Transit
Transit starts show we're making progress
For many years in the latter half of the 20th century, few US cities were actively building new transit lines. Yet in 2012 alone, 31 US cities will either open, start, or continue construction on new public transportation infrastructure, mostly rail.
As this map from The Transport Politic shows, the times, they're a-changin'.
Major transit openings and construction starts planned for 2012.
Image by Yonah Freemark on The Transport Politic.
The map was published as part of an extensive post that lists every major transit line in the US that will either open or be under construction in 2012.
The list is impressive. Nearly every major metropolitan area in the country is represented, and even more would be if the list included projects in the planning stages but not yet slated to begin construction.
The listed projects range from the gargantuan to the mundane. From New York's Second Avenue subway, to a BRT line in Fort Collins, Colorado.
The three map icons next to Washington indicate DC's streetcar projects and the two phases of the Silver Line. Other local projects, such as the Purple Line, the Columbia Pike streetcar, and the Corridor Cities Transitway, aren't shown because they are still in planning.
Our country still has a long way to go before the decades of automobile-focused planning are fully repaired. Even this list, impressive as it may be, is short compared to the highway construction list from most individual states. But still, we're making progress as a country. We're doing things now that we weren't doing a few decades ago. Transit is reaching more people, in more places.
So let's congratulate ourselves for a solid step forward. But let's not be too happy; there's still much work to be done.
Cross-posted at BeyondDC.
 | Dan Malouff is a professional transportation planner for the Arlington County Department of Transportation. He has a degree in Urban Planning from the University of Colorado, and lives a car-free lifestyle in Northwest Washington. His posts are his own opinions and do not represent the views of his employer in any way. He runs the blog BeyondDC and also contributes to the Washington Post Local Opinions blog.   |
Comments
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The problem with those: No-one is going to use them guaranteed! Expensive projects with very little benefits!
by Vincent on Jan 4, 2012 5:14 pm
A lot of money is being wasted on feel-good "me too" vanity projects that will benefit a small few - primarily people who don't need what transit is intended to provide - mobility for people who otherwise wouldn't have any.
Thus the crux of the problem. The original most beneficial purpose of public transit, especially rail transit, has morphed into a social-engineering vehicle used to "spur development", increase property values in already-expensive areas, please urbanists, and make politicians feel like "visionaries".
All while existing infrastructure continues to crumble and those who really need improved mobility struggle with traffic congestion.
by ceefer66 on Jan 4, 2012 6:19 pm
Although it would be interesting if an explict criteria was how many gallons of gas a transit project would save....
And I do see the advantages of building a middle class base of support for transit. If we can get beyond thinking of transit as "transport for poor people" we're making some progress..
by charlie on Jan 4, 2012 7:05 pm
How about a 2000's system like in Denver? Like Baltimore, their light rail system functions as an at-grade streetcar downtown then becomes grade-separated in the outer parts of the city.
How about Phoenix? They have a single line that opened in 2010. It exceeded ridership projections for years out... in its first week.
Seems like one a "no one rides it anymore... It's too crowded" scenario.
by Cavan on Jan 4, 2012 10:02 pm
In our own time, the investment of the Metro has yielded uncountable billions in property taxes, payroll taxes, sales taxes, an increased standard of living and an increasing population base inside the beltway rather than the stagnation of the 1970's through '90s.
by Cavan on Jan 4, 2012 10:10 pm
But these light-rail and streetcar lines serve just a tiny fraction of the land area of the cities and metro areas in which they are built, and account for just a tiny fraction of daily travel. Most of these "major transit lines" are just a few miles in length. 40,000 "riders" (actually, "boardings," not unique riders) per day is just a drop in the bucket. They're not going to have more than a tiny impact on overall transportation patterns in these places. Especially since most of their users are likely to be former bus riders.
by Bertie on Jan 4, 2012 10:27 pm
by Matt Johnson on Jan 4, 2012 10:42 pm
by AllenH on Jan 4, 2012 10:48 pm
New Construction Starts for 2012
Washington, DC Dulles Metrorail Extension Phase 2, opening in 2016 from Wiehle Avenue to Route 772, via Dulles Airport
Projected opening, preliminary engineering not yet complete, start date not yet set.
