By Request: It's the Network

Botswana Meat Commission FC says: "I dig all the talk about transportation/transit around here. How about some analysis of light rail and 'express bus' options that are sort of a halfway point between city buses and heavy rail." A few points on this.

As a mainline transit option, the great virtue of bus routes is that they're easy to set up. In ideal circumstances, I think the service on Georgia Avenue currently provided by the 79 Express Bus line in DC should be a full-fledged Metro line. There could be a separated Yellow Line extending north from the Shaw/Howard station along Georgia Avenue with transfers to the Green Line at Petworth and to the Red Line at Silver Spring. But that would be very expensive, wouldn't really be my first priority for expensive projects, and would take a long time to finish. So the 79 is a solid, practical solution. But by the same token that bus lines are easy to set up, they're easy to shut down and it's very easy to shift the stations around and consequently they aren't going to do a good job of becoming a locus of private sector investment and altered development patterns. A light rail line can do more to create dense hubs around stations with a vibrant commercial corridor running between them.

The choice between a light rail and heavy rail line, ideally, ought to be made not on the basis of the fact that the light rail line is cheaper but by thinking about what it is you're trying to accomplish. Light rail doesn't move as many people and, consequently, can't serve as the transportation backbone for as dense an area. But maybe you don't want to build a super-dense area, but you do want to have a workable transit link. Light rail's a good solution.

Across an entire metro area, you should expect the transportation network to genuinely be a network that involves heavy rail on some routes, light rail or BRT on some others, and then probably various kinds of local bus routes that work for shorter trips or bring people to hubs for other transportation modes. If you look at the best transit cities in Europe, you'll see that they have all kinds of stuff going on in terms of light rail and subways and commuter rail and intercity rail and buses all on top of each other.

Photo by Flickr user Intangible Arts used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

"Across an entire metro area, you should expect the transportation network to genuinely be a network that involves heavy rail on some routes, light rail or BRT on some others, and then probably various kinds of local bus routes that work for shorter trips or bring people to hubs for other transportation modes. If you look at the best transit cities in Europe, you'll see that they have all kinds of stuff going on in terms of light rail and subways and commuter rail and intercity rail and buses all on top of each other."

Maybe this is why Denver gets such great press on its commitment to comprehensive transit development over the first half of this century -- this is the precise plan that they have enacted (light rail within Denver (already in place), heavy/commuter rail to the outer burbs (building and/or planned), and a healthy mix of express and local buses).

Posted by Joe | June 19, 2008 11:51 AM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FasTracks

If you're interested.

Posted by Joe | June 19, 2008 11:59 AM

In a marginally related note, Metro reported that the last 2 days were the 6th and 10th busiest days ever for the system. It's notable because all previous "top ten" days were associated with some event, such as Reagan's funeral.

from http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0608/529533.html :

1 06-09-04 850,636 Reagan State Funeral
2 04-03-07 831,508 Cherry Blossoms/Baseball
3 04-24-08 828,973 Baseball/Basketball
4 04-17-08 828,418 Pope Visit/Soccer
5 04-11-08 828,132 Hockey/Baseball/Cherry Blossoms
6 06-18-08 823,516 No event
7 04-10-06 821,283 Immigrant Rights Rally
8 06-05-08 819,687 Baseball
9 06-03-08 812,812 Baseball
10 06-17-08 812,686 No event

Posted by Njorl | June 19, 2008 12:47 PM

The choice between a light rail and heavy rail line, ideally, ought to be made not on the basis of the fact that the light rail line is cheaper but by thinking about what it is you're trying to accomplish. Light rail doesn't move as many people and, consequently, can't serve as the transportation backbone for as dense an area. But maybe you don't want to build a super-dense area, but you do want to have a workable transit link. Light rail's a good solution.

So it's back to "Let's build a multi-billion dollar rail system, cross our fingers, and hope that enough density materializes around it to make it worthwhile." That's not rational transportation policymaking, it's mindless cheerleading.

There may be places where urban light rail makes sense. There are a few places where even heavy rail makes sense--although I think the chances that we'll be building any new subway systems are close to zero. But for the vast majority of transit needs, buses make far more sense.

Posted by Mixner | June 19, 2008 1:19 PM

Just to foster the European Train-envie of MY, this news about the Soccer Euro2008 and the provisory report about the transportion during the event for the Swiss part:

"More than 1 million fans have made use of the country's rail network, including the 2,700 special trains used just for the event, which Switzerland is co-hosting with neighboring Austria. Match ticket holders are entitled to free public travel before and after the game.

About 85 percent of fans used public transit to travel to the games, according to government estimates."

Aim high: Not Just a city-network, a state network ;-)

Posted by dropping | June 19, 2008 1:33 PM

Only to foster the European Train-envie of MY, this news about the Soccer Euro2008 and the intermediary report about the transportation during the event for the Swiss part:

"More than 1 million fans have made use of the country's rail network, including the 2,700 special trains used just for the event, which Switzerland is co-hosting with neighboring Austria. Match ticket holders are entitled to free public travel before and after the game.

About 85 percent of fans used public transit to travel to the games, according to government estimates."

Aim high: Not Just a city-network, a state network ;-)

Posted by dropping | June 19, 2008 1:39 PM

I got through the Request Line? Yay.

