» As gondolas catch on in South America, should other cities search for ways to make transit trips more interesting?

When I lived in New York, I took the subway from Atlantic Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn to my office at Union Square everyday. It’s easy to get between the two — there are several different lines that make the trip in about fifteen minutes — but I would inevitably choose to walk out of my way to take the N Broadway train rather than the closer 4 and 5 Lexington Avenue lines.

There’s a simple explanation: whereas the N soars high above the East River along the Manhattan Bridge as it leaves Brooklyn, the Lexington Avenue lines run underwater. The three minutes it takes to cross that bridge brought to my mornings the light of the sun and magnificent views of New York’s skyscrapers, parks, and riverfront. I’m not sure how much the other people riding with me cared, but it certainly woke me up.

The experience of riders on the subways that run across the Manhattan Bridge — the B, D, N, and Q trains do so — is a rarity. Few typical commutes on transit include aerial views of the city or the natural environment. Most transportation rights-of-way in central cities are either hidden below ground or surrounded by ugliness. Most daily transit commutes, if they aren’t downright sad, certainly aren’t particularly inspiring. Should that change?

Steven Dale, who publishes the Gondola Project, a year-long exploration of cable-propelled transit, toured South America earlier this year to gain insight into efforts to connect often out-of-the-way neighborhoods with broader transportation networks. In Medellin, Columbia, the local transit system wanted to connect isolated barrios on mountaintops to the metro lines below, so it built a two kilometer initial line that hovers above the city and now carries 40,000 riders a day. What began as a bit of an experiment has expanded into an eight kilometer network at a much cheaper price than would cost an equivalent rail system. Caracas, Venezuela, among other cities, has begun developing similar technologies.

Dale has proposed a series of gondolas for his home city, Toronto. Gondolas — like the télécabines found at ski resorts — and aerial tramways — such as New York’s Roosevelt Island tram or the Portland Aerial Tram featured in the image above — are different technologies, but they offer the same advantages of carrying commuters above instead of through the city.

What Dale describes as a “Disruptive Technology” — a “simple, convenient-to-use innovations that initially are used by only unsophisticated customers at the low end of markets,” a result of difficult geography and limited local funds — is to me a prime example of cities thinking differently about how to make the daily lives of their inhabitants more interesting. Wouldn’t you like to be able to glide above the city on the way to work?

There are of course major limitations to aerial vehicles like the gondolas Dale has highlighted; their maximum running speeds are relatively slow and they lack the ability to handle anywhere near the capacity of traditional train systems. But those issues are besides the point: the issue here is that these South American cities are improving public transit in a way that brings an element of joy to the daily lives of their users. How frequently can you say that about most bus lines?

Earlier this year, Jarrett Walker pointed to what he refers to as transit’s “Zoom-Whoosh Problem.” Noting San Francisco’s BART regional rail system, he suggests that transit benefits when it feels fast, modern, powerful — qualities it too often lacks. But that sensation is ephemeral — once you know the BART sensation, it loses some of its excitement: It becomes mundane. Washington’s Metro, designed in a similar era, is an underground architectural monument — a fantastic play on the use of concrete and light — but after a while, it begins to feel a bit gray and boring. Indeed, that’s the problem with any form of transportation that generates interest as a result of its newness; at some point, that feeling wears off.

The efficiency of urban subways, after all, does have its downsides.

That’s why the perspectives offered by South America’s aerial gondolas are so marvelous. They suggests that modern public transportation can be made interesting not so much because of its technological advancement, but rather because of the views it offers onto the beauty of the human and natural environments that surround our cities. The mountains or river in the distance will never grow tiring; nor will looking at the people staring out from their balconies or the stores hawking their wares.

It’s true, of course, that it makes little sense to build a gondola in many cities — many places lack major elevation changes or large natural obstacles that preference an investment in a mode of transportation that simply goes over everything that’s around it. The two North American examples I cited above — in Portland and New York — are both responses to geographical difficulties.

But you don’t need to build aerial trams to give people a more interesting, joyous experience when they’re making their daily commutes to and from work — you don’t even have to have that great of a view. To coincide with the complete renovation of Philadelphia’s Market Street Elevated, artist Stephen Powers created dozens of beautiful murals on the sides of decrepit surrounding buildings in a series entitled A Love Letter for You visible primarily by train riders.

We should see more of the same. One of the great advantages of riding transit is that you actually have the chance to take in what’s outside the window; you don’t have to pay attention to the “road.” We just need to give people something to look at.

Update, 15 June: Steven Dale responds on The Gondola Project to this post, arguing that gondolas “can exploit rather than just deal with natural obstacles” — they aren’t as limited as I suggest above. I think this makes sense: It is true that you can install an aerial transportation system much more easily than a ground-based one, and this means that barriers to transportation for other modes suddenly become opportunities. Dale also suggests that I underestimate the ridership potential of cable-propelled transit; I admit that it’s unfair to compare capacity of a gondola with a metro, since they don’t address the same markets. For more of his thoughtful discussion, check out his site.

Image above: The Portland Aerial Tram, from Flickr user neighborhoods.org

» Service changes on Long Island would reduce the number of one-stop rides into Manhattan but lower operations and capital costs.

Though the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) is the busiest commuter rail operation in the United States, with more than 300,000 daily boardings, its 700 miles of track make frequent services to all parts of the island too expensive to be economically viable. The stations at the end of the system’s two longest branches — to Greenport and Montauk, at the eastern tips of the island — are out of convenient commuting distance to Manhattan, so the LIRR provides only a few trains a day. From Montauk, a more than three-hour commute, there are only five trains daily to Penn Station; from Greenport, there are only three.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which runs the LIRR as well as the New York City Subway and other regional services, is planning to buy new diesel multiple unit trains (DMUs) to serve these and other lightly used routes, with the aim of reducing operations costs.

The very limited service to the system’s far extents results in suffering ridership; Greenport, for instance, had on average only five daily passengers in 2006. Yet as a result of the trains the LIRR currently has in its fleet, the system uses very heavy, diesel-guzzling vehicles for these routes. There is little room for more services to these far-off locales because of the high operating costs of these trains and the limited capacity along the LIRR’s routes approaching Manhattan.

Though much of the LIRR system is electrified and use electric multiple unit trains, several major sections of the system remain reliant on diesel-powered vehicles, though all trains with direct service to Manhattan must be able to switch to third rail electric propulsion as they enter the city. With 45 diesel dual-mode locomotives and 134 bilevel railcars, the LIRR serves the less-populated portions of the island, including unelectrified tracks east of Ronkonkoma and Babylon along the Ronkonkoma and Montauk branches, as well as along much of the Port Jefferson and Oyster Bay branches. Those latter routes have more service than do Montauk or Greenport, but their offerings are still constrained to about one train per hour.

The dual-mode locomotives and C3 railcars that are attached to them are relatively new, having been bought in the late 1990s. Yet they’ve been prone to maintenance problems because of the complications resulting from their dual-mode power systems.

Suffering from limited funds to maintain service levels as a result of the recession, the MTA is looking for ways to cut operating costs. It may have an answer in its decision to consider replacing the locomotive-hauled trains with DMUs along its least-used routes. If the organization determines that the new trains would save substantial operating funds, an $81 million order of about a dozen trains could come online in 2014 at the earliest. The plans are included in the MTA’s recently released proposed capital program for 2010 to 2014.

Unlike the existing locomotives, which are very gas-consuming since they’re designed to pull ten or more railcars at a time — certainly not necessary along the LIRR’s longest routes — DMUs, with only one or two cars, are much lighter and designed for lines with fewer riders. By providing “scoot” services along unelectrified routes to the terminals of tracks with electric operations, DMUs could allow the LIRR to both increase services and reduce operations costs.

New Jersey’s River Line, the Sprinter service north of San Diego, and Portland’s WES route use variations of DMU technology today. So does Austin’s brand-new Red Line.

