey times between London and Paris and Brussels.
The French had its link ready in 1993, enabling Eurostars to reach a maximum speed of 186mph between Calais and Paris. The Belgian link was ready in 1997.
But the £5.2 billion English link, from Folkestone to London, will not be open in its entirety until 2007, with the first part — from Folkestone to northern Kent — having opened in September 2003.
British Rail had come up with a perfectly feasible southern route for the 68-mile link as far back as 1990, but this was rejected in favour of a more easterly approach.
Like the tunnel, the link project has been clouded by financial difficulties. Initially, Eurostar was budgeting on attracting 15 million passengers a year, but the best it has managed so far is just over seven million.
While recent weeks have been dominated by the Eurotunnel boardroom drama, Eurostar has at least been able to post improved passenger figures, boosted by the quicker journey times and a new range of low fares.
Critics would argue that Eurostar’s initial fare structure put the price of tickets far too high.
According to Andrew Roden, of Rail magazine: “The dream of a fixed link between the UK and France has turned into a nightmare for builder, owner and funders.” He went on: “Part of Eurotunnel’s problem is that so much of its costs are fixed. It costs very nearly the same to run whether it is empty or full. There is little scope for cost-cutting.”
But Mr Roden doubted whether the tunnel would shut, whatever the financial problems. He said: “The trains are likely to keep running — it is the only way for the banks to make any kind of return on their investment. “The old adage — borrow £100 and the banks own you: borrow a million and you own the bank — is perfectly true.”
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Getting commuters out of their cars: Where’s the payoff?
Seattle Times
May 4, 2004
For years, Northwest Hospital & Medical Center had been offering all kinds of carrots to its employees to persuade them to stop driving alone to work: subsidized bus and van-pool passes. A free taxi ride home in case of emergency. Preferred parking for car pools.
Then, in 2000, the Northgate-area hospital added a stick. It began charging day-shift solo drivers $30 a month to park on campus. Drive-alone commuting dropped 13 percent.
To avoid the new fee, security officer Fausto Espinoza started car pooling to work. “Thirty dollars, that’s half of the gas bill or half of the electric bill at home,” he says.
Larger employers such as Northwest Hospital have been waging war against the “single-occupant vehicle” for more than a decade. It’s the law: The state Commute Reduction Act of 1991 requires employers of more than 100 day-shift workers to establish programs to get commuters out of their cars.
To help persuade them, government transit planners have worked with companies to develop all sorts of promotions and subsidies.
Nothing works better than the stick, the planners agree. Putting a price on parking gets results because it embraces a fundamental economic principle: When something costs more, people tend to do it less.
But the most effective tool also is the least popular. In King County, according to the state Department of Transportation’s Commute Trip Reduction Office, employees pay to park at fewer than one-third of all work sites covered by the law. Their number may even have declined recently, in part because of the region’s soft economy.
Most employers who do charge are in central Seattle, the University District or downtown Bellevue. Farther out in suburbia, where most of the region’s job growth of the past few decades has come, free parking remains the norm.
Suburban employers are reluctant to charge because they fear it could damage employee recruitment, retention and morale, says David Stallings, a King County Metro market-development planner. “Free parking is something they feel they need to provide to remain competitive,” he says.
Many offer a carrot but no stick. If Costco started charging workers to park at its Issaquah headquarters, “I think we’d get a negative reaction from our employees, and I think I would understand why,” says CEO Jim Sinegal.
No one wants to pay for something that’s always been free. “All of us hate paying for parking,” confesses Shawn Rossiter, a car pooler who oversees Northwest Hospital’s parking program and supports its goals. “We’d all rather have that $30 a month to buy a pizza.”
The hospital started charging because pressures from the marketplace and government trumped employee objections. Over time, some experts predict, those forces will persuade many more employers to follow Northwest’s lead.
Someone always pays “Parking is not free — even if it’s free,” says Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington State Transportation Center at the University of Washington.
Building it can cost anywhere from $1,500 per stall for a suburban surface lot to $22,000 per stall for a downtown underground garage, according to the Victoria Transport Policy Institute — and that doesn’t include land costs. Annual operating and maintenance expenses can run an additional $100 to $400 per stall.
Who pays for “free” parking? Indirectly, everyone does, says Donald Shoup, a UCLA urban-planning professor who has studied parking for a quarter-century.
Companies recoup their parking costs by charging customers higher prices and paying workers lower wages, he says: “Only in our role as motorists do we not pay for parking.” But those costs are hidden. For most motorists, free parking — or the perception of it — provides a powerful incentive to drive.
Downtown Seattle has the region’s best transit service and highest parking costs. Even so, a 2001 King County Metro survey found 44 percent of downtown workers commuted solo. Three-quarters of them enjoyed free or reduced-price parking at work.
