Posts about Minneapolis
Roads
Highway shoulders can become bus lanes, but it takes work
Why not let buses drive on highway shoulders to get around congestion? According to a regional task force, that can be done, and it does often work, but it's not quite as simple as putting a sign up and saying "let's do it".
Photo from Minnesota DOT.
With pressure mounting to stretch dollars and improve mobility, creative ideas like putting buses on shoulders are getting more attention. Maryland is considering the concept on I-270 and MD-5, and Virginia hopes to have a pilot project on I-66 in Arlington by 2014.
These would add to the handful of locations around the DC region where buses are already allowed to use the shoulder. The most notable example is the Dulles Access Highway inside the Beltway.
The main complicating issue is that highway shoulders are usually too narrow and not free enough from obstructions to immediately open them up to buses. Interstate highway standards call for 9-foot shoulders, but you need at least 10 feet for a bus, and really 11 feet is preferable. So a typical highway shoulder will have to be beefed up in order to be used as a bus lane.
That's a lot easier, and cheaper, than just about anything else you could do. But it's still a construction project that needs to be planned and funded.
Minneapolis has an extensive network of over 300 miles of shoulder bus lanes on highways. But it's taken them over 20 years to get there. They have a continuous program that adds a few miles each year. They started with the low-hanging fruit, and have worked up to more complicated stretches.
That's the idea behind Virginia's pilot project on I-66. At first, the section allowing buses will be short. It won't be a busway so much as a spot where buses can jump ahead of a queue of cars. But over time VDOT could lengthen the segment and provide a larger benefit.
For safety reasons, buses are usually only permitted to go 35 miles per hour when using shoulders. Still, that's enough to get by the worst congestion. If traffic is moving faster than that, buses just stay in the regular lanes.
Cross-posted at BeyondDC.
Transit
Transportation across the nation: Hot chicks edition
San Jose light rail. Image by alberth2 on Flickr.
Bus riders opposing LA rail expansion: A proposed Los Angeles sales tax to pay for transit will mostly go toward subway extensions through the Westside and to LAX, causing anti-taxers in the San Fernando Valley to join with low-income advocates of the Bus Riders' Union to oppose the plan. But wouldn't reducing vehicle traffic in those central areas make transportation easier for farther-out drivers, too? (LA Weekly)
San Jose plans density along light-rail: The city wants to transform a low-density area of mostly office parks, with a fairly underutilized light rail line, into a denser, more urban, mixed-use community. If there's a place where a new city would make some sense and not rile up too much NIMBYism, this is probably the spot. (SF Chronicle)
Creative living arrangements in Vancouver: With sky-high housing prices, Vancouver residents are breaking the traditional single-family home mold: buying houses in groups, moving in next to friends to share backyards, and raising families in small, urban spaces. (Vancouver Magazine)
Many of these links via Planetizen.
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