May 8, 2006
Question Time: Transit Needs
Continued strong growth in the Washington area appears to have established a consensus, among all but the most crotchety exurban lawmakers, that local jurisdictions need to be active in addressing current and future transit needs, even if that means acting autonomously (as opposed to attempting to tackle every transit problem regionally). Last week, Transit on Thursday discussed, once again, the trolley project making headway in Arlington County. Today, the Post has a story on how Virginia's efforts to do Orange Line transit "right" might compromise the project's Federal funding, and today City Desk has an item on how Bethesda might be preparing finally to tackle its own Purple Line project.
While it might be desirable for the region to consider how each project best fits within the overall transit framework, difficulties in pursuing such broad projects might lead to an increase in smaller, independent projects that add to the transit system in bits and pieces. What do you all think? Where are the greatest transit needs in the city, and would local municipalities be better off developing and funding important projects piecemeal (like the Arlington trolley) rather than funnelling everything through a regional process?
Picture taken by andertho.
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Greatest needs:
1. Some form of a circle line. Commuting between suburbs takes far, far too long.
2. Breaking up the 30s bus route into something shorter. The Friendship Heights-to-nearly PG county line route is unwieldly and results in long, long delays.
3. Periodic evaluation of bus lines with subsequent alterations, if necessary. Ever been on a bus during rush hour with 1-5 people? Ever squeezed yourself onto a bus (ahem, the S2/4)? Me too. Would be nice if we could do something 'bout that.
4. F'ing track work on the red line. Every. Single. Weekend. I commute into DC from Silver Spring M-F. Contrary to the belief of some metro officials, I do not hole up in my home S-Su. I would like to reach downtown without (1) waiting 25 minutes for a train; (2) having to change at RI Ave/NY Ave; (3) giving up and hailing a cab because the signs announcing the arrival of the next train have said "3 minutes" for the past 10.
Track maintanence must be conducted. Could we maybe do it every other weekend? Late evenings Su-Th, mostly?
5. SmarTrip taken by RideOn, DASH, etc.
If local jurisdictions can take unilateral action to solve their traffic woes, then so be it. Just remember that requiring the same can be dangerous, especially when a much needed traffic light cannot be built because the cost of installation exceeds the township's annual budget.
Oddly enough (since it was all one region, in the same state) the San Francisco Bay Area has approached transit in this piecemeal fashion. It's mostly to do with the intense regionalism of the area. (No one in the East Bay thinks that people on the peninsula should be able to speak for them, and down into smaller and smaller subsets from that.)
When I first moved to Oakland from Virginia, I thought this system was crazy. I always held up metro-DC which has two states, a federal district and several counties, cities and towns -- as exemplifying regional consensus building.
Now I wonder if I'm beginning to wonder.
Sure at times, there was duplication, and different transit agencies competed with each other. (You can take BART into downtown SF, an ACTransit bus or put your bike on CalTrans (state transit agency) van -- all to gross the SF Bay Bridge.) It's taken years to get something remotely similar to SmartTrip cards going. And it's really still not off the ground, because BART doesn't want to participate.
But, you do have "pay to play," BART only goes to those counties that put up a portion of its sales tax revenue. Added features (like the stumbling block of the Tysons tunnel) are regularly picked up by local jurisdictions. And increasingly, a group of representatives from all the transit agencies have been working together to coordinate interoperability. For instance, they've recently rolled out more coordinated "owl service" buses. (As BART, shuts down at midnight. And it was easy to get stuck after bar hopping in SF or downtown Oakland.)
In the end, coordination became a matter of necessity, but it took local buy in for each leg of the transit map to be completed. And each county and sub-region has the transit that meets the requirements of their local jurisdictions.
As strange as it is, the area still has the highest percentage of transit usage in the country. And as more independently planned projects are set to come on line in the next 20 years. It just makes the coordination efforts a stronger priority, while breaking up design and funding to local cities and counties.
The era of big metro-regional planning may be over for Washington, but I don't think it will be the end of the world. It has the ability to work, and keep much needed projects online.
