» Los Angeles submitted an application for U.S. TIGER funds with the intention of building a downtown streetcar line. But the alignments proposed are very similar to those offered by existing rail and bus services — and each would operate in a one-way loop, a failed transit concept.

Los Angeles has big hopes for its downtown, and, like most of the country’s major cities, it has seen significant population growth in the inner core over the past ten years. Now, to extend this renaissance, the city — also like many others — is planning a streetcar line that would traverse the district from north to south. Last month, it applied for $37.5 million in U.S. Department of Transportation TIGER grant dollars, which it hopes to supplement with local and private funds to complete an initial route of between 3 and 5 one-way track miles at a cost of between $106 and $138 million.

Despite the fact that planning for the L.A. streetcar goes back for more than a decade thanks to the work of a public-private local advocacy group, the city will have plenty of competition in its effort to win federal funds. Requests for the third round of TIGER funding outnumbered actual funding available by 27 to 1. With so many projects up for consideration, anything funded by Washington ought to be valuable. But L.A.’s project could benefit from significant improvement.

The fundamental problem with the proposed streetcar is that its service pattern would overlap that of other transit lines either funded or in service today. Though there are several corridors under consideration (a final route alignment will be selected in February 2012), each would run within the general north-south corridor between Broadway to the east and Figueroa to the west and Pico to the south and Union Station to the north.

This broad corridor, it turns out, will be mostly duplicated by light rail once the Regional Connector — a more than $1 billion project — links the Blue and Expo lines south of downtown with the Gold Line north of it by 2020. The Silver Line, a bus rapid transit route that connects El Monte to South L.A., runs a very similar alignment. And literally dozens of local and rapid bus lines running with headways of 15 minutes or less throughout the day (shown in yellow on the map below) run similar routes. All of these lines are within half a mile or less of all of the proposed streetcar routes.

(Click on the above map to expand – the top-rated streetcar route based on a study of alternatives is shown in bold pink; other potential alignments are in dotted pink)

Just how many similar transit lines does Los Angeles need running through its center city? Is a route that replicates existing transit necessary? And in a city with so many major transit projects waiting to be funded, is this a priority?

Business groups representing the Broadway corridor see the streetcar plan as a potential avenue to economic growth; they argue that the line would attract more customers to their stores and contribute to a more vibrant environment. The majority of costs for the line ($50 to $60 million) are expected to be covered by property owners, who are enthusiastic about the regeneration of the area. The Bringing Back Broadway group, which has led the effort, has a promising streetscaping plan that would work well with either the streetcar or improved bus service.

Even so, it is dispiriting to see yet another city make decisions on streetcar planning that imitate previous mistakes seen elsewhere.

The first is the one-way loop travel pattern of all of the proposed alignments. Rather than running in two directions on Broadway, which would appease those who feel that the east side of downtown is underserved by rail transit, all of the routes would run south on Broadway, only to turn around and run north on another street west of there. The result? People on Broadway would have to go south, then west, then north — just to get to the center of downtown. And people at L.A. Live, where a new football station is planned near Pico station, would have to go north, then east, then south — just to get to Broadway.

That is out-of-the-way thinking that does not address the travel needs of most people. Unsurprisingly, similar one-way transit loops in other cities have had difficulty attracting ridership. Though the transit agency predicts 7,000 to 11,000 daily riders on the line, one wonders what percentage of this group would simply be switching out of existing transit modes on parallel routes, to little benefit of anyone.

There are no transportation capacity concerns here: Not only would streetcars run in alignments shared with cars (with the predictable consequences: limiting capacity, slowing trains, and disrupting services), but Broadway has a total of five lanes reserved for automobile circulation. So why not just run the trains up and down that street, perhaps with a connection at the southern terminus to Pico station? Or why not simply focus on taking advantage of the frequent bus routes that already run in the area by directing streetscape projects to their needs?

L.A.’s transit priorities are generally in the right place — focusing most funds on extending rapid transit, both in the form of rail and BRT, to areas of the city suffering from lots of traffic congestion and too few transit options. Downtown is not one of those places.

Image at top: Conceptual rendering of Los Angeles streetcar on Broadway, from Bringing Back Broadway

» Streetcar projects are advancing seriously in cities across the nation, but their quick rise to the top of municipal transportation priority lists may not be matched by sound thinking in terms of project design.

If the Obama Administration’s push to construct high-speed rail lines has suffered numerous delays as a result of Congressional inaction and state-level criticism, its decision to allow numerous streetcar projects to move forward through the federal funding pipeline has produced a veritable explosion of project proposals across the country. Yet the manner in which cities are pushing these schemes smacks of poor policy making and suggests that a better use of limited transportation dollars is possible.

The recent promotion of streetcars in the United States is something of an aberration — at least in terms of recent history. Generally ignoring the successes of the locally funded vintage 2001 Portland Streetcar, the Bush Administration repeatedly informed municipalities across the country that their transportation policies should emphasize bus improvements over road-running rail lines. Though the SAFETEA-LU transportation authorization bill passed in 2005 specifically included a provision for limited-cost projects such as streetcars (called Small Starts), the Department of Transportation under Bush refused to fund them either in 2006 or 2007 (fiscal years 2007 and 2008), picking BRT projects instead — despite significant local demand for rail.

In early 2008, though, the Bush Administration seemed to relent, agreeing to recommend the funding of the Portland Streetcar Loop — and then beginning in 2009, the Department of Transportation under President Obama pressed forward with TIGER and Urban Circulator grants, encouraging cities from Dallas to Seattle to apply for federal funds and more recently allowing project development to move towards construction in cities such as Atlanta, Charlotte, and Tucson.

Over the past few months, the interest of cities in streetcars has seemingly exploded even further. Providence has proposed a two-mile route for $126 million; San Antonio wants a line that will spur real estate development; Milwaukee envisions a $64 million corridor through downtown; Kansas City plans $101 million worth of tracks between City Market and Union Station; and Arlington and Fairfax Counties in Northern Virginia are moving forward with a streetcar down the Columbia Pike. Each plan’s proponents will apply for — and expect to win — federal funds to cover most costs.

