August 25th, 2010 |
» Choice of transportation mode for new transit capital projects is often just as much a reflection of politics as it is a statement of “objective” technological benefits.
Would it be an indictment of the political system to suggest that most political leaders making decisions about what kind of technology to use in new transit corridors simply don’t care about the relative merits of various transportation modes? If someone were to develop a definitive formula that established, once and for all, the most appropriate technology for any possible corridor, would it matter?
I raise these questions because when put it in the context
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August 11th, 2010 |
» Link to airport and extension of Blue Line south, delayed indefinitely earlier in the summer, now back in line for funding. Yet transit agency plans reduction in light rail frequencies even as it expands.
Dallas and its airport, it seems, are inexorably linked in the minds of regional leaders, so the idea that the city’s transit system would fail to extend to the airport was, simply put, hard to understand. Facing decreasing sales tax revenues, however, the DART transit system’s officials announced in June that they had no choice but to put off this long-planned connection.
Yet this week brought
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August 2nd, 2010 |
» Facing construction cost increases, project planners asked for a higher federal share than originally planned. But the FTA has now made clear it will only pay so much for the nation’s biggest transit projects.
In recent years, the federal government has failed to provide a logical explanation for the manner in which it determines the share of funds it contributes to each proposed New Start major transit capital project, leaving the rest to local and state sources. The agency hasn’t provided strong incentives for cities that provide the most “cost-effective” expansion programs, nor has it produced a formula that
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July 16th, 2010 |
» Perhaps permanently abandoning hopes for an extension of the Tren Urbano, San Juan proposes light rail program. Implementation would coincide with a massive redevelopment of the Isleta and Old San Juan.
The enormous increase in construction costs for the Tren Urbano, which opened in late 2004, likely doomed any serious short-term hope of extending the rail corridor’s reach into San Juan’s historic center. What was supposed to be a $1.25 billion rapid transit line carrying well over 100,000 riders a day somehow morphed into an exercise in under-performance, with only 40,000 daily passengers transported on a guideway that cost
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July 7th, 2010 |
» Jerusalem has delayed its tramway project repeatedly over the past several years, leaving much of the city center torn up, with no relief in sight. The situation has severely damaged support for further transportation projects in this congested metropolis.
After two days in Jerusalem, I’ve never seen a group of people so annoyed at the prospect of getting a brand-new light rail system.
You’d think that they’d be excited about traveling more quickly in comfort through what has become a notoriously congested city, bringing reliable commutes to a place whose citizens have only had access to buses up to now
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June 30th, 2010 |
» France’s southeastern metropolis readies a downtown-airport connection with help from the private sector.
After the collapse of the massive London Underground PPP scheme early this month, the future of major private involvement in the maintenance and operation of public transit systems was put on the skids. There, the city took back full control of a system whose maintenance and reconstruction had been signed off to private entities less than ten years before, claiming that municipal entities would be able to do the job keeping up the network more easily than had the PPP partners. Though there is no technical
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