Dallas: Light Rail Expansion Continues With Opening of Victory StationLight Rail Now! Website November 13, 2004 On Friday, 12 November 2004, Dallas’s light rail transit (LRT) system passed yet another milestone in its seemingly relentless expansion, with the opening of Victory Station, located at American Airlines Center, a major sports and special events venue just west of downtown. The 35th stop on DART’s LRT system, Victory Station will initially be served only during arena events until the rail line reaches further expansion goals around 2009 to 2010. An estimated 2,000 LRT and 1,000 regional “commuter” rail passengers are expected to use Victory Station, which has been provided with longer station platforms to help accommodate the crush of passengers expected after events. [Dallas Morning News, 12 November 2004] Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), the transit agency, assisted by a trainload of local dignitaries, unveiled the station with fanfare. “DART has really shown the world that you can have a modern transportation system that can be run efficiently, on time and under budget” said US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a staunch DART supporter who was on hand to welcome the trains to Victory Station. [Dallas Morning News, 12 November 2004] “Today is about results. Delivering those results is exactly what DART is about” said US Representative Pete Sessions, R-Dallas. To celebrate the Victory Station opening, DART sponsored two days of special events, on 13 and 24 November, featuring “great food, live music, local exhibitors and more….” This included a shuttle train operating throughout the day between the Pearl Street station downtown and the Victory station. [DART News Release, 1 Nov. 2004] Prior to the opening of the extension, DART’s LRT was serving 57,000 daily rider-trips over its 44-mile, 34-station system. The 1.25-mile extension, at a cost of about $79 million, marks the first step in future rail line construction to northwest Dallas, Irving, Carrollton, and Farmers Branch what DART describes as “the start of a 49-mile DART Rail expansion to the southeast and northwest.” [Dallas Morning News, 12 November 2004; DART News Release, 1 Nov. 2004] The scale of DART’s rail expansion program is daunting. Through 2018, DART is planning for its rail network to link Pleasant Grove, South Dallas, Fair Park, and Deep Ellum to the southeast with the Medical/Market Center, Love Field, northwest Dallas, Farmers Branch, Carrollton, Las Colinas, Irving, and DFW Airport to the northwest. In addition, service will be extended south from Ledbetter Station in South Oak Cliff to I-20 and northeast from Downtown Garland Station to Rowlett. [DART News Release, 1 Nov. 2004] However, warns the Dallas Morning News, “North Texans will have to wait awhile for the next DART station openings. Stops from downtown to Fair Park could open in late 2009, and stations along the northwest line will open in mid-2010 and mid-2011.” The paper notes that “The five-year wait for the next station will be the longest between openings since DART debuted its starter system in 1996. The White Rock station opened in 2001, four years after the transit agency unveiled the final piece of its starter system.” [Dallas Morning News, 12 November 2004] Meanwhile, the popularity of the rail service continues to grow, driving other efforts to meet demand and improve service. To meet the rising demand for service, DART plans to add 20 new light rail vehicles (LRVs) to its 95-car fleet in 2005. [DART News Release, 1 Nov. 2004] |
The case for building on what we haveHoustonChronicle Nov. 13, 2004 Houston finally has rail transit. Trains carry 30,000 people a day on the Main Street line. The Metropolitan Transit Authority’s applications for federal money to build extensions are in. So why are Metro’s new leaders rethinking rail once again? For three days in late October, Metro board members, a panel of experts, elected officials and community representatives listened as rail suppliers presented a dozen different rail technologies. The purpose of the forum was to verify that decisions approved by the previous Metro board and Houston voters last November really are the best we can do to take Houston into the 22nd century. In other words, have we chosen a technology that will offer the greatest service safety, accessibility, frequency and speed for the cost? Light rail is the most popular rail transit technology in the United States, with 20 systems in operation, and another three under construction. On Nov. 2, voters in Phoenix and Denver approved light rail expansion. A light rail line at ground level is less than half as expensive as any other urban rail transit option. That’s critical: the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) awards funding based on cost effectiveness; a more expensive system is only justified if it attracts significantly more passengers. The leading argument against light rail is the number of crashes between autos and rail on the Main Street line. But most of the light rail accidents have been minor fender-benders like those that happen daily on Houston freeways. Ironically, figures reported by transportation reporter Lucas Wall in the Chronicle suggest that the light rail has actually reduced the number of accidents on the line. Metro’s studies for light rail extensions include design features like signalized left turn lanes that will make future lines safer than Main Street. Light rail transit offers flexibility. Ground-level light rail doesn’t necessarily require tracks in streets. Most light rail systems use long stretches of abandoned railroad corridors, crossing streets but not running in them. In difficult or congested areas, light rail can also run elevated or in subway without driving up the cost of the rest of the system. By contrast, alternate technologies like people movers, mini metros and monorails require the entire route to be separated either by elevating it, putting it underground or fencing it off. That’s costly. The question is whether the benefits warrant the expense. Total separation allows for automated, driverless operation, but the benefits of this are often not as dramatic as touted. The labor costs saved by eliminating drivers may be offset by higher maintenance expense and the closely spaced trains promised by automation don’t always materialize. For example, the fully computerized BART system in San Francisco can barely operate a train every two minutes; meanwhile, Toronto runs streetcars in the same lanes as automobiles just as frequently. That’s a lot of capacity; two-car light rail trains running every three minutes — the design capacity of the Main Street line — can carry 8,000 people an hour in each direction. Higher top speeds offered by grade separation (be it with light rail or another technology) also have limited benefits in practice. Only about half the travel time on the Main Street line consists of travel; the rest is spent in stations. Thus, doubling the top speed on Main Street would only reduce the travel time by a quarter. On the planned North Hardy route, passing tracks at stations will allow future express trains to skip some stations, offering greatly reduced travel time without much additional cost. In any case, riders seem to care more about predictable travel times than overall speed. Transit planners across the United States have concluded that the benefits of extensive grade separation are not worth the cost except in very dense cities like New York. Elsewhere, surface light rail delivers comparable benefits at a fraction of the cost. Light rail can also bring benefits that other technologies cannot. As the new restaurants and lofts along and near the Main Street line show, light rail can not only blend into a neighborhood but actually improve it. The same cannot be said for an elevated train. Elevated guideways look sleek in computer renderings, but are less elegant, with thickened columns, electric conduits and emergency walkways. But it is the stations that are the real problems: Imagine a building, 50 feet wide and 200 feet long, suspended over a city street, with four escalators and two elevators to the sidewalks below. That is obtrusive in downtown, let alone in a residential neighborhood. The reality is that elevated transit systems are best placed in existing corridors like rail lines or freeways. That is fine when those corridors are where the people are; but that’s not generally the case. On Fulton, the alternative to street-running rail serving the neighborhood would be an elevated line in the middle of the Hardy Toll Road. That would serve mainly industrial areas while bypassing neighborhoods and destinations like Northline Mall entirely. There are corridors in Houston — like Westpark — that might be well suited for elevated lines. But that can be done with light rail; using a different technology there would require either a second north-south line through downtown — duplicating the investment we have already made at higher cost — or make riders transfer to light rail or bus to get downtown. Sticking with a single technology will result in a more convenient, more flexible system. It will also reduce maintenance costs. Ultimately, Metro isn’t facing a technology problem at all. Passengers don’t care about automation or magnetic levitation or grade separation. They care whether the ride is comfortable and reasonably fast, how long they wait and whether they have to transfer and, most importantly, if they can get where they want to go. Metro’s mission is to meet those needs at the lowest cost, not to reinvent the wheel. |
D.C. Light Rail System Breaks GroundWTOP Radio — Washington November 13, 2004 WASHINGTON — The newest form of transportation to come to the nation’s capital is moving forward. Mayor Tony Williams was among the dignitaries at a groundbreaking for the Anacostia Light Rail project. When the half dozen stops open by mid 2006, it’ll be another piece in the mayor’s ongoing Anacostia redevelopment program. The Metro Board approved spending about $16 million dollars for land, site preparations and rail cars. But D.C. Department of Transportation Director Dan Tangherlini tells The Associated Press it’s District of Columbia money that’s paying for the project. He estimates the final cost at between $30 and $40 million dollars. Tangherlini calls light rail a “powerful economic development tool.” He points to the light rail line in Portland, Oregon, which he says is D.C.’s role model. The initial line will run between Bolling Air Force Base and Pennsylvania Avenue. |
FASTRACKS PUTS DENVER IN FAST LANE TO FUTURERocky Mountain News (Denver, CO) November 13, 2004 There it was, on the front page of Thursday’s New York Times, datelined Lakewood: Metro Denver voters had turned logic “on its head” by approving FasTracks last week and disproving the long-held notion that “mass transit systems become tougher to build as cities age and grow.” Tom Clark had a lot of skin in that game. The Metro Denver Economic Development Corp., which he runs, had donated $500,000 to the transit campaign, and then loaned it another $100,000. “It was our first big expenditure, and it paid off,” Clark said Friday. “I was plenty nervous on election night, with a third of my $2.2 million annual budget tied up in FasTracks and Amendment 34.” What voters approved, of course, was a 0.4-cent sales tax increase that takes effect Jan. 1. The levy will help fund the Regional Transportation District’s 12-year build-out of 119 miles of light rail and diesel-powered commuter trains on six new corridors. There will be extensions to three existing light-rail lines, including the T-REX line, a new style of rapid bus service on the Boulder Turnpike and a new network of suburban bus connections. When completed in 2017, FasTracks should reshape how people get around Denver, and it should channel land development and lessen sprawl. It also will allow businesses all over the area to draw on a metrowide work force. For instance, a small business in Arapahoe County could hire a lower-wage worker from Thornton or even Longmont who could get to work cheaply and without having to own a car. Much of the $3.5 million political campaign focused on whether or not FasTracks would much speed commute times or offer a great alternative to bumper-to-bumper traffic. Ultimately, voters believed it would. This year Clark raised more than $12 million from local companies “to get the economy running again,” with the 20-month-old MDEDC spearheading economic development efforts for the Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce. The passage of FasTracks represents the group’s first major success. “Someone from the public relations firm we use in New York called Thursday and said, ‘Jeez, we thought everyone in Denver drove an SUV,’ “ Clark joked. The Times interviewed William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association. “Outside of New York City, which is in a league by itself, this is the largest comprehensive program of expanding public transportation in the country,” he said. Millar talked further to Times reporter Kirk Johnson about the early 20th century, when trolley lines and subways often led to the development of new parts of a city. “Then we got away from that — highway building in the ‘50s dispersed development; now in the past 15 years, communities are struggling to find their way back,” Millar said. Indeed, Clark talked Friday about “a new awareness that we’re going to reshape Denver with transit-oriented redevelopment. There’s a renewed sense of confidence in this business community that we can step up on big issues. Now companies will look at us as someone who’s looking over the horizon. People in this business community are walking around with a little bit of swagger.” Some swagger is fine, even well-deserved, but some perspective should keep it short-lived. Denver was one of 23 U.S. cities that passed transit plans on Election Day. At least two of them — Phoenix and Seattle — are cities that compete hotly with Denver for economic- development plums. And don’t forget that two other cities we compete with for jobs and corporate relocations — Portland, Ore., and San Diego — are 20 years ahead of Denver in mass transit terms. “I had a bit of a letdown when I saw that Phoenix and Seattle had approved mass transit,” Clark said. “It surprised me. Just when I thought we left ‘em in our dust. I thought transit was going to be the major market differentiator for us. It will be a differentiator but not as major a one. Maybe there’s a difference in the size of the transit plans they approved, but the headline reads the same. And our potential customers read the headlines. “Thank God we did this. Where would we be without it?” Clark said. “But believe me, FasTracks, together with the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District and the Stadium District, creates a powerful story for Denver.” As if to underscore Clark’s last comment, I got a press release Friday about the Nov. 28 opening of a new light-rail station beneath the Colorado Convention Center expansion on Stout Street. It will allow easier access to Denver’s Performing Arts Complex. Presumably, it will do for cultural events what the 2003 light-rail spur did for sporting events. Onward and upward. |
