Transport Nexus

The nexus between transportation and land use.

Map Ideas

 

mbta-rail-timescale

My next map project. Via Transit Maps. This map, called a time-scale map, shows the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) commuter rail network in Boston. This graphically simple map shows distance according to time and the lines are weighted according to frequency. A fare table is provided in the legend, thus the map answers some of the most common transit questions: How long is the journey? How much does it cost? How frequent is the service. Brilliant.

One of the aspects of the real gig that I enjoy most is having the responsibility of maintaining the agency’s geographic information system (GIS) data. I also am responsible for many of the map products produced. I’m always looking for a better way to display data and this is great. I hope to make something like this soon.

Elements of a BRT Station

2nd Ave. BRT Source: NYC Department of Transportation

Via Kevin O’Neil, who asks the question of what makes an ideal bus rapid transit (BRT) station? As you may guess, I have some opinions. But first, some background.

Bus rapid transit, known as BRT in the biz, is a term that applies to buses that have similar operational characteristics to rail systems. The goal of BRT is to achieve the operating characteristics of rail transit at the cost savings from bus transit.  BRT can imitate rail transit service by scheduling frequencies, separate right-of-ways, off-vehicle ticketing and level boarding platforms at “stations.” More detail about BRT can be found here.

In response to the Active Transportation Alliance survey that Kevin linked to, here are my answers in greater detail:

Q2: How similar should transit stations across the city be? Should amenities and design of the stations be more uniform at every stop or should a station be more unique to the neighborhood it is in? How would you balance design uniformity with reflecting neighborhood character? 

I believe that transit stations should have similar design features with local variations. That is, similar design features to project the brand of the transit system or line but with local variances for public art, for example. But I weigh heavily towards design uniformity in which economies of scale can be taken advantage of.

Q3: Should transit station design emphasize providing free-flowing foot traffic for pedestrians and riders by minimizing structures in and around the station (which could reduce shelter from the elements), or should it emphasize providing maximum shelter from wind, rain and cold with more enclosed structures (which could impede foot traffic)?

This is Chicago. When riding transit you’re exposed to the elements. Stations should be designed to protect customers from the weather, particularly the rain, cold and wind. Enclosed structures should be built, whatever the cost.

Q4: Which of these transit station amenities are most important to you? Consider that due to the space and electricity available at some station locations, it may not be possible to have all of them. If you had to choose, which are your TOP 5 station amenities?

My top five amenities are in order 1: protection from wind, 2: heat lamps, 3: pre-paid boarding, 4: real-time arrival screens, and 5: neighborhood maps.

The reasoning for this order is that, as a transit rider, I value protection from the elements. Waiting for the bus or train is part of being a rider. Making that experience as comfortable as possible is essential customer service. Pre-paid boarding, in all honesty, should be tied with #1. A true BRT can only have pre-paid boarding, otherwise it’s essentially an express bus. Real-time arrival screens are nice. I’ve got a smart phone that has real-time arrivals too. Why do I rate this amenity so high? Because I think it’s a form of advertising, particularly if headways are high, say every 5 minutes. Good BRT marketing will result in a uniform branding on the rolling stock and stations. But when people see that the buses come over couple of minutes, it makes it easier to entice new riders. Last, but not least, is neighborhood maps. They are also essential to the identity of the neighborhood and, done right, can give the neighborhood a sense of place.

5. What are your biggest concerns with transit (bus and train) stops as they are now? Please tell us your TOP 2.

My biggest concern with transit isn’t on the survey’s list. It’s that far too many transit stations are not in a state of good repair. A distant #2 is lack of weather protection. I’m starting to wonder whether I’m beating the drum of weather protection because it’s January.

6. Dream big! What’s your big idea for the best transit station ever? Tell us one thing you wish every train station had!

Besides being in a state of good repair? I actually really like platform edge doors (PED). I’ve seen them in action on the London Underground Jubilee Line. I think the safety benefits are tremendous in terms of keeping people away from the tracks and I think it makes the station environment a bit more relaxed. Just imagine how peaceful the CTA Irving Park Blue Line station would be if it had PEDs.