These are not isolated examples of cities suddenly interested in a new transit mode. Rather, the relatively sudden availability of dollars from Washington, D.C. has encouraged new thinking about what kinds of transit are possible. The fact that streetcars can be built with lower per-mile costs than other forms of rail transit, their ability to attract denser development in some cases, and the possibility of farming off most of their costs to another government entity has made them incredibly appealing. Washington, seeking transit projects that are visible and reinforce dense communities, has been a willing partner in this effort.

For the most part, this has been beneficial policy, since it has encouraged more cities to think seriously about how to invest in high-quality transit. In addition, it has spread rail transit beyond the nation’s biggest metropolitan regions, a trend that arguably will be helpful in encouraging choice riders onto transit systems and simultaneously improve the daily commutes of regular riders.

But the difficult side of the story is that many of the projects are planned to be constructed in a manner that provides an inferior quality of service than the bus lines they replace. In one city, the transit agency proposed building a line with only one track, making it impossible to increase the frequency of service (the situation was fortunately resolved in a second grant); in others, the streetcar lane would be located in a section of the street vulnerable to considerable delays from backed-up and turning cars — because streetcars, unlike buses, are not able to navigate around sources of delay. Vehicles proposed for services have universally been of limited capacity, meaning they offer little improvement in terms of passenger space over articulated buses.

Most importantly, almost every one of the major streetcar projects proposed has refused to separate trains from automobile traffic for the majority of the routes, despite the fact that doing so usually requires little more than different types of paint, camera enforcement, and a few barriers, all of which can be installed at minimal cost.

This means that streetcars will be stuck in the same traffic as everyone else, making speed improvements impossible. The lack of dedicated street right-of-way for streetcars likely stems from a sense that it would be politically difficult to promote removing lanes from automobilists and providing them to transit users. Yet the vast majority of traffic lanes, after all, are off-limits to trains; why is it so crazy to imagine a few dedicated to streetcars?

These should not be considered nit-picky complaints, since the cities promoting streetcars are investing millions of public dollars in their lines — often at an expense of $50 million per mile and up. At those costs, an effective quality of service should be standard.

Fortunately, at least one city seems to have seen the light. Seattle’s recently released Transportation Master Plan recognizes the fundamental difference between what it calls local and rapid streetcars, noting that most of such projects in the U.S. so far (including Seattle’s own South Lake Union Streetcar) have skewed towards the former type, which I have described above.

The Plan notes two major possible rapid streetcar lines for Seattle, extending from the downtown core to the Ballard and University Districts that would “Achieve faster operating speed and greater reliability through longer spacing between stops and more extensive use of exclusive right of way.” Trains would be either larger or coupled “to accommodate high passenger loads.” Though significant sections of these rapid lines as currently planned would remain in shared lanes with automobiles, these proposals are the closest U.S. transit agencies have yet come to the ideal of developing cheaper light rail by effectively running it in street rights-of-way (like a European tramway), which is what the rapid streetcar concept is advocating.

Simply suggesting moving streetcars into their own dedicated lanes, however, is not always a universally appealing solution: Cities like Sacramento and Buffalo, for instance, have chosen to study reintegration of formerly transit-only streets into their downtown automobile circulation networks because they were concerned that restricting rights-of-way to trains was limiting business activity. Whether or not this is an accurate assessment of the effect of these transit malls, they were perceived as negative enough to the community that attempting to replicate their forms today cannot always be the right answer. Every city must decide for itself the best way to integrate new train systems into their streetscapes.

And yet the Bush Administration’s bias against streetcars was logical from the standpoint of encouraging pure mobility; for the same cost, rapid buses provide faster and more reliable service in dedicated lanes. In order to justify the continued enthusiasm of municipalities for streetcars, we should push for guidelines that ensure that services must be designed to operate as quickly and efficiently as possible. Streetcars may be less expensive than comparative types of light rail, but at the cost we are spending for them we should expect more out of them.

Image above: A simulation of a streetcar line in Atlanta, from Georgia Transit Connector

» A 1.6-mile streetcar line would bring dubious benefits to this Texas city.

Not all transit expansion projects are created equal — let that be clear. Sure, expanding public transportation options in general usually contributes to the expanded mobility of urban residents. But governments, as we know all too well, have limited funds. So identifying the best possible investments for the money must be an essential part of political decision-making.

Which brings us to Dallas, which submitted plans this week for a 1.6-mile streetcar from the city’s downtown to the Oak Cliff neighborhood just southwest across the Trinity River. It could be the first rail line in the U.S. to feature streetcars that use battery propulsion instead of always having to rely on overhead catenary. The project was funded by a U.S. Department of Transportation’s TIGER grant in February 2010 and it will be Texas’ first modern streetcar line if it opens as planned in 2013 (the existing McKinney Avenue Trolley, open since 1989 in Uptown and currently being extended, uses historic vehicles). Though it may generate construction jobs — one of the major goals of the federal funding program — the rail line will do next to nothing to improve the quality of public transportation in this, America’s ninth-largest city, still suffocated by its automobile dependency.

I will get to the point quickly: Though the $23 million the Dallas Oak Cliff streetcar will cost to construct is truly tiny compared to the investments other cities are making in light rail or subways, the characteristics of this project make one wonder if it is worth spending any money at all on it. There are plenty of projects around the country that could take advantage of these funds in a far more efficient, customer-focused manner.

The project violates almost all the basics of transit project delivery. Worst is its proposed single-track construction — there will not even be any bypass tracks included as far as I can tell (see update below: this issue has been partially resolved) — which will limit service to 20-minute maximum frequencies. From day one, the service will be limited to what in a standard transit system would be considered poor operations quality. And this is basically an impossible-to-resolve structural problem, since once construction has been completed, there will be little appetite for more of it in the same locale.