‘Peninsula’ plan changes are approved; Roads added in new proposalJersey Journal November 13, 2004 An enthusiastic Planning Board has approved an amended pre-development plan for the former Military Ocean Terminal, now known as the Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor. The plan for the 299 acres, as presented Tuesday night, was heralded as a framework for one of the largest mixed-use development in the metropolitan New York area. Yet Mayor Joseph V. Doria Jr. cautioned, “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” and said the pre-development stage will likely last at least 10 years. “This is a plan for the future,” he said. The redevelopment blueprint, authored by the Bayonne Local Redevelopment Authority, was presented to the board by Planner John Clark. The original plan was presented and approved in August 2001. The majority of the differences between the amended plan and the original involve transportation. Traffic engineers had not been consulted on the original plan, and they played a key role in fine-tuning the streetscape of the Peninsula, officials said Tuesday. Some of the major additions are: • A plan to widen Route 440 to six lanes, which Clark said would be needed whether or not the MOT site is developed. • Creation of a new bridge over Route 440 and the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail tracks at 41st Street, to alleviate traffic on the existing 40th Street bridge. • Creation of a new north-south thoroughfare, Harbor Avenue, that would run from the entrance of the Peninsula up to Exit 14A of the New Jersey Turnpike. • Creation of a street-car system that would run up and down the Peninsula and connect back to the 34th Street and 45th Street light rail stations. Open space and environmental concerns were also key issues raised both by Clark and by the board. As planned, the Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor will be home to a maritime industrial park with 1.5 million square feet of commercial space on the north side, while the south side will be mixed-use, with 6,700 residential units (both market-rate and affordable housing), 655,000 square feet of cultural space, 260,000 square feet of retail space and some 750 hotel rooms. Fifty-eight acres — 20 percent of the total development area — will be dedicated to open space, as well as a substantial wetlands enhancement and mitigation on the south side, in part to make up for the wetlands that will be destroyed to develop the north side. The plan also includes many features to provide outdoor activity space for visitors and residents, such as small boat marinas, fishing piers and a portion of the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway. Doria cited three main concerns that have remained throughout the planning process so far, dating back to the MOT’s closing in 1995: accessibility, ratables and much-needed tax income and jobs. The Peninsula project, he said, will address all three. Both the board and Clark stressed that the development process will be ongoing and fluid, and that further major amendments will have to go before the board for approval. After viewing Clark’s Powerpoint presentation, the board appeared impressed. The presentation, board Secretary Stephen Gallo said, “set forth a vision and a tone of excitement for the community.” First Ward Councilman Theodore Connolly called that vision “almost poetic,” and Doria hailed the Peninsula development as “probably be the brightest gem in New York Harbor.” |
TOWNS WITHOUT PUBLIC TRANSIT SEEK SHARE OF GAS TAX REVENUEDaily Miner & News (Kenora, Ontario November 13, 2004 The City of Kenora’s public transit system will benefit this year from the injection of $81,000 through the province’s recently announced gas tax program. The city will receive even more funding to boost ridership and possibly assist in the purchase of a new $300,000 transit bus in subsequent years of the three year $680 million program. However, smaller municipalities which don’t maintain public transit systems won’t share in the Liberal government’s funding windfall. A political back hand that doesn’t sit well with councils who are left out and continue to struggle with increasing operating and capital budgets, including the provincially downloaded costs of maintaining essential transportation links such as roads and bridges. Parry Sound-Muskoka MPP Norm Miller put the question to Northern Development and Mines Minister Rick Bartolucci in Queens Park, Nov. 1. Miller demanded to know why the province is denying the majority of northern communities a portion of the gas tax through a similar funding program. The minister responded that these municipalities can apply to the Canada Ontario Municipal Rural Infrastructure Fund (COMRIF) for assistance in financing the repair and replacement of roads and bridges. The $900 million federal/provincial program is available to municipalities with populations under 250,000 for infrastructure renewal and replacement projects including bridges, roads, water and sewers. Miller contends that Bartolucci is missing the point. “It’s a question of fairness. The fact is that small and northern municipalities are not going to receive a share of gas tax funding and that’s not fair,” Miller said in an interview, Wednesday. “Municipal requirements for roads and bridges go far beyond the local tax base, amounting to millions of dollars over the next 10 years. Sustainable government funding would enable them to plan and complete repairs more effectively.” Ministry of Transportation spokesman Bob Nichols offered the clarification that the gas tax program is specifically intended for municipalities that directly, or through a third party, provide a public transit service to paying customers. “The gas tax funding is dedicated to building stronger communities through increasing public transit ridership, reducing commute times and improving air quality,” Nichols said. “Any municipality that meets the requirements and didn’t receive a gas tax allocation is encouraged to contact the Ministry’s of Transportation’s transit program and policy office. However, program funding is being allocated to communities such as the City of Dryden, which no longer maintains a public transit system but continues to run a special handi transit bus for the elderly and disabled. City of Dryden treasurer Paul Heayn confirmed the municipality will receive $38,500 from this year’s gas tax allocation which it will use to increase ridership by expanding services such as adding additional runs for seniors for shopping and special events such as Christmas light tours. “We’re also applying for capital funding to replace the van with future grants,” Heayn said. Meanwhile in the Municipality of Red Lake, chief administrative officer Brian Anderson reports that the community isn’t eligible for gas tax funds for either the local handi-transit van or the municipally operated ferry service. The handi transit van is not municipally subsidized and is operated by the independent Harmony Centre on behalf of people with special needs. However, Anderson regrets that the municipal operated passenger ferry to McKenzie Island doesn’t qualify for funding under the gas tax program. “The Ministry of Transportation looks at ferries as an extension of highways and not a form of transportation,” he said. “We’re not too happy about it as we could use the additional funding to offset operating expenses. The ministry has agreed to look at it and we’ll see if the rules will change next year for the ferry.” Anderson added that it costs the municipality $120,000 annually to operate the ferry service which is offset by a nearly $100,000 provincial grant in addition to passenger fees. The 30 foot steel hull boat is powered by a V-6 inboard engine and transports up to 15 passengers at a time on the short trip to the island. He said the ferry runs every 15 minutes, 18 hours a day, seven days a week from April to December and is a vital transportation link for the approximately 250 residents of McKenzie Island. |
Denver learns how downtowns can riseArizona Republic November 14, 2004 DENVER — My book tour has been a forceful reminder that vibrant, healthy downtowns are the norm in competitive cities. This is never more true than here, in my adopted hometown. In the 10 years since I left, downtown has added about 80 percent of the amenities that make it so inviting and livable. In the four years since I came back to my real hometown, downtown Phoenix has added perhaps 1 percent of Denver’s assets — and the Mile High City is only a third our size. Bookstores? Denver has six downtown, chains and local. Enjoy 450 stores and restaurants, including three grocers and three drugstores. Of course, all four major sports play downtown. Hate sports? Then go to the Six Flags Elitch Gardens amusement park, or any of the nine museums and myriad galleries. The performing arts center is one of the country’s finest. Stay in one of 19 hotels. The downtown workforce is about 110,000 people. Many are choosing to live here, too. City neighborhoods connect, rather than having streets walled off. They enjoy parks and streetfront retail, all in walking distance. Residents have transportation options, including light rail and the lively 16th Street transit mall. These will grow with the recent vote that makes downtown the hub of 119 miles of new rail lines. Let me be clear: Denver, like these other great cities, suffers from sprawl and competition from edge office parks. It has many suburbs, including upscale equivalents of Scottsdale. It is near world-class ski resorts. So it’s not like we have much that other places lack. But they have great downtowns. They have wonderful city neighborhoods and local merchants. Not coincidentally, these cities have diverse economies, higher incomes and are competitive tigers. It’s sobering to this Phoenician. It makes me think that our town has become hopelessly, narrowly self-selecting. Folks like me, who expect the nation’s fifth-largest city to offer a quality downtown, should leave. Still, 20 years of writing about urban economies contradict this mood. I’ve watched cities turn around their downtowns, and with that their regional fortunes. Nothing was inevitable. But there’s a hard truth: No miracle pill will make a downtown healthy. I would apply that even to the proposed ASU downtown campus. It’s wonderful, but not enough. A campus housing the University of Colorado, Metropolitan State College and the community college opened in downtown Denver in 1977. Yet this downtown’s worst decline still was to come. That’s why Phoenix can’t stake its hopes on one big project, or even three (ASU, light rail and expanded convention center). Successful downtowns can begin with smart public policy and intelligent public-private partnerships. For example, city hall preserved the wonderful buildings of Denver’s Lower Downtown. But the downtown ascent must be powered by the private sector. Every healthy central core I visited was chock-a-block with businesses (even the stunning turnaround, helped by the subway, on LA’s Hollywood Boulevard). Phoenix leaders are right to be manic about housing, but the city must lure offices and retail. We gain nothing if downtown is just another commuter suburb. Downtown must become the friendliest place for private capital of all kinds. The other need is for wealthy stewards who love the center city. Will they step up? |
Freeway planners seek expansion, others oppose itInland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA) November 14, 2004 Inland Empire freeway planners find themselves in a continual race to stay ahead of the area’s fast-paced growth. They’re building new freeways, adding lanes to existing ones and creating more interchanges to smooth the flow of traffic. As better freeway access encourages more construction, more people crowd the roads. They demand less gridlock, and the cycle continues. Some traffic researchers and environmentalists say smart planning -not more asphalt — is the only logical approach to reduce congestion. County transportation planners, on the other hand, say they need to add lanes and revamp freeway interchanges to keep up with inevitable growth whether it’s desired or not. “Effectively what they are saying is we want to have growth control by gridlock,” said Darren Kettle, director of freeway construction for the San Bernardino Associated Governments. “It’s just not a policy that works in Southern California. … [Developers] are going to keep building whether a freeway lane gets built or not.” In the 50 years since the San Bernardino Freeway first gave automotive traffic a fast route to the citrus groves and vineyards east of Kellogg Hill, the Inland Empire has grown furiously. Cheap land -suddenly with easy access to Los Angeles — attracted development, which fed more cars onto the freeway, and transportation planners have been playing catch-up ever since. Southern California Association of Governments, a regional transportation agency, predicts 2.3 million people will live in San Bernardino County by 2020, an increase of half a million from the current population. REGIONAL PLAN NEEDED TO CONTROL AREA’S GROWTH Increased public transportation, along with denser urban areas that combine businesses and residences, would reduce the need for more roads, said Allen Bartleman, chairman of the Sierra Club’s San Gorgonio Chapter. But builders have no economic incentive to create urban centers where people can live, work and play when they reap huge profits by plopping scores of cookie-cutter homes on cheap, undeveloped land, he said. “You [need to] work on a regional transportation plan that considers where we should grow, and doesn’t put primarily the interests of developers who own cheap land at the forefront of everything,” said Bartleman, who filed a lawsuit against SANBAG challenging the legality of Measure I, which extended a half-cent sales tax that funds local transportation projects. The lawsuit claims SANBAG, the county’s transportation agency, should have performed environmental studies of each project proposed in the measure, which 79 percent of voters approved Nov. 2. It only needed 66.7 percent. A third of the $6 billion the tax is expected to generate over 30 years will pay for freeway projects, including interchange improvements and carpool lane additions. Public transportation, including Metrolink and public bus services, will get 16 percent. A bulk of the $1.3 million spent to promote Measure I came from developers, engineering firms, construction companies, real estate agents and Las Vegas casinos who will likely benefit from its passage. Freeway projects proposed in the measure, which extended a tax that began in 1990 through 2040, aim to reduce congestion by increasing freeway capacity. With the exception