 

Technical Difficulties

My apologies for those of you looking to check out my site after the nice mention from Streetsblog on Twitter. I’ve been running the site for not quite a year on the WordPress platform and was looking for a new Twitter widget to post my latest tweets on the website. Last night I uploaded the Twitter Feeder widget and then my site took a dump some time this afternoon. Deleting the widget from my cPanel seems to bring me back from the white screen of death. At first I thought it had something to do with my recent migration of Transport Nexus’ domain registration from WordPress.com to Bluehost, which hosts this site and my other site ryanjrichter.com. This turns out not to be the case.

Amateur hour here, I know. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Transit Disinvestment

A CTA train emerges from the north portal of t...

Rising up or falling down?  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In my hometown, Chicago, the CTA raised fares today.  Lots of people are upset, and for good reason. In many cases it’s easy to blame the low hanging fruit – mismanagement, corruption, government waste, high salaries and benefits, etc. Often, the 800 pound gorilla in the room is none of these things. Raising fares is a rational response to a systemic problem in this country – the poor state of good repair as it’s called in the business, or the lack of well maintained infrastructure. It is a lack of a commitment nationwide to maintaining our infrastructure – and the problem is that we’re overbuilt – causing these state of good repair issues. And I don’t mean that we’re overbuilt on transit – it’s the roads, our development pattern and our suburban experiment that is bankrupting us.

CTA, like transit properties nationwide and like Metra here in Chicago, is raising fares in part due to declining federal and state support for capital expenditures and a poor economy  that has devastated the operating side of the budget. This is happening all across the country. Therefore, it’s easy to see how transit gets into a situation, a cycle of slow, but perpetual disinvestment on the capital side, not out of poor management, but rather choices in which one must choose the least bad option. Then, the economy goes down, bringing down sales taxes – the principal operating finance mechanism – and now transit is unable to make payroll. This is referred to as the transit “death spiral.”

Transit is in a pickle. In the vast majority of cities it carries just a fraction of the overall work commute. In the Chicago metropolitan statistical area, that number is 11.5%. We’re in fourth place behind New York (31.1%), Washington D.C. (14.8%), and San Francisco (14.4%). It’s difficult to marshall the political forces needed to support transit locally and nationally when only 11.5% of the region’s work trips are made by transit. These numbers are so low precisely because of the built environment we have created. And until the fundamentals of that growth mechanism known as our suburban experiment change, I think the cycle of disinvestment in our infrastructure is likely to continue.

Transit Mode and Development Opportunities

I have not mentioned this before, but my favorite planning book  in the last year has to be Human Transit. Authored by Jarrett Walker, the book is based on much of what he has been saying on his blog by the same name. Reading his interview with the Urban Land Institute on how developers need to think like transit planners has resonated with me in my own practice.

A significant aspect of my job involves transit-oriented development. My role is to represent my agency as the planning stakeholder. TOD has been the rage in many suburbs in Chicago, particularly the ones with commuter rail. I have a good feeling when I go into a town for a TOD plan which one will succeed and which one will fail. As Walker states:

Even if your development is at a rail station, the bus system is almost always a key part of how a transit-oriented, low-car style actually becomes viable. That’s why it’s important for developers to think about what makes transit useful, which is often very different from what makes it superficially appealing. Only the useful is an enduring value.

I see too many towns that believe that by building development near their train stations that they can breed success. Of course, many of these places do not have bus service of any meaningful kind to provide a modal connection between the commuter rail and the rest of the surrounding area, nor are they willing to drop the parking minimums in the TOD area. Thus, it’s not really transit-oriented but rather transit-adjacent development that is planned. And by not taking into account frequency of service and multimodal connections between bus and rail, many TODs are simply not viable and are instead designed to support the car rather than stand independent of it.

 

 

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