» Three intersecting lines will serve mostly circumferential routes around the Paris city core, providing fast trips to a currently under-served clientele.

In the Western World, the most significant rapid transit project currently being contemplated is Paris’ 96-mile Grand Paris network that would extend brand-new automated rapid transit lines across and around the region at the eye-popping price of more than twenty billion euros. If adequately financed, it would be a huge undertaking designed to speed travel between locales now at the periphery of the region’s fast transit network, spurring housing and population growth in the metropolitan area’s suburbs.

Announced more than a year ago by conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, the program has no assurance of being completed. While regional authorities are currently constructing dozens of miles of new light rail lines, several busways, and a few metro extensions, almost all in the inner suburbs, the national government’s program has yet to be funded thanks to its extraordinary cost. The RER regional rail program, the last major transit program conceived for the French capital, radiates fast trains from the city core and was conceived in the 1960s, and little has happened since. Continuing the current situation could mean decades of only minor improvements in mobility for the nine million people living just outside the walls of the City of Paris.

Yet the Réseau Primaire de Transport du Grand Paris (primary transport network of greater Paris) may be coming to life. This week, the government opened public debate on the project, revealing the extensive studies it has completed on potential alignments for the rail corridors, including proposed station sites. And the Sarkozy Administration has committed to €4 billion to the Société du Grand Paris, the semi-autonomous organization that will build the project and invest in eight major development sites that will have prime access to the network.

If the program is approved, the Société would take on 40 years of debt financing to sponsor the €21.4-23.5 cost, to be paid back mostly through deals made on real estate in station areas.

The project would encompass 155 km (96 miles) of new lines that would be added to the existing automated 5.5-mile Line 14 Metro that currently runs along a southeast-northwest route through Paris. Three routes would be offered: a 50 km Blue Line from Orly Airport to Charles de Gaulle Airport, via the existing Line 14; a 75 km Green Line from Orly Airport to Charles de Gaulle Airport, via the La Défense financial district west of Paris (with 21 km shared with the Blue Line); and a 60 km Red Line from La Défense to Le Bourget Airport, via the southern and eastern suburbs. Commute times for suburban residents hoping to reach destinations outside of Paris will be decreased significantly, with average train speeds a very respectable 40 mph thanks to few stations (give or take 40, depending on the final alignment chosen) and very high frequencies thanks to automation. At peak hours on some segments, trains will arrived every 85 seconds.

Construction could begin in 2013, with completion of the full project by 2023. By 2035, the system is expected to serve between two and three million daily riders.

The alternative is scary. Little new investment in new public transportation corridors would foster extreme congestion on lines entering Paris and increased automobile use in suburb-to-suburb travel; 80% of such commutes are already made by car. The inner suburbs — made up of three départements, Hauts-de-Seine, Val-de-Marne, and Seine-Saint-Deins — are surprisingly dense, more than San Francisco at 17,000 people per square mile, enough for adequate ridership on high-capacity transit lines and not sprawling in the traditional sense. Paris itself has 53,000 inhabitants per square mile, New York City 27,500.

Nevertheless, the government’s project is not universally liked. Its focus on station-area development at major business districts and airports promotes environments designed for middle-to-upper income groups; the new system could benefit real estate investors marketing to their needs more than anyone else. That’s problematic considering the Paris region’s existing segregation of income groups, with wealthier inhabitants mostly to the west of the city and the poor to the northeast. Moreover, the extension of the northeast and southwest segments of the system far from the urban core (some of which is still farmland!) seems more likely to promote exurban development than reinforce dense areas.

The Socialist Party, which controls the regional government and at least for now seems well positioned to win the presidency from Mr. Sarkozy in 2012, has advocated a separate 37-mile Arc Express program, which would circle around the City of Paris at a much closer radius, with far more stations and average speeds of about 25 mph. That project will be submitted for public debate in the coming months.

