Connex wins Metrolink race

Railway Gazette International

January 2005: City News

SOUTHERN California Regional Rail Authority board of directors has selected Connex to operate the Metrolink commuter rail network in Los Angeles, replacing Amtrak with effect from July 1 2005.

The $210m five-year contract is Connex’s second in the USA; the group took over operation of MBTA commuter rail services around Boston in July 2003. The deal includes an option for a further five-year extension; it also covers the provision of train crews plus administrative and training services required to support operations.

The three-phase competitive procurement process initiated in November 2002 produced a shortlist of three bidders: Amtrak, Connex Railroad LLC, and TransitAmerica LLC. Amtrak’s proposal was deemed non-compliant in September, and in the final assessment Connex achieved the higher technical and financial score.

Connex plans to employ around 130 staff to operate the 830km network of seven lines serving 53 stations. Metrolink is currently handling around 40000 passengers/day, and forecast turnover for the five years is €77m. Connex will use BNSF as its main subcontractor in Los Angeles, with new staff to be trained using BNSF’s 20-week certification programme. Anyone not required to replace Amtrak staff at Metrolink will be offered a job at BNSF.

At €104m, Connex offered the lowest bid to operate the bus and VAL light metro networks in the French city of Toulouse, where it was expected to take over from public/private operator Semvat on January 1 2005. Semvat, Connex and Keolis will be bidding for a second contract covering the period 2006-12.

RATP to run Firenze light rail

Railway Gazette International

January 2005: City News

ON DECEMBER 8 Paris Transport Authority announced that its international subsidiary RATP Développement had won the concession to design, build and operate the light rail network in Firenze.

The three-line network serving Firenze and the neighbouring municipality of Scandicci will eventually total 29·5km. Construction work is already underway on Line 1, which is expected to open in 2008. The concessionaires will be responsible for building the other two routes, which are scheduled to enter service by February 2010.

The 30-year operating concession covers all three routes. A new operating company is to be formed, in which RATP will hold a 51% stake; the remainder will be owned by the existing municipal bus company ATAF.

The network will be standard gauge, and electrified at 750V DC. Line 1 will run for 7·5km from Firenze SMN station west to Scandicci, serving 15 stops. A fleet of 17 low-floor Sirio LRVs will operate a 3min interval service at peak times. Work has started on the bridges over the Greve and Arno rivers and the main depot and operations control centre at Scandicci.

Line 2 will run for 9km from Peretola airport to Piazza della Libert�, serving the university and the city centre; it will have 19 stops. The 4·5km first phase of Line 3 will link the hospital at Careggi with Viale Strozzi serving 9 stops. The remaining 8·5km would extend the line to the FS station at Rovezzano, adding a further 15 stops.

RATP Développement is already active in Tuscany; it is a shareholder in Ferroviaria Italiana (LFI) which operates rail and bus services around Arezzo.

Suburban EMU refurbished

Railway Gazette International

January 2005: First Report

On November 23 British operator South West Trains returned to service the first two of its 91 Class 455 inner-suburban EMUs which are being refurbished at Bombardier’s Ashford works.

The mid-life refurbishment project will be completed in March 2008. The £67m cost is being funded by Porterbrook, and will be recouped by incremental lease charges to SWT. Hornagold & Hills is project manager, with detailed design work undertaken by AEA Technology Rail and Atlantic Design.

The interior layout has been revised to increase capacity by improving passenger flow. Following passenger consultation, SWT decided to drop the under-used middle seat in the former 3+2 layout in favour of 2+2 seating, with the increased space used to provide more standing room, wider aisles and easier to reach grab rails, which should accommodate an extra 60 standing passengers per unit.

To determine how best to minimise station dwell times through faster boarding, The Railway Consultancy carried out detailed testing of different interior configurations using a carriage mock-up and a team of 95 people. The doors now open wider to allow two people to pass, and the draught screens have been set further back so that passengers standing against them will not block the doorways.

Grammer is supplying 244 new seats for each four-car unit, and these have high backs to meet crash safety requirements. A further 28 perch seats are provided, and there are tip-up seats in the wheelchair spaces as well as in multi-purpose areas for luggage, bikes or additional wheelchairs. Accessibility has been improved within the constraints of the existing bodyshell, the Strategic Railway Authority having agreed that prohibitively-expensive modifications would not be demanded.

The EMUs are receiving a complete electrical overhaul, with the auxiliary switches, relays and fuses replaced by modern equivalents to improve reliability. The existing traction equipment and wiring have been retained, but Saft 70Ah batteries have replaced 40Ah batteries, and the use of LED marker and door indicator lights will further reduce maintenance requirements.

According to Project Sponsor Andrew McIntosh, SWT hopes the refurbishment programme will reduce delays due to rolling stock faults by 3000 minutes per month when the entire fleet is completed. ‘They will be the most reliable suburban trains in the country’, believes Managing Director Andrew Haines. The Class 455s accounted for half of the 143·5million passenger-journeys handled by SWT in 2003-04.

Installation of CCTV from RPS will be part-funded by Transport for London.

BA car order back on track

Railway Gazette International

January 2005: City News

ON DECEMBER 10 Alstom Chairman & CEO Patrick Kron signed an agreement that will see 65 metro cars ordered for the Buenos Aires network assembled at the company’s La Plata works in Argentina.

Deliveries from Alstom’s Lapa works in S�o Paulo, Brazil, had been suspended due to payment difficulties, and Transport Secretary Ricardo Jaime explained that the government had agreed to provide a total of US$156m, representing a ‘very significant saving’ on the original contract price of $214m.

The Argentinian government’s $10m debt with Brazilian development bank BNDES is to be met by Alstom, which will be investing 10m pesos at La Plata including the installation of a production line from Canada. As well as a further 16 cars for Buenos Aires, over the next three years La Plata may take a share of recent metro orders won by Alstom in Brazil, Chile and the USA (RG 1.03 p35).

With a bid of 99·9m pesos, Benito Roggio has won the contract to build the 1·6km extension of Line B from Los Incas to Villa Urquiza (RG 10.04 p 663).

MTR branches out

Railway Gazette International

January 2005: City News

ON DECEMBER 3 Hong Kong MTR Corp signed a formal agreement to build and operate Beijing metro Line 4, which is due to open in time for the 2008 Olympics.

MTRC is taking a 49% stake in the project, as will the state-owned Beijing Capital Group; the remaining 2% will be held by Beijing Infrastructure Investment. The consortium will finance and build the line in exchange for a 30-year operating concession.

Running from Ma Jia Lu in the south to Long Bei Cun in the northwestern Haidian district, Line 4 will be 29km long and serve 24 stations. Total cost is put at 15·3bn yuan, of which the city government will contribute 10·7bn. The remainder will be provided by the concessionaires; two-thirds through bank loans and the rest as equity.

Two days earlier, MTRC signed a co-operation accord with Tianjin municipality to assist with developing the city’s planned three-line metro network. MTRC is already helping with staff training for Tianjin’s first line from Liuyuan to Shuanglin which is expected to reopen this year following a closure for reconstruction and extension costing 7bn yuan. The two new lines are expected to cost 10bn yuan each.

Following a series of minor technical problems leading to high-profile delays and service disruptions in Hong Kong, Deputy Operations Director Andrew McCusker announced in November that MTRC was launching a 20-point improvement programme valued at HK$2bn a year.

Hiroshima develops low-floor LRV

Railway Gazette International

January 2005: City News

IN MARCH, Hiroshima Electric Railway will put into service the first 100% low-floor tram to be built entirely in Japan.

Designated U3·ALFA, the car has been developed by Kinki Sharyo, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Toyo Electric Manufacturing. It consists of five articulated sections on three bogies, two of which are powered. The wheels rotate independently, and the motors and gears are mounted outside the wheels

Key to the ability to keep the floor height down to 360mm (330mm at the doorways) was the development of a suitable bogie, which was achieved by a grouping of eight manufacturers supported by the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure & Transport. This group started work in 2001.

Japan’s first low-floor LRVs entered service in Kumamoto in 1997, but these and subsequent builds were imported from Europe or manufactured locally under licence.

Like most modern electric traction in Japan, U3·ALFA uses VVVF motors capable of regenerative braking. Maximum service speed is 80km/h, and the track gauge is 1435mm, although designs were also produced for 1067mm gauge bogies. The largest of Japan’s 19 light rail operators, Hiroshima has 266 cars out of a national total of around 1000.

Bangkok bid battle

Railway Gazette International

January 2005: City News

A CONSORTIUM of Siemens Transportation Systems and Sino-Thai Engineering & Construction was confirmed on December 13 as preferred bidder for the DBOM concession to build the express rail line to serve Bangkok’s new Suvarnabhumi International Airport (RG 10.04 p663).

According to SRT Deputy Governor Youdtana Tupcharoen, the Siemens group offered the lowest financial and construction costs of the three competing bidders. Its final bid was between 29bn and 30bn baht, depending on the financing terms.

The East-West consortium, led by Italian-Thai Development with Vossloh, bid 32·7bn, whilst the MCBM consortium of CH Karnchang, Bilfinger Berger and Mitsubishi failed to meet the financing requirements.

Youdtana expected to complete negotiations and award the contract within a month, so that work could start in early 2005. The 33km elevated line running east from Makkasan will open for revenue service in mid-2008. The airport is scheduled to be inaugurated on September 28 2005.

Playing it safe with light rail; Revelers who’d rather not drive enjoy taking the Hiawatha Line to their favorite taverns

St. Paul Pioneer Press

January 1, 2005

Construction worker Mike Dunn had a simple reason for riding the light-rail train from bar to bar on New Year’s Eve. “It’s cheaper than a DUI,” he said.

Dunn started at the Mall of America on Friday afternoon, rode the rails to Block E in downtown Minneapolis and then stopped off at the Cardinal Tavern near the 38th Street Station. He was planning to make his last stop at the Mall of America to go bowling. “We’ve been to the Loon, the Hard Rock Café, Old Chicago, GameWorks , Brothers and Dream Girls,” said Dunn, a Twin Cities native in town from Colorado Springs, Colo., to ring in 2005 with friends and family. “This is great. Everything has just been a ball.”

Friday was the first New Year’s Eve that revelers like Dunn could hop from party to party on the Twin Cities’ newest transit option — the Hiawatha Line, which opened in June and was extended last month to the Mall of America.

While the trains gave partiers a cheap and safe way to get around, they also helped bar and restaurant owners ring in the New Year with ringing cash registers. The owners of the Cardinal Tavern say the train has been a boon for business. They put out extra party hats for the riders stopping off on Friday night, according to Noel Casey, co-owner. “New Year’s has never been huge for us, but we’re hoping it will be this year,” he said.

A pub crawl held last month celebrating “The 12 Bars of Christmas” brought more than 200 people to the bar, he said. The bar, which used to open at 8 a.m. for breakfast, now opens at 7 a.m. And they’ve installed a new espresso machine to serve light-rail commuters, he said.

Passengers on Friday night could ride for 2? hours for $1.75. “It’s the drunk train,” said Dunn’s son, Kris Dunn of Bloomington. “We could never go around downtown and park for under $5 each. It’s cheap. That’s the drunk train for you.”

Not worrying about having to appoint a designated driver and avoiding drunk drivers on the road were keys for Michael Snyder of Minneapolis, who boarded the train with his brother and two friends at the 46th Street Station.

The group was headed to The Bolt on Washington Avenue for the “three- for-one drink specials,” Snyder said. “And then we’ll head back to my place and avoid all the craziness. This way, we don’t have to worry about other people out driving. It’s a nice alternative.”

Dale and Linda Bartosh of Bloomington rang in 2005 by taking their first light-rail ride. They parked at the Mall of America and rode to downtown Minneapolis to eat dinner at Café Di Napoli on Hennepin Avenue. “We came for the novelty of it,” he said. “It’s nice and smooth.”