The most obvious route candidates for these new trains are the Ronkonkoma branch from Ronkonkoma to Greenport and the Montauk branch from Babylon to Montauk. Though these sections of the line would have their direct services into Manhattan eliminated and riders would be forced to transfer to get to the rest of the island, DMUs would make possible all-day operations since the trains would not have to be competing with the more heavily used vehicles from other branches trying to get into the city.

The savings the MTA would accrue from using less fuel per passenger would likely pay for the cost of more daily services, increasing ridership. If transfers were timed, the connection between the diesel-operated lines and those that are electrified could be simple enough to keep all of the system’s current riders.

For the LIRR, the use of DMUs along these far-off branch lines seems appropriate, since the diesel locomotives the system currently uses are designed for far busier routes and fundamentally inappropriate for places like Greenport or Montauk. Indeed, the decision to consider a conversion to these new technologies should inspire other commuter rail operators to switch to more efficient DMUs; Nashville’s infrequently used Music City Star line comes to mind as an obvious candidate. Lighter, more efficient trains could play an important role in reducing the operations costs of transit agencies across the country, all of which need to find savings to survive.

Image above: Bombardier’s VLocity 160 DMU, used in Australia, from Bombardier

» Can ferries play a useful role in the broader public transportation system?

Most major cities are situated along some body of water — usually a river or two, often a lake or the ocean. There’s a good reason for this: waterways played an important role historically as transportation links for people and freight. They also allowed connections across barriers insurmountable by ground-based transportation; in the early 1900s, for example, ferries were the only mode of transport between Manhattan and Northern New Jersey. But new technologies allowing the construction of underwater road and rail tunnels and the general improvement of ground-based transportation systems have reduced the importance of boats for the average commuter in the urban environment.

In some cities, of course, the ferry never died out as a transportation mode — Venice’s Vaporetto water bus continues to be the primary mode of transit in that pedestrian city; in North America, both Seattle and Vancouver have extensive operations because of their water-bound geography. But for the most part, cities that grew up around their respective rivers have come to ignore them as potential corridors for transit service, citing the slow speed of water-bound travel and the difficulty of getting from the waterfront to business or residential districts.

Yet the transformation of many inner-city waterfronts from industrial zones to parks surrounded by walkable dense neighborhoods has reawakened an interest in using boats for transportation operations. With water views and fresh air, water taxis could be an appealing alternative to more mainstream forms of transit. The news this week that a company called American River Taxi plans to begin transit operations later this year between several of Washington, D.C.’s major waterfront zones is only the latest example of such an initiative.

The Potomac Riverboat Company currently operates a route between Alexandria and National Harbor.

Boats provide a unique opportunity to improve urban transportation because their use requires very little construction spending: unlike trains or buses, they can take advantage of a natural resource to move about, rather than having to rely on a built rail or road route. The only capital expenses required are in the erection of ferry terminals and the purchase of the boats themselves. Replacing some ferry routes with bridges or tunnels for ground-based transportation would cost billions of dollars.

From this perspective, the investment in new boat routes between Georgetown, the Southwest Waterfront, the Navy Yard, Alexandria, and National Harbor could provide significant new connections to areas of the Washington region that don’t have direct transit links today. Each of these neighborhoods has seen significant redevelopment over the past decade, already features a ferry dock, and may be able to attract enough traffic for the service provider to stay afloat.

On the other hand, urban water taxi operations typically have higher operations costs than equivalent trains or buses because they carry a relatively small number of people per vehicle and they consume large amounts of diesel fuel per mile. The ferry between New York’s Rockaway Peninsula and Lower Manhattan costs a total of $26 to operate per passenger trip, of which passengers are charged $6 — all for a trip that takes longer than an equivalent subway ride. In terms of ecological consequences, the high energy consumption levels of boats don’t make them particularly environmentally friendly, either.

These efficiencies improve significantly when passenger demand is higher and the size of boats increase. New York’s free Staten Island Ferry carries about 60,000 passengers a day on a 5-mile route and has operating costs per passenger trip of about six dollars. The city’s subway system, on the other hand, costs about $2 per passenger trip to operate, mostly covered by fares.

Thus even busy ferries suffer from relatively high operations costs. But these expenses are easier to bear than would be the construction of new routes for ground-based transportation, frequently extraordinarily costly. If capital and operations costs were put into the same pot, ferries would come out looking more economical than buses or trains.

Nonetheless, water taxis face a fundamental challenge resulting from the fact that most people aren’t interested in traveling from one waterfront to another, which is really all that a boat can do. Indeed, ferries work best in cities like Hong Kong where the city’s core is directly adjacent to the water. Companies like New York Waterway operate connecting bus shuttles between ferry docks and surrounding neighborhoods to make up for the problem, but this required connection increases overall travel time and reduces the appeal of the ferry, no matter how nice the ride across the river may be.

In most American cities, where business centers are separated from the water (often by large highways), it is unclear whether water taxis will ever produce significant ridership. Serving similar routes between Manhattan and New Jersey, New York Waterway carries about 30,000 daily passengers, compared to 250,000 on the PATH railway. Of course, part of the difference is that while PATH is subsidized, the Waterway is not and therefore charges much higher fares necessary to make up operations costs. Should the government agree to subsidize operations costs for ferries, just as they do for trains and buses? Is there a good reason why ferries are not incorporated into the broader public transportation systems of most cities?

If the routes proposed for Washington turn out to be a financial bust, should the city step in to ensure that the people using the boats continue to receive services at a reasonable fare?

The answer largely depends on whether the city wants to use transportation as a tool to develop land near the waterfront, since the ferries are probably not going to play a significant role as transit. Water taxi service could help Washington encourage new construction along its rivers; a high operations subsidy may be the price to pay to attract private investors onto once inhospitable sites.

Image above: New York Water Taxi, from Flickr user WEST-ULTRA (cc)

» This guest post by Alon Levy is the third in a three-part series on a potential New York Regional Rail Network. Check out the First and Second Pieces.

In a two-part series on The Transport Politic, I previously argued that to improve Greater New York’s commuter rail service, the agencies controlling it should orient their capital plan to emphasize good service on existing lines instead of spending on outbound extensions, with a special focus on through-routing. Such a system would remodel New York’s commuter rail along the lines of the Paris RER or a German S-Bahn.

In the six months since my articles were published, I have continued to refine some of the points in the proposal. Some of those refinements come from tweaks proposed in the comment threads; others come from reading more about good commuter rail operations in France and Germany, as well as about the state of tracks in New York, for which Rich Green’s maps are an invaluable resource.

The basic premise of the plan remains the same, and almost the entire map of the proposal and most of the details I gave in the previous posts could stay the same. I believe a few of the route choices should be tweaked, but beyond this, most of the changes would be in station layout and in operations and scheduling.

All proposed improvements here have a unified theme, which is that New York regional rail should look more like the RER or an S-Bahn. The previous two posts emphasized through-routing and service to city neighborhoods; this coda will stress seamless operations, highlighting transferring and schedule convenience.

Transfers

The best transfer is one that is timed and cross-platform. Timing reduces waiting time, and cross-platform configurations simplify walking from one train to another. The transit planning literature recognizes this fact: ridership projections for future New York City subway lines assign a time penalty to transfers, recognizing the fact that walking from one platform to another is inconvenient for commuters beyond the extra time cost; those projections, however, do not assign any transfer penalty to cross-platform transfers beyond the waiting time for the connecting train, which transfer timing reduces to zero.

The proposed Fulton Street station, where Yellow, Orange, and Blue lines will meet, should be converted to cross-platform operation. In the  initial proposal, the tracks are laid in a cross shape. The north-south tracks (Blue Line) could stay the same, but the east-west tracks (Yellow and Orange Lines) could be tweaked: the tunnel from Flatbush to Manhattan would be moved further south to give the tracks time to curve north, and then the tracks would curve west to the Village as in the first plan.

In addition, if possible, the underground Hoboken station for trains to Fulton should be at the same level as PATH, with cross-platform transfers. This is little different from the practice in Paris, which configured the central transfer station, Châtelet-Les Halles, to allow cross-platform transfers from the north-south RER B to the east-west RER A.