If part of the overall plan is the idea that "feeder" systems will branch off of metro stops, then I think it's appropriate for the localities to design their own solutions in the absence of a strong regional approach (or funding).
Great transit systems are not always the product of master plans (see NYC & London). Our own great streetcar system was the product of competing companies. I wouldn't mind seeing more of that now. Imagine if two companies started competing with each other to build a better surface rail system out to the suburbs (how much money would you get from a Washington to Annapolis line? or a better Loudon/Fairfax to the city line?). Maybe there's just no way that a private company could afford that in this era of cars, but maybe someday...
Melissa's on point here. I've got nothing else to add, I'm afraid, but I can lend support to all of her points, especially imho, number one.
Talking about local control, how about Logan Circle community taking on illegal church parking and the mayor just turning around and trying to do a district wide plan with a task force that will never get off the ground.
Where's Waldo should now be Where's the Mayor's task force?
Melissa:
"Greatest needs:
1. Some form of a circle line. Commuting between suburbs takes far, far too long."
A rail line roughly around the Beltway. Welcome to Washington, DC circa 2040. I've always thought that really, really long term.. this is inevitable. DC will continue to be one of the most advanced transit cities in the nation.
Whatever systems get built, they need to inter-operate with one another. Accept the SmartTrip, all the rail (rather it be heavyrail/subway or streetcar or light rail) needs to share as one system and network following the same line scheme already set into motion so as to keep things from getting too cluttered...Purple Line for example....then use brown line, pink line, etc, etc. Even if it's not all metro's system. Take a look at how the buses are currently mapped out and you have to visit 10 different transit agencies to get the whole metro area bus network...let's not repeat that....let's integrate it all to make it one transit system even if it's run by many different people.
In a perfect world, we'd have good public transportation at both the macro and micro levels. Taking the metro around the city through the burbs is almost pointless if you can't get around each burb without a car. And buses just suck, particularly metro, which runs them on no real schedule.
Del Ray is currently looking at proposals for making Commonwealth Avenue more of a pedestrian-friendly boulevard. I'd like to see a trolley run from Braddock Road metro, down Mt Vernon Ave to Glebe or Crystal City and then back via Commonwealth. Braddock road metro is too far to walk from and, again, I don't think many people will take the bus. And from what I heard at the Civic Association meeting last night, it doesn't sound like the state is going to pitch in much money for transporation upgrades.
Delrayder
http://delradius.blogspot.com/
I don't know about you all but I LOVE it when gasoline goes up. I hope it goes to even $6 to $8 per gallon. It will be the best thing that ever happened to our nation. We will finally start to get our communities back. Buses, trolleys, subways, bikes, scooters, all of these things make life more enjoyable and sociable.
Hasn't car culture been one big stake in the heart of civility and human relationships? Haven't cars made streets physically ugly and unpleasant? Clearly the negatives of car culture outweigh the positives. I wonder if people will ever look back and realize how absurd it was to have to move 4,000 pounds to simply get a cup of coffee? Or how crazy it was for each individual to move 4,000 pounds anytime they wanted to go anywhere? It's just nuts.
Deejoshy,
While skyhigh gas prices could theoretically lead back to a pre-car city plan, it is not at all a desireable means to get there.
First, any change due to gas spikes would take as long as it took to create the car culture, namely decades.
Second, in the meantime, I hope you happen to live near a coffee bean field, because otherwise, that 6 or 7 dollar per gallon gasoline is going to mean transporting coffee from the field to the port to the coffee shop will be a lot more expensive.
Third, in a larger sense I hope you want to pay more for just about everything, from goods to services. While it may seems like just dessert that some suburban Hummer driver now would pay so much more to go to the store, you're overlooking how harmful high gas prices would be on the lower middle and lower class. They often travel large distances by car to get to work because they can't afford to live any closer. Extremely high gas prices would significantly raise the cost of living, and raise what would qualify as a "living wage". Since all this inflation would come about not through economic activity, but resource scarcity, there wouldn't be any more money to actually pay a living wage.
At least in Europe, when they gouge you for gasoline, it goes mostly to taxes. If we had similarly high prices here, without any extra stream of revenue going to the government, we'd be doubly screwed.