of freeways 10 and 210 west of the 15 Freeway, SANBAG wants to add lanes to every freeway in the San Bernardino Valley. The only place to go is up on northbound 215 Freeway into Riverside County. Traffic planners are considering elevated lanes because buying land to widen the freeway would cost tens of millions of dollars. There also are 34 freeway interchange projects on the transportation agency’s list, including three new interchanges on the I-15 in the Victor Valley as well as new freeway connectors in Fontana, Yucaipa and Rancho Cucamonga. Current Measure I funds will help complete the extension of the I-210 from Fontana to State Route 30 in San Bernardino in 2007. Kettle said Southern California will probably not add more freeways for at least 15 years, though there’s talk of creating a new highway corridor between the Antelope Valley in Los Angeles County and the High Desert. BUILD IT AND TRAFFIC WILL COME Some research suggests congestion relief from the freeway projects will not last long, and the roads will clog again from a phenomena known as induced traffic. “If you build it, it will either slowly fill or quickly fill depending on the demand that’s out there,” said Matt Barth, director of the Center for Environmental Research and Technology at UC Riverside. USC researchers, meanwhile, discovered that a road capacity increase of 10 percent generated 2 percent more traffic immediately and 9 percent within four years in metropolitan regions. Rural areas saw about 7 percent more traffic in the same time period, the study showed. But Kettle said SANBAG’s plans are not myopic. “You want to build it so it can accommodate for future growth for the next 20 to 25 years,” he said. That’s why the agency wants to widen freeways rather than squeeze a few more lanes onto existing roadways. Freeway expansion may reduce travel times, but it also provides people with more access to live farther from where they work, said Jennifer Wolch, director of the Center for Sustainable Cities at USC. “That facilitates a type of growth and development model that I think has some very serious problems,” she said. Besides encouraging sprawl, new and expanded freeways also raise environmental concerns by encroaching on wildlife habitat and important watersheds, Wolch said. John Holtzclaw, who chairs one of the Sierra Club’s national transportation committees in San Francisco, said traffic planners can ward off sprawl by not building roads. “If you don’t build the freeway out to an area or provide public transportation to it, it won’t grow nearly as much,” he said. Robert Noland, a professor of transport and environmental policy at Imperial College London, has studied induced travel in the United States and the United Kingdom. Noland thinks planners in Southern California and most urban areas in the world put too much emphasis on roadway expansion to relieve traffic congestion. “Research shows that this assertion is fundamentally flawed,” Noland wrote in an e-mail. “Road expansion allows for more development. … The Inland Empire should be debating how [or if] they want the region to grow.” But Wendell Cox, who led the charge to bring light commuter rail to Long Beach as a member of the Los Angeles Transportation Commission, said induced travel is a flawed concept. “It’s sort of like saying if you build more maternity wards you will get a higher birth rate,” he said. “It’s getting cause and effect mixed up.” Researchers did not consider how much traffic new freeway lanes take off city streets and that population growth will occur regardless of road construction, said Cox, who works as a transportation and public policy consultant. HOLDING OUT FOR NO GROWTH IN PHOENIX During the 1970s, Phoenix added no new freeways because of an anti-growth sentiment in the area and a lack of funding. “I think there was a feeling that if we didn’t build freeways people wouldn’t come here,” Maricopa Association of Governments Transportation Director Eric Anderson said. But the desert city and outlying communities, such as Tempe and Sun City, kept growing, and the area’s few roadways were plagued by gridlock. In 1985, Maricopa County became one of the first counties to pass a half-cent sales tax to fund transportation projects. Since then, the region has added about 145 freeway lane-miles, but it needs more to keep up with growth, Anderson said. Cox said the Inland Empire’s transportation woes will not be solved with more buses, light trains or even high speed rail, which, in theory, would zip commuters hundreds of miles in a matter of minutes. Public transportation works well in New York City and San Francisco, which were planned more than a hundred years ago, but today’s metropolitan areas are better served with more roads, he said. “Anybody who tries to suggest you would be better off with less roadway is probably smoking something that is illegal,” Cox said. SEARCHING FOR AN IN-BETWEEN Somewhere between centralized cities and urban sprawl is a compromise. Mixed-use communities integrate residential and commercial development and give people the option of walking to a nearby grocery store or a restaurant, even if their drive to work still takes an hour or more. “There’s a danger of focusing too much on the commute,” said Geoff Anderson, director of the Development, Community and Environment Division of the Environmental Protection Agency. “You still have a bunch of trips they need to maintain their daily livelihood.” Fontana officials have zoned areas in the north end specifically for mixed-use development. “It just seems like good planning for a community to do that,” City Manager Ken Hunt said. The ideas range from stores with residences on the second floor to a commercial center with an adjacent executive apartment complex. But so far, it’s only on paper. Hunt said developers need higher density levels to make the mixed-use concepts work, but people often view that as a bad thing. “What comes to mind is a project where you have a bunch of people stacked on top of each other,” he said. “That is sometimes politically challenging to do in a community.” Officials can avoid the stereotype by using different terms such as compact or transit friendly communities when they talk about mixed-use areas, Holtzclaw said. “We can either change the direction we are going and make it more convenient in the future, or we can continue sprawling and make it less convenient,” he said. |
Streetcars to roll in Southeast; Rail line to serve Bolling, boost Anacostia economyThe Washington Times November 14, 2004 D.C. officials broke groundyesterday for Anacostia Light Rail, a $55-million streetcar system that will make it easier for Southeast residents to travel and may stimulate the community’s economy. Wielding shovels across the street from the Anacostia Metro station at the site of what will be the Anacostia light rail station — one of six stops on the line — Mayor Anthony A. Williams, Metro General Manager Richard White and other officials hailed the new beginning. “It’s a great day for the neighborhood,” said Dan Tangherlini, director of the D.C. Department of Transportation. “After a 42-year hiatus, we return streetcars to the city, and we will begin the process of reconnecting our neighborhoods.” The initial Anacostia Light Rail line, budgeted at $50 milllion to $60 million, will run for 2.7 miles along the right of way of the existing CSX Shepard Branch industrial spur — from Pennsylvania Avenue, south of the John Phillip Sousa Bridge, to Bolling Air Force Base. Officials hope its six stops will open by fall 2006. Mr. Tangherlini said the expectation is that Bolling employees will use the system to commute and to leave the base to shop in the community. “We feel the way to revitalize a community is to give [people] access to opportunity — opportunity for jobs, opportunity for recreation, opportunity [to attend] cultural and religious events,” Mr. Tangherlini said. “I consider this a renaissance. People have been very patient, and they are getting their due.” The streetcars will run above ground in groups of three cars, each holding about 30 passengers. Officials said seats will be arranged around the inside of the cars, providing ample standing room. The color of the cars has yet to be determined, but Mr. Tangherlini said officials were “leaning toward red or green.” The cars will be like those now used in Portland, Ore., and Tacoma, Wash. The Metro system’s Board of Directors has approved spending $16.1 million for land, site preparation and cars. However, the District will pay for the project with money left over from Metro projects, money created by Metro economic development projects and other capital funds, Mr. Tangherlini said. He said the city is interested in Metro running the line, but no agreement has been reached. Streetcars were a fixture in the District from 1871 until 1962, but the city officially retired the last familiar green-and-ivory cars after Congress voted to replace them with a fleet of diesel buses. Navy Capt. Carol Schmidt, stationed at the Washington Navy Yard/Anacostia, said she is thrilled by the idea of a new transit line. “I think this will help ease some of the parking issues,” she said. “It’s more obvious at the Navy Yard. I applaud any effort that helps to ease the traffic problems.” Presiding over the groundbreaking ceremony, Gladys W. Mack, a Metro board member, said the economic growth sweeping across downtown also must come to Anacostia. She said the proposed baseball stadium along the Anacostia waterfront and the new pedestrian bridge would stimulate economic revitalization. “Suddenly everyone [will] rediscover the Anacostia River,” Mrs. Mack said. Mr. Williams said light rail meets several needs, from helping residents move around the city to economic development to connecting residents of Barry Farms to jobs. “Our vision is to expand the light rail to the new baseball stadium, and I’ve always said the stadium was about more than baseball,” the mayor said. “I think the light rail will help a lot in our community,” said Dorothea Ferrell, a member of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 8C01. “It’s definitely a connector and something in which all ages can get involved, from youth to seniors, because we all need transportation.” Ms. Ferrell said she and other residents attended many meetings to get a Barry Farms stop on the line. “We were isolated until Metro [opened], and now we have the opportunity to carry our children around [the city] to let them know about other areas of the District,” she said. She was less enthusiastic about building a baseball stadium on the Anacostia Waterfront. “I care about residents located in that area and how they will make it, where they will be shifted,” she said. “They are humans, and they have a right to be a part of D.C. and not Maryland or Virginia.” |
ROAD WARRIOR: No firm date for monorail’s reopeningLas Vegas Review-Journal November 14, 2004 If you’ve been wondering when the glitch-plagued Las Vegas Monorail will finally get going again, the official party line is that it’s not clear. But if you bend an ear toward those in the know, you’d get the feeling that you’ll be hearing jingle bells and raising New Year’s toasts well before you’re allowed to ride the high-tech choo-choo. “Based on what we know, it would be difficult to see it opening before 2005. But we don’t know the whole picture. We’d like it as soon as possible,” said Jacob Snow, general manager of the Regional Transportation Commission. Snow’s agency doesn’t run the monorail, but it has oversight over mass transit in Southern Nevada and a keen interest in the monorail, which has been shuttered since Sept. 8. That’s when metal parts fell from under a moving train for the third time this year, the most drastic of a number of troubles suffered by the $650 million lemon on a rail. Monorail spokesman Todd Walker said any reopening target date is purely speculative right now. “It’s premature to know before we have an exact timetable” for repairs, he said. “We want to open the system as soon as possible.” But he concedes that to safely reopen, there’s a long laundry list of items yet to be done. First of all, officials need to settle on a root cause for the monorail’s woes. Preliminary findings are contained in a report from operator and builder Bombardier Corp. According to Ron Lynn of the Clark County Department of Development Services Building Division, which has regulatory authority over the monorail, Bombardier believes stresses appeared in unexpected ways on train drive shafts, causing vibrations and the shedding of parts. They have yet to prove their case. Given the monorail’s balky beginning, Bombardier has lost the benefit of the doubt among local authorities. “We’re not convinced that their hypothesis is completely valid,” Lynn said. Lynn and Walker are awaiting a report in the next week or so from Exponent Inc., a disaster analysis firm retained to give a second opinion. “If it has a solution, and everybody agrees with it, we solve the problem and we retest, and at the OK of the county, we reopen the system,” Walker said. Sounds simple, but it may not be easy or quick. “It’s likely there will be fixes suggested that will take an undetermined amount of time to fix before we can reopen the system,” Walker said. “The system today is not ready to go out and carry passengers.” Will that fix take a week? A month? More than that? “It really depends on what the fix is,” Snow said. “Some fixes are pretty easy to do. Some aren’t as easy.” That would be followed by testing, which will be in two phases. According to Lynn, initial testing will involve stressing the trains over a period of time, then checking the trains from top to bottom to see how they fared. Then comes “commissioning,” when trains are run as scheduled over a period of time, but without riders. “I imagine they’ll want to do a significant testing and demonstration period,” Snow said. For the system’s initial launch, testing called for relatively trouble-free operations while running trains up to 20 hours a day over 30 consecutive days. Frequent glitches meant it took roughly six months to reach that goal. “I don’t want to say it’ll be 10 or 30 (days of testing this time),” Walker said. “It’s an undetermined amount of time.” Lynn said there’s plenty of variables that could foul up a testing schedule and push back a relaunch date. “If the corrections are inadequate in scope or degree, that opens up some more days for additional repairs. If the repairs are correct, but other things come up, that’ll bring it back to the drawing board,” Lynn said. “If they implement the fixes, and it takes two weeks per train, I may be able to commission one or two trains but not the rest of the system,” leading to a staggered reopening, Lynn said. If you roll all that around your brain, get out a calendar and do the math, it makes it nearly impossible to believe a November relaunch is possible. And December seems awfully iffy, at best, if you’re going to do a quality fix. January, maybe? The monorail company is hedging its own bets. On its Web site at www.lvmonorail.com, under the “Get Tickets” link, it posts this warning to prospective riders: “Due to the monorail’s recent mechanical and operational issues, if you will be arriving in Las Vegas prior to December 15, 2004, we recommend that you do not purchase advance tickets at this time.” That’s hardly a firm target date. Just a short while ago, the Web site listed Nov. 1 as the “do not purchase” date. Walker promises that a relaunch day will happen, even if he can’t say when. “The monorail will reopen, absolutely will reopen to passenger traffic again,” Walker said. “It’s unfortunate that we’ve experienced the delays that we have, but we’re still moving forward. We’re still very optimistic.” |