To put it another way, 20-minute frequencies mean ten minute average waiting times; combined with the seven minutes it will take trains to journey the 1.6 miles from origin to destination, this means that on average, walking will be just as fast as taking the train. And the lack of bypass tracks means that any future extensions would increase maximum frequencies even further. This is hardly convenient transit, and everyone seems to recognize that fact, considering service will end at 7 PM each day, with no weekend operations. An urban rail line with a service pattern that is less broad than that of a typical city bus should raise some serious questions.

If this project serves such an important travel market as to deserve the significant investment that is required to put tracks in the street, why are such pitiful operations planned?

Then there is the issue of stop placement. The line’s four proposed stops are already bordering on too many considering the short route distance. But confounding the matter is the fact that three of those stops are within a half-mile of one another in the Oak Cliff neighborhood; this means streetcar stops less than every 1,000 feet, slowing down service and increasing costs. Is the assumption that people simply will be unable to walk more than a few blocks to a station? If this were true, isn’t the whole point of the transit investment, premised on people walking from stops to their final destinations, kind of problematic?

Similarly, the two terminal stops fall short of the likely destinations of many of their users. On the Oak Cliff end, trains will stop two blocks short of the Methodist Hospital, landing instead across from a large parking garage. That’s friendly competition.

On the downtown Dallas side, trains will stop at Union Station, which is an acceptable terminus but not nearly as good as what was originally planned — line up Main Street, through the heart of the central business district (which would have increased the line’s price to $58 million). But the federal government’s willingness to contribute only a portion of funds and the city’s general ambivalence about spending any of its own money has interred that plan, at least for the moment. This produces a situation in which passengers living from Oak Cliff have an only indirect connection to the jobs center, which is several blocks away from Union Station.

Moreover, the line’s creators have chosen to design the connection between the streetcar and Dallas’ lengthy light rail network in such a way that not only makes it difficult for passengers to transfer between the two but also limits the opportunities for interoperability between them. At Union Station, where streetcars will terminate and light rail and commuter rail lines already exist, passengers will have to walk 500 feet to get from one service to the other (this is the one place on the line were short walking distances really matter!). This will make the prospect of transferring between services frustrating and slow, limiting users’ desire to take the streetcar rather than hop into their automobiles.

While the new streetcar will include a track connection to the light rail, that link has paradoxically been designed to eliminate any chance that the streetcar could one day act as an extension of said network. The connection, included to make it possible to maintain streetcars in the light rail shop, doubles-back on the passenger line away from downtown. The plan thus precludes the possibility of providing for a future in which streetcars could utilize the light rail tracks through the downtown to offer better service to the business district.* The possibility that this streetcar line could serve as a sort of tramway, with light rail-type operations in the street right-of-way, has been made difficult by this poor interlining with the light rail and the single tracking. The fact that streetcar and light rail lines are only marginally different and in fact can be made identical in terms of vehicles used appears to have passed over the designers of this project, ironically the operators of the city’s light rail system DART.

From the perspective of a government already light on funds, this Dallas streetcar project thus comes across as inept. Though it would serve a new part of the city, it would do so in a way that adds very little to existing transit options and that offers very little for service improvement in the future. Should this project be a priority for U.S. grant givers? Should Dallas, a city with troubled transit ridership, be focusing on a project that will do next-to-nothing to change those conditions?

No matter the limited benefits of the Dallas streetcar project, of course, it is fortunately not the norm in terms of recent capital projects at most — or at least many — American transit agencies. The streetcar project currently underway in Tucson, for instance, will manage to provide two-track service, reasonable frequencies, and direct service to major destinations in that city. Though this project will indeed be more expensive than its Texan cousin, it will offer far more in terms of transportation benefits and will attract a more significant patronage from day one. On the other hand, we can only hope that for the sake of ensuring appropriate use of limited government dollars, projects like Dallas’ should be curtailed.

*Those knowledgeable of Dallas’ light rail network might note that the downtown route, which runs along Pacific Avenue and Bryan Street, is already congested with trains at rush hour and therefore could not handle the addition of streetcars. But Dallas’ medium-term transit plan identifies a parallel downtown route called D2 that would resolve those issues and leave plenty of room for streetcar operations.

Update. 26 July: Turns out that, unbeknownst to me, Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson managed to secure an additional $3 million in federal funds for the streetcar project last week. These funds will be used to build a passing track, which will allow for significantly improved service and allow trains to run more than every 20 minutes. This makes the project mildly passable — but the other issues raised in this post remain extremely problematic. And though the passing track will be useful, it will not be sufficient to allow for reasonable service on an expanded system.

» Light rail or streetcar approach for a project whose proponents claim would restore the health of this city’s core?

Unlike similar projects in nearby cities like Cincinnati, Detroit’s planned light rail line for Woodward Avenue has near-universal support from just about everyone in local and state government — even though it is being constructed in a city that is shedding population quickly. The $528 million route, which would by 2016 extend 9.3 miles from downtown to the city’s borders at 8 Mile, has been the priority of regional transportation planners for years. And with federal support for the first phase of the corridor announced in February 2010, construction is supposed to begin later in 2011, at least for the 3.4-mile section from Hart Plaza to Grand Avenue.

Aligning the project with other transit offerings in Downtown Detroit, however, has become a contentious issue. The Detroit DOT, which is running the Woodward Rail project in cooperation with a private entity called M-1 Rail (which has contributed much of the funds for the start-up line), will recommend later this month the preferred alignment — and decide whether it will run in its own lanes in the median of Woodward or along the street’s edges.

The first controversy — just where the line should go once it reaches downtown — is the result of years of indecision and missteps about just how transportation planning should evolve in the Detroit region. The much-maligned People Mover, an automated rail line that since 1987 has been circling aimlessly around downtown in a one-way loop, was built  to distribute passengers coming in from a Woodward rail line decades ago, but the latter project is of course only being built now. In the meantime, the city constructed the (beautiful) Rosa Parks bus transit center in 2009, but neglected to put it along Woodward (despite the fact that rail was being planned at the time), instead locating it a few blocks away in Times Square. On the other hand, the metropolitan area transportation plans suggest a bus rapid transit line along Gratiot Avenue that would terminate at Campus Martius Park, right on Woodward.