So, if liveable cities is what you want, then advocate for that through smarter city planning. It would happen faster and with less economic devastation than wishing ill-will to the SUV drivers of the country.
Applause for Reid's dead-on comments!
I think Deejoshy's point is this: what's more likely to get American consumers to go green and invest wisely in their cities -- Deejoshy's hard work convincing people or skyrocketing gas prices? For nearly 100 years, this country has shown astounding lack or foresight in urban and transportation planning. It takes massive shocks like rising oil prices to get people to even consider looking at those issues in a different way.
Maybe. But there's a serious risk that you're shooting an ant with an elephant gun.
Not that skyrocketing gas prices is anyone's explicit policy goal (well, anyone in the mainstream that I'm aware of), but to cheer on sky high gas prices as the necessary means to reach the city-planning nirvana is short-sighted. The huge chunk that such high gas prices would take out of the economy would potentially devastate the economic activity it would take to actually reconfigure the cities in the first place (who's going to build high density housing if no one's got a job to pay for them?)
Gasoline prices are important even to the very mass transit systems you seek salvation in. Jack up gasoline prices and either cities lose money subsidizing transit riders or transit riders start paying more to ride.
This is all kind of a moot point. It's not as if you're advocating jacking up prices, so arguing the costs and benefits is pointless.
If the prices do reach 6 or 7 dollars, it'll be because demand is way more than the supply can handle. You think that that would be a good thing for cities. I don't.
Dream-List of mega-billion dollar transit projects (with apologies for Virginia biases since I live here):
- A complete overhaul of all Metrobus bus routes. Most date from pre-MetroRail, and don't make logical sense in the present age.
- Maps and schedules at all bus stops
- Start digging. New Potomac tunnel crossing, and de-coupling of the Orange Line from the Blue Line so that they run independently with out shared river tunnels or downtown tunnels.
- Reconfiguration of all existing Metro rail cars to a mixed "compromise" forward facing and parallel/side-facing seating arrangement to allow more standing room and easier access to doors. Build all new rail cars with 4 doors per side vs. 3.
- Electrify VRE, add a third track so as to not compete with freight so much, and run it between Richmond and Baltimore 24/7, with 15 minute headways during peak hours, and 1/2 hour headways off-peak and weekends. Harmonize MARC and VRE so that they compliment each other and can cross jurisdictions. Reconfigure the rail line so it goes to closer proximity to BWI airport.
- Start building 3rd or 4th tracks on existing Metro lines in order to allow for express and local trains.
- Scrap Arlington light rail/trolley plans, and start digging a metro tunnel under Columbia Pike, as was in the original Metro preliminary designs.
- Design a DC downtown surface light rail network that is convenient and denser for DC travel and takes pressure off Metro.
- Bar cars like MetroNorth trains have :-) (do they still have them??)
Since I write so much about this in my own blog, I don't feel like listing all the things I write, e.g., (1) that transit advocates need to organize our own annual conference, alternating each year between the Washington and Baltimore regions; (2) recently I wrote about reconceptualizing the region's train service--which no one has mentioned yet in this thread at http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2006/05/thinking-about-role-of-railroads-in.html; (3) I've written tons about buses and transit marketing more generally. And this is but a fraction of what I write on transit.
But first wrt Reid's first comment, something I've been meaning to write and hope to get to within a couple weeks is that "we" need to do transit planning in a more focused way centered around each Metro station or train station--the radius would vary according to the conditions impacting the area--what I mean is build a plan to maximize transit efficiency and marketing to get as many people to use transit within each catchment area.
(I am not saying only focus on subway or train station. I agree with posters who write about buses--although I don't think that "the old" routing is necessarily bad, although/2 the suggestion about breaking up the 30s line into a couple routes is excellent).
Bill's suggestions are excellent! although I'd probably disagree with heavy rail vs. streetcar on Columbia Pike, unless the ridership numbers are really high, which I doubt. The cost per mile to construct a streetcar line is $20 million; subway tunnel $400 million. So you're looking at $100 million vs. $2 billion. What are the ridership numbers and do they justify that $1.9 billion difference?