Little Rock River Rail streetcar draws “incredible” ridership in first weekLight Rail Now! NewsLog 14 November 2004 Little Rock’s heritage-style electric streetcar system has been enjoying spectacular success in attracting passengers since its inauguration on November 1st, according to reports from its general manager. Keith Jones. PE, Executive Director and General Manager of Central Arkansas Transit Authority, says that, by Thursday, Nov. 4th, streetcar ridership had raced “far beyond” his expectations. “Of course it’s free and it’s brand new, but it is still an overwhelming response”, Jones comments. Jones’s observations provide a useful professional snapshot and savvy assessment of the nuts-and-bolts experiences of a startup electric trolley service observations which might be valuable to others considering or planning similar operations. Ridership for the first weekend after the launch of the streetcar service has been impressive for a short, 2.1- mile system with just three vehicles: • Thursday, 4 Nov. 2 cars in service, 11 AM to midnight 1800 rider- trips • Friday: 5 Nov. 3 cars in service, 11 AM to midnight 2800 rider-trips • Saturday 6 Nov. 3 cars in service, 11 AM to midnight at least 2900 rider-trips • Sunday 7 Nov. 2 cars in service, 11 AM to 5 PM 1550 rider-trips “Those are incredible figures” observes General Manager Jones, pointing out that CATA “had to start limiting the loads to 80 persons per car on Saturday as we had more than 100 [passengers per car] a few times on Friday, and that gets to be marginally safe with people being in the rear stepwells, too crowded for comfort, etc.” Nevertheless, he adds, “Crowds were very cooperative.” Jones notes that “Ridership the past four days was diverse in every way. Young, old, local, surrounding counties, out of state. Racial and ethnic diversity was typical of almost every hour.” The volume of boarding passengers was almost equally divided between Little Rock and North Little Rock. According to Jones, “Alltel, 7th and Main, River Market, and the Chamber stop on the south end of the bridge were the most popular boarding locations.” As Jones had expected, for passengers, “the ride over the bridge in either direction is a huge, huge attraction.” Because of the ridership demand, CATA decided to add a third car Friday, the 5th, one day earlier than planned (the agency had planned to have 3 on Saturday). Jones estimates that perhaps 80% or more of the passengers during the first week were “cycle riders” they boarded at a stop and rode the streetcar around to the same stop before deboarding. However, Jones expects that “This will gradually diminish as people learn to trust the fact they can get off at an intermediate stop, spend time and money, then be able to get a streetcar to return to their point of beginning.” Nevertheless, even with this “cycle ridership”, Jones reports that his observations and discussions indicate that adjacent businesses felt that they benefited from patronage generated or attracted by the trolley ridership. Jones found many riders using the streetcar just to explore. “Conventioneers who knew nothing about the streetcar or the two cities jumped on with little reluctance.” He adds, “People want to know about the locale, and our drivers are learning the answers and telling us what they need to learn, but drivers need to spend most of their time watching out for traffic and pedestrians. Getting trained and talented volunteers to ride on busy days to talk to the visitors is something we will explore with the two convention bureaus and others.” Jones notes that there is pressure to increase the operating hours of the streetcar service, but this must conform to the operation’s current budget constraints. While revenues have probably exceeded expectation, so have labor costs, to accommodate the demand. Already, the streetcar service is facing demands to run three cars more often, but “We cannot continue to run three cars except on Saturdays due to costs but also due to the basic mechanical fact of life that you always need a spare when you are dealing with complex things having moving parts. Of course as we develop some budget history on the expense and revenue side, we will discuss what it would take to increase the hours.” Jones points out that CATA will have two more streetcars under contract soon for delivery in mid-2005. So far, at least from its first week of experience, the River Rail streetcar has the definite look, feel, and sound of success. |
Rail-system plans stir controversy; Charlotte, Raleigh leaders see problemsThe Associated Press Nov. 14, 2004 CHARLOTTE, N.C. — City Councilman Patrick Mumford envisions the day he has another option for his daily commute to work in Charlotte’s downtown financial district. He already can choose between his car, a 10-speed bike and the city bus that stops near his house. Mumford says light rail should be another choice for him and thousands of commuters sick of sitting in traffic. Construction has begun on the first leg of Charlotte’s light rail system, a 10-mile stretch between downtown Charlotte and suburban Pineville dubbed the South Corridor. In the state’s second-largest metropolitan area, 150 miles west, efforts are under way to connect Raleigh, Durham and Research Triangle Park by commuter rail. The price tag for the South Corridor is $371 million and is but a fraction of the overall bill to construct Charlotte’s new mass transit system, which will have spokes running from downtown to five different points on the perimeter of the city’s sprawling development. Current cost estimates for the entire project range as high as $6 billion. Brad Schulz, spokesman for the Triangle Transit Authority, said the Triangle’s rail project is expected to cost about $640 million. Scaled back from 35 miles to 28 miles, the system will utilize diesel-powered trains instead of electric-powered ones. Charlotte is funding its system with large state and federal grants and with tens of millions of dollars annually from a half-cent transit sales tax approved by voters in 1998. By contrast, the Triangle project gets about $6 million to $8 million in local funding from a rental car tax in Wake, Orange and Durham counties. With that kind of money on the line, there are detractors. “There are a lot of unanswered questions about rail transit, but one thing we know for sure is that neither project will significantly reduce traffic congestion,” said John Hood of the John Locke Foundation, a think tank based in Raleigh. “We know that because the people who are building them have said so.” A traffic study released in September by the Texas Transportation Institute showed that the average peak-period commuter experienced 45 hours of delays in Charlotte in 2002 — above the 25-hour average for medium-size cities and on par with delays in larger cities such as Denver, Phoenix and Seattle. In Raleigh-Durham, also classified as medium-size, delays averaged 25 hours. Also, a recent study by a Seattle-based environmental group, Northwest Environment Watch, concluded that Charlotte has the worst sprawl in the country when compared to 15 similar-size, fast-growing U.S. cities. Mumford said light rail has never been offered as a panacea for Charlotte’s woes. “During the times when the roads are most heavily traveled, we feel that mass transit can help alleviate problems,” he said. “If we can help traffic move during morning and afternoon peak times, it’s not only good for commuters but also for business.” Former city Councilman Mike Castano says it is more efficient to use public money to improve Charlotte’s roads. “I would say 98 percent of the residents will never use mass transit,” he said. “They use cars.” Castano says light rail will be an expensive boondoggle. “The figures just don’t add up,” said Castano, who heads a group called C-FAST that opposes light rail spending. “There are thousands of citizens who feel like the decision has already been made to go ahead with light rail.” Charlotte’s South Corridor line is to feature 15 stations, about half of them with park-and-ride lots. Due to be finished in 2006, the first spoke in the city’s system, which will include light rail and high-speed bus ways along other corridors, is projected to carry about 9,000 riders per day, escalating to about 18,300 by 2025, local transit officials have said. By comparison, some 54,000 riders already use city buses each day. Meanwhile, officials in the Triangle have estimated daily ridership on their rail system at 14,300 when it opens in 2008. It is expected to rise to 21,800 per day by 2025, Schulz said. David Hartgen, a professor of transportation studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, questions light rail’s benefits. “Even if it is built, 97 percent of the travel will be on the streets,” he said. “So if we spent 5 percent of the money to improve intersections, we would see a lot more benefits.” |
The Right Read On The Rail VotesTampa Tribune (Florida) November 14, 2004 Voting on one question every four years is no way to run a railroad. Floridians said they wanted a bullet train four years ago, then said earlier this month that they didn’t, or more precisely didn’t want to be constitutionally forced into the project regardless of costs. The Florida High Speed Rail Authority is exactly right that the Nov. 2 repeal of the bullet train amendment is not a vote to kill the concept. When asked any ballot question, voters tend to say yes. All eight amendments on the recent ballot passed. And even though voters said yes to repeal the rail amendment, they also would have said yes if asked if they wanted the state to find safer and faster ways than interstate highways for folks to travel between the state’s major cities. Rail authority members are looking at a new route out of the Orlando airport and listening to another contractor, Global Rail Consortium, a group with ties to South Korea. Its promise to invest $400 million of its own money in a Florida train is worth exploring. This month Amtrak improved Tampa’s train schedules, restored sleeping cars and dining cars and added Orlando as a stop for its train serving Miami, Tampa and New York. Yet the national passenger railroad still does not provide convenient and state-of-the-art transportation. It costs only $8 to take the Silver Star to Orlando, but the trip takes just over two hours — 5:22 p.m. to 7:27 p.m. — a schedule ill-suited for business travel. Getting to Miami takes nearly six hours — 10:35 a.m. to 4:20 p.m. For in-state trips, a fast train running frequent schedules at reasonable rates could be profitable, some rail experts believe. State Sen. Jim Sebesta, a Republican from St. Petersburg and probable chairman of the transportation committee next session, joined Gov. Jeb Bush in recommending repeal of the rail amendment. But Sebesta remains a supporter of rail. “Admittedly, it takes a vision of the future to see a 300 to 400 mph bullet train zipping across Florida, carrying Floridians, tourists and others, and connecting the major areas of our great state,” he said. “I firmly believe if we can put the funding partnership together, this could be one of the greatest economic development boons Florida has ever seen. Repeal, yes. Quit, no.” Sebesta and the High Speed Rail Authority are right to press cautiously ahead. Florida voters would surely agree. |
Thames Gateway: Taking the transport test: A new railway is one thing. But new roads are coming too, says Juliette JowitThe Observer November 14, 2004 FROM A new road bridge to plans of a whole new railway in east London, you could be forgiven for thinking all transport investment for the next generation was going into this one corner of Britain. In fact, that might not be so far off the mark. But there are still objectors on both sides. Environmental campaigners focus on the new six-lane bridge from Thamesmead to Beckton — or ‘motorway bridge’ as they evocatively call it — as a symbol for their discontent. The £450m bridge is, though, only part of a bigger problem, which is that while there is much talk of new rail lines and trains, a lot of time is being spent building new roads and car-parking spaces. Transport experts mostly agree that new roads generate more traffic, more pollution from greenhouse gases and local toxic emissions and, eventually, congestion — a point conceded by the government in its leadership of the debate about national road pricing in the future. There are also concerns that, far from meeting the pledge to help local communities, the bridge will largely generate traffic from better-off long-distance commuters. ‘It will generate traffic over a wide area,’ warned Richard Bourn, London campaigner for the Transport 2000 lobby group. ‘One has to wonder, how serious is government over climate change measures (to combat global warming)?’ A similar pattern emerges with pro vision of new parking, which is taking place on a huge scale. Two examples are the Stratford City scheme, which Newham council approved, with 10,000 spaces; and Silvertown Quays, which will have at least 5,000 and, objectors fear, up to 10,000 spaces. At Stratford City, the developers responded to criticism by offering to reduce parking in future if there was not enough demand, but critics fear that people will get into bad habits. Instead, environmental groups want better planning to ensure developments reduce the need to travel; good walking and cycling routes put in from the start to get people into the habit of using them early on; and more progress on proposed public transport links such as the £10bn on- off Crossrail link to west London, and extensions to the East London Line and Docklands Light Railway. The area should also benefit from a big interchange at Stratford for the speeded-up Channel Tunnel Rail Link for Eurostar trains to the continent and the promised commuter ‘bullet trains’ to and from Kent. Here, environmental groups meet the business lobby, which is also anxious for more public transport improvements. DLR extensions to City Airport and Woolwich are going ahead, but there is support for another to Barking, and maybe more after that. The London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, has said the ELL extension is a priority, but there is still not a commitment to government funding — and the decision might depend on whether London hosts the 2012 Olympics. The most important scheme, though, is Crossrail, which has been promised a hybrid bill but again is not yet funded. ‘Crossrail is the big one,’ said Julia Lalla-Maharajh, transport director of the lobby group London First. London First goes further, however: not only is the Thames Gateway Bridge ‘absolutely vital’, London First wants another bridge from Silvertown to the Greenwich peninsula to relieve the congested Blackwall tunnel. Better roads and parking are essential for the regeneration to succeed, said Lalla-Maharajh. ‘Physically, people have to have a road outside their house; it’s not about concreting over, it’s about creating an infrastructure in the community |