Already Under Construction, Opening After 2012
Opening in 2013
Washington, DC Dulles Metrorail Extension Phase 1 (11.6-mile metro rail), from East Falls Church to Wiehle Avenue
Opening date in 2014, property to be turn over to WMATA for pre revenue testing 2013.
Opening in 2016
Washington, DC Dulles Metrorail Extension Phase 2 (11.5-mile metro rail)
Projected opening, see New Construction Starts for 2012 above.
by Sand Box John on Jan 4, 2012 11:40 pm
After 40 years of development, light rail accounts for about 5% of all trips by urban mass transit, and about the same share of passenger-miles. Mass transit in total accounts for less than 5% of passenger-miles of urban travel. So that's 5% of 5%, or about 0.25% of all urban travel. About 1 mile out of every 400 miles that Americans travel in urban areas is by light rail. It's the equivalent of a rounding error.
by Bertie on Jan 4, 2012 11:46 pm
Part of that is from attracting would-be car commuters and part of it is because jobs, housing, and amenities now exist in walking distance of Metro stations that simply would not exist without it. People take the most convenient way to get somewhere. If both the origin and destination are near a train line, many choice riders will take the train. That's not necessarily true outside of rush hour with buses.
Improved transportation infrastructure simply enables more economic activity to occur. Rail systems attract choice riders without requiring the destination to spend millions (underground parking spaces cost at least $30k/space to construct, usually more) on car storage. The land not wasted on car storage allows the amenities to be closer together and more pedestrian-friendly. Transit is most convenient in places like U Street or Silver Spring. More people take the train system as it's a convenient to access so many amenities so close together. It becomes a self-reinforcing feedback loop.
by Cavan on Jan 4, 2012 11:50 pm
I didn't assert that. I said that most of the users of these new "major transit lines" are likely to be former bus riders.
by Bertie on Jan 4, 2012 11:59 pm
That being said, look at our city that truncated its highway system and built a complete Metro and compare it to somewhere that paved itself over and built no intra-city rail system. Which one has more vibrant walkable urban neighborhoods? I'm not saying inside political city limits. Lots of cities in the U.S. have places that we would classify as rural in their political limits. I'm talking places you can live well without a car or with driving under 5,000 miles a year. We have lots of places like that because we spent money on the Metro. Most places west of the Appalachians don't because they didn't spend on transit.
You get what you pay for and what you plan for. If all you plan for is cars and traffic, you'll get lots of cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places.
Trains are one of many tools to plan for people and places.
by Cavan on Jan 5, 2012 12:01 am
No statistics or wild claims, just reality.
Fact is, with few exeptions, they operate in a limited area and serve a relatively small ridership. The truth is, most of them are running through downtown and upscale close-in neighborhoods and serving people who either already took the bus or simply don't need an expensive rail ride to work or to shop. These lines are being built to satisy the demands of urbanists and transit advocates who want to "re-shape the city" to their liking - at the expense of everyone else, most of whom won't benefit from these vanity projects or the increased property values in areas they can't afford to live in.
Meanwhile, the transit advocates begrudge every penny spent on the roads that benefit the majority and try to justify their position with nonsense that "driving is subsidized" and "rail saves gas" (Yeah, right. Those bus-riders sure were wasting a lot of gas).
by ceefer66 on Jan 5, 2012 7:05 am
Cavan, a lot of these are not streetcars, but extensive urban/suburban light rail systems with street-running segments downtown where they function as low-speed transit with a significant number of stops. This dual mode of operation is similar to BART, which operates as commuter rail in the far suburbs (with 15-20 minute headwyas between lines), and then picks up frequency with aggressive interleaving in the city (as such, in the city of SF you have urban subway like frequency at headwasys of just a few mintues).