Charging for parking can be a powerful incentive to find an alternative. In downtown Bellevue, 73 percent of the employees of firms that provide free parking drive alone to work, according to the state Commute Trip Reduction Office.
For firms that don’t offer free parking, that figure is just 47 percent.
Some employers have achieved dramatic reductions in solo commuting by coupling changes in parking policy with improved incentives to stop driving. The engineering firm Ch2M Hill eliminated free parking and began subsidizing transit when it moved to a downtown Bellevue office tower in the late 1980s.
The share of workers driving solo declined from 89 percent to 65 percent in 1990. Today it’s just 38 percent.
The University of Washington began jacking up parking prices in the early 1990s, using the proceeds to subsidize transit, car pools and other options. The number of students, faculty and staff who drive alone to campus has slid from one-third to less than one-quarter. Without the program, the university estimates, it would have had to spend up to $100 million for more parking.
But employers such as the UW and Ch2M Hill remain the exceptions. Planners say the number of employers who charge for parking hasn’t increased in recent years.
With office vacancy rates high, some building managers are dropping or reducing parking charges to lure or keep tenants. King County Metro says the share of downtown Seattle workers who enjoyed free parking at work actually increased between 2001 and 2003. Some suburban employers who once charged for parking have stopped.
In much of the region, though, pay parking was a tough sell even before the economy soured.
Abundant asphalt
About 80,000 people work in Redmond, more than twice as many as in 1990. Nearly two-thirds of them are employed by companies that belong to the Greater Redmond Transportation Management Association, an organization that works with employers to get commuters out of their cars.
Some of those firms have award-winning commute-trip-reduction programs. Not one charges employees for parking. If they did, drive-alone commuting almost certainly would drop, says John Resha, the association’s executive director. But, “to be first, you’ve got to have a real good reason,” he adds. “In the suburban market, you’re in a whole different situation.”
People work farther apart in suburbia, usually in widely separated, low-rise buildings. That means transit service often is spotty and finding a car-pool partner more challenging. Employers are more reluctant to take away free parking and risk employees’ wrath if alternatives to driving don’t work well, says the UW’s Hallenbeck. What’s more, he adds, many suburban workers could simply park on the street.
To prevent spillover into neighborhoods, many cities and counties required developers to provide more parking stalls than employees and customers needed under ordinary circumstances. So on-site parking is usually abundant.
For many suburban employees, free parking is a benefit “not unlike a health or retirement plan,” the state Commute Trip Reduction Office said in a 1999 report.
Employers tinker with it at their own risk. After the Commute Trip Reduction law passed in 1991, Olin Aerospace of Redmond — now Aerojet — formed an in-house committee to figure out how to comply.
Its options were few. Management told committee members they couldn’t propose anything to get commuters out of their cars that would cost the company money or alter the workweek. So, on the committee’s recommendation, Olin imposed a $5 monthly parking charge in 1994. Within a year, drive-alone commuting had dropped from 90 percent of the work force to 67 percent, according to a 1995 King County Metro report.
Within another year, the fee was gone.
Cindi Gyselinck, Olin’s employee-transportation coordinator at the time, says many workers were so upset by the parking charge that they refused to fill out the paperwork to deduct the $5 from their paychecks. “You’re not going to fire somebody over five dollars,” Gyselinck says. Olin repealed the charge and reimbursed its employees. Many workers reverted to driving alone.
Supply and demand
Northwest Hospital’s North Seattle campus is more suburban than inner- city. It’s no transit hub: Just one bus route serves the campus. Before 2000, parking had been free for 40 years.
The city provided the hospital with a push to start charging. It required Northwest to switch to pay parking before it could build a new garage.
But Rossiter, the program supervisor, says the decision to end free parking was mostly a question of supply and demand. When parking was free, patients and visitors often had trouble finding a space. “We had sick people driving around and around, looking for a place to park,” Rossiter says. “It was a nightmare.”
Charging was a way to manage demand. Everyone but employees who car pool pays now: visitors and patients by the hour, workers by the month. The $30 monthly fee wasn’t greeted warmly. “It got to the point where it was almost tears,” says Rossiter. “People asked us, ‘Why am I paying for the same piece of asphalt where I’ve been parking free forever?’ “
Many workers still avoid the charge by parking on neighborhood streets. That should become less convenient in a couple of years, when the city plans to limit on-street parking to two hours.
The parking fee is no more popular now than it was in 2000, Rossiter says. But Fausto Espinoza, the car-pooling security officer, says he has come to accept it. His commute from Everett takes less time in the HOV lane, he says. He wouldn’t go back to driving alone even if the charge was repealed.