“It’s great, especially on New Year’s Eve when we’re drinking,” said Erica Bock, 27, of Apple Valley, who was out celebrating with Simon Groom of London. “I just moved back to Minnesota, and I don’t have a car. I’ve lived in Boston and London, so I’m used to public transport.”

Metro Transit officials said they were pleased that New Year’s Eve partiers would chose to ride the train from bar to bar. “We’re providing a public safety service,” said Bob Gibbons, an agency spokesman.

Ever since the line between the Mall of America, Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and downtown Minneapolis was completed Dec. 4, the number of nighttime riders has increased, Gibbons said. “There was a big destination on one end of the line and nothing on the other end of the line,” he said. “Now, there’s a major entertainment venue on the other end, and that’s a really new dimension. It’s big, it’s safe and it’s a social activity.”

At The Loon Café in the Warehouse District in downtown Minneapolis, light-rail riders and other revelers were treated to free champagne and noisemakers. “We benefit from the light rail every night,” said general manager Tim Mahoney. “Light rail is a great alternative for getting downtown and not getting caught in the parking and traffic hassles.”

It’s also much cheaper than taking a cab, he said. “You can stay at the Mall of America and come into town for the celebration or vice versa. It’s the most positive thing that’s happened to the Warehouse District since they built the Target Center.”

City’s $75M mass transit question; Do Tucsonans want new plan, Downtown-UA?

Arizona Daily Star

January 1, 2005

City officials want to know whether Tucsonans would use a new type of mass transit between Downtown and the UA, and if so what kind of vehicle and route they’d prefer.

There’s $75 million riding on what residents say.

That’s the amount the Federal Transit Administration is offering to qualifying cities that can demonstrate a high level of resident interest in mass transit. They also must have a plan to build such a system, said Jim Glock, director of the Tucson Transportation Department.

The city could use the federal funds along with money from local sources to launch a new type of transit system over the next few years that would move people quickly between two of the city’s biggest centers of activity.

The system would use a type of bus or trolley and would provide rapid expresslike transport between the Arizona Health Sciences Center, the University of Arizona and the Rio Nuevo District just west of Downtown.

A transit service that would provide a quick ride to and from classes sounds good to Delicia Smiley, 42, who attends classes and works as a reading tutor at Pima Community College’s Downtown campus. “If it would be faster than the bus I used to ride, that would be an excellent idea,” said Smiley, who until recently - when she got a car - rode the Route 4 bus from her home on the East Side to the Downtown campus almost every day.

Glock said the initial system could “provide a foundation for expansion in the future. While we’re limiting this particular effort to the UA-Downtown connection, no doubt we’ll be looking” for ways the system could be expanded to provide service to more parts of the city, he said.

For now, city officials and community representatives involved in what the city is calling the Transit on the Move program are studying whether the new transit system would be appropriate for the area bounded roughly by the Arizona Health Sciences Center, just north of the main UA campus, and the Rio Nuevo district, just west of Downtown.

Mass transit is especially needed around the UA, said David Duffy, director of campus and facilities planning. University officials are committed to “holding the line” on the number of vehicle trips to and from the main campus, Duffy said. That is because UA officials already are hard-pressed to accommodate the 50,000 people - students, faculty and staff members and others - who travel to and from the campus every day while classes are in session.

Mass transit is one solution to UA-area traffic congestion, according to a campus development plan approved last year by the Arizona Board of Regents. “Rather than more traffic capacity, the emerging vision calls for different approaches to travel,” the 2003 Comprehensive Campus Plan says. It cites other ways of getting around campus, such as walking, transit and bicycling.

If the Federal Transit Administration approves the city’s application, it would provide a grant of up to $75 million that the city would have to match, Glock said. The city may include that request in its part of a plan that the newly formed Regional Transportation Authority is putting together, he said.

Meanwhile, Glock said, members of Transit on the Move want to solicit more ideas from the public about the proposal.

Transportation Department officials also are tallying 5,000 responses to a weeklong survey of Sun Tran bus riders conducted in October. The survey was “very successful,” Glock said.

[SIDEBAR]

Transit on the Move essentials

* Federal guidelines require new transit systems to be easy to use, affordable and supported by the community, according to the Transit on the Move Web site. The system would use one of three types of vehicles that would be well suited to the UA-Rio Nuevo route:

* Rapid bus circulator - A type of bus that runs on tires instead of tracks, and that is similar in size and appearance to regular 40-foot city buses but which has amenities such as low floors and multiple doors for easy entry and exit.

* Historic trolley - An electric-powered rail system that uses an antique historic vehicle or replica, such as those now used by Old Pueblo Trolley.

* Modern streetcar - An electric-powered rail system that can share a lane with other vehicles and can be coordinated with the traffic signal system.

Director prioritizes rail transit; Interim transportation chief Ed Hirata is one of six new appointees to Hannemann’s Cabinet

Honolulu Star-Bulletin

January 1, 2005

Mayor-elect Mufi Hannemann’s choice to be the interim city transportation director says it’s time to put the wheels in motion to get rail transit up and running. “We need to get started on the rail project,” said Ed Hirata, who headed the state Transportation Department under former Gov. John Waihee and who held several city positions, including transportation and managing director, under former Mayor Frank Fasi.

Hannemann is having difficulty filling the transportation director’s slot permanently. Hirata took the job at Hannemann’s behest and will stay on for at least six months to give Hannemann time to find the right candidate. “I just didn’t feel we had the person that understood through the years why we’ve had so many failed attempts at some of the transportation solutions, so I wanted someone with that kind of history,” Hannemann said. “I wanted someone who also could deal with the bureaucracy that we have in city transportation services.”

Hannemann said he will announce the remaining three directors’ positions and his managing director on Tuesday. He said the search for a transportation director could go nationwide as he plans to seek out transportation experts on a planned trip to Washington, D.C., but he still hopes a person could be found locally. In the meantime, he did not want to leave the job vacant while the search continued, he said.

Besides getting the ball rolling on rail, Hirata will also assist Hannemann in implementing short-term traffic solutions such as better synchronization of traffic signals and possibly merging the state and city traffic management centers.

More trolley work planned; Underground switch boxes need strengthening along Madison route

Commercial Appeal - Memphis, Tn

January 1, 2005

It’s not deja vu: There really will be construction going on again along the Madison Avenue Line.

Starting Monday MATA will do three months of work on the new trolley route to strengthen underground switch boxes against heavy traffic, transit officials said Friday.

Work will come in four phases. During the first phase — about four weeks — trolleys will go east from Downtown only as far as Pauline. They usually would continue to Cleveland.

The $56 million, two-mile Madison Avenue Line opened in March.

The reinforcement work will be under warranty, said William Hudson Jr., president of the Memphis Area Transit Authority.

Madison will remain open to traffic and businesses won’t be blocked, MATA spokesman Alison Burton said. Shuttle buses or bus route No. 2 (Medical Center) will be available to riders getting off trolleys at Pauline.

The 21 trolley switches, which direct the trolleys, are buried a few feet under the pavement. Heavier-than-expected traffic has made the boxes that protect the switches less stable than they should be, Burton said. The reinforcement should prevent future problems, she said.

Repair and maintenance work also will be done to the five-mile Main and Riverfront trolley loop, but not until after the first phase of the Madison project, MATA officials said. “We selected this period for the construction to help lessen disruption for trolley riders, residents and businesses because ridership drops about 30 percent during the winter months,” Hudson said.

About 200,000 people have taken the Madison Avenue Line since it opened, Hudson said. “I’m real pleased with the numbers,” he said. “We’re looking forward to improving the numbers as people become familiar with trolley service from Downtown to the Medical Center.”

How Light Rail Systems Have Enhanced Grade Crossing Safety

Metro

January 2005

Inevitably, the opening of a new urban light rail system, with all of its ceremony and civic pride, is shortly followed by collisions between trains and members of the public. The local community is unfamiliar with the new light rail system, its intersections and signaling of approaching trains. Unfortunate citizens think they can “beat the train” in their cars, or not pay careful attention while walking over or near train tracks.

The results are usually tragic and prompt citizen and governmental demands for improved safety protocols. System operators take great pains in their planning and implementation to avoid such incidents, and struggle to accept the fact that there is no perfect solution for entirely eliminating these collisions. Still, the quest for the safest operating environment is a primary concern for all light rail systems.

The larger issue of grade crossing safety is being studied at various levels, including the federal government. The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is addressing the issue through the first-ever use of locomotive-mounted cameras to study highway-rail grade crossing safety and trespass prevention. The FRA is partnering with the North Carolina Department of Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway in a $482,000 federally funded research project that will capture real-time data of actual collisions and trespass incidents. The research findings from this study will provide the industry with valuable safety data.

To gain a deeper understanding of grade crossing safety issues for light rail systems, METRO spoke with a number of system operators around the country to survey the latest developments and lessons learned.

Houston’s rite of passage

The Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County’s METRORail, which opened in Houston on Jan. 1, 2004, has received a good deal of attention this year for its successes as well as its grade crossing safety challenges. In its first 11 months of service, the system performed successfully through a number of major events, including Super Bowl XXXVIII, the annual Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo and Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game.

In October, METRORail ridership set a new record high — an average of 32,941 weekday customer boardings. (The system projected 35,000 daily boardings by the end of the year.) These are impressive numbers given that the passenger volume nearly matches numbers not expected to be reached until 2020.

Unfortunately, with that success has also come a number of collisions. METRORail experienced 11 collisions in March 2004. Since that time, system management has implemented changes in its safety program, resulting in declining monthly accident statistics; there was only one accident in November. This accomplishment is all the more notable given that the number of trains on the line doubled during that period.

Invoking the 3 Es

For Tom Lambert, METRORail’s vice president and chief of police, safety improvements have been all about the “3 Es” — engineering, education and enforcement. Engineering deals with system design and technologies used in signage and signaling. Education focuses on getting the word out to drivers of private and commercial vehicles and pedestrians about how the grade crossings function and how the signaling works. Enforcement deals with law enforcement procedures for compliance with applicable motor vehicle and pedestrian laws and system regulations.

Back in the spring of 2004, when it became clear that METRORail was experiencing more collisions than originally predicted, Lambert and other executive managers decided to consult with the Texas Transportation Institute, an independent organization affiliated with Texas A&M University and based in College Station, Texas. The institute helped METRORail focus on a 2.5-mile stretch of track that had been the scene of several accidents.

METRORail reconfigured the traffic signal lights so that they now turn red for all traffic as trains pass. More signs and added markings to better direct traffic movement were also added. METRORail improved the “Train Approaching” signs to make them flash in addition to lighting up.

METRORail’s dedicated police force also has been empowered to more actively enforce applicable jaywalking and motor vehicle moving violation laws along the light rail line — issuing warnings and citations. As a result, accidents involving illegal turns have been almost eliminated.

Public education efforts have included mass distribution of safety literature and public service announcements in the local media. When the system opened in early 2004, an external agency was hired to conduct a series of TV commercials called “Stop, Look & Listen,” focusing on pedestrian and driver safety.

Brian Bochner, senior research engineer for the Texas Transportation Institute, believes following the 3 Es is essential for improving safety in any transportation mode. However, he believes the bigger picture for transportation system safety starts with fundamental issues of available resources.

A light rail system is obviously most vulnerable to safety problems at points of contact between trains, private and commercial vehicles and pedestrians, Bochner says. So, a system that minimizes these intersections of contact increases its safety quotient.

The root problem, however, is that in our increasingly congested urban environments with their expensive real estate, gaining clear right-of-way is becoming more challenging each year for planners of rail systems. “There are safety implications for every decision a transit agency makes,” Bochner says. “There are competing uses for land, limits on available space, traffic conditions, community and environmental impacts and cost implications that must be considered.”