Thus three options for the rail line’s downtown alignment are being considered, as shown below. In response to the Detroit DOT’s insistance that the rail line serve the bus center, the first two options would loop from Woodward onto Washington Street and then turn along Congress and Larned Streets to form a two-way loop running from the Cobo Convention Center to the Municipal Building. The fact that this route would parallel the People Mover almost directly — eliminating its very limited raisons d’être — should be bothersome to anyone who is paying attention.

The other possibility, which would run trains directly down Woodward, would be cheaper and faster (because of a shorter track length), and it would at least attempt to provide a downtown service that does not duplicate the People Mover. Though it would not connect directly to the bus station, it would allow transfers to the future BRT. And it would serve to highlight Campus Martius, which has been the focus of downtown revitalization.

Also raising challenges in Detroit has been the question of how the rail line meets the street downtown: Will it run in the median of Woodward, in its own right-of-way (as planned for the sections of the route further out), or will it run along the curb in lanes shared with automobiles, like a streetcar?

The M-1 financiers, whose $100 million downpayment on the initial line’s construction was more than the city’s $73 million or the U.S. government’s $25 million, have suggested that putting the trains adjacent to the sidewalk would, in the words of the Detroit Free Press, “boost tourism and redevelopment.” This claim is based on the highly questionable assumption that people are afraid to cross the street (a logic that denies the fact that riders would of course have to cross the street on the way back) and the assertion that packing eight stops on the 3.4-mile trip between Hart Plaza and Grand Avenue would be more beneficial than installing five there. Stations every half mile or so are considered standard for light rail lines in the centers of U.S. cities.

To a group of local enthusiasts who have created a Lego-based video advocating “trains down the middle,” the answer is obvious: The median alignment would be safer, faster (by 2 minutes 30), and less likely to be encumbered by automobile traffic. Their logic is sound. The fact that the route would remove two lanes for automobiles does not seem to be the issue, fortunately, so it is quite possible that they will get their way.

The bigger question, though, is the importance of this line for the future of Detroit.

In a city that lost 240,000 inhabitants between 2000 and 2010, the necessity of this project must be evaluated. The city is overbuilt — ready for its 1950 population of 1.85 million, not the 700,000 that reside there today. What is the point of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a new transit project in a place that has few issues with traffic congestion and where transit ridership has declined from 136,000 daily users in 1996 to 121,000 today, despite the much-heralded completion of the new transit center and the supposed revival of the city’s downtown?

Those who doubt the importance of new infrastructure for Detroit have a point — there might be some value in simply redirecting the funds appropriated for the rail line towards poverty alleviation. Yet there is no clear mechanism by which to do that: Poor residents of Detroit cannot simply be handed checks because they live in the Motor City. That would be unfair to the impoverished people everywhere else. Investing in affordable housing is unnecessary in a city with extremely high vacancy rates and the lowest housing prices in the nation. The U.S.’s lack of state-owned enterprises means direct public job creation is almost impossible. But simply abandoning government efforts to aid the city would be a cruel endnote for a city that has suffered half a century of neglect.

So transportation improvements like the light rail line act as an indirect approach in an attempt to remediate this city’s ills. It will not work alone, but perhaps it is worth the effort, especially if the city builds it in coordination with the densification of areas along the line, a process that is currently being planned.

Moreover, despite Detroit’s long downfall, the signs of its resurgence (or at least plateauing) are perking up. Though the city lost a huge percentage of its population in the last ten years, several areas along the Woodward rail line actually gained population between 2000 and 2010. Those included parts of the downtown and the New Center — the two places to be served by the first phase. And just off Woodward, the two mini cities-within-Detroit of Hamtramck and Highland Park, saw some growth in areas near the avenue.

Nor is city revival impossible. Between 1970 and 1980, we should remember, New York City lost 820,000 inhabitants. Gotham is now bigger than ever. Though a changing global economy and increasing interest in urban living likely played an important role in producing that turn-around, investments in that city’s public transportation system, which began wholeheartedly in the early 1980s, likely produced significant change as well. Who says the same approach cannot work in Detroit?

Image above: Strolling down Woodward Avenue, from Flickr user Jodelli (cc). Maps above: Potential downtown Detroit light rail alignment options, from Detroit DOT.

» A year after the opening of a commuter rail line to the city’s northern suburbs, Austin dedicates funding to planning a light rail line that focuses on the inner city.

In 2000, Austin came within 2,000 votes of approving a $2 billion, 52-mile light rail system that would have run through the city and its suburbs along east-west and north-south corridors. The first stage, estimates suggested, would attract more than 30,000 daily riders and serve the city’s most prominent destinations, including downtown and the University of Texas.

The failure of that referendum, however, forced those plans to be abandoned. Local transit proponents replaced it with the much less ambitious 32-mile Capital MetroRail, which opened in 2010 for a cost of about $100 million. Like many similar commuter rail lines built over the past few years, MetroRail’s limited frequencies and poor downtown connectivity have limited ridership to less than 1,000 boardings a day on average in the nation’s 14th-biggest city of 800,000 inhabitants. A bus rapid transit line is also in the works in a similar right-of-way as the 2000 light rail line, though that project is likely to be less-than-rapid, since it will have no dedicated lanes.

Now the city’s back with a new project — a 16.5-mile plan that would cost $1.3 billion to construct. It has been in development at least since fall 2009. But for some local writers, the city’s plans could be yet another disappointment for the capital of the Lone Star State. Their biggest concern: Half of the project’s tracks would operate in the road right-of-way, alongside automobiles. Though the project is still being planned, it would be submitted to voters in the City of Austin in November 2012, according to current plans by Mayor Lee Leffingwell. Municipal residents approved the 2000 project, though their suburban counterparts did not.

Because of its street-running nature, the light rail line would be a pseudo streetcar, a rail corridor with reserved lanes only along the outside stretches that connect to the new airport to the south and to a redevelopment of the old Mueller Airport northeast of the state capitol complex. Downtown, trains would get stuck in traffic like everyone else.