New Streetcars Get Good Reviews From RidersKARK-TV Little Rock Air Date: 11/15/2004 [2004/11/15] The new streetcars running through the downtowns of Little Rock and North Little Rock are serving a function of carrying tourists visiting for the opening of the Clinton Presidential Library. Central Arkansas Transit Authority spokeswoman Betty Wineland says the agency has been getting calls from all over from people who want to ride the trolleys. The system took eight years to plan and about 20 (m) million dollars to build. Phase Two will take the rail line east of downtown Little Rock to the Clinton Center. The system now has three cars running on two-point-five miles of track. The system connects Alltel Arena in North Little Rock with stops south of the river that include the River Market, office buildings and museums. The line takes in courthouses and city halls on both sides of the river, as well as the downtown libraries. |
Voting on how we grow: big election day dealWashington Post November 15, 2004 Ballot-box zoning and big-ticket transportation decisions — citizens bypassing elected officials to make critical decisions on how their communities develop — had a field day on Nov. 2. And the habit is spreading. Take California, where the state constitution opens the door wide to end runs around local elected officials. Bill Fulton, publisher of California Planning & Development Report, notes that the rush to file ballot measures by environmentalists, disgruntled citizens and developers is no longer confined to the “blue” counties up and down the Pacific Coast where uppity liberalism frequently reigns and Democrats rack up huge margins. Now “red” inland areas, where Republicans predominate, are turning just as rebellious, joining the club of proposed urban growth boundaries, or attempts to force public votes on virtually any new development. In the Central Valley’s San Joaquin County, strong GOP/Bush territory, seven growth measures made it onto the ballot this year (with environmentalists and developers splitting on the outcomes). And the push to popular control isn’t just a California phenomenon, notes Phyllis Myers of State Resource Strategies. In Florida, the phenomenon is spreading from the southern metropolitan part of the state (Miami-Dade up to Palm Beach) to the northern Atlantic coast and inland. Volusia County (Daytona Beach) voters decided, for example, to create Florida’s first citizen-proposed urban growth boundary, an effort to discourage development in rural wetlands and forests. But looking to the future and how we grow, some of the biggest shifts ordered at the ballot box seem to be occurring on the transportation front. Counting measures on ballots earlier in the year, the Washington-based Center for Transportation Excellence calculates voters have approved 80 percent of 2004’s proposed public transit measures, several dozen winning propositions with a cumulative price tag of close to $ 40 billion. Especially on transportation votes, public officials are often strong supporters. And with their involvement, we may be witnessing a historic turn — U.S. regionalism, fired by the need to assure mobility in traffic-clogged times, finally coming of age as a winning political agenda able to shoulder past historic city-suburban differences. The most spectacular breakthrough came Election Day in Colorado, when Denver-region voters decided, 57 percent to 42 percent, to OK “FasTracks,” a $ 4.7 billion initiative to build about 119 miles of light rail and commuter rail with extensions reaching out through the suburbs to such targets as Boulder and the Denver International Airport. Republican Gov. Bill Owens, conservative think tanks and auto dealers opposed FasTracks. But they were rolled over by a previously unthinkable alliance of the mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper, supported by 30 of his fellow mayors across the region plus environmentalists and the Greater Denver Chamber of Commerce. As it gets built over the next two decades, FasTracks could make a significant difference in the look, feet and mobility of one of America’s fastest growing, strategically located cities. Fifty-one of the 57 stations envisioned along FasTracks lines are expected to pose major opportunities for TOD — transit-oriented development. The variant to subdivisions marching along the Front Range of the Rockies may be compact new, transit-served communities in which people can live, work, dine or shop in town-like settings with significantly reduced auto needs. Backers suggest that population focused into the Denver-area TODs will take a significant bite into regional vehicle miles traveled, saving close to 50 square miles of open space through mixed uses and more intensive development. One likely transit village, in Boulder, will transform a used-car lot along a railroad spur into a dense, affordable neighborhood. In Denver’s Lower Downtown, the historic Union Station will be refurbished as a mixed-use project and become the primary local-regional-statewide transit hub for light rail, commuter trains, and local and intercity buses. Another transportation breakthrough occurred in Austin, Texas, where transit backers rebounded from a heartbreaking narrow defeat in 2000 to win voters’ approval of a smaller-scale system focused on regional commuter rail. Some rail advocates who had fought a 20-year battle for transit could finally celebrate. And while former Austin Mayor Kirk Watson led the campaign, it had a critical new friend and ally in state Rep. Mike Krusee of suburban Round Rock, a Republican and chair of the Texas House Transportation Committee. In Phoenix, voters went for a $ 16 billion transportation measure focused on highways, but still including money to add 27 additional miles to the planned light rail system approved in 2000. And so it was in a variety of smaller places, from Kalamazoo, Mich., to Lexington, Ky. In rural Colorado, voters in towns up and down a 70-mile corridor anchored by Aspen voted increased sales tax funding to expand the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority’s bus lines. In a nation ruled by superhighways, big-box retail outlets, isolated developments and Everyman/Everywoman on his/her own four wheels, all this goes strangely against the grain. But it is happening. |
First Prop. 400 work unveiledEast Valley Tribune November 15, 2004 Many of the first significant freeway, road and bus improvements under Proposition 400 will benefit the East Valley, including expansion of U.S. 60 and HOV lanes on Loop 101. One of the top priorities in the recently approved regional transportation plan is doubling the number of lanes on U.S. 60 east of Val Vista Drive Another key improvement is easing backups on Loop 101 by building an HOV lane from north Scottsdale to the freeway’s terminus in Chandler. Scottsdale will get the first HOV lanes, between the the Scottsdale Airpark and Loop 202, said Eric Anderson, transportation planner for the Maricopa Association of Governments. “That will potentially be one of the first projects out of the box,” Anderson said. Transportation officials hope to start construction in 2006. That would be the first year funds are available under Proposition 400, a $15.8 billion regional transportation plan voters approved Nov. 2. The measure extends a transportation tax that otherwise would have expired the last day of 2005. It will fund freeway expansion, road widening, more bus service and additional light rail. Planners have just started to study the HOV lanes on Loop 101, Anderson said. The plan calls for them to be built in the first five-year phase of the 20-year plan, which means they should all be open by 2011. Officials are working on a more specific schedule, Anderson said. The HOV lanes will allow another Proposition 400 element to start operation — rapid bus service. Buses will take that lane from the Scottsdale Airpark to south Chandler, with stops in downtown Scottsdale, Arizona State University, a future transit center in Mesa and Chandler Fashion Center. The rapid service should boost the number of people in Scottsdale who use transit, said Dave Meinhart, Scottsdale’s transportation planning director. He expects the HOV lane will flow faster than the general purpose lanes and encourage more drivers to ditch their cars. “Once you start to go to a system that can have you speeding by the people in the regular lanes, it makes it a lot more attractive,” Meinhart said. On U.S. 60, officials want to double the number of lanes east of Val Vista Drive by 2007, when a new interchange opens with Loop 202 near Ellsworth Road. Drivers would find themselves in a frustrating bottleneck without the new lanes, Anderson said. E.V. GETS TRANSIT BOOST The East Valley will get most of the transit improvements in the first five-year phase of Proposition 400. Five out of 11 rapid bus routes will open in the East Valley in the first phase, and there also will be six of seven traditional bus route improvements in the area. The first improved route in the plan is more frequent service on the Scottsdale/Rural roads route. Starting in 2006, service will increase to every 10 minutes in peak hours and every 20 minutes off-peak. The Scottsdale Road route is the city’s busiest today because it links many highprofile destinations, including the airpark, downtown Scottsdale and ASU. It also will run alongside the proposed ASU Scottsdale Center for New Technology and Innovation at the old Los Arcos Mall site, and numerous offices and retail stores. Planners expect demand will grow as these entities expand. “It’s going to be one of the primary transit corridors in the Valley,” Meinhart said. By 2010, bus passengers will see improved service on Main Street, Arizona Avenue/ Country Club Drive, Gilbert Road, Chandler Boulevard and Baseline Road. Drivers will see service at least every 15 minutes during peak times and every 30 minutes at other times, said Jim Dickey, the operations and planning director for Valley Metro. Some Valley routes now have service every 30 minutes in peak periods and every hour at other times. The plan calls for rapid bus service — which is a route with only a few stops at major destinations — to get riders to downtown Phoenix and also to emerging employment hubs in the East Valley. Those routes will serve loops 101 and 202, Main Street and Arizona Avenue. NO NEW E.V. LIGHT RAIL The only major element the East Valley won’t see right away is light rail. A 20-mile rail line will open in Phoenix, Tempe and Mesa in 2008, funded separately from Proposition 400. The proposition’s first phase will fund an extension from Spectrum Mall to Metrocenter in Phoenix. Officials will start studying two East Valley extensions, though. One would extend the line along Main Street, from Longmore to Mesa Drive. Another would build a spur from Apache Boulevard in Tempe, south on Rural Road to about Southern Avenue. Both those projects would be built after 2011. Mesa and Scottsdale get the bulk of road projects through 2011. A key improvement in Scottsdale is making eight miles of Pima Road a four-lane street from the city’s southern limits to 90th Street. The city also plans to build frontage roads along Loop 101 from Princess Boulevard to Scottsdale Road. Mesa is looking to expand Southern Avenue to six lanes from Country Club Drive to Recker Road. That eight-mile project may extend beyond the proposition’s first phase because it’s such a massive project, said Kevin Wallace, the city’s transportation planning administrator. That project and other ones may take several years to begin because the city still needs to do lengthy studies and design work. “It will probably be 2008 or 2009 before you start seeing projects on the streets,” Wallace said. |
EUROSTAR TO QUIT WATERLOO BASEPress Association November 15, 2004 Channel Tunnel high-speed train company Eurostar will quit its present home at Waterloo station when a new international terminus is completed across London at St Pancras in 2007, it was announced today. The St Pancras project is part of the second half of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, the completion of which will cut journey times from London to Paris and Brussels. It had been thought that Eurostar might keep its Waterloo operation on when the link was completed. But today the company, which has just completed 10 years in operation, announced it was switching its entire operation from south to north London. Once in operation, St Pancras will offer return journey times at least 40 minutes quicker. One-way times to Paris will come down to two hours 15 minutes, while Brussels will be one hour 53 minutes. Listing the benefits of the move today, Eurostar also said domestic journeys will be quicker into Waterloo where there would be more space after Eurostar vacated the station. Eurostar communications director Paul Charles said: “After conducting extensive research, we have concluded that the benefits of moving the whole of Eurostar’s operation to St Pancras International substantially outweigh the need to operate a handful of services from Waterloo. “This move will bring many new passengers for Eurostar from other parts of London and south-east England, the Midlands and Yorkshire and, additionally, benefit domestic commuters using Waterloo.” Eurostar recently announced record market share and passenger numbers. It carried 6,046 million passengers in the 10 months to the end of October 2004, up 16.2% on the corresponding period last year. Market share on the London-Paris route is now 68%, while it is 63% on the London-Brussels route — the highest in Eurostar’s history. Eurostar has carried more than 59 million passengers between London, Ashford, Calais, Lille, Paris, Brussels, Disneyland Paris, Avignon and the French Alps since services started on November 14, 1994. Later, the Government announced that it would fund a £402 million Eurostar maintenance depot on existing railway lands at Temple Mills in east London. This will enable the new depot to be provided in time for the start of Eurostar services on the new high-speed link in 2007. Original plans envisaged Eurostar trains gaining access from St Pancras to the existing North Pole International depot via the North London Line. But further investigation indicated that this would require costly and disruptive infrastructure works and significantly reduce capacity on what is already a congested line. The Department for Transport said today that implementing the Temple Mills depot straightaway therefore provided a more cost-effective overall solution. |