What other systems are doing

While Houston’s light rail system has received much media attention this year, safety concerns are an ongoing reality for all light rail systems. Some transit agencies have tried new technologies to improve safety. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in Los Angeles implemented experimental four-quadrant railroad crossing gates, replacing traditional two-gate systems with gates that cover all four quadrants of an intersection.

Here’s what’s worked for a few other transit agencies:

The Utah Transit Authority (UTA) installed medians wherever possible at crossings to prevent cars driving around gates when down, according to Ed Buchanan, UTA rail safety administrator. The agency installed grade crossing indicators for system operators to determine if gates are down and in place. All grade crossings are equipped with gates, lights and bells. In most intersections, there is a median gate as well as a street-side gate. Also, the agency installed gates behind sidewalks so that each sidewalk Is blocked when the gates come down. All of these efforts have minimized train collisions, Buchanan says.

In Los Angeles County, the MTA has learned many lessons since opening its Blue Line light rail system in the early 1990s. As train lines have been added, safety conditions have improved. “The Gold Line has been in operation since July [2003], and so far we have had only three minor incidents,” says Abdul Zohbi, rail systems safety manager. “All three were caused by vehicles that violated traffic laws.”

The MTA also lives by the 3 Es, Zohbi says. For engineering, the MTA uses the previously mentioned four-quadrant gates, pedestrian gates, swing gates and medians. For its enforcement efforts, Metro works closely with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and for the Blue Line uses its photo enforcement system. And for education, extensive campaigns target most of the population within a 5-mile radius of the system’s right-of-way. Local schools were given rail safety presentations. The MTA also produced 13 videos that were aired on local TV and cable channels.

Signal pre-emption helps

Niagara Frontier Transit Authority (NFTA) in Buffalo, N.Y., was one of the first light rail systems to go online in the country when it became fully operational in 1985. Although the trains run slower than most other light rail systems (about 15 mph at peak — the equipment restricts the maximum speed to 28 mph), there have been traffic collisions with motorists who overestimated their ability to “beat the train” at an intersection. One of the main design elements that has kept collisions to a minimum is traffic signal pre-emption, according to NFTA spokesman C. Douglas Hartmayer.

NFTA worked out the signal pre-emption system with city authorities, giving the trains green lights down the route. In addition to the positive safety implications, it also expedites rail travel, Hartmayer says.

Dallas — Streetcar Proposal

Rail Transit Online

January 1, 2005

Two private sector companies on Dec. 13 presented plans for a three-line downtown streetcar circulator system to a Dallas city council committee and representatives of DART. The 14-page proposal was developed by Pegasus Parking Ventures and Stanland & Associates, an urban design and planning firm.

“We’re not asking the city to give us money,” said Miguel A. Del Valle II, CEO of Pegasus Parking.� “The only critical thing now is to get a high-level policy group in place that we can work with.”

One possible route would run through the arts district, then along Ross Avenue, San Jacinto Street and Main Street.� The modern streetcars would connect with DART light rail stations and the existing McKinney Avenue heritage streetcar line.� Del Valle and Raymond E. Stanland of Stanland & Associates emphasized that their scheme is only in a very preliminary stage but added that they believe streetcars can help boost downtown economic development.

City Council and DART board members agreed to explore the plan, although some of the DART representatives expressed reservations, especially about costs and financing. However, several council members appeared to be enthusiastic, saying streetcars could keep people out of their autos for short trips around downtown.

Toledo, OH — University Link

Rail Transit Online

January 2005

The Metropolitan Area Council of Governments is studying a proposal for a rail transit link — probably a streetcar — to connect the downtown area and the University of Toledo.� The route would include parts of Monroe Street and either Dorr or Bancroft streets and it could also serve the Toledo Museum of Art and Toledo Hospital, depending on the route selected.� Public meetings on the plan are being held during December as part of the $100,000 study, 20 percent of which is being funded by the university.� “It is sound economics to connect the student population base in and around campus with the downtown area,” university President Dan Johnson told the Toledo Blade.� Metropolitan council Vice President for Transportation David Dysard said the streetcar would help with the development and redevelopment of the city’s core.� The university line could also connect with the proposed Westside Technology Corridor, another transit concept using an existing rail right-of-way that would link the university with the Medical College of Ohio, Owens Community College and the Port Alexis Industrial Park.

Washington, DC: Metro opens Blue Line extension

Light Rail Now! NewsLog

1 January 2005

If you thought the expansion of “heavy” rail rapid transit in America was virtually dead, think again. Saturday, 18 December 2004 saw the opening of two new stations and an additional 3.1 miles of the Washington Metro’s “heavy” rail rapid transit (metro) system marking the first expansion of Washington, DC’s Metrorail system beyond the originally planned 103 miles of route (finally built out in January 2001), and the first time the metro system has reached beyond the Capital Beltway in Prince George’s County, Md. While the Morgan Boulevard station is just inside the Beltway, the Largo Town Center station is located outside the Capital Beltway in Prince George’s County.

[Washington Post, 19 December 2004]

Metro planners forecast that within a year, ridership at the new stations will total nearly 10,000 per day. Officials expect the $456 million extension to ease mobility congestion within the travel corridor possibily even alleviating some traffic on parallel roads and drawing shoppers, families, and businesses to the heart of the county. In any case, it will provide a much-needed and desired alternative to the area’s rapidly mounting roadway congestion.

[Washington Post, 19 December 2004]

Besides improving mobility, another major objective has been to encourage and attract crucial economic development and transit-oriented development, or TOD. “This marks the renaissance of economic development” in the county, Maryland’s Republican Lieutenant Governor, Michael S. Steele, underscored at the opening of the Largo Town Center stop. “It was built with the people in mind.”

[Washington Post, 19 December 2004]

“When you live in an outlying area, the Metro can bring opportunities for expansion and growth, particularly to a place like Prince George’s” observed former County Council member Marvin Wilson at the Morgan Boulevard dedication. “It brings people to our county and shows that all kinds of things can grow beyond metropolitan Washington.”

[Washington Post, 19 December 2004]

“For some of the first passengers to catch the train,” related the Washington Post, “the practical benefits triumphed: easy access to the movie theater at Largo; a day care center at Morgan Boulevard that will accommodate 90 children; no more waiting at cold bus stops for a ride to Addison Road, which used to be the last stop.”

[Washington Post, 19 December 2004]

Subway may stop in ‘smart growth’; Fairfax’s plan for urban developments near Metro stations sparks debate

Richmond Times-Dispatch

Jan 1, 2005

VIENNA — Long known for its suburban sprawl and leafy lifestyle, Fairfax County is giving the green light to more urban-style development around its Metro subway stops.

Last month, the county Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a plan that eventually will replace a 61-home subdivision near the Vienna Metro station with offices, stores and 2,250 homes in about a dozen buildings, some as tall as 14 stories.

To its supporters, the Fairlee-Metro West development being planned by Pulte Homes Inc. and Clark Realty Capital represents an example of “smart growth,” the land-use approach that seeks to stem sprawl by encouraging development near public transit stations.

“Transit-oriented, mixed-use and walkable development like that proposed for the Vienna Metro station offers the best opportunity to reduce traffic congestion, save open space, provide housing close to jobs and accommodate growth expected in Fairfax County,” said Cheryl Cort of the Washington Regional Network.

But critics of the project said it will restrict Metro access for longtime residents, create too much traffic and harm the environment. They claim supervisors are pushing high-density development in places where no constituency for it exists yet.

“We are deeply troubled by the county’s approach to the Vienna Station project,” said William S. Elliott, a spokesman for FairGrowth, a group formed to fight the project. “Unless they radically improve how they review and debate such projects, we think the county could create a true disaster when it begins considering even bigger proposals in Tysons Corner and elsewhere.”

Board Chairman Gerald E. Connolly acknowledged the difficulty in building a consensus for the project. People support the concept of smart growth, he said, but often balk when it comes to their neighborhood. “Smart growth is an orphan when it comes to having a constituency,” he said.

Pushing smart growth

Connolly said Fairfax, the state’s most populous locality with more than 1 million residents, must consider allowing more intense development around Metro stops as it deals with a growing population and dwindling open space. Unlike neighboring Arlington County, Fairfax has mostly limited dense development around its Metro stations, opting instead for suburban-style subdivisions.

That is beginning to change. The county wants to increase the amount of development allowed along a proposed new Metro line that would run through Tysons Corner to Washington Dulles International Airport.

Backers of such projects cite the success of Arlington, which has concentrated much of its commercial development along a 3-mile corridor served by five Metro stops. The Rosslyn-Ballston section in Arlington is considered one of the country’s premier transit-oriented corridors, and it was recognized in 2002 by the Environmental Protection Agency with a smart-growth award. Its transit-oriented development has been copied in other parts of the country.

Planning paid off

In the 1960s, when Metro was being planned, Arlington officials decided to place the rail line and five stations beneath the corridor rather than in the center of Interstate 66. By making that choice, the county wanted to spur office, retail and residential investment close to the stations, and it hoped to bolster surrounding neighborhoods.

The decision has paid off. The corridor is now considered the county’s economic engine. Construction cranes are a common sight. More than 35,000 people live in the corridor, and 73,000 jobs are situated within a short distance of the Metro stops. The corridor contains 7.6 percent of the county’s land area but generates 33 percent of its property-tax revenue, county officials said.

Rosslyn residents own an average of 1.1 vehicles per household according to the 2000 census, compared with 1.9 in the United States as a whole, as reported in the National Household Travel Survey.

Instead of driving, residents typically walk or take a bus to the train, according to a 2002 Metro survey. Between 1972 and 2002, Arlington added more than 11,000 housing units, 16 million square feet of office space and 950,000 square feet of retail space, all without a significant

increase in traffic, county officials said.

Opponents of the Fairlee-Metro West project said Arlington’s success cannot be replicated in Vienna. Arlington enjoyed the advantage of having five subway stops within a relatively short distance, meaning homes and shops are within a short walk one of the stations, creating an ideal scenario for transit-related development.

The Vienna project, by contrast, would be located at the current terminus of Metro’s Orange line. The line is above ground, in the median of I-66, making future development around it more difficult. The project would have parking for 4,400 cars, meaning people would have scant incentive to take the train, opponents said. The developer projects that about 30 percent of Fairlee-Metro West residents will use Metro to travel to and from work.

Stewart Schwartz of the Coalition for Smarter Growth said the biggest benefit of the project will be to ease the development pressure stemming from vacant land in the region. “The community needs to be more concerned about the single-use projects, where there’s no choice but to drive for every single trip,” he said.

Why “smart growth” is dumb.

The American Enterprise

January 1, 2005

Americans love their own cars, but they’re sick of everyone else’s. The car is blamed for everything from global warming to the war in Iraq to the transformation of America into a land of strip malls and soulless subdivisions filled with fat, lonely suburbanites. Al Gore called the automobile a “mortal threat” that is “more deadly than that of any military enemy.”

But other thinkers extol the personal autonomy and freedom made possible by automobiles. Drawing on authorities from across history they argue that the car is not merely a convenience, but one of history’s greatest forces for good, an invention that liberated the poor from slums, lifted workers from company towns, and freed women to work.

They note that for most Americans, mass transit is impractical and irrelevant. Since 1970, transit systems have received more than $ 500 billion in subsidies, yet people have continued to vote with their wheels. Transit has been losing market share to the car and now carries just 3 percent of urban commuters outside New York City. It’s easy to see why from one statistic: The average commute by public transportation takes twice as long as the average commute by car.

Aren’t suburban drivers getting a free ride, thanks to highway spending? The answer is no. If you add up all the costs of driving, it works out to about 20 cents per passenger mile, and drivers pay more than 19 of those cents themselves. A trip on a local bus or commuter train costs nearly four times as much, and taxpayers subsidize three quarters of that cost.