This has infuriated local transit advocates like Chris Bradford, who writes at Austin Contrarian. Mr. Bradford argues that streetcars may actually increase congestion and provide inadequate incentive for people to take the train instead of driving. Indeed, especially for trips across the city — not ending downtown — light rail that gets stuck behind traffic lights will be uncompetitive when people can drive on freeways and avoid downtown traffic altogether. Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a line that would hardly improve speeds over existing buses?

The alternative, however, isn’t nearly as simple to implement as critics of this new project seem to be implying.

In theory, it wouldn’t cost much more to provide reserved lanes for the light rail on the 4- and 6-lane streets along which it would run. All that would be required would be a few curbs that prevented cars from entering the train’s right-of-way.

The problem, unfortunately, is that removing lanes from car traffic and dedicating them to transit is never an easy proposition. In Los Angeles, for instance, the proposed Crenshaw light rail line is facing criticism from neighborhood advocates who argue that a surface-level project would destroy the local business community. Their suggestion: Spending hundreds of millions more on an entirely underground alignment.

Car drivers, who of course predominate in a city like Austin, see dedicating lanes to transit in the middle of downtown as an affront to their rights to mobility. Whether or not their argument is persuasive, a politician cannot simply dismiss their concerns as irrelevant. That could cost a mayor an election.

The city has been discussing this project or one like it for years, so much so that those who are developing the Mueller Airport have actually included a corridor for the future rail line in their site plans. The new airport is eager to provide its customers direct transit service to and from downtown. And a rail service that actually serves the University of Texas and the busiest areas of the center city — not true of the existing MetroRail — would be quite appealing.

Austin’s response to these difficulties has been been transforming its “light rail” program into a streetcar project, which will require a more limited investment than a subway and which would stimulate less opposition than a more typical light rail line. In terms of increasing the number of people using transit for their daily trips, this will guarantee fewer riders and ensure that those who are using the system get a lower quality of service.

Are these political compromises worth it just to get a rail project rolling? If Austin proposes to fund the line in a vote next year, should transit proponents support it or oppose it?

Image above: Downtown Austin, from Flickr user Jorge Michel (cc)

» Wavering commitment to this — and similar infrastructure projects around the country — sends the wrong message about the seriousness of public investment in better transport.

Over the past few months, American transportation projects have been canceled at an accelerated rate: From New Jersey to Florida to Wisconsin, rail programs that have been in the making for years have been abandoned because of conservative opposition to expansion in transportation spending at all levels of the federal system.

This movement, which has been grounded in claims of fiscal responsibility, has sent a disappointing message about the commitment of the American public sector to projects it has previously endorsed.

Ohio Governor John Kasich (R) made his mark last year, eliminating state support for a new intercity rail line to connect Cincinnati, Columbus, and Cleveland — despite the fact that the federal government had agreed to pay for all of the project’s construction costs. Now, he has set his sights on undermining the Cincinnati streetcar project, which was set to begin construction after municipal leaders such as Mayor Mark Mallory assembled adequate funding, including $51.8 million from the state, $5 million from regional governments, $66.6 million from the city, and $25 million from the federal government’s Urban Circulator program.

The project, whose first phase would cost $128 million to build and another $3 million a year to operate, would run about 2.5 miles from the banks of the Ohio River, through downtown and Over-the-Rhine, to Uptown and the University of Cincinnati. Though following a well thought-out route to the city’s major in-town destinations, the streetcar nonetheless has been the subject of intense controversy in Ohio’s third-largest city.

Mr. Kasich, who earlier this month announced that he wanted to cut state transit operations funding by 39% over two years, explained his logic by saying that “There’s a new sheriff in town,” according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. The streetcar, the governor argued, was an inappropriate use of public resources and thus the state’s $51.8 million involvement should be cut. If this change is approved as expected by a state transportation board on April 12, this would leave a $30 million gap in the project’s initial construction budget. The same board, upon announcing the state commitment just four months ago, rated the project the highest-scoring transportation program in Ohio.

All this was enough to encourage one member of the city council to withdraw his support last week. The fate of the project is up in the air. Without state funds, the city would either have to find more local funding or give up.

Of the several dozen being proposed across the United States, the streetcar project in Cincinnati is one of the most promising because it connects what is one of the country’s most densely built center cities to a major university. It would run through the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, which saw major riots ten years ago but now is being rapidly transformed through building improvements and infill. At the south end of the route, the massive The Banks development is radically altering the connection between Cincinnati and its riverfront through the construction of new stadiums, a park, and hundreds of new apartment units. The streetcar is a great example of orienting transit investments towards communities that are working seriously to increase densities and encourage their inhabitants to choose not to get around by driving.

Mr. Kasich, however, says “We’re not living in Portland,” and for now, he is right.

But whereas Portland grew by 10.3% between 2000 and 2010, reaching a historic high, Cincinnati lost 10.4% of its population, which has declined from more than 500,000 in 1960 to less than 300,000 today. Portland now has a higher residential density than its Ohio counterpart.

Of course Portland’s successes can be attributed to a lot more than its transportation program, which has been enhanced thanks to billions of dollars invested in light rail and streetcar lines. Yet the Oregonian city surely has been aided by an active public sector that has made significant investments in its transportation offerings. Those projects have increased the appeal of that city, making it a better place to live and one that is more attractive to companies that may want to locate there. Can Cincinnati increase its livability while its state government pulls back in the name of austerity?

Whether or not this project is a good investment or not, though, is only half of the question: At this point, the funding for the project had been identified and people had begun making decisions based on the assumption that it would be completed. The same could be said for the intercity rail line planned for Wisconsin, for example, where train maker Talgo built a manufacturing plant and hired employees after getting a state commitment to buy rail cars — only to be told months later that the project had been de-funded.

What message does this send to potential investors in a city like Cincinnati? If a city’s plans for a transportation project, even when fully funded, can be shut down because of the decisions of a new governor, how can anybody make long-term assumptions about where and how to develop? Moreover, why should they invest in a place whose politicians think they can renege on previous commitments?