I'm in agreement with a lot of people here that transit investments are useful, however, i think that streetcar investments draw money away from projects with true mobility benefits for a boutique offering that doesnt really move many people. Look at some of the real streetcar projects and their ridership (versus previous existing bus lines) and you'll seewhat i mean.
by AS on Jan 5, 2012 7:42 am
1) Reducing auto traffic is a possible outcome of transit investments, but as Cavan notes, you build transit to accomplish many aims, including economic, quality of life, etc. Reducing auto traffic might be one of those aims, or not. Depends on the place.
2) Transit trips aren't the only relevant metric. Transit trips enable the development of places where there's high pedestrian, bike, and taxi use. In DC, SOV trips are less than 50% of total. Also, the highest rates of transit use happen to be in those areas inside the beltway and outside the urban core, not in the core itself, where bike and ped are much more competitive. But transit service to the core enables those other modes to flourish. Also, in those places, congestion is terrible, but that's not a problem because those places are flourishing.
3) Relying on Federal funding is a problem. It puts pressure on sponsors to advance low-cost projects; it increases time to implement; and it weakens the link between the value created by the investment and the funding sources for the investment.
4) More regions (IMO) should be funding transit themselves -- with funding sources linked to private economic and public fiscal benefits -- and not waiting for the time and scope-distorting impacts of Federal New Start funding.
5) Highway funding should be treated comparably to the way I'm talking about transit funding.
by jnb on Jan 5, 2012 8:52 am
If these light rail systems are such a panacea, then why is traffic still so bad?...Meanwhile, the transit advocates begrudge every penny spent on the roads that benefit the majority and try to justify their position with nonsense that "driving is subsidized" and "rail saves gas"
Why are we spending so much money on area roads when the traffic is so bad? Obviously that experiment has failed, so let's stop throwing good money after bad.
(Yes, I'm being ironic.)
by oboe on Jan 5, 2012 8:58 am
Another issue with federal funding is the wait. Wait increases the capital cost.
Trips aren't the only metric. Yes, improving quality (quieter and smoother) is worth something. I think streetcars should be able to reduce employee costs as well, but I haven't seen that.
by charlie on Jan 5, 2012 9:02 am
if it serves poor folk who already take the bus, thats not worth anything, because those folks are already taking the bus.
Getting affluent people out of their cars is no good. Giving poor riders a system that saves times, gives better service than local buses (note that BRT is new starts on this map).
So the only transit lines should be ones that serve poor people who currently have no access to a local bus? hmmmm.
Is transit overall small? yeah. thats why to solve our problems we need transit AND bike/ped AND Car/van pooling AND teleworking AND shorter auto trips AND new (fuel saving) auto technologies. To the extent we can find strategies that synergize those (like, you know, TOD that gives more transit trips AND shorter auto trips AND more bike/ped trips) seems like something worth pursuing.
by AWalkerInTheCity on Jan 5, 2012 9:23 am
It's mirrors the critique of cycling infrastructure: cyclists are both wealthy elites with a sense of entitlement, out of touch with the desires of the common man, and they're also poor wretches with no other options.
by oboe on Jan 5, 2012 9:33 am
by oboe on Jan 5, 2012 9:35 am
A. A sudden shift in demand can overwhelm the markets ability to respond and generate ricardian rents even without what we would consider supply constraints - esp given the long lead times for projects, and resultant lag in market response
B. Not all supply constraints are govt regs on density, parking, etc - there are a. real challenges in assembling land in dense areas b. real construction cost issues in dense areas c. planning issue relating to the impact on vehicle and pedestrian traffic of multiple new buildings going up at once in a small area
by AWalkerInTheCity on Jan 5, 2012 9:59 am
1. Height limits - mostly an issue in the district (and probably more in the CBD than elsewhere) AFAICT height limits are not an issue in the inner suburbs. the constraining reg there is FAR, and local jurisdictions (at least the pro TOD ones) will often trade that off for amenities, financial proffers, or affordable units. And at some point making the FAR too high is problematic, given that in most suburban TOD there will still be a fair amount of auto use, and too high a FAR will create issues for (often nearby) adjoining low density areas.