Aren’t we paving over paradise, though? Sure, cornfields around our major cities are being converted to residences. The big picture, though, is that more than 90 percent of the continental United States is still open space and farmland. The major change in land use in recent decades has actually been the gain of 70 million acres of wilderness — more than all the land currently occupied by cities, suburbs, and exurbs. Because agriculture has become so efficient, farmers have abandoned vast tracts of land that have reverted to nature.

O.K., but doesn’t sprawl trap drivers in traffic hell? Actually, the nation’s worst traffic tends to be not in “sprawling” suburbs and exurbs, but in densely populated urban areas that haven’t been building new roads — the kinds of places hailed by “smart-growth” planners.

Suppose you have a choice between two similarly priced homes. One is an urban town house within walking distance of stores and mass transit; the other is in the suburbs and requires driving everywhere. Which one would you pick? If you chose the town house, you’re in a distinct minority in this country. Only 17 percent of Americans chose that in a national survey. The other 83 percent preferred the suburbs. For all the bad press that suburbs get, polls consistently show that the vast majority of suburbanites are happy with their neighborhoods.

You could argue that Americans are deluded because they haven’t been given a reasonable alternative. Smart-growth advocates ask, “What if the government lavished money on mass transit and imposed high gasoline taxes to discourage driving?

As it happens, that experiment has already been conducted in Europe with surprisingly little effect. To American tourists who ride the subways in the carefully preserved old cities, the policies seem to have worked. But it turns out that the people who live there aren’t so different from Americans. Even with $ 5-per-gallon gasoline, the number of cars per capita in Europe has been growing faster than in America in recent decades, while the percentage of commuters using mass transit has been falling. As the suburbs expand, Europe’s cities have been losing people, too. Paris is a great place to visit, but in the past half-century it has lost one quarter of its population.

The goal of restoring old-fashioned city neighborhoods sounds noble, but those old neighborhoods and their transit systems were not built by planners at regional authorities imposing their visions of how people should live and travel. They were built by housing developers and private streetcar and subway companies responding to their customers’ desires. It was only in the middle of the twentieth century that urban planning became a bureaucratized profession with sweeping ambitions, like the “urban renewal” projects of the 1960s and ‘70s that mostly served to hasten the urbanites’ flight to suburbs. Now that the planners have followed them to suburban counties, Americans are heading to smaller communities in the exurbs.

Many of those who flee do so reluctantly. They understand the appeal of stoops and corner stores and running into neighbors on the walk home from dinner. Some of them, especially the young and the childless are moving back to cities, and once again there are private developers ready to meet their desires (which now run toward lofts and historic town houses with modern kitchens).

But for most middle-class families, the ideal of city life conflicts with the reality of their own lives. Even if they’re willing to do without a yard, how can they afford to live in a decent neighborhood within easy commute of their jobs? How will they go shopping on a rainy day with a child in tow? Where will the children go to school?

The bias against suburbanization is often a product not of reason but of class snobbery and intellectual arrogance. Portland, Oregon became the poster city for anti-suburban planners by building light-rail lines instead of highways, and severely restricting suburban development. But nearly 90 percent of its commuters still drive, and highway congestion increased in Portland more than any other American city in the 15 years after the first light-rail line opened. Meanwhile, housing prices rose sharply, making Portland one of the less-affordable cities for home buyers.

Distaste for the car and suburbia among today’s intellectuals, and their fondness for rail travel and cities, are an odd inverse of old aristocratic attitudes. The Duke of Wellington’s complaint against the new railroads of his day was that they will “only encourage the common people to move about needlessly.”

Suburbs were quite fashionable when only the upper classes could afford to live there. Nineteenth-century social workers dreamed of sending crowded urbanites out to healthy green spaces. But when middle-class workers made it out there, they were mocked first for their “little boxes made of ticky-tacky,” and later for their McMansions.

Sure, there are social and environmental problems caused by suburbanization and the private car. But it appears that few of these drawbacks would be solved — in fact, many would be made worse — by the proposals coming from today’s critics.

— Adapted from “The Autonomist Manifesto,” originally published by the New York Times Magazine, September 26, 2004.

BART replacing parking validation machines; Old 1990s system often didn’t work

The San Francisco Chronicle

JANUARY 1, 2005

BART officials, responding to years of complaints about malfunctioning machines, are slowly revamping the antiquated parking validation systems at some of the busiest stations.

The system, installed in seven stations in the early 1990s to keep non-riders from using the parking lots, has long been plagued by machines that do not work. The problem has grown so severe that police issue citations only at the three stations with working validation machines — Orinda, Walnut Creek and Lafayette. “Some of the (old) machines have never worked, and others are ineffective,” said Linton Johnson, a BART spokesman.

But many riders at Lake Merritt, where the validation program requires riders to pay a quarter, don’t realize the machines don’t work, don’t know that police won’t ticket them, and spend several confused minutes deciding whether to risk it, leave, or try to get a validation.

Tom Haygood, 37, of Alameda used to feed the machine until he bought a parking permit for $84 a month. The validation machines often had “out of order” signs, but he said, “I think the validation system works. I just don’t think they have enough representatives policing the lot.”

The old machines have been removed from the North Berkeley, El Cerrito and Rockridge stations, said Kevin Hagerty, manager of the parking division. BART is adding validation functions to its new ticket vending machines, which seems to be working.

The programming will be added at the Fruitvale station this month and at North Berkeley before long. As problems arise, BART will convert more vending machines to the validation system.

BART has never figured out quite how to make the system work. It was installed after BART officials discovered non-riders were poaching parking spaces, leaving those wishing to ride the train combing the neighborhoods around the stations for parking. “In the early 90s, we discovered difficulty at some stations because non-riders, especially casual carpoolers, were using the lots,” Hagerty said. “We couldn’t accommodate those who wanted to use BART to commute.”

The agency experimented with ways to make patrons validate parking. In some cases, they installed boxes inside stations where riders dropped a washer into their parking spot number. BART then tried a more sophisticated electronic machine where riders entered a stall number and received a printed receipt. Police used printed lists of validated spaces and cited those parked illegally.

There were a total of 48 validation machines, but Lake Merritt was the only station to require a fee — a move to discourage Laney College students from parking there. Most of the machines there, though, only worked sporadically. “They worked one day and not the next,” Hagerty said. “We always had to put out-of-order signs on them.” The malfunctioning machines can’t be salvaged, officials said.

After a parking survey was conducted in 2003, BART found that Lafayette was one of the most popular parking lots among non-riders, with up to 150 people parking each day and not riding BART.

The survey also found office workers in nearby buildings were using the lots at the Walnut Creek and Orinda stations. BART started the new validation program in those three stations, adding the validation function to add-fare machines.

The machines are a hassle for BART riders, but necessary in some places, say officials.

“If there is a small problem, we are not going to inconvenience 2,000 people for 20 violators,” Hagerty said. “But in stations with complaints, we will continue to conduct surveys and investigate.”

(NOTE: and just where did the reporter get his alleged ridership statistics??)

TRANSIT IRONY

Governing Magazine

January 2005

I don’t own a dog, but I’ve heard all the stories that dog-owners tell. The kids beg for a puppy, go wild when it arrives and become deeply attached to it. But they don’t have much desire to take care of it when it grows up. That’s the way cities are with transit systems. Or at least, it’s the way they seem to behave. I don’t know how else to explain the odd combination of headlines about public transportation that has been appearing around the country these past few weeks.

On Election Day in November, Denver and Phoenix voted to spend billions of dollars on sleek new rail systems they hope will eventually lead them away from traffic gridlock and endless sprawl. San Diego approved a new rail line and massive expansion of its bus system.

At the same time, the oldest and most heavily used transit systems in urban America are begging for the cash they need just to provide existing service. Chicago’s CTA is warning that if it doesn’t get an infusion of at least $80 million from the state legislature, it will have to cut service 20 percent and lay off 1,250 workers. Atlanta’s MARTA system is looking at doubling some of its fares. In Philadelphia, SEPTA may have to cancel train service on weekends. “There’s not a groundswell of public support,” the system’s chairman admitted a few weeks ago.

All of this is pretty depressing when you reflect that each of these systems has been integral to an urban revival in recent years, generating infusions of downtown residential population that range from modest in Atlanta to nothing short of spectacular in Chicago. If you ride the CTA Brown Line home from the Loop at night on a weekday evening, your problem is not bad service. Your problem is squeezing onto the train.

If you want to, you can use statistics to prove almost any point about mass transit that you wish to prove. On the one hand, nobody disputes that the number of transit trips has declined over the past quarter-century: If you compare the big-city rail systems in 1980 and in 2005, you get a ridership decrease of about 30 percent. On the other hand, most of that decrease was in the first half of the period. Between 1995 and 2002, transit use in America actually went up by about 3 percent a year. It fell back slightly in the recession that began in 2001. But SEPTA and the CTA both saw increased ridership in the first half of 2004. So a lot depends on what year you choose to look at.

The one number that’s declined steadily and inexorably for most systems is the amount of government assistance. A decade ago, the federal government provided 5 percent of the operating budgets of the 35 largest transit agencies. These days, it’s 1 percent. States still cover about a quarter of the budgets, but that is aid vulnerable to economic conditions. Much of it comes from sales tax revenue, and when sales tax collections are down, as they have been for the past several years, transit systems are big losers.

But even when times are flush, public transportation is still victimized by funding rules that don’t usually protect it against inflation. If the CTA were getting its state money in 1985 dollars instead of 2004 dollars, it would have an extra $100 million this year — more than enough to solve its most urgent budget problems.

The list of relevant numbers goes on forever. In the end, though, the numbers are only a symptom of the disease. The real problem is political fragmentation that makes cities, suburbs and states into competitors in the transportation game instead of allies.

In Chicago, the CTA has to struggle not only against general budget austerity but also against METRA, the network of suburban train lines that brings 150,000 commuters in and out of the city every weekday. During the past two decades, METRA has enjoyed funding increases above the level of inflation, has held its fares down, added service and grown substantially in ridership.

In part, that’s because the communities that METRA serves have themselves been growing. But it’s also because METRA has more powerful friends than the CTA does. One of those friends is the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, whose constituents in suburban towns such as Elgin and Aurora ride METRA and not CTA.

A few weeks ago, when the Illinois legislature was considering whether to give the CTA the budget help it was seeking, Hastert weighed in with a vow that if CTA got any of METRA’s dollars, Congress would simply transfer an equivalent amount of federal money out of the CTA account. In view of that threat, it was no surprise that state legislative leaders, even though many of them are inner-city Chicago Democrats, gave up any interest in a CTA bailout.

The politics of transit for Philadelphia are, at the moment, even more acrimonious than those in Chicago. That’s in large part because they are based not only on demographics but also on partisanship. The financial future of SEPTA has become entangled in the bitter disputes between Democratic Governor Edward Rendell and the Republicans who control both of Pennsylvania’s legislative chambers.

GOP leaders have viewed SEPTA’s requests mostly as special pleading on the part of Rendell, who was mayor of Philadelphia for two terms before he became governor. Suburban Republicans, whose constituents ride the urban transit system, unlike most suburbanites in Illinois, have been relatively sympathetic toward helping SEPTA. But Republicans from other parts of the state, who hold the balance of power in the legislature, have been adamantly against it.

Then there is the case of Atlanta’s MARTA, whose difficulties are due less to current political rivalry than to decisions made decades ago. When MARTA was planned in the 1960s, the leadership in the fast-growing suburban territory northeast and northwest of Atlanta chose not to be included, arguing privately that a transit line presented too many opportunities for the inner-city poor to move out beyond urban boundaries. Cobb and Gwinnett counties, with a combined population of well over a million, have no MARTA lines and hardly any voters who express a desire to help pay MARTA’s bills.

With a sales-tax funding base restricted to Atlanta itself and two inner-suburban counties, the system doesn’t have the political constituency to meet its current costs and can’t afford to build the new lines that would broaden the constituency. That’s a pretty succinct summary of the Catch-22 that afflicts aging transit systems in many different parts of the country.