The Sarkozy government’s project is far more ambitious and encompasses 70% of the Arc Express alignment. But it could use some cutbacks; specifically, the Green Line’s southwest segment seems unnecessary. The Red and Blue Lines are each expected to attract about one million riders by 2035 while the Green Line will move half as many; even so, the Green Line is expected to cost as much to build as the other two combined.

All that said, this program is unique as it represents a major investment in a public transit project that is primarily aimed at improving the livelihoods of those living outside of the city core, not typically the first priority of transit planners. Yet it’s an especially important goal considering the increasing concentration of the poor and lower-middle class in the suburbs (both in France and in the United States). In massive metropolitan areas like the Paris region, there are few good options for improved mobility other than the provision of fast transit between big destinations — so it’s not like the installation of “cheaper” light rail, busways, or the like would do much to aid in the ability of people to get from one place to the next.

Only with truly rapid transit can people be granted easy movement throughout regions, and that’s what this project would provide.

The lines are being planned to interface directly with existing transit lines, encouraging multimodal transfers; of the 40 or so stations that could be built, 37 are in correspondence with existing or planned fixed-guideway public transportation. Bus lines would be redrawn to shuttle passengers to and from stations. And the government’s plan to encourage new construction around stations, and in fact to use proceeds from the development to pay back the costs of the system, is at least fiscally sound, though not necessarily socially so.

Update: I felt that this discussion could be better informed by positioning the project on a map showing the relative densities of the neighborhoods and cities in the Paris region. I’ve added the map below:

(Base density image from IAU-IdF)

» As Veolia closes in on Transdev, Deutsche Bahn completes acquisition of Arriva. All before much real competition has begun.

Compared to Western Europe, the U.S.’s intercity passenger rail system seems positively easy to understand, with exactly one major carrier. The Old Continent has a glut of operators providing services along thousands of miles of travel corridors, representing billions of rides every year. In Western Europe, with serious competition in play in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands, this makes for a complex system of corporate link-ups and competing systems, as the chart above shows.

With European Union regulations promoting competition in international services across the continent beginning this year and in domestic services over the next few, the system will get a whole lot more complicated. That is likely to benefit most directly three major corporate entities: The German national rail company DB, the French national rail company SNCF, and private company Veolia Transport.

DB completed the acquisition of the Arriva Group last week, making a wholly-owned subsidiary of the British company that operates several rail franchises in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands. Though the German businesses of Arriva will be divested as part of a deal with European regulators, this will give DB a major foothold in the U.K. to join with its already clear dominance in its home market.

Meanwhile, the merger of Veolia Transport and Transdev, both French companies, seems likely to create a similar powerhouse if the deal goes through as expected either in 2011 or early 2012. The merged group, representing almost €10 billion in annual revenues, is primarily involved in public transit operations, but it is advancing rapidly towards increasing its presence on the intercity rail market. Veolia announced late last year that it is working with Italian national rail operator Trenitalia to run high-speed trains into France.

SNCF has been expanding its international presence through its Keolis division, which already runs trains in Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Each of these companies is either completely owned by a national government or has some government involvement in its organization. National European rail operators are relatively autonomous in their decision-making. Still, this could produce an interesting situation in the near future in which, for example, a division of the government of Germany could operate trains between destinations in France and the United Kingdom.

The dominance of these three players is likely to upset the current deals that allow high-speed trains to travel between European countries, since until recently the major national rail companies stuck to their own countries. In essence, E.U. regulations will allow any operator to use tracks in any of member countries as long as they pay the required track use fees and win a schedule slot. DB is planning to run its ICE trains through the Channel Tunnel, competing directly with primarily SNCF-controlled Eurostar; NTV, a new fast train company partly owned by SNCF, will compete with Trenitalia beginning later this year; through Keolis, SNCF has said it may run TGVs into Germany for the first time without agreement from DB.

The sheer size of companies like DB, SNCF, and Veolia increases their ability to bid for intercity rail operating contracts in countries across the continent. This seems likely to put into difficulty the existing national operators not only in the countries where competition is already accepted but also eventually in places like Spain, currently monopolized by national service Renfe.