The other transfers in the proposal—Secaucus, Tonelle, Jamaica, and Sunnyside—either are already cross-platform or cannot be converted. Those that are cross-platform should always be configured with two platforms, four station tracks, and possibly two bypass tracks; as much as possible, each route should stop reliably at the same platform, and schedules should be coordinated for timed transfers. This would allow cross-platform transfers between the LIRR-Morristown and Northeast Corridor trains at Sunnyside and Secaucus, relieving Penn Station.

At Secaucus and Tonnelle, the cruciform two-level transfers between the trains to Penn Station and those to Hoboken cannot be converted to cross-platform, but can simplified by tearing down or not building faregates. But they could still be timed if trains wait for one another for a minute at each station, a process that can be performed off-peak without straining capacity; this is done on the Berlin U-Bahn for wrong-way transfers between the U6 and U7 at Mehringdamm.

Finally, three additional infill stops should be considered, two in New Jersey and one in Brooklyn. The West Shore Line (part of the Orange Line) should have a new stop at 51st Street, near the Tonnelle Avenue stop of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail. The Morristown Line  (Purple Line) should have an infill stop at Orange Street in Newark, intersecting the original Newark subway, which has no direct connection to Newark Broad Street Station. And the new Flatbush-Fulton tunnel (Yellow and Orange Lines) would pass under the Jay Street and Court Street-Borough Hall subway stops, permitting a new Borough Hall station to be constructed; this stop would offer transfers to both Court Street and Jay Street stations.

Route Changes

The above-described change in the Fulton Street station layout suggests a second route for the Hoboken-Fulton segment (Yellow and Orange Lines) through Manhattan. Instead of going north under Hudson or Greenwich Street and stopping at Houston Street, it could go north on the same route as the Staten Island-Harlem connection (Blue Line), on separate tracks, and curve west north of Houston, stopping below the existing West 4th Street subway stop.

This option reduces the amount of necessary construction in Lower Manhattan, as well as the total route-length of tunnel to be built, which correspondingly lowers costs. It also serves the Village in a more central location. Unfortunately, West 4th is a three-level station, so crossing under it would require diving deep underground, substantially increasing costs. In Tokyo, one of the reasons for substantial subway cost escalation in recent years is that to cross existing lines, new lines have to burrow deep underground, as this new tunnel would have to. I believe this option would be worth it if the cost were the same or lower than that of the route proposed in the original plan.

At the same time, I am no longer convinced by some of the outbound extensions I had previously proposed. It may not be cost-effective to run improved regional trains on their respective commuter lines’ full length. The original plan already cut out some low-ridership branches and line segments; however, there may be room for more cuts, for examples west of Raritan on the Raritan Valley Line, east of Ronkonkoma and Babylon on the LIRR, and west of Dover on the Morristown Line.

On the other hand, there should be more double-tracking of single-track bottlenecks, such as the single-track bridge over the Hackensack over the Erie Main Line, which is otherwise fully double-tracked.

At least according to the comments on my posts, the most controversial idea I suggested was the tunnel from Staten Island to Manhattan. This tunnel would be expensive, at $7.4 billion, using the estimated costs for a Brooklyn-Jersey City freight tunnel as a baseline. The main benefit of the Staten Island tunnel is not cost per rider, but commute shortening. Residents of Staten Island are in a near-tie with those of Queens for the longest average commutes in the United States. However, Staten Island’s situation is worse: unlike in Queens, where neighborhood retail is often within walking distance, on Staten Island most people need a car to run errands, so shopping trips take much longer.

In either case, it might be useful if expensive to extend the proposed Staten Island lines west to meet New Jersey Transit. The existing Staten Island Railway would have to be extensively modified, complete with a new railway bridge, an elevated line in Perth Amboy, and a raised Tottenville station on the bridge’s approach; this would connect the line with the Perth Amboy commuter rail station, where there could be a cross-platform transfer. At a much lower cost, the North Shore Line could be extended west on an existing freight rail bridge, follow the Morristown and Erie and Conrail lines to cross the Northeast Corridor at an infill station north of Linden and then join the Raritan Valley Line at Cranford.

Penn Station Pedestrian Flow

While through-routing is enough to eliminate the capacity problems resulting from Penn Station’s limited track space, there remains the serious issue of pedestrian capacity. One of the arguments I have heard proponents of the under construction Access to the Region’s Core project use is that the platforms at Penn are narrow and have narrow stairways to the concourses, so a new station is necessary (and will be built according to current plans for the ARC tunnel).

There are multiple solutions to the circulation of pedestrians at Penn Station besides the new connections and stations proposed in my plan. First, Penn Station does not use its existing tracks as efficiently as it could. The LIRR recently remodeled its platforms and the lower concourse so that each of its platforms has four or five staircases leading up to waiting areas. NJT has done no such thing, and each of its platforms only has two such staircases. Remodeling the NJT tracks would be expensive, as it was for the LIRR, but building a new station would be much more pricey.

In addition, today’s station has 11 island platforms, each flanked by two tracks, with only one track adjacent to two platforms. Paving over half the tracks so that each track is adjacent to two platforms would not only widen the platforms and allow the installation of wider staircases and elevators, but also double the number of usable doors on the train. This would leave Penn with 11 or 12 tracks, of which only nine would connect to both the North River Tunnels under the Hudson and East River tunnels.

For reference, with four tracks to the east and six to the west (four to New Jersey, two through an upgraded Empire Connection), Penn would not need more than six to eight through-tracks; it would run out of access tunnel capacity before it would run out of station track capacity. This solution would be more radical than remodeling existing platforms but might be cheaper for a given capacity.

Finally, the concourses should be stripped of back offices immediately, and space-consuming concessions should be eliminated as traffic increases. George Haikalis of the Institute for Rational Urban Mobility notes that only 54% of the lower concourse is used for passenger circulation purposes; the rest is consumed by Amtrak back offices and concessions. This goes against standard practice worldwide. As train stations get too busy, sometimes even existing retail gets kicked out, as was necessary at Shanghai Metro’s busiest station, People’s Square.

Scheduling

Compare the following two off-peak train schedules for Monday, January 4th. Both schedules only list departure times.

I selected these two schedules at random, based on trips I had taken recently. The TER schedule is clockface: trains leave at regular intervals, at the same time every hour. It is easy to remember. The Metro-North schedule has some clockface patterns as well, but they are less regular and break down on the shoulders of rush hour.

By making timetables easier to remember, clockface scheduling makes travel easier for passengers, increasing ridership. While the clockface example above is of half-hourly service, there is no lower limit to frequency: in New York, some buses already run clockface, even if they operate every five minutes.

Best industry practice is in Germany, where the S-Bahn not only maintains clockface scheduling, but also rationalizes the additional rush hour service. The regularity is such that in Stuttgart, there is no need for a  comprehensive timetable; instead, a system map indicates at how many minutes after the hour each line arrives at each station. Each line has two departure times, spaced exactly half an hour apart, with additional peak hour trains at the quarter-hour marks. Berlin, whose services are more complex, does have a timetable, but each of its lines maintains clockface scheduling with intervals of five, ten, or twenty minutes; further, the schedule shows that on the Stadtbahn, the S3 and S5 arrive at the shared stops simultaneously, allowing cross-platform transfers.

Even today, New York has the track capacity to maintain clockface schedules with regular intervals on each line. The local/express train alternation is not a problem for two-track railroads with passing sidings, let alone four-track railroads such as the Northeast Corridor and the inner portions of the LIRR and Harlem Line mainlines. Once a new pair of tracks under the Hudson River is in place, clockface scheduling will become even easier.

Service Patterns

On New York’s commuter rail systems, as on the RER, not all trains stop at all stations. This does not worsen service as long as express trains are run on a limited-stop basis like express subway trains and if schedules are regular. As on the subway, regional rail express trains should enable people to make diagonal travel, going from suburb to suburb without passing through Manhattan, switching instead at an outlying transfer point such as Jamaica. While transit’s greatest advantage over cars is over straight trips that end in or pass through Manhattan, it can also serve useful purpose for a substantial number of diagonal trips. The current train service pattern squanders this opportunity: for example, the New Haven Line trains skip all stations in the Bronx, making it difficult to travel to stations on the Harlem Line.