If there’s an overriding lesson in the transit-budget crisis that’s afflicting the older cities right now, it’s that in order to remain stable over the long run, a transit system has to be an octopus. It has to stretch its tentacles into every corner of a metropolitan area, giving the residents of the entire region a stake in its future. If you look at urban transit referendums around the country over the last decade, you find that most of the “no” votes aren’t cast by people who don’t want the service; they’re cast by people who are afraid the service won’t reach them. Building an octopus is politically and financially very difficult. But building a slithering snake is a recipe for permanent inadequacy, as Atlanta has learned with MARTA time and time again.

More than just an octopus, though, a successful transit system needs to be a creature with a single brain. Metropolitan Chicago has more than enough resources to maintain a network that provides excellent service to the distant suburbs without short-changing the city’s revival. But as long as there are dueling agencies with different management, different constituencies and different funding sources, that’s unlikely to happen.

For the MARTAs, SEPTAs and CTAs of the world, it may simply be too late. That’s the bad news. Very bad, in fact. But there’s a little bit of good news: The cities now embarking on major transit projects seem to have done a pretty good job of figuring out what does and doesn’t work.

In Denver, for example, the $4.7 billion FASTRACKS proposal that passed in November drew on a region-wide coalition that included mayors of all 31 of the area’s cities, nearly all the chambers of commerce, and virtually all of the important newspapers in the area. The system itself will include six new lines and 57 stations spreading out from Denver in every direction, all the way to Boulder in the northwest and the international airport in the northeast. Supporters offered the vision of a network that would eventually connect 31 village centers, each less than a half-mile from one of the stations. Citizens could oppose the project on the basis of cost, or argue that it wouldn’t solve traffic congestion. But not many could complain that it would never reach them.

When opponents, led by Colorado Governor Bill Owens, argued for starting small, with shorter pilot projects in a couple of busy corridors, the pro-transit coalition responded that this would be about the same as doing nothing. The political support would be insufficient. When you need an octopus, you don’t start by designing a snake. FASTRACKS ended up getting 57 percent of the vote.

Proposition 400 in Arizona got almost exactly the same vote following a campaign that enlisted a similar coalition of elected officials, business leaders, legislators, the state transportation board and the media. It wasn’t Phoenix against the suburbs; it was Phoenix and the suburbs together. Along with 27 miles of light rail, the plan included significant commitments to highway improvement and new arterial streets. Critics called the light rail component a waste of money, but they never got anywhere. Proposition 400 gave so many diverse and far-flung communities a piece of the action that it became impossible to stop.

The moral of this story is clear: Public transportation is a political winner when it unites communities and interests instead of dividing them. The time to do that is right at the start. If you have any doubts about the cost of moving too slowly, consider this: Just last month, after decades of planning and delay, Washington, D.C.’s Metro system finally opened a rail station in suburban Largo, Maryland, at the site of the Capital Centre, an arena built in the early 1970s for basketball and hockey. It’s a nice station, but it won’t help sports fans much: The Capital Centre was demolished in 2002.

POLICE TRAINING FOR TRAM WORKERS; SPECIAL MEASURES PLANNED TO HELP ENSURE PASSENGER SAFETY

Daily Post (Liverpool)

January 1, 2005,

MERSEYTRAM staff will be trained as special police constables in an effort to make it one of the safest transport networks in the world, the Daily Post can reveal.

The measure is one of a number contained in the final bid from the MET consortium currently being evaluated by Merseytravel.

Trams staff will be encouraged - by payment or time off in lieu for time on duty - to become special constables within a new tram section of the British Transport Police. They would then be able to patrol the trams which they work on as part of their everyday job.

Staff involved in day-to-day contact with the public will also undergo psychometric testing to make sure they have the characteristics needed to help defuse and not exacerbate possibly difficult situations.

If Merseytram goes ahead, they are some of a wide range of safety measures which will be written into the final contract. They also include attempts to get local residents to take ownership of stops near their homes to reduce vandalism.

The full list of safety features includes: The setting-up of a special British Transport or Merseyside Police unit for the dedicated use of the tramway;

- The use of Antisocial Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) to ban persistent offenders from the system;

- CCTV on all trams;

- CCTV at all tram stops with a direct feed to the tram control centre and Merseyside Police;

- The use of dedicated tram community safety officers in addition to the British Transport Police;

- Introducing an “adopt a stop” scheme for selected local residents to keep an eye on a nearby tram stop on a neighbourhood watch-style basis. In return, they will receive discounted or free travel on the system;

- Using crime prevention advice from British Transport Police and Merseyside Police.

Neil Scales, chief executive of Merseytravel, said: “Nationally, we’re at the forefront of safety on public transport and the safety of passengers was one of the points we stressed in the invitations to tender for Merseytram.

“Merseytravel, together with the five local authorities of Merseyside, Merseyside Police, British Transport Police and public transport operators in the region, are members of Travel Safe which I chair.

“Travel Safe employs a wide-range of resources including education, youth work, 12 community safety officers dedicated to public transport (the first of their kind in the country), extensive CCTV - which can produce images up to the standard required in court cases - and targeted police operations. These resources will be deployed to ensure the public can travel safely and in comfort on Merseytram. “

Fares, please; London’s buses

The Economist

January 1, 2005

Can London’s buses keep up their remarkable growth?

ONCE the Cinderellas of London’s public transport, buses are now the showpiece. Since his election in 2000, London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, has poured up to £500m ($970m) a year into the capital’s bus network. It isn’t just money the buses have got more of, but road space as well: London now has 280km (175 miles) of bus lanes, up by a half since 2000. Mr Livingstone’s generosity turned a gentle annual increase in bus passenger journeys, of around 3%, into annual growth of more than 8%. The daily average in 2000 was 4.13m; now it is over 5.5m. The buses are more frequent, more reliable and comfier.

Taxpayers might quibble, but Transport for London (TfL), the body that oversees the capital’s buses, Tube and taxis, sees it as a stunning success. In their share of journeys made in greater London, buses have gained four percentage points from cars. That is unlike anything in the world, says Jay Walder, its finance chief. London’s planners say that they have replaced a vicious circle, in which people shun poor public transport for their cars, thus creating worse congestion, slower buses and ever greater losses, with a virtuous one.

But can it continue? The growth is at least partly thanks to a stonking subsidy that allowed Mr Livingstone to slash fares. How much each extra passenger has cost is hotly debated. The overall subsidy now is 24p per journey, and TfL reckons gaining each extra one has cost 61p. But Tony Travers of the London School of Economics thinks the real figure is at least double that. At any rate, central government is unwilling to spend more money this way.

So the growth must now be in fares, not subsidies. To balance TfL’s books, these will go up by around 12% in January; there will be a similar rise in the next two years, and fares are projected to go up at two percentage points above inflation until 2010.

That may threaten the growth in passenger numbers of which Mr Livingstone is so proud. After all, if low fares got people on to buses, high fares may drive them away. But TfL reckons fares are so low — 53p, on average — that passengers are not very price-sensitive. Peter Hendy, TfL’s head of surface transport, says a 5% rise in January 2004 barely dented growth.

Even if that’s right, TfL faces other problems. First, meeting peak demand in central London requires so many buses that they slow each other down. Here the answer is better pricing. TfL is using its “Oyster card”, a whizzy electronic ticketing system, to create a new super-peak fare category to encourage people to travel earlier or later, when buses are emptier.

The second big weapon is technology. The electronics on London’s buses are “the biggest and oldest such system in the world”, says Mr Hendy. Some bits, such as the gadgets that count wheel revolutions, date back to the 1960s. TfL is now planning to buy a new £100m system that will track the bus’s location, communicate with the control centre and signal to traffic lights that a bus is approaching. That will speed buses’ passage through junctions, help keep them at efficient intervals and let people know when the next one is coming. Going cashless, which is planned for 2006, will also increase speeds and cut costs.

Keeping intruders out of bus lanes would also help. TfL has given responsibility for policing bus lanes to a specialist unit and has improved CCTV coverage. Recorded obstructions have fallen from 9.1 per km in August 2003 to 4.8 per km a year later, and there is room for improvement.

All these may indeed help. But the fundamental problem is that buses are not a good way of moving lots of people long distances round a crowded city. What London really needs is a bigger, better underground railway system. Even if the billions being splurged on the Tube turn out to be well spent, it will be a decade before it can carry a lot more passengers. Until then, buses will struggle to fill the gap.

Garrison Keillor: Time for a big step forward in rail transit

Minneapolis Star Tribune

January 2, 2005

This is the year for state government to show itself capable of bold action; it’s time for rail transit to take a big step forward. It’s been studied to death for 50 years and the reality is as plain as can be. The roads are choking us: For a good half of the business day, it’s impossible to guess how long it will take you to drive from A to B — this deters economic growth. People in the far suburbs spend two and three hours a day trapped in cars, which is nobody’s idea of a good way to live. This is replacing the weather as a subject of conversation.

Meanwhile, the spokes of the great 19th-century railroad hub are still in place, ready to be incorporated into a metro rail system. Look at a detailed map of the Twin Cities and you see the little spiny lines of rails going about where a transit system should go. To turn them into recreational bike trails is a waste of engineering, like using a satellite dish for a flowerpot.

The old bulls of the Legislature who stymied mass transit as they built deserted superhighways in their rural districts are mostly gone, and the stage is set for the governor to be a hero. The Hiawatha LRT is the trainer model, and now it’s time to do the system right. Minnesota has a long, proud tradition of engineering, of basic problem-solving, and if the politicians would just show some foresight, we can build a transportation system that will turn the Twin Cities into the major metropolis it ought to be. When you can get from Anoka to downtown Minneapolis in 15 minutes, you bolster both communities and you create a good that is fundamental to civilized life.

It should have been started 25 years ago. It can get started this year and next. An investment so crucial shouldn’t be put off until a sunnier day.

STRAPPED; PORT AUTHORITY; CALLS WAGES; REASONABLE

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania)

January 2, 2005

Wages, salaries and employee benefits eat up the biggest part of the financially troubled Port Authority’s $282.7 million operating budget — $212.6 million, or more than 75 percent. A three-part series that begins today examines overtime, pensions and a special retirement incentive for certain managers at the agency, which could make severe service cuts due to a budget deficit of $30 million.

In the 1970s, Pittsburgh was No. 1, paying the highest wages in the nation to union bus and trolley operators.

Times have changed.

Now the $22.79 top hourly rate for operators at the financially crippled Port Authority is fourth-highest in the United States among similar-size transit agencies and 17th highest overall when larger cities like San Francisco and New York are included.

When overtime is counted, one-third of the 2,700 hourly employees and first-level supervisors grossed $50,000 or more in 2003, the latest year for which statistics are available. Two bus drivers earned more than $90,000.

Even bigger money went to the chief executive officer and his top staff, as it does in public transit systems across the United States. Port Authority CEO/General Manager Paul Skoutelas grossed $198,756 in 2003, a year when his salary was $195,000. “I sold back some unused vacation time,” he explained. The annual salaries of seven other administrators topped $100,000.

But a state-mandated study corroborates the Port Authority’s claim that it is a relatively lean, cost-effective operation. “Relative to peer agencies, Port Authority has maintained one of the lowest levels of administrative or overhead cost relative to total operating cost,” concluded Booz Allen Hamilton, an independent consulting firm hired by the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation last year.

“Overall, on the administrative side, we’ve been lean for a long, long time,” Skoutelas said. “I’ve been sensitive to this. We’re the lowest among our peer groups” when it comes to the total money spent on administration and management.

At $195,000, Skoutelas tied for No. 10 nationwide. Top executives were paid as much as $295,000 by the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Booz Allen Hamilton praised the authority for reducing overtime by 33 percent, increasing labor productivity by 12 percent and holding operating cost increases to 0.5 percent while inflation increased by 10 percent.