Update: The Ohio Department of Transportation’s budget request, approved by the State Senate Transportation Committee today, included an omnibus provision that “prohibits state or federal funds appropriated by the state from being used for the Cincinnati streetcar project,” according to All Aboard Ohio. If approved by the full State Senate and House, this would effectively make it impossible to spend state dollars on the program, even if the state transportation board, which approved the funding last year, pushes it forward.

Image above: Downtown Cincinnati, from Flickr user Jere Keys (cc)

» A recommendation from the Urban Land Institute suggests pulling a proposed rail line out of a highway and onto a neighborhood street.

Take one trip on the Dan Ryan branch of Chicago’s Red Line and you’ll be convinced of the perils of locating transit stations in the medians of fast-moving expressways. Getting to stops is hard enough: It usually requires crossing first a huge intersection featuring cars hopping on and off the freeway; then, on too small of a sidewalk you’re required to bridge over several lanes of rushing traffic below. Once you’re finally on the platform, though, the situation may be worse: Cars are whizzing by at high speeds — producing tremendous noise and emitting nauseating pollutants — on both sides of the track. It’s certainly not a welcoming experience.

Fundamentally, standing there at a station waiting for a train makes you feel like you are a second-class citizen — at least in comparison to those speeding past in their private vehicles. And any pedestrian-oriented development generation transit investments sometimes attract is quickly turned away by these highway-adjacent locations, as illustrated by the prominent siting of a gas dispensary nearest to the station in the photograph above. Thus for cities hoping to attract increasing patronage and denser land uses, repeating station design examples such as those found in some parts of the Windy City should be a no-go.

From this perspective, the recommendations provided by the Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) Daniel Rose Center this week to the City of Charlotte were enlightening. Selected by the national organization for special study this year, Charlotte’s civic community was offered a number of suggestions for the renovation and widening of Independence Boulevard, which stretches southeast from the city’s downtown. Rather than extend a light rail line or a busway down the road’s median, as current local transit plans promote, the study group argued that an investment in streetcar lines paralleling the route on two much smaller streets would be more effective in encouraging transit-oriented development and refurbishing the city’s southeast side — its least affluent. The streetcar routes would extend into downtown and use the 1.5-mile starter corridor on Trade Street that received funding from the federal government and which is expected to open in 2015.

Public transportation offerings on the highway would be reserved for long-distance service in the form of express buses, not the sort of inner-city mobility provided by light rail or bus rapid transit.

The transit line that would, and could still, run down Independence Boulevard — the 13.5-mile Silver Line — has been identified as a bus rapid transit corridor, though community residents have argued that they deserve light rail service similar to that currently provided on the Blue Line, which opened in 2007. Decisions on mode have been delayed repeatedly because of a lack of funding for the project and a focus on extending that rail line to the northeast, though even that project is being cut short thanks to budget shortfalls.

The basic assertions of the ULI group are sound from the viewpoint of urban design. By building new streetcar lines north of the freeway on Central Avenue (already being planned by the city, albeit without funding) and south of the freeway on Monroe Road, the fixed transit service would reach into the core of the neighborhoods they are meant to serve, rather than their peripheries, as would be the case if the bus or rail were concentrated on Independence Boulevard. This would, in turn, encourage automobile-oriented uses to stay in their place — near the highway — and encourage pedestrian uses on the much smaller roads where the trains would run. If the highway is a permanent feature on the cityscape, it is not necessarily one that should be attracting walkers, the primary users of any transit system.

As journalist Mary Newsom has written, Independence Boulevard’s urban form does not jive with the smart growth principles that are implicit in the theory behind the construction of new transit lines. When it was built, she writes, the highway “Celebrated auto-oriented suburbia, the “progressive” thinking of its time. Today, as cities spend millions to retrofit auto-only areas for transit and pedestrians, Independence survives as a fading tribute to a theory of city building that didn’t work. It’s lined with deteriorating strip development, its traffic still a reviled snarl.” This is no place around which to articulate a new vision for the metropolis.

Stations along the Blue Line light rail corridor, which is located in a railroad right-of-way running directly through several of the city’s denser neighborhoods south of downtown, have been surrounded with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of new residential and commercial construction since the rail line opened. The Silver Line, running in the middle of the freeway, would not repeat that story — but more civilized and appropriately placed streetcar routes could.

It would be inappropriate to discuss this issue without noting that an added advantage of the streetcar investment is that it would be less expensive than a full-scale bus rapid transit line in the center of the freeway (which, in turn, would be cheaper than a light rail line down the highway). The relatively inexpensive nature of the streetcar, though, is also its downfall: This transportation mode rarely includes dedicated lanes and thus vehicles crawl down the street. Streetcars are not rapid transit.

Yet this may be a compromise worth accepting in Charlotte. Is a fast bus rapid transit line acceptable if it forces its passengers to adapt to dehumanizing conditions? Or is a slow streetcar that can be designed in harmony with a pedestrian streetfront a better deal for the city’s future?

Image above: Chicago Red Line 63rd Street Station, from Flickr user Zol87 (cc)

» In spite of questions over whether the federal streetcar program has a future and the death of a project in Fort Worth, local dollars are distributed to build new links in Cincinnati, Dallas, New Orleans, and Tempe.

Last week’s decision by officials in Fort Worth, Texas to halt planning work on the city’s streetcar line struck a blow to the nation’s nascent collection of modern streetcar lines, one of the Obama Administration’s biggest transportation policy moves. Local leaders backed down from a $25 million grant received from the federal government earlier this year, arguing that the city wasn’t ready to invest its own money in a project that some suggested shouldn’t be funded by taxpayers.

The decision reinforced the commonly heard argument that the federal government is encouraging a form of transportation that is not fully accepted by people on the ground. It is certainly true that Fort Worth was far from prepared to accept the grant from Washington when it was first distributed, as the city had yet to specify a route or identify a definite local funding source.

The disappointing news from Cowtown, however, was the exception to the rule this month as Cincinnati, Dallas, New Orleans, and Tempe worked to establish their own local revenue streams for major streetcar projects.