Notes about the chart above: To simplify matters, I’ve only included the U.K., Ireland, France, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Portugal, Germany, and Netherlands; Western Europe is larger than that, but there’s only so much to be shown on one chart. I also have included several deals that are not yet completed, included the Veolia-Transdev merger. In addition, some of the chains of control are simplified, excluding some subsidiaries sitting between corporate HQ and actual operations. Local public transit is not included here.

» Freight companies rejoice now that they won’t have to pay for passenger train delays.

It was inevitable: Distraught by the possibility of having to increasingly open up their tracks to passenger trains, the freight railroad companies have staged an open rebellion against a proposed U.S. policy that would have penalized them if they caused delays.

The rule, which was proposed in May by the Federal Railroad Administration, would have enforced “stakeholder agreements” that went along with funding for new or improved intercity rail routes advanced by state governments. In exchange for a public investment in track, signaling, and the like, freight rail companies would be required to ensure that passenger trains aren’t delayed by oncoming traffic or slowed-down cargo trains.

In the Omaha World-Herald earlier this week, reporter Joe Ruff described some of the opposition to these rules. D.J. Mitchell of BNSF railways, suggested that the situation was stacked against the freight companies since their existing lines simply are not built for trains running at speeds higher than 90 mph whereas the Obama Administration has been adamant in pushing projects that increase maximum speeds to 110 mph along freight corridors. Meanwhile, Ruff quotes Bob Turner of Union Pacific, who argued not only that the passenger trains could delay freight traffic but also that “It’s out land, it’s our rails… This is about the government regulating what happens on our property.”

This was a sad reaction from an industry that could potentially benefit handsomely from the infusion of significant federal dollars. The freight railroads have operated mostly without government help for decades. Yet Washington clearly did not approach this situation with the necessary tact, failing to inform the industry of the proposed rules changes… before they were proposed, which evidently is the way things are supposed to work.

Joseph Szabo, head of the FRA, concluded that the rules were a mistake, and pulled the regulations out of consideration, a move veteran transportation insider Ken Orski dubbed as “sensible.” Orski concluded with a hope that Mr. Szabo “do no harm” to the freight industry, a message most people can agree with but one that provides little sense of what direction the government’s future initiatives need to point. But the decision also seems to suggest that the federal government is unwilling to mess with the freight industry no matter the costs. Is that an acceptable position for the future of the national transportation system in general?

The fundamental problem is that the U.S. government has failed to produce a guiding document that lays out the national goals for the railway system, both in terms of both freight and passenger movement. The national rail plan, whose preliminary draft was released last fall, is by all evidence likely to be a manifesto of vague, uncontroversial ideas, with few specific “plans” for the country’s future mobility. This means that the manner in which the DOT awards intercity rail grants — generally on a state-to-state basis, without much consideration of national needs — is likely to be the way it’s done over the next few years as well.

It also means, in more direct response to the issue posed here, that the government has failed to mediate a compromise between the proponents of freight and passenger rail service. The difficulties raised over the recent proposals by the FRA are only the start of things. For the future of American intercity rail, the government has a responsibility to take further steps to coordinate policy so that it benefits both sides of the rail equation, but it has not done so thus far.

As I discussed last month, despite the fact that allowing trains of different speeds (freight trains are slower than high-speed trains) would (and does) cause problems, there is significant ground for compromise that would allow both services to be improved substantially over the next few years. Notably, were the government to encourage joint use of tracks in city centers by rival freight companies, other inner-city corridors could be devoted to passenger rail without much of a problem.

But that won’t be possible unless the federal government abandons the hands-off policy it seems to be enforcing through its recent decision; at some point, if freight railroads benefit from national investments in their tracks, they should face penalties if they prioritize their trains over passenger vehicles. Freight companies may own the tracks, but if they’re getting funding for improvements, they have to compromise to allow passenger trains to operate effectively.

It’s time to develop a dialogue between freight railroad companies and advocates of improved passenger rail. Improvements for both don’t have to be set in opposition to one another.