Nevertheless, the authority is in a financial fix, facing a $30 million shortfall in its $282 million operating budget for the fiscal year that is half over, and an estimated $45 million deficit for the 2005-06 fiscal year that begins July 1.

The authority places most of the blame for its troubles on years of inadequate operating subsidies under the administration of former Gov. Tom Ridge and, more recently, the failure of the Legislature to pass long-term, dedicated funding to help it and four dozen other struggling transit systems across the state.

As a result, riders who account for 235,000 bus, trolley, incline and paratransit trips a day face a 25-cent increase in the base fare to $2 on March 1; a 12 percent reduction in service March 6; another 50-cent fare increase to $2.50 on July 1; and another 15 percent reduction in service on or about July 1.

It is a predicament that Skoutelas said will leave the nation’s 15th largest transit system a skeleton of itself and that riders and businesses have said will cause irreparable harm to their mobility and to businesses in Allegheny County.

During public hearings about proposed fare increases and service cuts in November, at least a half dozen people complained that employee wages and benefits were too high and should be cut to match revenues.

Skoutelas said the authority already has taken unprecedented cost-cutting steps, including a year-long wage freeze for 2,700 union workers and more than 300 management and non-represented employees, saving $23.7 million; laying off 85 people; and eliminating 55 administrative and three hourly jobs, saving another $5 million.

In a recent interview about administrative salaries and union wages, Skoutelas elaborated:

- The two highest-paid bus drivers got $94,143 and $91,219 in 2003, but those wages reflect a drop since 2001, when the two top drivers grossed $103,318 and $95,552, respectively. He said better management led to less overtime overall.

- Those who work a lot of overtime are usually the most experienced, reliable workers. “We know we can depend on them,” Skoutelas said. “We’re a seven-day, 24-hour operation. We have people working in the middle of the night.”

- It is cheaper to pay overtime than to add employees and pay fringe benefits, especially with the soaring costs of health care.

- The authority is neither top-heavy with administrators nor is their pay out of line with that of other urban transit systems.

He said the authority has trouble holding onto some people with special skills. He cited three light-rail managers lured away by other cities in recent years at wages at least 50 percent higher than they received here.

He said the authority was lucky to recruit Steve Banta in mid-1999 to help fill the gap. Banta, who was paid $118,154 in 2003 and recently moved up to No. 3 on the wage list, is now operations manager. He came with extensive experience starting and managing light-rail systems in Los Angeles, Denver and San Diego. “Some of these jobs require national experience and can’t be pulled out of the local market,” Skoutelas said. “They sleep with pagers under their pillows.”

As for the rank-and-file workers who pad their salaries with overtime, Skoutelas described them as “the ones not looking for reasons not to come to work. They’re people who enjoy doing their jobs.”

He also dismissed the notion that a bus operator racking up $94,143 in gross wages could not perform his job safely or might have violated provisions of a commercial driver license restricting the number of hours of work and rest to no more than 11 hours of driving over a 14-hour period.

“I don’t subscribe to the idea that we create a safety issue with overtime and our safety records bear this out,” Skoutelas said. “[Port Authority drivers] work in a different environment than a Greyhound bus driver and have breaks built into schedules.” In addition, a number of drivers work split shifts on weekdays, with built-in overtime, to accommodate the morning and afternoon peak ridership periods.

Patrick McMahon, president and business agent of Local 85, Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents Port Authority drivers and others, also defended overtime. “Every time the pay issue comes up, everybody wants to jump on the few people who take advantage of the chance to work overtime,” he said. “They spend their lives here. But I’ll tell you, point blank, that Skoutelas has told me in negotiations that he depends on overtime. It’s a financial thing to keep down overall costs.”

McMahon said he’s a friend of the unidentified bus driver who grossed $103,318 in 2001. “He lived a half-block away from the garage,” he said. “Anytime day or night that they needed a driver, he was there in 10 minutes.”

The average wage of all Local 85 members in 2003 was $47,304, but the figure includes 116 drivers who work at 65 percent of the top rate of $22.79 an hour.

The contract with union bus-trolley operators, mechanics and other support personnel expires June 30.

Tomorrow: A look at pensions

TRANSIT: A PRICE TO PAY

FIRST OF A SERIES

Wages, salaries and employee benefits eat up the biggest part of the financially troubled Port Authority’s $282.7 million operating budget — $212.6 million, or more than 75 percent. A three-part series that begins today examines overtime, pensions and a special retirement incentive for certain managers at the agency, which could make severe service cuts due to a budget deficit of $30 million.

S.D. county transportation projects to keep rolling: construction on $ 350m Oceanside-Escondido rail line set for 2005.

San Diego Business Journal

January 3, 2005

>From the North County rail line running from Oceanside to Escondido to the state Route 125 South tollway in Otay Mesa, San Diego County transportation projects are in full swing and will continue to move forward in 2005, according to local transportation officials.

Beginning this year, several vital transportation projects will get off the ground and begin construction, according to the San Diego Association of Governments, the region’s planning agency.

Most of the new construction is slated to occur on mass transit projects, including the $ 350 million Oceanside-Escondido rail line, dubbed the Sprinter, and the $ 670 million midcoast trolley extension, which will extend from Mission Valley to University Towne Center.

Other projects include the Interstate 805 freeway shoulder project, which will allow buses to run along the freeway shoulder; the nearly $ 1 million Bus Rapid Transit showcase project in Chula Vista, a 13 mile bus rapid transit line between Otay Ranch and Downtown via 1-805 and SR-94; and the complete implementation of the $ 34 million automatic fare technology, which will allow passengers on all county and city buses to pay their bus fare through a type of charge card, known as the Compass card.

Construction on the SR-125 south tollway which began in 2003, is also expected to continue. The $ 400 million SR-125 project, which will improve the mobility and accessibility to the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, is scheduled for completion in 2006.

With many projects just beginning to see the first signs of construction, other projects are expected to be completed in 2005, according to Sandag officials.

The much-anticipated Mission Valley East extension, which will connect Mission Valley to La Mesa via the trolley, is expected to be completed this year. The nearly $ 500 million project will parallel the Interstate 8 corridor, a region which is expected to grow to nearly 300,000 residents by 2015.

Garry Bonelli, communications director for Sandag, said by late 2005 the Mission Valley East trolley line is projected to attract more than 2.5 million new annual transit riders in the region as a result of improved transit connectivity. “(We hope to) ease congestion and enhance transportation capacity within the busy Interstate 8 corridor by generating more than 11,000 new trolley trips a day on the new Mission Valley East trolley line extension,” Bonelli said. “This really is the crown jewel.”

Also to be completed in 2005 is the $ 25 million San Ysidro Multimodal Transit Center, which will help organize different forms of transportation, and the $ 138 million SR54/SR-125 gap and connector project.

“The overarching goal is to ‘keep San Diego moving,’” Bonelli said. “And we want to offer time-competitive travel options; move more people, not just vehicles. To meet this goal we need to offer a variety of solutions from new and improved HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes/managed lanes; additional highway lanes; new and expanded trolley and rail service; and vanpool, carpool, telework and flex-time options. This means informing the driving public and working with regional employers to help the commuting work force ‘survive the drive.’

“Key highways in the area will be expanded and upgraded as construction occurs on I-5, 115, 1-805, SR-905, SR-125, SR-76 and SR-52 in coming years.”

Funding for these projects, however, will be one of the biggest challenges for Sandag and the region in 2005. “Overall funding comes in three buckets: local, federal and state,” said Gary Gallegos, the executive director of Sandag. “On local funding we are very excited and thankful that the voters passed Prop. A (the half-cent sales tax expected to generate $ 14 billion through 2048 for transportation projects throughout San Diego County); that secures the local funding. And we can then use the local dollars to leverage for state and federal dollars.”

For the last two years, the federal government has not been able to agree on a spending plan, meaning that transportation officials have not been able to plan projects needed in the region, he said.

Gallegos said he is hopeful that by June or July the federal government will be able to agree on a spending plan, allowing him to do his job better. “We are excited that with the new year we are going to be able to finish some projects and make some progress on others,” Gallegos said.

While 2005 will bring transportation projects to the forefront, Gallegos said, 2007 will be the year that everyone will get excited about. In 2007, the Mission Valley East extension will be completed, as well as the managed lanes on I- 15, easing the traffic from Miramar to Lake Hodges in Escondido, he said.

Firetruck changed signal to green, test determines; A re-enactment of Sunday’s collision of a MAX train and a fire engine leads investigators to consider human error as a cause

The Oregonian – Portland

January 4, 2005

HILLSBORO — Monday’s re-enactment to understand a devastating collision between a MAX train and a Hillsboro fire engine showed the emergency vehicle’s system to change traffic lights worked from blocks away and gave it the right of way.

Preliminary test results show the electronic system used to change traffic signals to green was functioning properly, said Lt. Chris Skinner, Hillsboro police spokesman. But authorities say determining what caused the Sunday afternoon collision could take at least until the end of the week. The tests were conducted with fire engines and computer records.

“We are investigating if it was a human error — on either side — or if it was a signal system malfunction,” said Mary Fetsch, TriMet spokeswoman. She said the train’s operator, a nine-year TriMet employee, remained hospitalized Monday, and she didn’t know what he saw.

Four people, including a firefighter and the MAX operator, were hospitalized with minor injuries. “Any time you have a situation like this that involves two enormous pieces of equipment, you certainly feel very, very fortunate that you don’t have more people injured and that the injuries aren’t worse,” Skinner said.

The crash happened about 4:15 p.m. Sunday at Southeast Fifth Avenue and Washington Street as the fire engine headed south to a house fire and the MAX train headed east toward Portland.

At the time of the accident, officials said, the train was going 10 to 15 mph, and the fire engine was going 15 to 20 mph. Fetsch said the driver may not have been able to stop the train after it had gone one block from its last station. She said a 55-ton MAX train takes 50 feet to stop when it is going 15 mph or slower.

The Washington County Crash Analysis Reconstruction Team is investigating, along with Hillsboro police and fire officials, TriMet and Hillsboro traffic engineers.

Fire Chief Gary Seidel said initial data from the computer in the traffic lights indicate that Vincent Rosatti, who was driving the fire engine, changed the traffic light at the tracks to green two blocks away. “Once the light was changed, it held,” Seidel said.

Rosatti, Lt. Carl Tuma and Chad Carey, “my two firefighters and the engineer at the scene told me, ‘We had the green,’ “ Seidel said.

Firetrucks, police cars and ambulances have an Opticon system, invented by 3M, that activates switches in traffic signals to give them a green light. The system runs through the strobe lights on the vehicle’s roof.

Light-rail operators let street traffic clear before signaling their own light system that the train is ready to proceed to the next stop. The traffic lights then hold to allow the trains to pass, Fetsch said. At an intersection, if an emergency vehicle changes the light first, it takes priority, Fetsch said.

Four to six car-train accidents occur in a month on TriMet’s entire line, which runs 33 miles from Hillsboro to Gresham, Fetsch said. Since Tri- Met began serving the west side in September 1998, 16 traffic accidents have involved trains moving through Hillsboro, she said.

There are no barriers at MAX-street intersections in downtown Hillsboro, as is the case through much of the light-rail system. Some jurisdictions, such as Beaverton, opted for barriers at some intersections. No downtown Portland intersections have barriers.

Erwin Promitzer, a firefighter sitting in the right-hand passenger seat in the back of the cab, was unconscious and had to be cut out of his safety harness and breathing apparatus. Promitzer, 43, a Hillsboro firefighter for nearly 20 years, was taken to OHSU Hospital by a LifeFlight helicopter. He was released Monday.

Fetsch identified the MAX operator as William Wagoner, 58, of Beaverton. He was expected to be released today from Tuality Community Hospital in Hillsboro. The condition and name of a MAX passenger who was taken to a hospital were not released.