B. parking minimums - I would love to see a comparions of the requiremens by jurisdiction, and case studies of how attempts to modify for particular developments have played out. The city paper piece linked in todays post has interesting bits on that. I think reducing parking mins can be something where urbanists and NIMBYISTs can agree (at least in some instances). OTOH as the article pointed out, sometimes out of town financiers and commercial tenants will pressure developers to more parking spaces whatever is required
by AWalkerInTheCity on Jan 5, 2012 10:05 am
Light rail couldn't possibly substitute for more than a tiny fraction of the urban road network. At $50-100 million per mile or more, it's far too expensive. It's never going to be more than a footnote in our urban transportation system.
And per the discussion in the recent posts on self-driving cars, it's likely that within a few decades almost all transit will be replaced with self-driving taxis. A few decades from now, we'll probably be tearing out these new light rail and streetcar lines, just as we tore out the old streetcar systems in Los Angeles and other cities in the first half of the 20th century when they couldn't compete with buses and cars.
by Bertie on Jan 5, 2012 12:03 pm
by Gray on Jan 5, 2012 12:16 pm
Can you provide evidence that its never going to be more than a footnote? We have plenty of historical evidence that streetcars, including privately owned streetcars, have been integrally important in urban transportation and suburban development.
"Never" is quite a preclusion.
by Tina on Jan 5, 2012 1:04 pm
first, plenty of those projects are heavy rail, commuter rail, or BRT, NOT lrt or street cars.
second, the lrt and esp street cars probably make up a smaller proportion of the dollars than they do of the projects.
third, LRT can be quite different in its charecteristics from street cars, as others have mentioned, and we seem to be conflating them.
by AWalkerInTheCity on Jan 5, 2012 1:42 pm
yes. A predictable outcome as it seems its a conscious strategy by a commenter.
by Tina on Jan 5, 2012 1:55 pm
Commuter rail and BRT aren't really conducive to urbanism. Their main purpose, as the name implies, is to serve commuters. They discourage city living by making it easier for people to work in cities and live in the suburbs.
by Bertie on Jan 5, 2012 2:07 pm
I think there is a role for both.
If you are doing this to troll, you are becoming too transparent. It dont work.
by AWalkerInTheCity on Jan 5, 2012 2:17 pm
I agree.
by Tina on Jan 5, 2012 2:23 pm
I don't know what this even means. I meant what I said: Commuter rail and BRT tend to discourage city living by making it easier for people to live in the suburbs.
by Bertie on Jan 5, 2012 2:37 pm
by Matt Johnson on Jan 5, 2012 3:21 pm
by Bertie on Jan 5, 2012 3:47 pm
Anyway, not every investment has to advance every goal.
[Deleted for violating the comment policy.]
by AWalkerInTheCity on Jan 5, 2012 3:52 pm
Commuter rail might not support people living in center cities, as you say, but center city development is not the only form of smart growth. S-bahn stations 20 miles from Munich center are cluttered with bikes, because the areas around the stations are bikeable/walkable historic villages/towns served by rail.
Compact, walkable exurban villages or towns can be very effective smart growth solutions and, in fact, doing a better job of promoting this kind of development should be a big part of the urbanist agenda, since "suburbs" are where most growth inevitably will be taking place.
by jnb on Jan 5, 2012 4:16 pm
by Tina on Jan 5, 2012 4:35 pm
You're missing my point.
What I'm saying is the light rail projects built/planned so far are limited in scope. They don't serve the needs of the majority of potential transit users and thereby don't serve the true purpose of transit. With very few exceptions, they serve a small area and a limited demographic. The only recently-built (in the last 20 years) light rail system I know of that meets the true transit litmus test - accessibility/utility for nearly everyone - is Metrolink in St. Louis; even the much-touted Portland, OR system falls into the limited-access category.
If we were following the true purpose of transit in this region, we would be extending the Orange Line from Vienna to serve the working class and middle class commuters from Centerville and Manassas instead of building a developer's boondoggle to "urbanize Tysons" and provide rail transit for affluent Dulles corridor commuters who don't need rail and airport users who think we need rail to Dulles just because they got to ride on a train from the airport to the local Marriott the last time they were overseas. The $5 billion spent on the Silver Line could have been put to far better use. I'm surprised no one on this blog (at least to my knowledge) has ever addressed that. I guess we're too busy nitpicking the ICC and worrying about the remote possibility of an Outer Beltway.