Image above: C&NW freight train, by Flickr user vxla (cc)

Would it be an indictment of the political system to suggest that most political leaders making decisions about what kind of technology to use in new transit corridors simply don’t care about the relative merits of various transportation modes? If someone were to develop a definitive formula that established, once and for all, the most appropriate technology for any possible corridor, would it matter?

I raise these questions because when put it in the context of actual decision-making by politicians in the United States, the seemingly endless debate between proponents of rail and buses can sometimes appear downright irrelevant.

Bus rapid transit may provide the same capacity as light rail or light rail may be more effective in producing ridership increases or busways may be cheaper to construct or trains may be better transit-oriented development generators. But if there isn’t significant political support for a transportation technology, it doesn’t matter; the only proposals that are built are those that capture the hearts of the people who decide how public funds are spent.

Last week Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, her region’s biggest cheerleader for better transit, suggested that for new transportation routes, “Bus rapid transit is not acceptable.” The regional transportation agency HART has yet to determine whether it will promote light rail or faster buses for one of the many potential corridors for better transit service. But the Mayor’s statement, backed up by similar nods of approval for trains by HART President David Armijo, suggests that the only politically feasible option is light rail. When voters in the Tampa region go to the polls on November 2nd to determine whether to increase their sales taxes, they will be considering whether to fund rail, not just any sort of improved transit.

On the other hand, up in Maryland, Republican gubernatorial candidate and former Governor Robert Ehrlich Jr. has suggested that he would replace the current (Democratic) governor’s plans for light rail in Baltimore and suburban Washington, D.C. with bus rapid transit projects. Mr. Ehrlich has cited what he claims are the cheaper costs of bus investments, an opinion that may have more to do with reorienting transportation funding towards highways but which still could point towards efficiency in spending, important for any government program.

There are plenty of seemingly reasonable explanations for the rock-hard support of both Ms. Iorio and Mr. Ehrlich for their preferred transit technologies, but the fact is that their statements in favor of one mode or the other are based on emotional responses, not some kind of well thought-through assessment of their communities’ specific needs.

For many politicians in the United States, light rail has attained something of a mythical status, and they’ve been able to transfer the excitement about the mode to their constituents, as proven by the recent proliferation of successfully passed transit sales tax increases usually founded on the assumptions that trains are coming. There’s some good logic to this fact: Trains are sexy and different: For metropolitan areas used to only bus operations, light rail is appealing to the popular imagination in a way that bus rapid transit is simply not because of its similarity to existing services. Even if it is possible to imagine bus lines that are just as performing as light rail, it is hard to communicate that potential to the average person before a vote.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s successful campaign to advance the Measure R tax increase in 2008 and now his 30/10 transit plan, both of whose products will primarily be new rail lines, is arguably founded on both general enthusiasm for rail services in L.A. and the coinciding promise that the plan will bring those offerings to everywhere in the region. Similarly, the increase in local taxes to fund the extension of the San Francisco Bay Area’s BART rapid transit system into San Jose was endorsed by more than two-thirds of voters in the 2008 election cycle, likely because of the emotional appeal people in the area hold for the BART rail system. There are cheaper and arguably more appropriate alternatives, like a bus rapid transit line or an improvement of commuter rail services in the East Bay, but they weren’t considered because of a lack of political will to advance their development.

The fundamental question for proponents of better transit stuck asking themselves what transportation technology to support is this: Is it more important to argue for a mode that is more technically efficient or one that is emotionally appealing? Could Mayor Villaraigosa have found enough support for his plan had it promoted a series of busways? Is Mayor Iorio’s argument in favor of light rail a response to her recognition that only it will be exciting enough to appeal to voters?

More directly: If it is necessary to intrigue both politicians and the public about a new transit system in order to get it funded, the necessary corollary must sometimes be choosing the wrong transportation mode from a technical perspective in order to satisfy political demands.

All this said, I do not want to imply that the continued discussion about what transportation modes work best is a silly matter; if anything, more research is necessary to answer the questions that continue to enliven debates about the various benefits of different types of transit. If planners can demonstrate conclusively that light rail really does produce higher ridership and more transit-oriented development than bus rapid transit, then they have an obligation to push for its implementation. If, on the other hand, they can show that bus rapid transit can provide all the benefits of light rail at a lower price, then they must do the opposite.