Based on the damage to the fire engine and physical evidence at the scene, Skinner said the train apparently struck the passenger side of the fire engine just behind the cab. The train jumped the tracks and pushed the wrecked fire engine into the yard of a house on the southeast corner of the intersection. A 60-foot fir tree in the yard kept the wreckage from hitting the house.

A woman in the house was so frightened she was taken to a hospital with chest pains. Her name and condition were not released.

Seidel said the engine, the city’s newest, cost $300,000 in January 2003. The engine was a total loss.

The chief credited Rosatti with keeping the crash from being worse. He said the engineer saw the train coming a split second before the collision and accelerated to keep MAX from hitting the cab directly.

Seattle and Las Vegas monorails reopen

Light Rail Now! NewsLog

4 January 2005

Both the (old) Seattle monorail and (new) Las Vegas monorail have finally reopened for public operation after being out of service because of technical problems.

The Seattle monorail, a “classic” Alweg beam-straddling model installed in 1962, was shut down after a fire on Memorial Day, 31 May 2004. Normally, the service runs two cars, or trainsets, a “Red Train” and “Blue Train”, in a point-to-point shuttle operation on separate beamways. However, on 31 May an electrical fire was triggered by breaking driveshafts, disabling one of the trainsets and forcing the evacuation of 150 passengers, most of them with help from firemen. After the fire, the city shut down both trainsets, and an investigation and overhaul ensued.

[Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 13 August 2004]

During the overhaul, the trainsets’ electrical systems were modified to eliminate the possibility for the type of electrical arcing that led to the “Blue Train” fire. A “hot body” detector and new grounding system were installed, and workers made sure the trainset floors and walls would be fire-resistant enough to allow safe evacuation of passengers. In addition, trainset gearboxes (one of which had been shattered shortly before the fire started) were insulated.

[Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 13 August 2004]

There had been previous fires on the system, as well as a crash and at least one incidence of a tire detaching and falling to the ground below. However, the 31 May fire was the worst incident in recent years. Fortunately, no-one has been reported hurt in any of these incidents.

On 16 December 2004, the monorail system was able to reopen with at least partial service, since overhaul and retrofitting of the “Red Line” trainset had been completed. However, work on the “Blue Line” trainset is still under way, with completion (and full operation) expected sometime this spring.

[Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 17 December 2004]

In Las Vegas, the brand-new privately financed monorail, using Bombardier’s proprietary straddle-beam M-VI technology, was shut down this past September after a number of malfunctions and incidents, the most serious of which was dropping parts from the trainsets (earning the system the moniker of the “Las Vegas Monofail”). (See Las Vegas Monorail shut down.) After an examination by a firm specializing in disaster investigations, followed by a major overhaul and partial rebuild of the rolling stock, prolonged “commissioning” (in effect, reliability testing) was carried out in mid-December. The system was finally allowed to reopen to the public on 24 December, ending the 107-day shutdown, during which fare losses are estimated to have totalled more than $9 million.

[Business Wire, 27 December 2004]

Ron Lynn, head of the Clark County Department of Development Services’ Building Division (which regulates the monorail) issued a certificate allowing 30 days of monorail service pending further review. In addition, the monorail management was given six months to resolve “nearly two dozen minor outstanding issues”, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

[Las Vegas Review-Journal, 24 December 2004]

The Las Vegas Monorail’s travails have made it a favorite target of local humor. One local columnist, George Knapp, dubbed it “the debacle of the year in Southern Nevada” which had “provided moments of much-needed comic relief by starting up, then shutting down, starting up, then shutting down again, all the while raining pieces-parts like a mechanical McNugget.”

[Las Vegas Mercury, 22 December 2004]

“When Strip tourists hear a familiar metallic clatter, it used to mean someone had hit a jackpot” wrote John L. Smith, another heartless critic . “Nowadays, it’s the sound of another part falling off the Las Vegas Monorail.” Smith also awarded it the No. 1 spot in his tally of the “worst stories” of 2004, and suggested that, if the monorail continued to have problems, it could be converted into a “Regional Justice Center”.

[Las Vegas Review-Journal, 15 December 2004; 26 December 2004]

But these relentless attacks aside, free fares helped lure thousands back onto the monorail upon its reopening. About 33,000 rider-trips were carried on Christmas Eve, the day the system reopened, and a whopping 45,000 on Christmas Day –10,000 more than the monorail system had ever previously handled on a single day since its original opening in July.

[Las Vegas Mercury, 28 December 2004]

Intense traffic congestion and a total shutdown of the Las Vegas strip then further improved the attractiveness of the monorail over the New Year’s celebration period. Even with the full fare in effect, the system is estimated to have carried about 50,000 rider-trips from 08:00 New Year’s Eve to 03:00 New Year’s Day and 40,000 from 08:00 New Year’s Day to 02:00 Sunday, the next day. These numbers were tallied despite a brief shutdown of the monorail, as planned, between 23:45 New Year’s Eve to about 00:15 New Year’s Day, during the fireworks show.

[Las Vegas Review-Journal, 4 January 2005]

However, limitations of the small capacity of the trainsets apparently began to become evident during these high-traffic conditions (see our discussion of this in Las Vegas Monorail: Troublesome Technology in a Unique “Niche” Application). “At times, trains that were packed with passengers and unable to take on more bypassed some mid-Strip stops” reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

[Las Vegas Review-Journal, 4 January 2005]

Monorail officials are hoping the system will average just over than 40,000 daily rider-trips on a typical day. With a nominal $3.00 fare (for up to a 4-mile ride), this level is needed for the privately owned system to pay its ongoing costs. So far, the Las Vegas Monorail management have declined to divulge what the average has been over the extra-heavy holiday period.

[Las Vegas Review-Journal, 4 January 2005]

Portland’s Tri-Met transit service continues to break ridership records

Light Rail Now! NewsLog

4 January 2005

Portland, Oregon’s light rail transit (LRT) and bus system, operated by its transit agency, Tri-Met, continues to shine as one of the outstanding urban public transit success stories in North America. Having already broken monthly ridership records several months this fiscal year (which ends next June 30th), Tri-Met seems well on its way to achieving ridership growth for the16th year in a row. For Tri-Met, which was formed by absorbing the failing private transit operator Rose City Transit in December 1969, this is now its 35th anniversary.

[TriMet News & Info, 27 December 2004]

In November, Tri-Met’s ridership growth occurred on both MAX LRT and bus service, with TriMet’s sixteen Frequent Service bus lines leading ridership gains. Frequent Service lines – basically, a Quality Bus (aka “BRT”) service offering headways of 15 minutes or less, top-quality rolling stock, shelter displays and other bus stop amenities, and signal priority and special roadway improvements to improve running time – now carry 56 percent of all bus ridership, up 20.3 percent from just a year ago. Regular bus service posted a 4.4 percent gain compared to a year ago.

In weekday ridership, the MAX LRT system – overall, the transit system’s star performer since its installation in 1986 – continued to register impressive gains, increasing by another 20 percent, to an average of 96,000 rider-trips each weekday. This increase included the new ridership on the Yellow Line, which opened in May of last year. (See Portland: Interstate MAX Yellow Line opens ahead of schedule and under budget.)

Another big winner was the new light rail ridership to Portland’s airport. MAX Red Line daily boardings and deboardings at Portland International Airport averaged 2,700 for a 16 percent increase. (See Portland: Airport MAX a Big Hit.)

Overall, the unrelenting, blazing success of Portland’s public transport system seems to offer some of the strongest evidence in the USA of the payoff possible from investment in high-performance rail transit as well as reliable bus operations and Quality Bus services.

RULING BOOSTS RAILWAY PROJECT; GREENBUSH WORK TO BEGIN IN STAGES

The Boston Globe

January 4, 2005

The US Army Corps of Engineers has issued a sweeping environmental permit allowing work to proceed on the Greenbush commuter rail restoration through the South Shore, the last significant hurdle for the controversial $479 million project, state transportation officials said yesterday.

The 120-page permit, which MBTA officials picked up yesterday at the New England office of the federal agency in Concord, clears the way for construction of the Greenbush line in environmentally sensitive areas along the 18-mile rail corridor.

State Transportation Secretary Daniel A. Grabauskas said work would begin immediately along sections of the route in Braintree, Weymouth, and Hingham. An administrative magistrate has dismissed appeals filed by project opponents of state-issued wetlands permits in those communities. Only a challenge to state permits in Cohasset and Scituate remains.

“We can get to work on a significant portion of the right-of-way now,” Grabauskas said. “The MBTA is doing this project in the most environmentally sensitive manner possible, being mindful of endangered species, wetlands, and historic districts. All these appeals have cost us time and money.”

John Bewick, spokesman for the Hingham-based residents group Advocates for Transportation Alternatives, which opposes the Greenbush project, said that “it is not clear until we have a chance to read it what our actions will be.” He did not rule out an appeal of the Army Corps permit.

Any such appeal would have to be filed in federal court. The Army Corps of Engineers has jurisdiction over any construction work proposed for federally designated wetlands. The state separately issues permits for work through areas it defines as wetlands.

“This is not a surprise,” Bewick said of the granting of the permit. “Nothing has changed the fact that Greenbush is fiscally irresponsible, at a cost of $350,000 per car removed from rush hour, at a time when the T is curtailing bus service and cutting ferry service in the harbor and is obviously in a fiscal crisis.”

The T recently said it might have to cut its Night Owl, a late-night bus service, as well as regional, privately operated bus lines to help close a $16 million budget gap for the current fiscal year. The Greenbush restoration would be funded from the T’s capital budget and is not eligible for federal money.

Bewick said a thorough review would show the project is “environmentally damaging, compared to alternatives. They are required to do a full environmental review, and obviously they haven’t,” he said.

No one at the Army Corps of Engineers New England office could be reached for comment yesterday.

Joe Pesaturo, spokesman for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, said that opponents of the project “should see the writing on the wall.”

The Greenbush commuter rail line stopped service in 1959, as the Southeast Expressway opened. The T has sought to put trains back on the line, to complete the three branches of the Old Colony line, which reaches into the South Shore and Southeastern Massachusetts.

The project was put on hold in 2003 because of concerns about rising costs, including a $90 million tunnel that must be built under Hingham Square. Although some advocates said that urban transit would be a better investment, Governor Mitt Romney went ahead with the project, in part because it is one of the transit improvements the state promised to undertake as a condition for receiving federal funding for the Big Dig project.

The T says the line would carry 8,400 riders per day, relieve congestion on Route 3 and the Southeast Expressway, and reduce car pollution. Opponents say that putting big commuter trains on reconstructed tracks along the corridor will be destructive for houses and wetlands areas adjacent to a railbed that has been inactive for more than four decades.

Trams extended into Docklands precinct

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

January 4, 2005

Melbourne’s trams have been extended into the city’s Docklands precinct.

Tram lines have been built along Harbour Esplanade and Docklands Drive. Services will run every four to five minutes at peak times.

Victorian Transport Minister Peter Batchelor says the $7.5 million project comes at a critical time for the Docklands development. “For all those people who live and work in the Docklands at the moment this will be a huge boost to amenity and public transport,” he said.

The extended service starts today.

Dulles Metrorail cost rises; FTA review, analysis to delay opening 18 months

Washington Times

5 Jan 2005

It will take longer and cost more than initially projected to build a Metrorail line to Washington Dulles International Airport.

The opening date for the first phase has been pushed back 18 months. It now will be mid-2011 - at the earliest - before anyone rides an 11-mile Orange Line extension from West Falls Church, through Tysons Corner, to Wiehle Avenue in Reston.

Officials said the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), which is picking up part of the cost, was to blame. “It’s largely a result of FTA requests for analysis and the review time that they require,” said Corey Hill, capital projects director for the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

It will cost almost $3.5 billion to build the entire 23-mile line out to Loudoun County by 2015� That is nearly $80 million more than expected. The delay and the subsequent higher costs are detailed in the final environmental impact statement on the project.