A better way of treating diagonal trips would be to require all or most trains to stop at stations located such before splits, as far as track arrangement permits. The LIRR does this at Hicksville; other important junction stations include Woodlawn, Floral Park, Rahway, Valley Stream, Summit, and Newark Broad. At those stations, as far as possible the schedule should time outbound and inbound trains to facilitate diagonal transfers: where platform arrangements permit cross-platform transfers, for example at Valley Stream, the trains should arrive at the same time, and where they do not, for example at Woodlawn, the outbound train should arrive one minute after the inbound train.

No system mainline should have less than two trains per hour at any hour of operation; ideally, the minimum frequency should be three trains per hour. Branches and low-ridership outlying segments should have no less than one train per hour. When there is too much branching to run hourly trains to all branches without running them empty on the common trunk lines, the branches could be served with shuttles with timed transfers off-peak.

In the urban areas, frequency should be higher, starting at six trains per hour. This could cause problems on the Northeast Corridor, the LIRR lines feeding into East Side Access, and the lines feeding into the Hudson Line, which begin to branch out in inner-urban neighborhoods. On the lines feeding into East Side Access, timed transfers at Sunnyside could be enough. But on the Hudson Line’s two branches and the Northeast Corridor, off-peak service should include short-turning trains serving just those branches: for example, the Northeast Corridor could be served by local trains running from New Rochelle to Newark or Penn Station.

None of this applies to peak hour, when there is enough demand to permit one-seat rides to Manhattan from every branch. The system should still avoid mixing lines, for example running Montauk Branch trains to Penn Station instead of Fulton, but on the Northeast Corridor, Hudson Line, and LIRR Main Line, direct trains should serve both inner-urban branches from all outlying corridors.

Fare Collection

My original proposal called for faregates, on the models of Paris and Japan. However, it may be better to use a  German- and Swiss-style proof of payment system, in which stations would be barrier-free and passengers would have to present tickets at fare inspections to be conducted at random. Such a system could even extend to bus service, and would go a long way to reducing operating costs. The MTA’s recent Making Every Dollar Count report says that out of every dollar the agency obtains in revenue, it needs to spend fifteen cents on fare collection.

The tradeoff between faregates and proof of payment is an issue of ridership. At the passenger density of the RER or Tokyo’s commuter rail system, or for that matter the New York City Subway, fare inspections are infeasible. But at lower passenger density, fare inspectors cost less than station agents. The busiest lines in New York straddle the boundary between RER and S-Bahn ridership. But either faregates or proof of payment would cost much less than having multiple conductors per train collecting tickets.

» The project represents a marked advance for a city that’s been reluctant to invest in fully separated lanes for its buses.

When American transit planners begin working on a new transit capital project, they’re often required to undertake what’s called an alternative analysis, a study whose purpose is to identify the appropriate route and technology for a specific corridor. It’s an open secret among people in the industry that while these reports often provide useful information about where exactly to place a new line, the choice of vehicle mode is almost always predetermined.

This leads to a sometimes bizarre situation in which, for instance, a city planning a one-mile extension of its rapid transit lines “considers” whether high-speed rail or local buses might work in the same corridor — even though everyone knows that if the money ever shows up, the rapid transit line will be the only thing built. The process, in other words, is often a charade.

Such was the case recently for New York City, whose Department of Transportation is intent on improving the public transportation offerings in Midtown Manhattan, the nation’s largest business district. Despite the fact that the DOT has been on an all-out crusade to improve bus service, has no money for more subways, and has demonstrated little interest in light rail or streetcars, it evaluated all four in its recent study for the 34th Street corridor. It threw in an elevated automated people mover for consideration as well in case anyone cared.

Unsurprisingly, the report advocated the construction of a bus transitway along the route.

None of this is to suggest that improving bus operations in Midtown is a bad idea. Rather, it’s sometimes worth considering the hoops through which transit agencies must jump in order to bring their visions to fruition.

But the alternatives analysis did allow New York City’s DOT to demonstrate why it considers a dedicated transitway for bus service to be the ideal technology candidate for the two-mile 34th street corridor, running river to river. The mode allows the use of existing vehicles and the through-routing of express buses from elsewhere in the city — something not possible had streetcars or light rail been chosen. It would also be relatively cheap to implement, at between $30 and 125 million, versus $250 million and up for light rail or several billion for a full-scale subway line.

The transitway would allow commuters to get across the city 35% faster than possible today, cutting transit times to 20 minutes, just slightly longer than would be feasible with a light rail line.

For this heavily foot-trafficked street, New York City is proposing something nice: wider sidewalks, a pedestrian plaza between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, and increased public facilities with new station canopies.

It’s a significantly improved plan over the previously revealed project for First and Second Avenues, which will separate each direction of bus service onto two separate streets and do little to curb the intrusion of other vehicles into the busway. With a clear separation between cars and buses this time, the city is likely to actually improve service levels.

One thing the transitway is not, however, is bus rapid transit, despite the DOT’s continued use of the word to describe what it wants to build on 34th Street. With 13 stations end to end — roughly every 800 feet — buses will average a miserable six miles per hour, hardly faster than a person can walk the route.

Some may argue that a light rail line would be more appropriate — perhaps as part of a tramway loop including 42nd Street — but similar proposals for that technology would feature equally abysmal transit times because of the high number of stops deemed necessary. Rail would face the additional stumbling block caused by the fact that overhead catenary has been illegal in Manhattan since the devastating 1888 blizzard, which shut down the city’s elevated transportation system.

There are also plenty of congested corridors around the city that arguably need better transit far sooner than Midtown Manhattan, which is replete with subway lines.

But the DOT’s efforts are about more than moving buses through the city more quickly: it’s apparent that the 34th Street plan is as much aimed to improve the streetscape for pedestrians, who until recently have been put in last place by New York City decision-making. With the possible exception of 125th Street, there are few corridors in Manhattan that are more used by walkers, since 34th is a shopper’s paradise.

If that’s what it is, though, New York should be clear in its intentions: this isn’t really bus rapid transit, it’s a way to improve the function of the street for everyone.

Image above: Map of proposed 34th Street bus transit services, from New York City DOT

» The city’s largest borough currently suffers from a large gap in service, but relatively inexpensive improvements could address those problems well.

Though New Yorkers overall are used to some of the longest commute times in the country, residents of southeast Queens are particularly affected. The inhabitants of this large segment of the borough between JFK Airport and Jamaica, from Brooklyn to the city line, have average travel times to work of more than 50 minutes. That’s each way.

It’s a terrible situation, especially since so many people in the pretty dense neighborhood rely on public transportation to get around — and so many are headed to Midtown and downtown Manhattan, areas with high levels of train and bus service already. Transit planners have a moral obligation to find ways to improve their commutes, even in face of the mounting budget deficit currently pounding New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Commute times in Queens	Transit share in Queens

Fortunately, there are several cheap investments the city could make that would substantially reduce the trip times of those living in this part of the borough, starting with a change in fare policy. Leveraging existing transit corridors to a fuller extent by constructing more stations in southeast Queens is also a serious and relatively inexpensive option.

New York offers a standard ticket price for its subway and bus services; the same fare is paid for trips consisting of just a few blocks or twenty miles. The same applies for the city’s unlimited passes, which allow rides anywhere in the city on buses and subways for a set price over a period of time.

There are positives and negatives associated with this system — one thing it certainly does is instill the idea that the whole city is accessible to every citizen, of any class — but it certainly preferences people who live far from their jobs. Yet New York City is structured in a way that makes further densification of the central city core very difficult, even as most jobs continue to be located in Manhattan; people from the outskirts of the city, like it or not, need to be able to get to the center in a reasonably short period of time.