But planners will only be able to make their argument effectively if they are able to frame it in terms that are appealing for the people who control the public’s purse strings, both in the voting booth and behind the mayor’s desk.

Today is the deadline for applications to the second phase of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s TIGER program, which provides multi-million dollar grants to transportation projects around the nation based on merit. Cities are likely to submit several billion dollars of proposed projects to compete for a $600 million pot. Unlike the first round, in which Tucson, Detroit, and Dallas received funding for their streetcar lines without having to allocate local funds, this time municipalities are required to contribute 20% of the estimated cost of the program.

Atlanta has chosen to submit a 2.6-mile streetcar line for consideration this time. Of total estimated costs of $72 million, the city hopes the federal government will chip in $52 million; the city and the downtown development district have each agreed to pay $10 million. The rail link will serve as an east-west connector right downtown between the Centennial Olympic Park and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center, mostly along Edgewood and Auburn Avenues east of downtown. With significant local funding, more than 2,000 estimated daily riders, and the potential to encourage transit-oriented development around Georgia State University and the historic Sweet Auburn, this project is well positioned to win a grant from the U.S. DOT.

Atlanta’s previous application for the first round of TIGER grants, a $300 million proposal to bring streetcars from downtown to Arts Center along Peachtree Street, was rejected due to its duplication of the existing MARTA rapid transit route and its lack of a local funding commitment.

Like many cities applying for similar transportation funds from the federal government, Atlanta has had to prioritize. In this city’s case, though, that prioritization comes to the detriment of one of the nation’s most innovative projects: The Beltline. Unlike the proposed streetcar, which in most ways mirrors similar programs across the country, the Beltline advances a different way of thinking about how to build transportation.

Indeed, if the so-called Capital of the New South does not get money from the TIGER II program, it will be thanks to the decision to find U.S. dollars for the Beltline later rather than now. This project has for the past several years at least appeared to be the city’s transportation priority. What happened? Are city council members suffering from a case of attention deficit disorder?

The Beltline — a $2.8 billion, 22-mile trail/light rail line/development engine — appears to fit perfectly the guidelines of the TIGER program, which is supposed to support innovative thinking about transportation investments. Will Atlanta being doing anything different if it spends on a streetcar?

On the other hand, the Beltline really is different than anything else proposed in a U.S. city. Using a series of mostly abandoned freight rail corridors extending in a loop around the city center, the program would produce an elongated necklace of parks, trails, and recreation facilities. Running on roughly the same corridor would be a transit system, likely light rail, providing circumferential movement between the MARTA branch lines.

The Beltline organization agreed not to submit its demand for $13 million in trail elements to the TIGER program in order to improve the city’s chances of winning money for the streetcar.

From one perspective, this was an admirable decision, since the streetcar is closer to being shovel-ready than the Beltline transit element, whose mode choice has not even been made yet. Just as important, since the Beltline is a much larger project than the streetcar it may be able to qualify for the federal government’s New Start major transit capital projects program in the future, once more study of transportation mode alternatives has been completed.

But the U.S. DOT sponsored trail programs in the previous TIGER grants; if this is what can be done for the Beltline now, that’s worth something since it helps begin the necessary future flow of U.S. money into the program. Is it unfair to point out that Atlanta hasn’t exactly been at the cutting edge of public transportation over the past two decades, and that it may have trouble advancing two new rail programs simultaneously? That’s especially concerning considering the city’s plans to extend the streetcar up Peachtree Street. Which does the city value more: The groundbreaking Beltline or the like-so-many-other-cities streetcar?

I may, however, be asking an unfair question. Georgia is advancing rapidly towards approving a measure that would allow Atlantans to vote themselves a regional one-cent sales tax specifically designed to pay for transit expansion projects. Of the $5 billion that could be raised over the next ten years, up to 60% could be earmarked for transit. That would make building both the streetcar and the Beltline perfectly possible.