The FTA is paying for preliminary engineering of the stretch to Wiehle Avenue. Planners hope the federal government will pay half the cost to construct the entire line, but there is no commitment.

The state, Fairfax and Loudoun Counties, and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which operates Dulles, also are expected to provide funding.

Virginia estimates it will cost nearly $94 million a year to operate the line in 2015. The local jurisdictions that subsidize Metro would pay about one-third of that tab and riders would pay the rest, Mr. Hill said.

According to Metro, about 55 percent of the cash-strapped transit agency’s operating budget comes from the fare box.

The report finds minor social and environmental effects from building the line. Most of it will sit within the median of the Dulles Toll Road and the adjacent airport access road. “That’s a huge reason for why the impacts are lessened,” Mr. Hill said.

Other minor changes have been made to the plan, including better access to buses at Wiehle Avenue, and planning for a shorter walk for commuters from the Kiss and Ride lots to the Tysons West station platform. No one will lose their home, Mr. Hill said, but the state will need the land where a tire and a rent-a-car business now operate.

The engineering work should be completed by October and provide a detailed design plan and cost estimate of the first phase.� Then the state will ask the FTA for permission to move into final design and construction.

Streetcar Plan Plugged

Tampa Tribune

January 5, 2005

TAMPA - The city and HARTline’s quest to secure $3 million in federal transportation money to extend Tampa’s streetcar line might not be dead after all.

The Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization voted unanimously to postpone deciding how to allocate the $3 million and await a recommendation from its staff. Funding the streetcar, among other projects, will be considered.

``This thing is on life- support for you,’’ Commissioner Ronda Storms told city Councilwoman Linda Saul- Sena, a supporter of the extension. `You’ve got to be really happy. Every time it looks like it’s going to die, it resuscitates itself.’’

The federal dollars are intended for projects that ease air pollution and alleviate traffic congestion. Board members last month divvied up all but $3 million of $30 million for projects such as adding turn lanes at busy intersections and enhancing bus service in New Tampa.

Streetcar officials want to extend the line to Whiting Street. The project, which would expand the route about three-eighths of a mile, would cost more than $7 million. State and federal money to cover the rest of the extension cost has been requested or secured, streetcar officials have said.

The Tampa City Council voted last month to pursue the federal funding for the expansion, but the planning group, whose members include city, county and transportation officials, nixed the idea, 6-5.

Opponents said the streetcar would do little to ease traffic congestion, partly because the streetcar does not run during rush hour. Critics also said they felt rushed into making a decision and suggested other areas of the county are worthy of transportation money.

In the past month, Plant City and Tampa submitted requests for a piece of the $3 million, seeking money for projects including new buses and traffic- monitoring cameras.

Those requests were being considered Tuesday when Saul-Sena suggested $2 million be spent on the streetcar and $1 million on the Plant City projects. Saul-Sena argued that extending the line makes sense now that residential developments are planned in the Channel District. Lengthening the line could turn the streetcar into more of a commuter system if Channel District residents take it to work.

City Councilman Shawn Harrison acknowledged downtown workers likely wouldn’t take the streetcar to lunch because the trip would take too long, but he said the city would benefit from a line extension. ``We will never know if it can go beyond an economic development, tourist initiative if you don’t extend it,’’ said Harrison, the board’s chairman. ``Once it is extended to Whiting, I truly believe it will serve that function.’’

Several board members, however, were reluctant to support Saul-Sena’s suggestion. They wanted to see proof that the streetcar would ease traffic congestion.

Even the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority representative on the planning board hesitated. Steve Polzin said he was concerned motorists would be unlikely to give up their vehicles for a ride on a streetcar. The extension probably would be more appealing to pedestrians, Polzin said, and taking pedestrians off the streets is not the intent of the federal funding program. ``I’m not prepared to support this,’’ said Polzin, a HARTline board member.

Saul-Sena said she will encourage HARTline staff to explain the benefits of the streetcar extension to planning organization members. The matter could be reconsidered at a meeting in February or March.

Digging Beacon Hill

Seattle Star

Jan. 5 - 18, 2005

One of the deepest tunnels ever built in glacial soil — 150 feet deep — will soon be dug through Beacon Hill.

A laser-guided machine will travel under Interstate 5 just south of Lander Street and bore its way into the hill. When it is done, there will be a mile-long tunnel from the west portal at Forest Street to the east portal at McClellan Street.

There will also be a train station inside the hill, the Beacon Hill stop on Sound Transit’s Central Link light-rail line, which will then proceed down Martin Luther King Jr. Way South through Rainier Valley.

The soils of Beacon Hill present a host of engineering challenges for tunneling, say Sound Transit engineers. “The whole central Puget Sound is formed by glaciers,” says Joe Gildner, the deputy construction manager for Central Link light rail, “everything from fine grain silt and clay to scattered boulders.”

Next summer, a tunnel boring machine will arrive in Seattle from Japan’s Mitsubishi Corp. The 300-foot-long machine, as long as a football field, will be assembled on a track pad in SODO, where the headquarters for Central Link is located. Spade and disc cutters, 21 feet in diameter and sharp enough to cut through boulders, make up the first 30 feet of the machine.

All the soil, rocks and other “spoils” of the dig will be brought back to the western entrance of the tunnel — the west portal — on trains and will become the property of the tunnel and station contractor, Obayashi Corporation of Tokyo. This company has built train stations in Kyoto, Japan (which is built upon artificial ground) and Tokyo; a 9.4-mile underground tunnel and bridge which spans Tokyo Bay; and the main stadium for the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.

Right now, workers are underpinning Interstate 5 just north of the Tully’s plant, where the train will eventually enter the tunnel. It’s easy to spot the construction if you’re driving north on I-5. “Protecting I-5 is a major focus for us as we go under it,” Gildner says. “We are putting in pin piles clustered around each pier to improve the foundation capacity.” He says the freeway will not have to be closed for this work.

When workers dig the shaft for the Beacon Hill Station, they plan to excavate it in discreet bits, not all at once, using a technique pioneered in Austria called sequential excavation mining. The idea is that the engineers can observe the behavior of the ground as the excavation proceeds. “By doing it sequentially,” Sound Transit spokesperson Geoff Patrick explains, “you are controlling it. It’s a sequence to mine the stuff to prevent it from collapsing in these depths in these soils.”

The construction of the Beacon Hill tunnel and station is scheduled to take four years and is the most time-sensitive part of building the Central Link light-rail line. “One day of delay means one day of delay to the opening,” says Gildner, who also worked on Tri-Met’s light-rail line in Portland.

Contractors will soon be working around the clock, six days a week, on Beacon Hill. Central Link light-rail is scheduled to open in 2009.

Fitch Ratings Comments on SEPTA’s Financial Challenges

Business Wire

January 5, 2005

Fitch Ratings notes that in the face of fiscal stress, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is making the difficult choice to put in place measures that are expected to yield recurring revenues and cost savings.

A combination of fare increases and service reductions, to be implemented in the absence of additional subsidy support, have been selected by SEPTA to close a $62 million deficit equal to 7% of fiscal 2005 budgeted operating expenses (fiscal year ending June 30). Similar to many other transit agencies with tight resources, SEPTA had already been implementing other budget-balancing revenue and expense strategies for a number of years. However, SEPTA’s fiscal 2005 measures, which include raising the base transit fare to $3, reducing weekday service levels by 20%, and scaling back weekend service, are expected to impact transit service quality and competitiveness more adversely than prior years’ gap-closing actions. In addition, SEPTA must contend with additional gaps beginning in fiscal 2006.

Following the governor’s commitment to provide $13 million in additional funding in the short term and to seek a long-term funding solution with the general assembly, SEPTA delayed the initial implementation of the gap-closing measures to Feb. 27 from Jan. 23. In addition, the court of common pleas granted a City of Philadelphia request to delay a hearing on its lawsuit against SEPTA’s fare increase and service reduction measures until Jan. 21.

Fitch rates SEPTA’s $403.1 million in outstanding special revenue bonds ‘A’ with a Stable Outlook. The ‘A’ rating by Fitch reflects the strong debt service coverage provided by the gross lien on pledged revenues consisting of moneys distributed to SEPTA from the Public Transportation Assistance Fund; the diverse, though volatile, dedicated tax sources; and the legal protections and covenants that protect bondholders from SEPTA’s operating and other financial obligations. Debt service coverage has been more than 3.0 times (x) since fiscal 2000 and is expected to remain so in fiscal 2005.

Nevertheless, Fitch’s rating also considers SEPTA’s continuing financial pressures and its good track record in adequately managing them. The future direction of Fitch’s credit rating on SEPTA’s special revenue bonds will depend upon the adequacy of measures to maintain fiscal balance, support for public subsidies to the transit system, and whether SEPTA is required to pursue a cycle of large fare increases and service reductions that further reduce the scope and utility of transit services.

Established in 1964 as an agency of the commonwealth, SEPTA operates an integrated public transit system serving the City of Philadelphia and the suburban counties of Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery. SEPTA’s transit services, which carry 307 million annual riders, include fixed-route bus, subway-elevated rail, light rail, commuter rail, trolley bus and paratransit operations.

RECORD-BREAKING EUROSTAR HEADS FOR PROFIT

Press Association

January 5, 2005

International high-speed rail firm Eurostar is on track to make a profit in three years’ time after notching up record passenger numbers and sales last year, it emerged today.

The French arm of the Channel Tunnel train operator, which is also owned by the UK and Belgium, is expected to break even in 2007 - earlier than anticipated, Eurostar said.

Eurostar said it hoped the British division, which pays more to use the tunnel than its French and Belgian counterparts, would make a profit “as soon as possible after 2008” if it can repeat last year’s record performance in 2005 and 2006. A spokesman said: “This is the first time that Eurostar as a business has been able to look at the prospect of profitability in the next few years and that is very encouraging.”

Eurostar, which runs from London’s Waterloo station, carried 7.27 million passengers last year - 15% more than in 2003. Its punctuality figure of 89.2% of trains running on time was 10.9% up on the 2003 performance and was also an annual record.

The company completed a hat-trick of best performances by achieving sales of £433 million in 2004 - a 15% rise on the 2003 total. The Christmas and New Year rush, in which 250,000 customers travelled and 17 extra trains ran - the group’s busiest-ever festive season - boosted passenger numbers.

The first full year of operation of the first section of the 186mph Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), which has speeded up journey times from Folkestone to north Kent, lifted the 2004 performance.

The full link all the way to London will be ready by 2007, when Eurostar will move from Waterloo to a new international station at St Pancras in London.

Eurostar director of communications Paul Charles said the record figures proved business and leisure travellers had recognised the improvements to the group’s rail service. “We are not seeing customers downgrade or switch to low-cost airlines - they are choosing to travel in high-speed comfort and style by train,” he said. “In 2005, we will invest more in our onboard product, in a climate where many airline competitors are investing less in their short-haul service.”

French state railway SNCF, Belgian rail network SNCB and a UK consortium including transport group National Express, British Airways and CTRL operator London & Continental Railways owns Eurostar, which was launched in 1994.

Mr Charles said Eurostar was already profitable at the operating level, but makes a loss after including charges for using Eurotunnel and the rail routes on each side of the tunnel. The UK arm made a £60 million loss in 2003.

As well as higher revenues from increased use of the service, Eurostar expects to benefit in November 2006 from the launch of a new system of payments for using the tunnel, which the group estimates will reduce its bill by £30-40 million per year.

ARROYO ORDERS IMMEDIATE COMPLETION OF EDSA MRT EXTENSION

Asia Pulse

January 5, 2005

Transportation and Communications Secretary Leandro R. Mendoza Tuesday revealed a recent directive of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to proceed with the implementation of the EDSA MRT 3 Extension via Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) Solicited Mode aft