Don't make this a roads vs. transit issue because it's not and I never said it was. I merely pointed out that many of those who advocate these light rail vanity projects, yourself included, begrudge money spent on roads.
So far, you're proving me right.
by ceefer66 on Jan 5, 2012 5:43 pm
"Why are we spending so much money on area roads when the traffic is so bad? Obviously that experiment has failed, so let's stop throwing good money after bad."
-----
Your response to my comment is just plain silly.
The cost/benefit of a major regional highway vs. a boutique light rail line serving only downtown and hipsterville can't even be logically compared. If road construction hasn't significantly alleviated traffic congestion it's because it hasn't kept up with development. And in this region the reason is a plainly and simply a history of over-indulging road opponents.
Most other US metropolitan areas don't have our traffic problems. And hardly any of them have spent billions on rail transit.
by ceefer66 on Jan 5, 2012 5:49 pm
It's ridiculous to suggest that our metro area's traffic problems are unique among large metro areas, or that other metro areas, particularly Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York haven't spent billions on rail transit.
by Frank IBC on Jan 5, 2012 6:19 pm
airport users who think we need rail to Dulles just because they got to ride on a train from the airport to the local Marriott the last time they were overseas.
Ceefer, I don't know about the local marriott, but I am a sometimes user of Dulles airport who thinks we need rail to Dulles because the airport has been there for 50 FREAKING YEARS without transportation to the city. This is the sort of thing that makes people in those places "overseas" laugh at us silly Americans. One can argue about the specifics--what particular type of technology, frequency of service, number of stops, design of stations etc., but for god's sake get the thing built already!
by rextrex on Jan 5, 2012 6:22 pm
Compact, walkable exurban villages and towns create the same kind of problems as compact, walkable center cities. Smaller, more expensive housing, more noise, more crowding, less privacy, less parking, and so on. People move out of cities to get away from these things, not to recreate them in a new location. I doubt these new commuter rail and BRT projects are serving many compact, walkable exurban villages. More likely, they serve conventional suburbs where people do almost all of their traveling by car, and there's a big park-and-ride lot next to the commuter rail/BRT station.
by Bertie on Jan 5, 2012 6:27 pm
Also, @bertie, [streetcars]...It's never going to be more than a footnote in our urban transportation system.
Can you provide evidence that its never going to be more than a footnote? We have plenty of historical evidence that streetcars, including privately owned streetcars, have been integrally important in urban transportation and suburban development.
"Never" is quite a preclusion.
by Tina on Jan 5, 2012 7:11 pm
I disagree. Transit isn't meant to be some kind of transportation welfare for the poor. All transportation (roads or transit) is an investment made by the government that's expected to have a positive return in economic growth. If we grow the economy, we'll have more job opportunities for the poor and more tax revenue by which we can fund things like healthcare for the poor.
by Falls Church on Jan 6, 2012 2:49 pm
by Andrew on Jan 6, 2012 8:59 pm
by Stan on Jan 7, 2012 12:12 pm
by Frank IBC on Jan 8, 2012 1:36 am
by Doug on Jan 8, 2012 11:48 am
Frank IBC, your point is well taken, re some folks not yet knowing the term "hydrolley".
"Hydrolley" was coined in 2008 at the Fourth International Hydrail [generic term for hydrogen powered rail, either fuel cell or internal combustion] Conference as the common term of art for hydrogen streetcars so that Net users following the emergence of the technology can find references published about it as soon as they are posted. BTW, that's how your comment was noticed; hence this reply.
Since the word "hydrolley" has been in use close to three years and since there are currently 2,000 Google references, I had hoped it had achieved "eologism" status by now. In the future when I use it I'll try to define it.
"Eologism" is (ironically) both a neologism and the antonym of the word neologism, coined tonight because apparently there was formerly no single, familiar, comprehensive, Googlable [capable of being found by the Google search engine] term characterizing "old, established, commonly-used words."
by Stan on Jan 8, 2012 6:02 pm
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