That single-fare policy has not been extended to the MTA’s commuter rail systems, Metro-North and the Long Island Railroad, both of which provide quick access from the outer boroughs to parts of the Manhattan office districts, at a higher price. From Jamaica, at the northwest tip of Queens’ southeast quadrant, a ride to Penn Station on the LIRR takes 19 minutes and costs $7.60 at peak times (or $5.46 during off-peak times); on the E Express Subway (faster than most), the trip requires 34 minutes, for $2.25 (or about $1.50 using an unlimited pass).

For many commuters, there’s a difficult choice to make: pay more than twice as much and get a 45% faster ride, or save money and squeeze into buses and subways. Most choose the latter option because it’s cheaper — which explains the high average commute times for people from Southeast Queens in spite of the large number of transit lines that criss-cross the area.

It also explains the under-use of some of the existing branches of the LIRR in southeast Queens, including the Far Rockaway Branch, which stops at Locust Manor and Laurelton Stations; the Hempstead branch, which includes stations at Queens Village and Hollis; and the West Hempstead branch, with its stop at St. Albans.

Thus an easy fix for this problem would be to make in-city trips on the commuter railroads the same price as those on the subway and buses, and allow commuters to make free transfers between the two. This would instantly reduce typical travel times for people in this section of Queens (and areas of the northern Bronx) and increase the use of the existing commuter rail capacity on the three LIRR corridors mentioned above.

If the city subsidized this fare reduction, the state-financed MTA could continue charging current fares on trips coming from outside of the city without encouraging debate over differences in transit provisions for the city and its suburbs, a discussion already at the heart of many of the agency’s financial problems.

Creating fare equity between the commuter railroads and the subways would produce significant time savings for the residents of southeast Queens. But the introduction of more people onto the LIRR system would require some substantial changes in commuter rail operations in order for the services to remain reliable. For one, in-city stations benefiting from reduced fares would have to have turnstiles installed so that free transfers could be enforced. Or, the MTA could wait for the universal contactless farecard it is already developing, a ticket designed to allow conductors on the commuter trains to make pass inspections using the same system as installed at subway faregates.

The introduction of thousands of new daily riders on LIRR trains would likely cause some capacity problems, since many of the system’s trains are already overcrowded at rush hour. Some of the difficulties would be solved with the opening of East Side Access to Grand Central Terminal in 2016, which will allow a larger number of trains to enter Manhattan. Moreover, with increasing ridership likely to occur anyway, the railroad will have to buy more trains over the next decade; if these vehicles were configured more like rapid transit, with more doors and more standing room (unlike existing LIRR trains, which prioritize comfortable seating), the larger number of riders could be handled easily.

And of course, there’s another easy way to relieve capacity issues at Penn Station: simply run trains through from New Jersey to Long Island, reducing track use in the central segments of the system. It can be done.

Though the MTA would lose revenue by significantly reducing the cost of inner-city commuter rail trips, it would likely also increase transit ridership on trips coming from areas at the edges of the metropolis. Meanwhile, the changes I’ve suggested would require limited investment above and beyond what was already planned — the new contactless farecard is being designed already; new trains are to be ordered within a few years anyway, and a change in their design won’t affect their pricetag.

But there are other, more costly investments that would focus on the commuting problems of this particularly isolated neighborhood. By adding stations to the three branches of the LIRR that pass through the community, a far larger slice of the population would suddenly find itself within half a mile of a rail station. Though adding a stop or two for each line would slightly increase the commute times of people coming from further away, they would significantly reduce the trip times of people in this neighborhood by providing quick, direct access to Midtown Manhattan and connections further down the line to subway routes heading throughout the city.

Building a new station is not exactly a cheap proposition, but taking advantage of an existing rail line, rather than, say, extending a subway (something that’s been proposed for Southeast Queens in the past), is a much less expensive alternative.

And then there’s AirTrain JFK.

Since it opened in December 2003, the line has become an important tool for commuters getting to and from JFK Airport; it connects each of the airport’s terminals directly to LIRR and subway services (E, J, and Z trains) at Jamaica, and to A Subway services at Howard Beach. Elevated above the median of the Van Wyck Expressway, its route passes directly adjacent to some of the neighborhoods that suffer from exactly the long commutes that irritate so many people who live in southeast Queens.

Unfortunately, because the AirTrain was built with funds from the federal government’s Aviation Trust Fund and airport Passenger Facility Charge revenues, it could not include local stations — the only stops on the line are at airport terminals, passenger facilities, and at the transit drop-offs at Howard Beach and Jamaica. Federal regulations state that those revenue sources can only be used for a project that “must exclusively serve airport traffic.” This results in a number of peculiar situations that ultimately reduce the effectiveness of transit that serves airports in the United States, since through-running and local (non-airport) stops are basically banned by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Theoretically, several new stations could be added to AirTrain along the Van Wyck corridor without reducing existing capacity by creating side-platform stations and building access tracks separate from the express tracks used by JFK-Jamaica trains. This would be a pricey investment, since it would require the creation of a new track connection between Howard Beach and Jamaica trains (to avoid interrupting airport express and inter-terminal service) and it would require the construction of a series of elevated platforms above a freeway and connected to an in-use transit line. Faregates would also have to be installed at JFK terminals to ensure that passengers pay the correct charge, since those riding on the new Howard Beach-Jamaica train would pay standard subway fares, while those heading for the airport would continue to pay the $5 airport fee.

These improvements would provide direct operations from a number of isolated neighborhoods to Jamaica and Howard Beach, from which there would be easy transfers to Midtown and Downtown Manhattan-bound trains.

It would have been more convenient to make these changes when the project was first being built, to say the least. But these changes wouldn’t affect the quality of the original investment and therefore would not pose an affront to FAA regulations.

Sadly, the MTA has done very little to address the excessive commute times of southeast Queens residents, who deserve improved transportation access, and there has been no coordinated planning for better transit service for the neighborhood. Its denizens are likely to see long trip times for decades to come.

» New York City unveils plan for faster buses on First and Second Avenues, but Manhattan’s East Side deserves better.

For revenue-poor cities desperate to offer alternatives to congestion both on the roadways and in existing public transportation, bus rapid transit presents an appealing opportunity. BRT can improve travel times and customer experience significantly, even as it can be installed at a relatively low cost.

Like any sort of transit, though, getting the specifics right is essential to ensuring the success of a project. Because BRT can operate in the street using traditional buses, it’s easy to get those details wrong. When that happens, the product provides significantly less value for the transit user.

New York City is planning a series of BRT corridors called Select Bus Service that will eventually extend across the city and connect areas that lack subway access. A line is currently in operation on Fordham Road in the Bronx, and upgrades have been made to 34th Street in Manhattan, but the real test of the program’s strength will come later this year when operations begin on 6.25 miles of dedicated lanes on First and Second Avenues between 125th and Houston Streets in Manhattan. With only 13 stations, the line is intended to relieve the overcrowded Lexington Avenue 4, 5, and 6 subway lines and offer better access to residents of the far east side of the island, whose north-south bus service is slow.

The city’s DOT estimates that the painting of red bus lanes on the pavement and the elimination of several stops along the way will result in a 20 to 25 percent reduction of travel times. The existing M15 Limited Bus requires about 48 minutes (as scheduled) to make the trip between Houston and 125th, stopping 18 times.

Despite the effort to complete the project as quickly as possible, the city’s department of transportation (building the project) and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (to operate the line) have yet to settle on the final design for the streets on which the service will run. At a recent community meeting, the DOT revealed three service alternatives, all of which would incorporate improved amenities for bicyclists as well. Each follows a basic template: one-way bus service running north on First Avenue and south on Second in marked but not isolated lanes and improved stations. Buses would get traffic signal priority at intersections. Designs A and B include an isolated bike lane, though Design C does not; I’ll only consider the first two here, since the last would not include a vital element of any complete street.

Design A, the most full-featured of the proposed designs submitted by the DOT, would offset the bus lane and include a fully separated bike lane, shown above. As discussed by Noah Kazis and Ben Fried on Streetsblog, the proposal has several fundamental flaws: One, the bike lanes would not be continuous, as they would be interrupted by turning traffic at intersections; two, so would the bus lanes, which would not be separated from the surrounding traffic other than by red markings and which will simply open up to general traffic at major intersections; three, the bus lanes would be open to serious interference because cars will have to travel through them to reach the parking located street-side.