In Cincinnati, Mayor Mark Mallory celebrated the decision by Ohio’s Transportation Review Advisory Council to award the city’s planned streetcar line $35 million in state funds. After receiving a federal Urban Circulator grant this summer and dedicating corporate and local dollars to the line, Cincinnati is now ready to break ground on the first phase next year. Dallas, which won a $23 million TIGER grant for a new downtown streetcar link in February and later received more funding from Washington for an extension to its McKinney Avenue historic streetcar, now has $10.8 million more from the Regional Transportation Council to spend on both projects. And New Orleans, whose Loyola Avenue connection is fully funded by the federal government, is considering redirecting local dollars to build another line down Rampart Street. Millions of dollars in new development is already being directed to sites adjacent to proposed streetcar stops in New Orleans.

The funds once earmarked for Fort Worth are likely to be redistributed by the U.S. Department of Transportation to another more interested city like Washington, D.C., which has a major streetcar system planned but which has yet to receive any federal funds for its construction.

Meanwhile, the Phoenix metropolitan planning organization has agreed to move a 2.6-mile streetcar planned for Tempe to the region’s long-term transportation plan. Though the group will ask the federal government to cover half the project’s costs — likely to add up to about $160 million — this represents a concrete commitment to spend local dollars on the project. Ten years ago, the only city in the country that would have agreed to such a major engagement was Portland. Other cities that have received U.S. funds and which are likely to move forward with their own projects over the next few years include Atlanta, Charlotte, Detroit, Salt Lake City, St. Louis, and Tucson.

Together, this news represents a strong endorsement for streetcar projects at the local level: Interest in streetcar construction extends beyond the boundaries of the nation’s capital. The mode’s expansion into metropolitan areas nationwide is genuinely supported by a whole bevy of citizens and leaders from coast to coast, willing to put up their own funds for projects that they think will improve their communities’ development patterns and mobility options.

Nevertheless, future federal support for streetcar projects has been put into question by the arrival of a new Congress that clearly does not share the Obama Administration’s enthusiasm for this particular mode of transportation. New House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL) has supported expanding the federal pot of funds for transportation, but he has also argued for increasing Congressional oversight over executive agencies such as the Department of Transportation. The grant programs that have contributed mightily to the build-up of streetcar networks — TIGER, Small Starts, and Urban Circulators — currently give the Secretary of Transportation (Ray LaHood) decision-making powers over which projects to fund. Mr. Mica has implied that he thinks such decisions should be made by legislators; would a new Republican majority in the house choose to spend that money on streetcars?

Democrats have picked as their ranking member on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Representative Nick Rahall (D-WV), someone who, to put matters mildly, has not made much of an effort to demonstrate his support for alternative transportation. He doesn’t seem likely to be a big voice in favor of devoting more of Washington’s money to streetcars.

Meanwhile, there is no evidence that the Congress has any interest in making room for further discretionary grant programs at all, considering the complete lack of consensus on how to fund maintenance of the nation’s infrastructure, let alone expansions in the form of streetcars.

Nonetheless, the clear commitments given by some localities to their own streetcar programs indicate that there is a future for such transportation in the United States, even if Washington takes its hands off.

» In a three-way race for Toronto mayor, picking the best candidate could result in the worst outcomes for the city.

Because the U.S. political system is basically a two-party duopoly, few electoral races offer more than a singular comparison between a Republican and a Democrat. In terms of transportation issues, there frequently is little question about who is the better candidate. Nonpartisan elections offer an alternative by opening up a broader range of choice for voters.

Case in point is Toronto, where local voters are going to the polls Monday to pick their new mayor. There, three candidates have made it to the end of the race, right-wing Rob Ford, centrist George Smitherman, and left-wing Joe Pantalone, the last being the heir to current Mayor David Miller. A new poll suggests Ford is leading the race with 43.9% of expected votes; Smitherman follows with 35.6% and Pantalone is expected to receive 15%. The election has one round and is not an instant runoff.

Despite the choice this election offers, voters interested in preserving the quality of North America’s third-largest transit system may unfortunately have to stomach voting for a less-than-ideal candidate to prevent a truly dangerous one from winning. Ford’s positions are dangerously anti-transportation alternatives and could spell trouble for Toronto’s chances to dramatically improve its mobility options over the next decade. For people hoping to keep up the momentum, voters would might naturally prefer Pantalone may have to choose to be strategic rather than idealistic by supporting Smitherman instead. Multi-party electoral systems have their downsides, too.

Mayor Miller has been in office since late 2003 and has been a strong proponent of increased investment in his city’s transit capital program: His 2007 announcement of the eight-line light rail Transit City program and his subsequent campaign to get Ontario provincial funds to pay for the projects were groundbreaking and entrepreneurial on a scale few cities have dared to dream up. After all, 75 miles of new rail lines serving new crosstown routes are no drop in the bucket; if built, they would fundamentally change the ability of people in Toronto to get around by rapid transit.

Yet candidate Ford, who at the moment appears to be on a fast-track to winning this race, would discard the Transit City plan full-stop. Using rhetoric to inflame already disenchanted suburban residents, concerned that their priorities aren’t being considered by a center-city focused city hall, Ford has declared that he will fight to “end the war on cars” (words that are uncomfortably similar to those of British Conservatives). How will he do so? By eliminating bike lanes from major streets and, even worse, by dismantling the city’s 47-mile downtown streetcar system, which serves 285,000 daily customers. Ford claims that these are disruptive to the free-flow of automobiles in North America’s most-congested city, but removing the transit infrastructure now would likely mean never getting it back.

Ford’s comments are couched in familiar conservative terms of “fiscal responsibility,” but it is clear from his message that he is simply more interested in promoting car travel than transit. By removing streetcars, Ford would have to cancel an already finalized C$1.2 billion contract with Bombardier for 204 new trains at a potential penalty of C$100 million and buy 550 new buses as well as construct two new $100 million bus garages. Because Toronto’s streetcar vehicles carry three times as many passengers as buses, operations costs would expand dramatically and the number of buses on the streets would multiply significantly; meanwhile, passenger comfort would decline. How more buses carrying fewer people would result in less traffic congestion as Ford seems to imply is unclear.