ENVIRONMENT: LISBON TRIES TO COPE WITH MASSIVE TRAFFIC WOESIPS-Inter Press Service November 16, 2004 According to official figures, 600,000 people live in the Portuguese capital. That is true, however, only at night and on the weekends. During the workday, the population actually increases threefold. And most of the commuters who live in dormitory cities, which are home to around 1.5 million people, flood into Lisbon every day in their favourite means of transport: the car. Between 500,000 and 600,000 cars enter or leave Lisbon every day, making Portugal one of the European Union (EU) countries that is most heavily dependent on petrol. Moreover, Portugal already exceeds its “quota” of greenhouse gas emissions by 13.5 percent. The governments that have ruled Portugal over the past decade sounded the alarm and adopted drastic measures — which, however, have not been effective. In fact, many have been counterproductive. One of the first measures, aimed at filling the state coffers, was adopted by the government of prime minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso (2002-2004), who is now president designate of the European Commission (the EU executive organ). It involved the installation of toll booths on the Cintura Regional Exterior de Lisboa (CREL), an outer ring freeway similar to those of Paris, Rome or Madrid, which are however used free of charge. The result was dramatic. The CREL, built during the 1990s with the aim of easing traffic flows within the capital, is now one of the least used roads in Portugal. To avoid paying the toll, the huge flows of vehicles enter Lisbon directly by the traditional highways and secondary roads. Other examples increase the need for environmental policies, such as the high price of “green” or lead-free petrol, on which a high tax is imposed. Although campaigns are under way to promote the use of public transport, the mayors of the satellite cities have seen this policy as a unique opportunity to enrich their municipalities, setting parking metres around suburban train stations where commuters would normally leave their cars to catch a train into Lisbon. As a result, the stations are empty, the trains are filled to only half their capacity, and long queues of cars clog all accesses to the Cintura Regional Interna de Lisboa (CRIL), the inner ring road just outside the city which holds the EU record in traffic jam speed: an average of 2.8 kilometres per hour during rush hour. It takes just a small accident on the CRIL, the only route leading to the Portela do Sacavem airport, “for a passenger to miss his or her plane, which has happened several times,” complained an employee at the Abreu travel agency. But even those who are willing to pay for the car-park at one of the train stops will find it impossible to leave their car behind and take public transport to work, considering that the maximum time of stay is three hours. “If I were to leave my car at the Sao Joao do Estoril station (26 kilometres from downtown Lisbon), I would need to return at least twice to insert new coins, which is why I pluck up my courage and take the car,” Patricia Ferreira, who lives in Sao Joao do Estoril but works at a Lisbon publishing house, told IPS. In order to reduce consumption of petrol, the national government and the city government of Lisbon have announced their intention to follow in the footsteps of London, where cars entering the city have had to pay a congestion charge of five pounds (9.10 U.S. dollars) since February 2003. The example of the British capital is cited by the Portuguese government as a success story that has no precedent in any other large European city, since the access charge for a small area of just 21 square kilometres has cut traffic by 30 percent, with the resultant benefits of cleaner air. But environmental activists and experts have been pointing out in statements to the local press that before introducing the new restrictive measure, London authorities paved the way carefully. Indeed, before the new toll began to be charged in London, the number of buses was increased, public-transport-only lanes were built, numerous investments in video surveillance were made and parking space was limited. Until public transport in Portugal is improved and a coherent price and rates policy is implemented, “nothing will work”, Alberto Nobre, who regularly rides the train linking Lisbon with the town of Setobal, located 45 kilometres south of the capital, told the state television newscast. “A monthly pass for the Lisbon-Setobal route costs 80 Euros (104 U.S. dollars),” Nobre explained. “I use the train, but my neighbour, who commutes every day with his wife and two children, spends around 320 Euros (416 U.S. dollars), so it is cheaper for him to take his Peugeot 104. With these rates, all the government is doing is promoting the use of the car.” Fernando Nunes da Silva, an engineer who specialises in urban transport, said the idea of copying the London scheme in Lisbon “is laughable”, because he does not believe “that anyone would take seriously a proposal for which no previous studies have been conducted.” Nunes da Silva, who created a sliding rate scale for residents and visitors using services in the southern city of Evora which was highly successful in the 1990s, pointed out that his initiative “slowly died out until it finally disappeared” when the city government decided to start charging for parking on the outskirts of the city. A project with a major environmental impact must not be seen by mayors merely as a great opportunity to rake in revenue, say analysts. Sergio Manso Pinheiro, a transport technician and member of the general assembly of the Lisbon municipality, preferred not to enter the fray, limiting himself to quoting the European Commission White Book on transport policy. The publication sounds the alarm about the traffic jams that consume 0.5 percent of EU GDP due to environmental and economic costs — a proportion that could rise to 1.0 percent by 2010. In the EU and in the rest of the traffic-congested world, “within a few years, we will not be talking about whether or not to charge tolls, but we will simply have to ban cars from driving in the cities,” said Manso Pinheiro. |
Monorail station designs: flair or functionSeattle Times November 17, 2004 A year ago, it sounded like elevated thinking: Hire local talent to design Seattle’s new monorail stations before a construction deal is signed, so the project would get off to a running start and create an architectural splash. So the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) spent $2.3 million commissioning seven architecture firms to design custom stations for each neighborhood. A King Street hub was envisioned with leaning walls, glass floors, bamboo in an Asian garden, a roof with 15 peaks, and exposed trusses to complement the nearby stadiums. Near the Space Needle, designers imagined a station of vertical, illuminated glass walls. The design for a Ballard stop featured umbrella-shaped curved roofs. But the sole company bidding to build the monorail isn’t obliged to use any of the designs — and chances are, the actual stations will wind up more modest and much cheaper than the images the SMP has released so far. The architects for Cascadia Monorail Co., the sole bidder to build the 14- mile line, have created their own station drawings, so the stops will be more uniform, according to Jeff Fielder, a lead Cascadia negotiator. The public still hasn’t seen precisely what Cascadia has in mind because confidential contract talks are still unresolved. SMP board members Kristina Hill and Rick Sundberg, both architects, have publicly pledged they will not vote for a system unless they are satisfied with how it will look. Still, Hill says simpler stations can be attractive. She and Sundberg have already started paring away pricey flourishes such as unnecessary glass walls, Hill said. “This is a transit system,” she said. “You don’t have to be building great cathedrals.” Some critics have questioned the purpose of the early station work, part of an overall $12 million expenditure for urban design. It never made sense to Dick Falkenbury, the tour-bus driver who founded the city’s monorail movement. He said it contradicts the agency’s integrated “design-build-operate-maintain” (DBOM, pronounced “d-bomb”) contracting method, which places full responsibility on the builders for final design of the monorail. “Stupid! They never should have done that,” Falkenbury said. “This is a DBOM, so why the heck are we having 70 designers design the thing?” SMP board member Cleve Stockmeyer likens his agency to a homeowner who solicits multiple remodeling ideas, discards some, then settles on a pleasing look. “I think it’s money very well spent, to open their minds and unlock the creativity,” he said. “We really got the message across that we want excellent design. One way to make that happen is to give the illustrations.” Goal: “excellent design” The monorail’s original cost estimate of $1.75 billion presumed basic stations costing $5 million to $7 million, built from a common “kit of parts” layout. “They are not seen as highly individualized or decorative,” a cost consultant said. But after winning the 2002 campaign for a new monorail tax, monorail leaders named “excellent design” as one of six goals. The SMP barnstormed the city, writing down hundreds of ideas from the people: a Scandinavian theme in Ballard, glass mosaics by teenagers at West Seattle Junction, the red neon “SODO” sign reinstalled near Starbucks Center. The Stranger, a weekly paper that is strongly pro-monorail, lampooned the forums in an article titled “Laugh Track: Monorail Meetings Lack Practical Guidance.” In June 2003, the agency’s governing board approved the custom station planning as part of a larger urban-design contract with VIA Suzuki, which had done neighborhood-based design for the Vancouver, B.C., SkyTrain. “They’re going to help us define, in great detail, what the contractor is going to be asked to build, so this is one of those fundamental building-block contracts for us,” SMP Executive Director Joel Horn said at the time. But monorail opponent Henry Aronson believes the designs were produced “for political purposes, to convince the people the monorail is going to be beautiful,” since there’s no requirement to use them. Money for custom stations — as well as passenger capacity and contingency funds — is constrained by a shortage in the income from a citywide car-tab tax, currently running one-quarter less than originally planned. No price has been released for the stations designed by Seattle architects. Hill, the SMP board member, believes architects were told to draw concepts that would cost $5 million to $7 million to build. But one of the architects says they were never given a limit. “I’m not aware that we were working within an actual design budget,” said Patrick Gordon, a principal in Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, which produced concepts for two stations. Cost-cutting, simplifying As the Seattle architects worked, the agency made several cost-cutting changes to the monorail operating requirements, which made the station layouts a moving target. Boarding platforms were shortened from 180 feet to 130 feet to roughly 100 feet, the minimum for a wide 200-passenger Hitachi train. Tall, bi- level “iris” columns, once considered for 14 stations, were reduced to eight, then made optional. Multiple elevators rather than escalators are now proposed to allow more-compact stations, so the SMP can buy less land while improving access for cyclists and the disabled. Meanwhile, Cascadia has tried all year to simplify the project. The team talked SMP into dropping several proposals: for 7,000 public drawings; a train and station mockup for pre-opening tours; an initial one- mile segment to open in late 2007; and the station aesthetics. Documents show that Cascadia thought a “collaborative effort” with the local architects and communities would lead to costly change orders. At Cascadia’s request, the station images were relegated in the final bid specifications to merely “architectural visions and preliminary concepts.” “It turned out, they threw the thing out the window,” Falkenbury said. Some members of the city’s advisory Monorail Review Panel (MRP), an amalgam of design- and planning-commission members, have been frustrated by the lack of certainty that the images will become part of the final design. “In my three-year experience on the Seattle Design Commission, no public or private project provided less information on what was being proposed than the Seattle Monorail Project has given to MRP,” said panel member Iain Robertson. The SMP originally planned to keep the Seattle architects involved during construction. However, SMP has ended its contracts for station design. The agency’s lead architect, Alan Hart, of VIA Suzuki, who once worked nearly full-time on the monorail, has been scaled back to on-call duty. That happened, in part, because of an effort to reduce expenses, said SMP spokeswoman Natasha Jones. But monorail officials insist the designs will have an impact in the final product. Seattle architects contributed features that might be usable because they are less elaborate, or have strong support from monorail board members: solar-power collectors, wood beams, pedestrian plazas and roof plantings, for example. There also is much support from Seattle Center officials for the original KeyArena station design, a hoagie-shaped building with a large pedestrian plaza. Several of the local ideas will be “embedded into the design,” said Cascadia’s Fielder, without elaborating. Horn added that he refers to the local design concepts daily during contract negotiations with Cascadia. SMP board member Cindi Laws said that until a tentative contract emerges, it’s too early to judge whether the investment in design work paid off. But she’s also certain that if the agency hadn’t made the effort, cynics would complain about that, too. |