One major advantage of this proposal is that it would include bulb-out bus stations, improving the customer experience and ensuring that a stopped bus isn’t blocked by cars entering and leaving parking areas.

Design B would offer one-way bus service on the far right lane, unencumbered by cars entering or leaving parking spaces as in Design A. As already experienced along New York’s 34th Street and Fordham Road BRT lines, however, this type of operation will be significantly affected by illegally parked cars and delivery trucks, whose drivers have a tendency to ignore the red paint. This problem cannot be avoided unless the city chooses to fully separate bus lanes, a decision it seems intent not to make. In addition, Design B’s lack of bus station bulb-outs will mean less space on the sidewalk for everyone and a lessened ability to make stops full-featured.

As a result, each proposal currently being advanced by the DOT will be insufficient in meeting the demands of the city’s expectations. As emphasized by Ben Kabak on Second Ave Sagas, the product will be little different from the existing Limited services along the street. He writes “What is the point of this project without physically separated bus lanes? If the goal is to markedly improve transit speeds up and down these avenues, that can be accomplished only through physically separated lanes. Buses cannot wait for delivery vans to move or for cars to finish parking. They shouldn’t have to wait for taxis to load and unload.”

Indeed, New York’s approach to BRT is halfhearted. If the city wants to build a truly successful project that will attract tens of thousands of daily users and demonstratively reduce the pressure on the subway, it will have to find better ways to increase bus speeds and ensure reliable service. But what are the alternatives? How could New York build a fast-moving, high-quality BRT line within the existing constraints of First and Second Avenues, while also respecting the needs of bicyclists, drivers, and the surrounding neighborhood?

These are similar problems faced by designers of streetcar lines, who have been producing projects that will have significantly reduced appeal based on current designs, which fail to adequately address interactions with surrounding traffic.

The most obvious solution is simply to separate the busway from surrounding traffic, something that must be done if the buses are ever to provide fast operations. One way to do that would be to alter the city’s Design B and simply cut off the right-side bus corridor from traffic, thereby ensuring fast flow of buses. But that wouldn’t solve the problem of limited space for the station, and it eats up potential parking space.

If an additional vehicular lane were added to the far right side of the street, demonstrated above, parking could be accessed from there, rather than through the bus lane as in Design A. This would create a sort of Parisian boulevard, with separated roadways for local and express traffic and presumably result in a better experience for pedestrians, who would be walking next to slow-moving and parking cars, rather than speeding buses or automobiles. Buses would have their own reserved corridor and never be interrupted by deliveries or stopped cars.

As shown above, another way to address that issue is to move the busway to the far left side of the street, adjacent to the bike lane. Doing so would allow for the creation of a median station in line with parking; it would also obviate the need for a pavement barrier between the bike lane and the rest of the road, an approach used by the city elsewhere to prevent opening car doors from hitting cyclists. The isolation of the bus lane behind parking would further ensure that it isn’t encumbered by other vehicles.

There are other advantages of promoting parking on both sides of the street, despite the fact that there is generally too much parking in New York and that its presence may encourage car usage. Sidewalk-abutting parking gives pedestrians an improved sense of security and reduces noise as it acts a bit as a buffer from the rest of the roadway. As a result, planners may want to consider how to encourage its expanded use.

A final approach to this problem would be to place the bus lane in the median. This would be possible with continued one-way operation on the two avenues considered here, but that would be less than desirable, since it would result in confused traffic flow. Rather, a median busway would preferably come with two-way vehicular operation, as shown above — though this would basically eliminate any option of parking on the street because of the constraints posed by overall street width, a situation that would likely infuriate surrounding business owners and residents, making it politically infeasible.

If two-way automobile traffic is unlikely to be implemented, another possibility is making the busway bi-directional. This strategy is appealing since it would likely increase ridership, because users wouldn’t be forced to walk between avenues to switch direction. Most high-capacity transit lines offer stations with operations in both directions because of the increased legibility offered by such a system. A First Avenue BRT makes so much more intuitive sense than a First and Second Avenue BRT.

With construction underway on Second Avenue for a new subway line, running both lines on First would be particularly useful, since the current plan is simply to delay the implementation of dedicated busways on the affected portions of Second Avenue. Running buses in two directions on First could be implemented now and improve service for customers traveling in both directions immediately.

The approach above, which demonstrates two potential methods to run adjacent busways, could be a solution. On the left, busways are lodged between through traffic and a shared local lane designed for parkers and bikers. On the right, busways operate between parking and a bike path. These designs would likely limit through traffic to only two lanes, however, which may be too little for the street’s needs. They also limit bike traffic to one direction.

A final alternative, as shown above, is to put the protected-lane busways on opposite sides of the street, a choice that would allow for two-directional bike paths. This layout may be ideal. It would allow parking to switch sides on alternating blocks and provide considerable shelter for bikers. In addition, it would allow local buses operating in the right lane of regular traffic to share stations with buses running the other direction; this could open up interesting possibilities for transfers, though it would make moving between two buses heading in the same direction difficult.*

This option would also have to contend with the nuisance produced by delivery vehicles. By placing the busway between parking and the sidewalk, any deliveries will have to be made either via the sidewalk or over the bus and bike lanes. This is a less-than-optimal approach. Alternatively, the city could enforce side-street only deliveries and simply reserve the avenues to through traffic.

None of these approaches are perfect, but they all would produce faster, more reliable bus corridors than would the three options being considered by New York. Before settling on a project that will feature significant intrusions into the busway and heavy resulting delays, the city should reconsider how the project could be implemented, with an eye towards ensuring maximum speeds and safety for bus users and bicyclists.

* Note: this post assumes buses only have doors on the right side, since those are the vehicles to be used by New York City. Some new bus models offer doors on both sides. If those buses were bought for this line, the design of the street could be considerably different, especially if, for instance, express buses had doors on the left and local buses on the left. This would allow the final alternative to offer direct local-express transfers. Image at top: Projection for New York City’s 1st and 2nd Avenue BRT (Design B), from New York City Department of Transportation

In six big cities across the country — Atlanta, Charlotte, Houston, Miami, New York, and Seattle — transportation is playing a role in the mayoral race being decided today. With the economic crisis front and center, however, transit isn’t anyone’s biggest priority.

Mayor of Atlanta, GA

• Mary Norwood vs. Kasim Reed vs. Lisa Borders (front-runners in a nonpartisan race)

Update: Mary Norwood, with 46%, and Kasim Reed, with 36%, have moved on to a runoff on December 1st.

Atlanta’s dramatic growth over the past twenty years — it has increased in population from 394,000 in 1990 to an estimated 538,000 today — has brought with it a panoply of benefits, including increased density and better services. Much of the population increase has been due to an increase in the number of white people, who now make up 38% of the population, compared to 31% just nine years ago. Those changes are producing a vastly different political environment, one in which a white candidate may take office for the first time since 1973.

Mayor Shirley Franklin, who has served since 2001, was a relatively competent manager of the city’s finances and livability, pushing proposals like the Beltline and Peachtree Corridor streetcar. But during her time, the city has suffered from a spike in crime, coming in opposition to the experience of other major U.S. cities, which have seen steady declines. That issue is tops in today’s mayoral race, though transportation proposals are also getting their day in the sun.

Current polls put white candidate Mary Norwood, currently a city counselor, on top. She has been strident in her statements against crime, and she has convincingly pulled off a characterization of herself as an “outsider” — good for a city sick of eight years of the same person. But she is facing strong competition from State Senator Kasim Reed and City Council President Lisa Borders, as well as three other candidates. If no one person wins a majority of votes, there will be a runoff on December 1st.

In a series of candidate forums, the three front-runners have made their positions known on transit issues, and Ms. Norwood doesn’t seem as appealing as her poll numbers suggest. Unlike the other two candidates, Norwood lives in a huge house in an unwalkable part of the city, whereas Ms. Borders has a residence downtown. Mr. Reed is a frequent user of the city’s MARTA rapid transit network, while Ms. Norwood appears to use it simply to get to the airport.