I hear ya about the importance of having multiple modes, I was thinking particularly about Sunbelt cities and their huge, sprawling outer suburbs that have major impediments to heavy rail: particularly the problem of needing county referendums to pass (where white surbanites can say they're afraid expanding rail will bring in crime/brown people). What has happened is that conties like Cobb and Gwinnett (outside Atlanta) have almost no public transit other than a few bus lines. Yet people want to get TO these counties for work nowadays and typical downtown commuters are finding gas too expensive.

Why not pour major money into much better buses (espeically the ones that can automatically pass through stop lights). Seems like a win-win.

Cheers.

Posted by Botswana Meat Commission FC | June 19, 2008 2:15 PM

Mixner inadvertently highlites here how he can be so wrong about everything, with his "Let's build a multi-billion dollar rail system, cross our fingers, and hope that enough density materializes around it to make it worthwhile." He actually seems to believe that maybe the density won't happen, Washington DC might stop being the national capitol, people might move away or stop having children, population will fall, and rail systems won't pay for themselves in the long run.

At least he's struck on the core of the matter, even if he's hopelessly confused about the facts. The heart of the matter is that we know population will increase, density will increase, the cost of energy will increase, and, in short, there is no tooth fairy. We're not going to be driving flying cars powered by electricity too cheap to monitor from mountaintop homes to mile-high skyscrapers- at least, not for free.

To the "Greatest Generation", life was a brief period of economic hardship followed by fifty years in which the heavens rained manna. They went to college on the GI Bill, bought homes with VA loans, and watched everything get cheaper and better for the next 50 years- all built on the power of the US dollar to buy foreign oil, the power of the US military to impose those contracts, and the seductive belief that when the oil ran out something else would magically appear. The basic idea of American society became that greed was good, because otherwise you would fail to take enough of all the free stuff.

Now we're starting to realize it wasn't free, it was borrowed, kind of like those times in college you thought you could party all night and ace the final in the morning.

There's nothing 'maybe' about it. The population in our major cities will increase, and the people doing the increasing will be looking for smarter ways to live. Part of being smarter is doing better accounting and being more accountable. The Europeans tackled these problems fifty years ago in figuring out how to rebuild their society in a way that wouldn't implode again, while still preserving their national identities.

Washington DC is an extreme example of a city restrained to an artificially low density by zoning, but you could go to any city in the US and find developers asking for variances to build higher and provide less parking. People with functioning brain cells can remember reading thirty years ago that the population in their region would double, and lo and behold, so it has come to pass.

In Mixner's world, we shouldn't plan rationally for the easily foreseeable future because something might happen- electricity too cheap to monitor, solar airliners, electric shoes, driverless cars run on rubber bands that fold for easy storage at the office- and then all that rational planning would be wasted.

I'm guessing you should go with the rational planning when you choose a residence or plan how to get to work.

Posted by serial catowner | June 19, 2008 2:28 PM

So it's back to "Let's build a multi-billion dollar rail system, cross our fingers, and hope that enough density materializes around it to make it worthwhile."

As opposed to 'Just wait! we'll all have fart-powered cars IN THE FUTURE!!1! because I say so!' What a spoilt hypocritical shit our silly glibertarian boy is.

Substantively, the way to approach this with buses is (depending on the private-public balance) is by some kind of bundling approach towards services: maintain stable arterial routes and coherent local services, where routing is slightly less important than regularity. Confidence is such a key part to bus provision -- with a rail network, you can generally assume that something's going to come down the track.

An interesting example here is Toulouse, which has expanded its metro, but also has regular bus services out to an array of villages on the low-density periphery that serve as suburbs.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | June 19, 2008 2:37 PM

The heart of the matter is that we know population will increase, density will increase, the cost of energy will increase,

Population will almost certainly increase. Population density and infrastructure density in urban areas in general are decreasing. We don't know what will happen to the cost of energy, and transit is at best only marginally more energy efficient than autos. Transit is unlikely to be as energy efficient as autos of 10 or 20 years from now.

In specific areas of specific cities, density may increase enough to justify new rail transit. The number of such areas is likely to be low. Making huge investments in urban rail in the hope that it will create sufficient density to justify the investment would be utterly irrational.

Posted by Mixner | June 19, 2008 3:00 PM

It is actually one of my pet peeves that sometimes you have a half dozen different trasnportation networks trying to supplement each other when really one system will suffice. Multiple networks just add to complexity and it creates a nightmare when you have to use 2 or more methods of transport to get to where you want to go. You have to know the schedule and the routes of both (all) routes, pay additional money for tickets, wait for transfers, be aware of any delays/construction etc.

Perfect example - the monorail connecting the NYC subway to JFK. Because instead of just extending the subway line to the airport, someone thought it would be more convenient for people to get out of the train car, go to the connecting monorail station, pay an extra $5, and wait for the connecting train to come to travel what would be an equivalent of a couple of train stops by subway.

Posted by MS | June 19, 2008 3:04 PM

"We're not going to be driving flying cars powered by electricity too cheap to monitor from mountaintop homes to mile-high skyscrapers- at least, not for free."

Well, we could if we spent the three trillion dollars we're blowing in Iraq - not to mention the trillions more we'll be spending in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan - on the Nanotech Energy Initiative proposed by the late Dr. Richard Smalley.

Our Energy Challenge
http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/energychallenge.html

Future Global Energy Prosperity: The Terawatt Challenge (PDF Warning)
http://cohesion.rice.edu/NaturalSciences/Smalley/emplibrary/120204%20MRS%20Boston.pdf

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 19, 2008 8:14 PM