The same market and regulatory forces that pushed Northwest Hospital toward pay parking are starting to play out elsewhere in the region and the nation.
By 2020, according to one leading economic forecaster, King, Snohomish and Pierce counties will have to find room for 470,000 more jobs, 30 percent more than today. If the state Growth Management Act holds, that growth will be up, not out. The law directs development into already- urbanized areas to prevent sprawl.
That means available land will get more expensive. Using it to build pricey parking lots or garages for everyone who wants to drive — but not pay — will become more difficult to justify, says Resha, the Redmond commute- trip-reduction official.
If free parking somehow is provided for everyone, traffic will just get worse, says Rick Williams, a Portland transportation consultant and former parking-company executive. That, in turn, will discourage new business, he contends — another reason for employers to stop subsidizing parking and start subsidizing alternatives.
Some Puget Sound cities already have adopted limits on how much parking developers can provide. One reason: environmental concerns about the impact of runoff from impervious surfaces on streams and salmon.
At some point, Resha says, even in suburbia, demand for parking will exceed supply. “That’s when you let the market start to determine the value of it,” he says. In five or 10 years, Resha predicts, even in Redmond, people will be paying to park.
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Editorial; Mass Transit In Bonding Bill: Central Corridor funding is vital
Pioneer Press
4 May 2004
The long trip toward reality for light-rail transit, due to end next month with the opening of the Hiawatha line, will propel commuter confidence that more of us may eventually be freed from intracity automobile gridlocks and gasoline bills that burn family income at alarming rates. The Minnesota Senate’s proposed bonding bill wisely includes $5.25 million for mass transit planning along University Avenue.
The funding for the so-called Central Corridor is vital.
As the House and Senate move through long lists of priorities and eventually reconcile the $889 million in the Senate proposals with the $602 million in House legislation, the planning money for the Central Corridor is not expendable in the bargaining. If politics were logical, the east-west route between Minneapolis and St. Paul would have been the first leg of the LRT system in the Cities.
With the Hiawatha line ready to roll from downtown Minneapolis to the Mall of America in Bloomington, it should quickly become obvious that extending light-rail travel is not only reasonable, it is part of a solution to the Interstate 94 follies between the downtowns.
Central Corridor planning money needs to be forthcoming now in order to move an already tardy initiative toward either LRT or a busway down University Avenue. Available federal money would go elsewhere if the state does not provide its share for the study of how best to improve public transit down the 11-mile stretch.
Minnesota in general and the metro area in particular have transportation problems that weigh on the economy as well as citizens’ tempers. The problems have no partisan stripes. Congestion, pollution and rising gasoline prices are neither Republican nor DFL matters. They are public problems that require public solutions. The transportation issues have broad consensus for finding solutions. From business community leaders throughout the metro to environmental groups, transit has become a priority to which lawmakers must respond as expansively as is fiscally reasonable.
The House puts $4 million toward planning for the monorail Personal Rapid Transit concept, an interesting and worthwhile effort. The Senate leadership has included $2 million of the needed $37.5 million for the Northstar Corridor heavy rail, which the House omitted entirely. The Northstar’s fate is up to House leadership and Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who backed the $37.5 million in his bonding proposals this year. There’s going to be plenty of negotiation in these last weeks of the session to get the state’s transportation spending commitments into law.
The Central Corridor must not be derailed in the bargaining.
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EU and France seek an accord on Alstom
The International Herald Tribune
May 4, 2004
After securing the creation of one national industrial champion last month, the French government is now thinking of ways to rescue another from oblivion.
The recently appointed finance minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, was widely criticized for forcing through the pending takeover by the French pharmaceuticals company Sanofi-Synthelabo of Aventis, its larger French-German rival.
In contrast, his efforts to prevent the French industrial giant Alstom from filing for bankruptcy were welcomed on Monday by the European Commission , which is overseeing the rescue attempt to ensure that it does not breach state aid rules in the European Union.
Sarkozy met with the EU competition commissioner, Mario Monti, for an hour and a half Monday to sound out several ways of preventing Alstom from failing, Monti’s spokesman, Tilman Lueder, told reporters.
The commission’s approval of any rescue bid is essential to avert bankruptcy. France has already provided 2 billion, or $2.4 billion, in cash and 2.2 billion in loan guarantees to Alstom, the maker of high-speed TGV trains as well as one of the largest makers of gas and steam power turbines in the world.
Sarkozy said the commitment of the French government to finding a “lasting solution” to Alstom’s problems is “total,” Agence France-Presse reported. “We want to fight to ensure that French industry and European industry continue to live,” he was quoted as saying after the meeting.
But rather than focusing on a state bailout, as did hi |