On their websites, both Ms. Borders and Mr. Reed highlight their respective records on transportation, which Ms. Norwood fails to do. As a state senator, Mr. Reed has been pushing for a new revenue source for transit, something the state has to approve before the city can implement it. Ms. Borders, meanwhile, has suggested that she would continue the Franklin legacy of encouraging investment in the Beltline, though at the candidate forum, she admitted that “it’s not going to be soon” — a response that shows either a taste for the realistic or a lack of ambition, depending on one’s perspective.

Unfortunately, none of the candidates has made a strong claim to being the supporter of transit; while Ms. Norwood’s lackluster responses on the subject knock her down a few points, her opponents aren’t much better. No one’s proposing the sort of long-range plan Atlanta needs. Nor is it clear that any of the candidates understand how and why transit should be implemented. Disappointing for such a promising city.

Mayor of Charlotte, NC

• Anthony Foxx (D) vs. John Lassiter (R)

Update: Anthony Foxx, with 51% of the vote, has won the mayor’s race in Charlotte; the first for Democrats in 22 years; Democrats also take huge majority on City Council

Mayor Pat McCrory, who made a name for himself as a Republican in favor of transit, has spent the last fourteen years in Charlotte’s City Hall, but he declined to run for reelection this year after loosing last year’s governor’s race to Democrat Beverly Perdue. Attempting to take his place are contenders Anthony Foxx, a Democrat, and John Lassiter, a Republican; both are currently city council members.

Though Charlotte once had some of the country’s biggest transit ambitions, with five separate rail lines planned, it was humbled by the financial crisis and the sudden decrease in sales tax revenue that hit virtually every municipality. The city is planning a streetcar to run through the downtown area and some of inner-city neighborhoods, and it has already put some tracks in place. Yet with no money on tap, the project is on hold — and that’s where the mayoral race became interesting.

Whereas Mr. Foxx voted in favor of allocating funds for studying the streetcar’s alignment and conducting some preliminary engineering, Mr. Lassiter voted against those studies, arguing that it was a waste of money to plan for a project that would not get built. Mr. Foxx continues to uphold his vote, arguing that the research was necessary to evaluate what the city could or could not build.

All that said, Mr. Lassiter remains a supporter of light rail expansion, though it is unclear whether he would suggest implementing a new revenue source to pay for its construction. Mr. Foxx seems more clear in his unambiguous interest in such investments.

Mayor of Houston, TX

• Annise Parker vs. Peter Brown vs. Gene Locke (front-runners)

Update: Annise Parker, with 30.5%, and Gene Locke, with 25.9%, have moved on to the runoff December 12th.

Of all of the races today, Houston’s may be the one where voters have no real possibility of going wrong when it comes to transportation issues. All three of the front-runners, including City Controller Annise Parker, Former City Attorney Gene Locke, and City Planner/Architect Peter Brown, are seriously in favor of transit investment. This marks quite a shift for a city that for almost a decade was unable to receive any federal funding for new rail lines because of the intervention of Congressman Tom Delay (R).

Yet times have changed. The city’s citizenry sees current Mayor Bill White as having had a successful career at City Hall, and that’s especially true for his work on light rail, which has been moved forward dramatically in the last few months, with approval from the Federal Transit Administration for the construction of two new lines. Houston’s single rail line has the highest ridership per route mile of any such system in the country.

This consensus, which generally includes an acknowledgment that transportation only functions effectively when growth is appropriately planned around stations, suggests a promising next four years for this fast-growing city.

Mayor of Miami, FL

• Joe Sanchez vs. Tomás Regalado (front-runners)

Update: Tomás Regalado, with 72% of the vote, cruises to easy win over Joe Sanchez.

With Mayor Manny Diaz being forced out of office after eight years because of term limits, Miami voters will choose between Joe Sanchez, a supporter of Mr. Diaz’s work, and Tomás Regalado, who has been a regular opponent of the current mayor’s philosophy on development.

Both candidates are members of the City Commission, and they’ve had very different voting records. Whereas Mr. Sanchez has come out wholeheartedly in favor of Mr. Diaz’s big development schemes, including a new tunnel to the port, a new baseball stadium, and a big condo building boom, Mr. Regalado has been a proponent of improving conditions in the city’s neighborhoods. That position, which has favored the majority of Miami residents who do not live in the areas affected by recent development trends, has given Mr. Regalado a serious lead in the polls. That probably means no major investments in transit over the next four years.

That’s because while Mr. Sanchez sees public transit as a core element of developing the future city, Mr. Regalado is more interested in fiscal austerity — despite the fact that Mr. Diaz, even with all his promotion of big new projects, shored up the city’s finances dramatically during his time in office. That stance means that Mr. Regalado will probably do little to improve the conditions of the city’s Metrorail network, which is already cashless.

Nor will Mr. Regalado stand firm in promoting more pedestrian-oriented spaces. In the vote on Miami 21, a strong decision about making the city a more walkable, livable place, he placed himself in the opposition. Mr. Sanchez was in favor. Mr. Regalado’s insistence that the city go “back to basics” ultimately means he won’t do much to help it improve.

Mayor of New York City, NY

• Michael Bloomberg (Incumbent, R-I) vs. Bill Thompson (D)

Update: Defying all odds, Bill Thompson gets 46% of the vote, despite being outspent 14 to 1 and having been left for dead by basically the entire Democratic establishment. Michael Bloomberg, however, moves in for his third term as mayor.

New York may be the only city in the country where the Republican-endorsed candidate has a significantly more pro-transit platform than the Democrat. In many ways, that’s terrible, because Independent-former-but-maybe-still-Republican billionaire Michael Bloomberg has basically bought himself the next four years, spending $35,000 an hour to do so throughout the campaign. All this after forcing the city council to alter its term limit rules to allow him to run for a third term. Democratic opponent Bill Thompson has had no chance.

Perhaps that’s why, despite his reasonable record as City Controller, Mr. Thompson has staked himself as the anti-Bloomberg on livability issues such as bike lanes, bus rapid transit, and pedestrian plazas. While Mr. Bloomberg has given his chief of Transportation Janette Sadik-Kahn basically full reign in implementing an excellent streets reform project, Mr. Thompson has held rallies decrying BRT on some of the city’s most-trafficked corridors. Maybe he sees that as the only way to get votes. If so, it says something terrible about New York’s citizenry. If not, Mr. Thompson’s priorities are woefully misguided.

Mr. Bloomberg, meanwhile, for all his investment in nice streetscapes, has reduced the city’s commitment to sponsoring the state-run MTA, which runs the Subway system. His claims that he’ll invest in a new streetcar along the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront seem exaggerated, especially when he can’t seem to get off his obsession with the less-than-useful extension of the 7 Subway into West Midtown.

It’s not a particularly good day for transportation advocates in America’s biggest transit city. Here’s to a better choice in four years…

Mayor of Seattle, WA

• Mike McGinn vs. Joe Mallahan

Update: In early results, Mike McGinn has a 910-vote lead over his opponent; with a large number of votes yet to be counted, the lead could switch hands. However, pro-transit Dow Constantine wins big over conservative Susan Hutchinson in the King County Executive race, with 57% of the vote.

In this runoff race, it’s quite clear who thinks what. In the first round, incumbent Mayor Greg Nickels found himself cornered from the left (environmentalist Mike McGinn) and from the right (businessman Joe Mallahan) and he dropped to last in a three-way race. If some transit proponents were disappointed — Mr. Nickels had staked his legacy on transportation investments — Mr. McGinn is attempting to pick up the mantle today, though with a spin.

Mr. McGinn’s primary campaign was mostly premised on his opposition to the construction of a full-bore tunnel under downtown Seattle to replace the moribund Alaskan Way Viaduct, which sits on the waterfront. Unlike Mr. Nickels, who promoted the project, the candidate suggested simply replacing the Viaduct with a surface level road and using the remaining funds for better transit. Mr. Mallahan found himself rigorously opposed to that position; he’s made himself into the candidate of the drivers, so to speak.