In exchange for the large network of light rail lines Mayor Miller has proposed to implement (construction is underway on one corridor already), Ford would build new subways that sound good in theory but which would ultimately mean far less transit expansion because of their higher costs. But subways are more convenient for Ford because they’re buried underground, safe from interrupting the travel of his precious automobiles.

Joe Pantalone, on the other hand, has been a full-throated defender of investments in public transportation, pushing the Transit City plan as strongly as the current mayor. He has promoted a 1,000-kilometer bike route plan that would ensure increased safety and convenience for those who choose to cycle around. Under his leadership, it is hard to imagine the city falling behind in the development of alternatives to the automobile.

Unfortunately, Pantalone is so far behind in the polls that a vote for him would help split the vote enough to put Ford in office. People who want to see the improvements he is promoting may have to vote against Ford, not for Pantalone.

In this case, that means checking off the box for George Smitherman. Though his transportation proposals has been relatively vague and he has not proven himself to be willing to put his political ambitions on the line for improved transit, Smitherman has generally supported the Transit City plan and has developed a plan to fund the local transportation network through gas taxes and profits from the power and parking authorities. He has regrettably asked for a moratorium in new bike lanes.

Steve Munro, an influential local transportation advocate, has reluctantly endorsed Smitherman, suggesting that the three-candidate election leaves progressive voters no choice but to vote centrist unless they want the conservative to win with a minority of votes. If Smitherman isn’t perfect, his efforts will be improved by the decisions of the larger city council.

Is Munro right? Is it worth sacrificing one’s ideals and voting against someone rather than for someone else?

Update, 25 October: Rob Ford has won the race, getting about 50% of the vote.

Image above: Streetcar in Toronto, from Flickr user Diego Silvestre (cc)

» New route would fill a gap in rail coverage. But this may not be the most promising alignment for streetcars in the borough. Nor will the historic vehicles increase capacity.

There is, of course, something romantic about a good old trolley: Its slightly plodding pursuit of its course down the street; its frequently open-windowed approach; its clanging bells. On the other hand, there are some really quite rational reasons why most American cities abandoned their street railroads in favor of buses beginning in the 1930s. At the time, buses were more modern, faster, and more comfortable for their daily users.

Yet cities like Savannah, Little Rock, and Memphis have brought back streetcars built decades ago (or simulacra of them) and are running them on their downtown streets. Now New York City may do the same, having launched a study to run streetcars from downtown Brooklyn to Red Hook. This retrospective transportation device is not going away.

But these mobile museums are more about tourism than they are about meeting typical commuting needs. Unlike modern buses, these old streetcars are not handicap-accessible, nor are they air conditioned. Even more problematically, they often carry fewer passengers than the buses they’re supposed to replace. And yet Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez from New York City, a real public transit kind of town, has funded a study on reinserting them into the urban space. Ms. Velazquez wants a further $10 million earmark to put them into operation.

The sums we’re discussing are relatively minor, so to call this investment a “waste” of money would probably be exaggerating. Moreover, Brooklyn itself is one of the country’s top candidates for improved street transit — but this probably isn’t the way to go about providing it.

Indeed, it would be worthwhile to take a step back and consider what goals the City of New York has in terms of improving its transportation system. How can the existing transit network be improved? What routes are missing or need to be reinforced? Where should future development be oriented?

If one of the many possible answers to these questions is that the city has an interest in developing a tourist circuit between downtown Brooklyn and the waterfront at Red Hook, then this project, pushed for years by the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association and its dynamic head Bob Diamond, may be ideal.

On the other hand, if the city wants to increase capacity on its most heavily used bus routes, provide circumferential travel corridors, and encourage increased development in underutilized zones, then there are plenty of other projects that would make more sense. Plenty of them could involve streetcars, just in a different mode than this Red Hook trolley scheme is supporting.

For one, modern vehicles are very different than the ancient tramways being considered for this Brooklyn route. Such streetcars, used in cities across much of the world, have the capacity of two, three, or four buses — and they’re outfitted with modern low-floor, climate-controlled interiors. In other words, they’re designed to fit the needs of commuters in today’s world, and they do so while providing substantial improvement over the transit services offered by modern buses.

If streetcars cannot provide improved operations over typical buses, why should cities spend millions of dollars installing them?

Even more important, however, is the fact that the Red Hook route shouldn’t necessarily be a priority for a city that has literally dozens of transit corridors that are more vital to its functioning. The B61 bus that runs a similar route to that planned for the streetcar attracts about 17,500 daily users — a respectable sum, but still ranking only 39th among all the lines in the bus system. If the city is interested in finding ways to ramp up and improve the surface-running transit offerings by replacing some bus lines with streetcars, it should do so on corridors that are already the most heavily used and provide high-capacity vehicles to do so, not decades-old trolleys.

Nevertheless, there are some arguable benefits to the Red Hook corridor. As the map at the top of the page demonstrates, this section of Brooklyn is poorly served by subways, even though it is relatively close to downtown. One could argue that a streetcar line could bring in more transit users in the area and spur increased development, especially along the waterfront, where a Fairway grocery and an Ikea store are already located. And the use of heritage vehicles could theoretically be seen as a money-saving instrument, since acquiring enough to run the route would probably cost a lot less than buying brand-new tramways.

The study that Congresswoman Velazquez funded will be completed over the next five months by consultant URS. If the research had not gotten underway now, the city would have lost the federal funding, since earmarks lose their value if they’re not taken advantage of after several years. The specific route, as illustrated above, was derived by Diamond’s group after City Hall asked the organization to refine the corridor for study. URS’ evaluation could produce a different corridor plan and perhaps also encourage the use of modern, rather than heritage, trains.

Complaints aside, the work that Mr. Diamond has pursued over the past few decades is truly worth admiration. After discovering a tunnel under Atlantic Avenue in the 1980s (which could be a section of this project), he has campaigned religiously to get trolleys up and running in Brooklyn. These efforts are the work of a true and tireless transit advocate; we need more of them.