DRIVERS URGED NOT TO PASS STOPPED TROLLEY; GREEN LINE EFFORT EYES RIDERS’ SAFETYThe Boston Globe November 17, 2004 The E branch of the MBTA’s Green Line, that wobbly ride down a vehicle-packed Huntington Avenue, could become a little safer this week as MBTA and Boston police mount a public awareness campaign to enforce a little-known ordinance that makes it illegal to pass a stopped trolley. Several close calls between vehicles and passengers getting on or off trolleys at stops between Brigham Circle and Heath Street where the trolley line shares the street with vehicles prompted the action by the T and Councilor Michael P. Ross. The launching of the campaign, which will take place in front of 835 Huntington Ave. tomorrow, will have Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Transit police, T officials, and representatives from Ross’s office handing out mock tickets to drivers that reminds them of the no-passing ordinance. Ross said he is stumped about why a major transit line loads and unloads passengers from the unprotected middle lane of a major thoroughfare. “It’s just one of these things that make you scratch your head and ask: ‘How did this happen?’ “ Ross said yesterday. Though the area has signs reminding drivers of the no-passing rule, Ross said it is often ignored. Ross also said the tiny signs on trolleys that pop out to face traffic when the trolleys stop are too small to be noticed. He said he is considering asking the T to install larger rubberized stop signs that would be more noticeable, especially at night. In the long run, he plans to seek funding to help the MBTA move the tracks to curbside so pedestrians can safely get on and off. “I think the real solution is moving the tracks next to the parked cars,” Ross said. “You’d never have another accident. When we finally do get the money to repave and retrack the street, I will be pushing for an amendment for that change.” MBTA Transit Police plan to be out in force from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. tomorrow, handing out mock Day-Glo traffic violations that remind motorists to treat stopped trolleys as though they were stopped school buses. The fine for passing a stopped trolley is $100. Repeat offenders could have their licenses revoked. “We’re doing this in an effort to prevent a tragedy,” said MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo. He said T officials could not recall a pedestrian accident along the line in recent memory. Pesaturo said that after tomorrow, T police will continue to enforce the no-passing law along all trolley lines. Beverly Ford, Boston police spokeswoman, said officers have long been ticketing those who pass working trolleys. Tim Ho, 43, who lives four blocks from the area, was not aware of the rule until he was recently stopped by a police officer. He got away with a warning, he said. “T riders should be able to disembark without the fear of being run down, so regulation seems correct.” he wrote in an e-mail. “But, I live four blocks from the area and it took a flashing-lights stop before I became aware of this. . . .How are people who drive this occasionally supposed to be educated. There’s so much happening around any vehicle there pedestrians, bikes, kids, double-parked cars [that] signs, signs, and more signs will not break through to get motorists’ attention.” (note Calgary comment <g>) |
DeLay unveils mobility planFort Bend/Southwest Sun November 17, 2004 U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay unveiled his philosophy on mobility in general, and rail transit in particular , with reference to Houston, at an infrastructure summit hosted by the Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce last week. DeLay called for a plan that would bring the transportation modes of 22nd century to Houston. “Unfortunately, transportation policy — and spending in particular — are still governed by an outdated vision of splintered industries and destructive turf battles among politicians, and between urban and suburban interests. Whether a specific transportation issue — say, congestion on a main thoroughfare — should be solved by a new bus line, a new lane, or a light rail system should be determined by the needs of the people, not the relationships government has with, or the preferences of, this or that traditional modal interest,” DeLay said. “The days of industries currying favor with policy makers to get contracts down the line is over, and such a system — however ingrained it may be in governments across the country — is anathema to the real needs of travelers and commuters, and therefore undermines any hope for a true mobility-driven transportation agenda,” he added. DeLay attributed “this adherence to outdated thinking” for the light rail in Houston. “The city of Houston — after a long, hard struggle — installed the same mass-transit system that was installed in Calgary, Canada, the year I was born. It seems to me that Houston can do better. It seems to me that tearing up two lanes of a major, six-lane urban artery to serve the needs of only 3 percent of the populace might not have been the wisest allocation of resources,” The light rail system, as it is currently devised, seems to provide for yesterday, and not plan much at all, DeLay said. “That doesn’t mean it’s a failure; just that it needs an infusion of vision and innovation worthy of a 22nd-century community like Houston,” he said. As a city of pioneers, the pioneering spirit must be at the heart of Houston’s transportation growth. “I assure you, that has been at the heart of my position on the new federal transportation funding bill in Congress, on which I’ve been working for a year with my House and Senate colleagues. The bill must embrace new technologies, new ideas, and innovative thinking. That is why I am committed to writing funding equity into the transportation reauthorization bill…Highway money raised in Texas ought to stay in Texas to create Texas jobs and Texas opportunities. I don’t think a guaranteed return of 95 cents on the dollar is too much to ask, and I’ve been saying as much to everyone on that conference committee who will listen. We are going to get this done.We are also going to provide greater empowerment and autonomy to states and localities,” DeLay promised. DeLay supports Congressman Michael Burgess’ RAPID Act, which would streamline environmental work done on highway projects, saving states and communities time, money, and administrative friction. I support the new tolling provisions we are working to include in the reauthorization bill, which would allow states to toll existing and new interstate highways. Innovative, flexible financing tools are the only way we’re going to meet all the needs we will have in the future, and I am open to new ideas, like allowing states to choose toll credits for federally funded projects if they wish. DeLay outlined the that goals should be to meet the evolving demands of our growing suburban populations and business development, find new ways and new technologies to meet those demands, and “do all of the above without raising the gas tax, which, ladies and gentlemen, is not on the table as far as I am concerned.” “Also, our transportation funding policies must work hand-in-hand with a national energy policy dedicated to increasing the production of existing energy sources and researching new sources. As gas prices rise, we limit our national mobility. And as long as the United States remains dependent on foreign countries — not all of them in harmony with our values or foreign policy — too many of the variables in our transportation policy are out of our hands. We need a national energy policy to complement our national transportation reforms, and we need it now,” DeLay said. “As long as we remain a nation at war with an ideology whose principal base of influence lies in the Middle East, the United States must — must — find a way to dislodge ourselves from our dependence on foreign sources of energy,” he added. Mobility — the ability of individual citizens to get where they are going in the most efficient and convenient way possible — must become the organizing principle of our transportation agenda. “I believe the new Congress will be prepared to make it so, and as Majority Leader and a negotiator, I believe we’ll finally get there, “ DeLay said. |
Speed blamed as train jumps narrow tracksThe Australian November 17, 2004 A HIGH-SPEED passenger train carrying 163 people could have been travelling at more than 150km/h — 90km/h faster than the limit — when it derailed on its way to Cairns, ploughing “like a bulldozer” into an embankment on Monday night. One of the Tilt train’s two locomotives and six of its seven carriages were derailed in the accident, which injured 120 mostly elderly passengers. Miraculously, nobody died in the spectacular crash, which has sparked a heated debate about the safety of the Tilt train on Queensland’s narrow 3ft6in gauge rail network. The injured were rushed to hospitals in Bundaberg, Gladstone and Hervey Bay. The most seriously injured suffered spinal, chest and abdominal injuries. Among them was the 55-year-old train driver, who was knocked unconscious and dragged out of the wreck by his colleague. He told his union yesterday that he had no memory of the accident. But 64-year-old passenger Ron Seymour of Brisbane said his personal entertainment module was showing the train travelling at well over 150km/h just before the crash. “I woke up and I put the TV monitor on and noticed the train was going 157km/h,” Mr Seymour said yesterday. “I felt the shake and then we were over.” Investigators from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau yesterday recovered the train’s crucial “black box” which, among other vital information, will provide the exact speed of the train going into the accident. A speed limit sign before the bend where the accident took place instructs Tilt train drivers to reduce speed to 60km/h. Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Employees Queensland secretary Greg Smith said the driver was recovering from severe concussion in Bundaberg Hospital. “He’s having trouble recalling any detail about the accident,” Mr Smith said yesterday. The rescue co-ordinator, Police Inspector Mal Churchill, described the accident scene as “ ‘absolutely horrendous’. “Pandemonium — like a bomb had gone off. I am amazed there were no fatalities,” Inspector Churchill said. Queensland civil engineer Warren Casey said state rail authorities should not be surprised. “I’ve been waiting for years for this to happen,” Mr Casey told ABC radio. “You cannot run trains like this on our little dinky train set we’ve got in Queensland.” He said Queensland Rail had done its best to address track displacement issues in relation to the Tilt train, but added: “You can’t override the forces of physics.” He said high-speed trains like tilt trains that can go up to 40 per cent faster around curves than conventional trains needed to travel on mostly straight tracks. The accident occurred about 11.55pm as the Spirit of Townsville — the world’s fastest narrow gauge express designed and built in the southeast Queensland town of Maryborough by engineering and construction group Downer EDI — was approaching the whistle-stop township of Barajondo, 74km north of Bundaberg. The train left Brisbane at 6.25pm on Monday for a 25-hour journey to Cairns and changed drivers at Bundaberg. A Queensland Ambulance spokesman described the crash scene as “’an absolute bloody mess’. The train has ploughed through the dirt like a bulldozer,” he said. Arriving at the crash site by helicopter from Brisbane yesterday morning, Premier Peter Beattie said it was a miracle nobody was killed. “This is horrific and distressing, and our primary concern is for the passengers,” he said. Mr Beattie said Queensland Rail expected the rolling stock to be cleared and the line re-opened within 72 hours. Director of the Centre for Railway Engineering at Central Queensland University Manicka Dhanasekar said while Queensland had narrower rail gauges than other states, this was unlikely to make derailments more of a risk for very fast trains. “Queensland went for this technology because they knew that they had a narrow gauge and this is the way they can run the train faster,” Dr Dhanasekar said. “Tilt trains are designed to run on the existing track without too much modification to the track … the size of the gauge does not matter.” Queensland Rail chief executive Bob Scheuber said up to 150 metres of track and 150 concrete sleepers would have to be replaced. Corporate affairs manager Lily Harrison said the fact no one died was a testament to the design of the train, which was commissioned only in June last year. |
MASS TRANSIT; MTA plans to rethink the sizeNewsday (New York November 18, 2004 MTA officials will review “sooner rather than later” whether employees are justified in using state cars for commuting, a spokesman said yesterday, but he could not say whether that assessment will conclude before an expected vote to raise fares next month. “There’s no time frame,” the spokesman, Tom Kelly, said, adding that the review has “got to be done.” Newsday reported yesterday that nearly 140 employees are entitled to use the late-model state-owned cars, with the largest number working for Metropolitan Transportation Authority Bridges and Tunnels. Nearly 70 employees there are entitled to cars, which have a value of about $1 million. Those assigned cars are also given state-funded automobile insurance, tune-ups, oil changes and gasoline. According to one source at Bridges and Tunnels, employees given cars there were asked yesterday to prepare statements explaining why they need the vehicles. “They’ve already asked for submissions; what their justification of the vehicle is,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The MTA, which faces large deficits due to increasing debt service and pension and health costs, is considering raising fares next year on unlimited weekly and monthly MetroCards, in addition to commuter rail prices and tolls. A vote on the hike is expected next month, with the new rates taking effect in March. The hike would come on top of more than $100 million in internal cuts that officials say will not affect service. The agency is under pressure to make additional cuts before raising fares. “This is the kind of thing where you intuitively feel that you can be doing better,” Assemb. Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester), chairman of a committee that oversees the authority, said of the automobiles. But, he said, the central problem the MTA faces is underfunding from the city and state. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, speaking at Brooklyn College, also said that while automobile costs do not make up the bulk of the agency’s expenses, the MTA might be wise to cut the fleet to initiate a larger belt-tightening. “It’s as symbolic as anything,” he said. “If the management cuts itself, it’s a lot easier to look at everybody else and say, ‘You have to, as well.’” Counting cars: Number of vehicles assigned to employees in each MTA agency, and number of full-time employees at agency as of 2003: AGENCY CARS POSITIONS MTA Bridges and Tunnels 69 1,732 Metro-North Commuter Railroad 8 5,993 Long Island Rail Road 8 6,309 MTA Headquarters 3 1,226 Long Island Bus 3 1,126 SOURCE: MTA NEWSDAY |