Nonetheless, the Viaduct has become a bit of a non-issue in the meantime because of the fact that state financing has come through and the city has approved work, making its completion a virtual certainly. But there are still major transportation issues to be resolved in the Puget Sound. Will light rail run on I-90 or SR520? Will there be a streetcar network? Will there be a West Seattle line?

Mr. McGinn, a staunch defender of transit, is the right man for this job. Mr. Mallahan’s car-driving mentality won’t privilege the kind of long-term investments Seattle needs.

» Vision42 group adds real estate industry to its backer list, but it cannot rely on the MTA or the City of New York to foot the project’s bill. Private investment may be the key.

If you’ve ever been to New York, you’ve been to 42nd Street — to Grand Central Terminal, the United Nations, Bryant Park, or Times Square. It is the city’s main street, and it attracts hundreds of thousands of businessmen, residents, and tourists every day.

For such an important thoroughfare, however, the pedestrian experience is lacking. Sidewalks are often packed to the brim; the subway lines that run underneath are difficult to use; buses are slow; getting to the Hudson and East Rivers at either end is inconvenient. Despite it attracting a huge number of daily users, the street suffers from inadequate retail offerings.

The Vision42 group has been attempting to correct those deficiencies for a decade now, planning a light rail line that would run river-to-river and replace all car traffic on the road. With 16 stops along a 2.5-mile route, the line would traverse Manhattan in 21 minutes with speeds limited to 15 mph for pedestrian safety. A new maintenance yard would be constructed adjacent to the existing LIRR yards west of Penn Station. Overall costs, including the acquisition of vehicles, would range between $400 and $600 million, depending on the extent of utility replacement work.

Vision42′s recent report suggests that the benefits of the project, in the form of increased retail and tax revenues, would be double overall construction costs over the course of just one year. It’s hard to imagine not wanting to implement a tramway line with such significant advantages.

And indeed, while I have some questions about the line’s routing and its rather large number of proposed stations, a tramway built in coordination with the elimination of automobiles from the road would greatly improve the street experience for the vast majority of users. Walkers would get more space; bicyclists would get dedicated lanes. Access to the United Nations and the two waterfronts would be made easier for everyone, and commutes between Grand Central and Times Square for tourists and local riders would be reduced to waiting a few minutes for the next trainset, rather than heading underground in the subway’s confusing network of tunnels. People using the Subway Shuttle between Grand Central and Times Square to transfer between lines or to end a commute from somewhere else in the city would find their trains less crowded than before.

42nd Street would be cleaner, quieter, and better looking. Drivers would continue to have access to virtually every other street in Manhattan.

The New York Times profiled the proposal in an article today, suggesting that the project was gaining momentum as corporations along the corridor have come out in support of the proposal. Clear Channel has even offered a free billboard to the project for advertising on Times Square. Everyone, however, seems to be waiting on Mayor Michael Bloomberg to sign on to the project.

But the administration is more focused on the extension of the 7 subway to the Far West Side, which will serve a wholly different purpose: long-distance commuters. The tramway, on the other hand, would provide local users quicker and more convenient connections along the street, but not replace the subway, which will continue to assure borough-to-borough travel.

The Mayor mentioned a new light rail line during this year’s campaign, but it would run along the waterfront in Brooklyn and Queens. That proposal has some merit, but the 42nd Street line would serve more passengers and have more dramatic effects on its surroundings.

Nonetheless, Vision42′s expectation that the city or state will be able to cobble together the funds to pay for this project is unrealistic. The city has suffered significant declines in tax revenue during the recession, and the MTA is unable to complete the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway on time, let alone the three planned extensions of the project.

But there’s another option for financing: private donations.

In Detroit, major corporations and wealthy individuals have assembled one hundred million dollars to finance that city’s planned Woodward Corridor light rail line. Though the Michigan city faces a cataclysmic economic environment completely unlike that of New York, which is able to pay for most of its obligations through public financing, Gotham could learn something from the pursuit of new transit in the Motor City.

If Vision42 can provide hard evidence that the tramway will up real estate values and expand the use of 42nd Street’s retail offerings significantly, it should also be able to convince the land owners already assembled in groups like the Times Square Alliance, Grand Central Partnership, and Bryant Park Corporation to contribute funds for the line. Their workers, after all, must use the street every day and would be the primary beneficiaries. Though finding $500 million in private money for a tramway may seem quixotic, companies lining the 42nd Street corridor represent a not insignificant portion of the United States economy. New York is no small town.

Vision42 should be not working to change the Mayor’s mind, but rather to deliver a check to City Hall covering the line’s entire costs upfront. The administration might then find it easier to support the project.

Image above: Slightly altered version of Vision42′s idea for a 42nd Street Tramway, from Vision 42

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has never been shy about his ambitions, and he has rarely cowered from doing what he believes necessary to realize them. When he determined he wanted to be mayor, he switched his party registration from Democrat to Republican; sensing that party’s extreme move to the right during the Bush years and fearful for his own electoral success, he became an independent. In his reelection campaign against Democrat Fernando Ferrer, he spent $70 million — compared to his rival’s $17 million. Last year, frustrated that New York City limits its mayor to two elected terms, he forced the city council into a switch that would allow him to win a third term because, he argued, steady leadership is essential during an economic downturn.

Despite his self-infatuation, the mayor has been a significant force for change in terms of alternative transportation in New York. His fight for congestion pricing, a policy that ended with a dud in the state legislature after Mr. Bloomberg bungled his attempts at lobbying, would have provided the Metropolitan Transportation Authority an important new financial resource. And under the leadership of Janette Sadik-Kahn, his Department of Transportation has been steadily transforming formerly automobile-centric areas of the city into more livable, walkable places.

It’s no surprise, then, that the mayor’s transportation platform for his reelection campaign is both ambitious and well thought through. But he faces a number of structural stumbling blocks that make the plan’s full implementation difficult to imagine.

It’s worth noting the principal goals of the plan, because they symbolize an important shift in the way New York politicians focus on transit improvements — notably because the list does not include any new subway extensions, which are typically the mainstay of similar attempts to attract the public’s support, and which are inevitably forgotten as soon as the campaign ends.

• Expand City Ticket to serve all stations at all times (not just weekends, as of now).
• F Train Express Service into Brooklyn, with an extended V Train.
• Staten Island North Shore reuse for rail.
• Brooklyn and Queens waterfront light rail/streetcar.
• Next train information provided in all subway stations.
• More BRT in all boroughs.
• Commuter van service to under served areas of the city.
• Free Manhattan crosstown bus service.
• Expanded ferry system.
• New integrated RFID transit card.

These are all good, implementable ideas that would improve transit in New York significantly for the city’s more than 8 million inhabitants. City Ticket expansion, specifically, would leverage existing resources to allow the outer borough population to take advantage of the commuter rail network. They’re currently forced to pay far too much for this service, and not enough Metro-North and Long Island Railroad trains stop in Queens and the Bronx.

Light rail along the Brooklyn and Queens waterfronts would be nice, serving areas frequently far from subway stations — though there are a number of other routes in Kings County that would be just as well-suited for streetcars. And there are plenty of good reasons to improve transit service on Staten Island.

But Mayor Bloomberg has to contend with two major problems: one, the savings he promises through administrative cost-cutting couldn’t pay for all of these new services, and he’s proposed no new major financial source that could fund them, let alone keep the ever-indebted MTA from falling behind on its payments again; two, the mayor of New York has no control over the MTA, meaning that his cost-cutting plans won’t hold water and his transit improvements will have to be funded by municipal dollars unless he can coerce the state government into moving money the way he wants. That’s an unlikely proposition considering the mayor’s previous relations with Albany. He claims it could be done through a “partnership.” We’ll see.

Mr. Bloomberg’s ideas, in other words, hold little actual weight in the New York political scene. While it may sound nice to improve transit through greater funding and a MTA management shake-up, those changes likely will only be made at the state level, where the mayor has little authority.