BART extension to SFO showing more signs of lifeSan Mateo County Times (San Mateo, CA) November 18, 2004 After two years of empty trains and heavy subsidies from county taxpayers, it appears the $1.5 billion BART-San Francisco Airport extension is beginning to catch on with commuters. This fiscal year, average weekday ridership is up 13 percent over the same period the previous year. Nearly 720,000 riders are currently riding BART trains each month in San Mateo County. “It’s a pretty dramatic increase from year to year,” said Jayme Kunz, a spokeswoman for SamTrans. The low ridership on the line — which has been as much as 48 percent below expectations — has been a disappointment to local officials. Last spring, it also sparked a public feud and threats of a lawsuit between BART and SamTrans, which had to pay far more than expected to operate the line because of the low figures. The ridership increase is good for SamTrans and county taxpayers who fund the transit district, because if the trend continues, they may not have to pay as much to operate the line. “Whether it’s going to reduce their subsidy, it’s too early to say,” said Linton Johnson, a BART spokesman. “But in general, more riders means less of a cost for SamTrans.” Johnson and Kunz credited a host of factors for the ridership increase, including 120,000 free fare cards BART gave away in September, high gas prices, more frequent service on the extension and free parking giveaway at county stations. But perhaps the biggest factor is the improving economy which means more people are commuting to work, both BART and SamTrans officials said. New job figures released Monday show California employers added more jobs in October than in any month since the height of the technology boom. The San Mateo County jobless rate has dropped from 4.8 percent in October 2003 to 3.5 percent this October. Kunz ridership still remains below what SamTrans officials would like to see, but the latest numbers do provide some encouragement. Of the five stations on the 8.7-mile line, South San Francisco and San Bruno have shown the biggest increases this year. Ridership has decreased to the Colma station and increased slightly at the SFO and Millbrae stations. The BART extension is not the only transit line seeing an increase in ridership. The first ridership survey of Caltrain since “baby bullet” express train service began and weekend service resumed in June shows the numbers have jumped 17 percent. Caltrain officials credit the increase to the addition of the express trains, the improving economy and a retooling of Caltrain’s schedule. More than 31,000 riders rode Caltrain in September. |
This week’s Monorail MomentLas Vegas Mercury November 18, 2004 Nice to see so many of my media brethren suddenly remember that the monorail still isn’t up and running. No one seems to know exactly what’ wrong with the system, but they sure seem to know who’s fault it is. Bombardier, the contractor, is to blame, we’ve all been told, and by golly, they’re gonna fix it. We seem to conveniently forget that even though Bombardier has had serious problems all over the world with other transportation systems, it still was the company of choice for LV Monorail executives, none of whom had ever worked with a ground-based mass transit system before. Let’s see, if the monorail shut down on Sept. 8, and it is losing $100,000 a day in missed revenue, that comes out to about $6.9 million so far. |
Transit District awards San Marcos loop contractNorth County Times November 18, 2004 OCEANSIDE — — The North County Transit District board awarded a $24 million contract Thursday to build a 1.7-mile elevated train track through San Marcos as part of the $375 million Sprinter light-rail line. The board accepted the low bid by West Coast Rail Constructors, the same company that is building the Sprinter’s main rail line from Oceanside to Escondido. Though the city of San Marcos has opposed the loop for various reasons, Councilman Mike Preston, the city’s representative on the transit board, did not attend Thursday’s meeting and neither did his alternate, Councilman Lee Thibadeau. Reached by telephone after the meeting, Preston said that both he and Thibadeau had personal business conflicts that prevented them from attending the meeting. “I really don’t think I’m going to change anything at this point, anyway,” Preston said. Bill Horn, a San Diego County supervisor and board member, was also absent. The rest of the board — — Carlsbad Councilwoman Ann Kulchin of Carlsbad, Vista Councilwoman Judy Ritter, Solana Beach Councilman Tom Golich, Del Mar Councilman Dave Druker, Oceanside Councilman Jack Feller and Encinitas Councilman Jerome Stocks — — voted to award the contract, which was nearly $4 million over budget. Just before voting, Feller said continuing with the Sprinter is all about foresight. “This is thinking about the future. This isn’t thinking about now,” Feller said. The increased cost of the San Marcos loop project will be covered by a special “contingency” fund created to pay for unanticipated costs associated with building the rail line, which is scheduled to open in December 2007. The loop’s cost overrun will shrink the fund from $13.7 million to $10.2 million. The San Marcos loop will consist of a raised concrete railway that cuts south from the main rail line through the heart of this growing city situated in a valley just west of Escondido. Its elevated train platform will be next to planned student housing for Cal State San Marcos. The project includes five concrete bridges and involves purchasing new property from private owners. Loop construction plans also include closing a local street called Shelly Drive to through traffic so the Sprinter can pass without interruption. The city of San Marcos has sued the transit district, claiming it has no right to close a public street. Despite the lawsuit and vocal opposition to the San Marcos loop among many property owners, public comments were positive Thursday. Dick Bartlett of Oceanside urged board members to approve the loop bid, noting that he rides public transportation frequently and would like to be able to access Cal State San Marcos without getting in his car. “The one thing we’re missing is access to the university,” Bartlett said. Jackie Camp, director of operations for Able-Disabled Advocacy Inc., said many of her disabled clients at the Libby Lake Community Center in Oceanside would ride the Sprinter to San Marcos to visit Cal State. Mark Rohrlich, president of a local development company, compared the Sprinter with the San Diego Trolley extension that connects San Diego State University to downtown San Diego. “I applaud (the board) for moving forward with a project that many people may not see the benefit of for years,” Rohrlich said. |
Beijing to speed up development of urban public transportXinhua Economic News Service November 18, 2004 Beijing is working on its urban transport development program for the next decade, under which the city will first set up its urban public transport system before 2008. By 2008, the Chinese capital plans to extend its roadways specially for public buses to 200 kilometers from current 100 kilometers, according to the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Public Security. With such a plan, the proportion for urban residents to take public vehicles would rise from the current 27 percent to 60 percent. The average speed of buses in Beijing is now lower than 10 kilometers an hour due to heavy traffic caused by throngs of private cars. Last year, Beijing had 2.12 million vehicles — 200 percent more than ten years ago. Private cars accounted for about half ofthe total. Sui Zhenjiang, deputy secretary-general of the Beijing municipal government, noted that though the city has accelerated the construction of highways and expressways over the past few years, it still fails to meet the rising demand of public transport. The key to solving the problem depends on increasing the capacity of public buses and accelerating the establishment of a public transport system. Beijing will build parking lots surrounding the urban area, which will help private car owners change to take public buses to their downtown workplace. It will also build 16 kilometers of new special bus lanes this year. By 2010, 75 percent of Beijing’s major roadways and some expressways will open special public traffic roadways. In the coming five years, all China’s metropolises will give priority to the development of public transport in accordance with a five-year goal for public transport set by the government. As an important urban infrastructure serving for most people, the urban public transport system will cover public and electric buses, subways, taxis, ferries and other public transport vehicles. During the past two decades, China has witnessed fast progress in developing urban public transport facilities, with 93 percent of cities having a public transport network. The number of public buses shared by all Chinese cities has risen from 45,000 in 1985 to over 259,000 by 2003, and the total taxies in China hit 884,000. Foreign experience has shown that increasing public transportation will ease traffic jams, improve the living environment and create sustained development in cities, said officials with the Ministry of Construction. According to the ministry, in the next five years, all local governments will make efforts to build more public transportation infrastructures and special bus lanes. At that time, the average speed of the national public transportation system is expected to reach 20 kilometers an hour, with 90 percent of public vehicles running on time. The ministry said the Chinese government will also increase investment in the construction of urban transport stations and other traffic infrastructure, making the annual total investment reach about three-to-five percent of the national urban GDP. In addition, China is inviting foreign investors to join the franchised operation of urban public traffic. |
Most punctual commuter trains are the services run by the StateThe Times (London) November 18, 2004 Britain’s only publicly run train franchise is outperforming its private competitors in both punctuality and customer satisfaction, putting pressure on the Government to keep it in the public sector. South Eastern Trains (SET), which operates from across Kent into four London termini, has just marked its first year under the direct control of the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA). The previous operator, Connex, was sacked for financial incompetence. The Government is under pressure from trade unions and Labour backbenchers to keep the franchise under public control to provide a benchmark against which the performance of private train companies can be compared. More than 100 Labour MPs have signed a motion opposing plans to hand the franchise back to the private sector next autumn. Official punctuality figures show that SET is not only performing much better than Connex, but that it is also well ahead of its two key rivals in southern England: Southern and South West Trains. In the three months from April to June, SET ran 86.5 per cent of trains on time. In the same period last year, Connex achieved 84.2 per cent. Punctuality at Southern declined year-on-year to only 81.8 per cent, while South West Trains improved marginally to 78.2 per cent. SET has also recorded a steep fall in the number of complaints from passengers since returning to public control. In Connex’s last 12 months in charge, the French company received 23,800 complaints. In the past 12 months, SET has received only 16,700. Train reliability is also improving rapidly at SET, with the average distance between breakdowns of its new Electrostar fleet doubling to 15,000 miles. Yet the SRA is under pressure from the Government not to publicise its success in operating the franchise. Ministers fear that they would face demands to re-nationalise all train companies if it became widely known that SET was performing well in the public sector. The Government has already been placed in the awkward position of having to reject an overwhelming vote at the Labour Party conference in favour of restoring full public control over the railways. Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, angered SET managers this week by trying to play down their achievement when he was questioned in the House of Commons. He said: “The performance of South Eastern Trains is not as good as the average for the South East as a whole. There has been an improvement, but that is largely due to what Network Rail has done in reducing track delays.” SET managers believe that it was unfair of Mr Darling to compare its performance against an average that includes companies such as Chiltern and c2c, which operate on dedicated tracks and are therefore much less likely to suffer delays. Gerry Doherty, general secretary of the TSSA union, which represents white collar rail staff, said: “We urge ministers to think again and keep South Eastern in the public sector. “If nothing else, it would give ministers a not-for-profit benchmark to help them to measure the effectiveness of private franchises.” |
Well over the limit; ‘Black box’ clocked speed at 112km/h in 60 zone before crashGold Coast Bulletin (Australia) November 18, 2004 AUSTRALIA’S fastest train was travelling at almost twice the permitted speed when it derailed in Queensland, rail officials admitted yesterday. The Tilt Train plunged off the line north of Bundaberg early yesterday while going at 112km/h on a section of track where the limit was 60km/h, shows preliminary information from its black box data recorder. Almost all of the 163 people on board were injured when the diesel-powered train, travelling between Brisbane and Cairns, crashed just after midnight on Tuesday. Miraculously, no one was killed as the train jumped the rails on a bend, leaving seven of the nine carriages overturned or lying jackknifed by the track. Queensland Health said yesterday that 15 passengers remained in hospital in Bundaberg and two in Gladstone. Despite the findings from the black box, Queensland Rail chief executive Bob Scheuber said it was not known whether speed was the sole cause of the crash. “It would be one of the contributing factors,” he said. “I can’t be absolutely sure whether speed alone has caused that. (I am) not discounting that it could be speed alone, at this stage I do not know.” The train carried two drivers who were both ‘on duty’, with the second one helping to monitor the track and signals. He said there was no question of the drivers being made scapegoats, after Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Employees (AFULE) state secretary Greg Smith said the union was concerned about speculation over the part speed played in the incident. “I will assure the AFULE and I will assure all of my drivers that we have a proper process of investigation under way,” said Mr Scheuber. He said removal of the damaged train and repairs to the track were under way and it was estimated diesel services would resume by this afternoon and electric services on Saturday. This would enable QR to clear a backlog of 30 freight trains. Queensland Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said the investigation should look at whether the train was fitted with adequate safety devices, while a solicitor warned that QR could face a huge bill for compensation if it were shown negligence played a part in the crash. Shine Roche McGowan solicitor Roger Singh said claims for compensation could be substantial becaus |