» This week’s big news. Open thread in the comments.

Follow my Twitter account (@ttpolitic) to get news in real time.

On The Transport Politic:

• U.S. Announces $8.5 Billion in Requests for High-Speed Funds; $2.3 Billion Available
• Can Bike Sharing Work in Cities With Monofunctional Job Centers?
• Chicago’s Parking Fiasco Fails to Stem Calls for Privatization of Infrastructure
• Chicago’s Plans for a High-Speed Airport Link Revived Thanks to Investor Interest

A note on the last article: In discussing the matter of access between Chicago’s downtown and its airport, I neglected to mention two important issues about such links that generally apply to places throughout the country. One, that they’re too often proposed as elixirs (even “money-makers”) for struggling transportation agencies and thus that they are sometimes prioritized over more important projects; and two, that the City of Chicago would do well if it truly thought over the value of such a connection before it pushed its construction. The second is especially relevant considering the clear current federal emphasis on high-speed intercity projects. Last year, French national railroad company SNCF proposed a bypass loop around Chicago, running through the airport, as an essential element of its proposal for a Midwest high-speed rail project, but didn’t suggest a direct fast downtown-airport connection. Perhaps that should put in question what is the more important investment for the whole region.

New Directions for the Old South series on Next American City:

• For an Increasingly Urban Nashville, the Waterfront is the Place for Change
• Driven Over by I-69

Fast Trains Aren’t Easy

For those hoping high-speed rail could be a non-partisan issue, this week likely served as an ugly wake-up call. In Wisconsin, which received hundreds of millions of dollars from the Obama Administration earlier this year, GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker has been making a big deal about how he would return the money if he’s elected to office later this fall. This isn’t new news from Walker, who’s been fighting the project for months, but now he has created a special website designed to criticize the Milwaukee-Madison intercity rail project, which he’s opposing because it would require the state to chip in annual operating subsidies. He prefers investing in roads subsidies instead.

Over at the California High-Speed Rail Blog, Robert Cruickshank has detailed the push by Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman to delay funding for the high-speed rail project between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Her Democratic rival Jerry Brown supports a project speed-up, whatever that means.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal suggests that the $8.5 billion in requests for funding the DOT received for a $2.3 billion pot earlier this month means that states are backing off from high-speed rail because of the now-required 20% local commitment. This, evidently, is too much for many states, especially those controlled by conservatives who are uninterested in putting up their own money.

Image above: Light rail at Denver’s Union Station, from Flickr user DanTheWebmaster (cc)

» Mayor Richard Daley hopes for a fully privately funded project connecting downtown with O’Hare Airport, but the city should be sure not to give away too much in the process.

Chicago, perhaps like no other city in the United States, has set itself apart as a center of trade, and recently that has been expressed in the growth of its two airports, O’Hare and Midway. With the resurgence of passenger rail promoted by the Obama Administration, it may be able to reassert its dominance in that field; it will sit at the confluence of three upgraded intercity rail lines already at least partially funded: One to St. Louis, another to Detroit, and a third to Milwaukee and Madison.

Now Mayor Richard Daley (D) is promoting a plan to connect the two modes of transportation via an express rail line between the Loop and O’Hare International. This is only the most recent in a long line of proposals designed to establish quick links between the airport and downtown; it is, perhaps fortunately, no more likely of success.

This week, Mr. Daley formed a 17-member exploratory committee to study options, arguing that private investors from around the world had suggested to him that they might be available to help finance the project. The Mayor promised that the municipal government would provide none of the funds for either construction of operation of the program, though he did not rule out the possibility of demanding state or federal dollars to aid in the investment. The new chair of the Regional Transportation Authority is likely on board, being a big supporter of public-private partnerships.

The previous plan for the express rail link, developed earlier this decade, would have included a “superstation” downtown also connected to the local rapid transit network where travelers could drop off bags before boarding trains. The expresses would run along upgraded Blue Line rapid transit tracks; the fast trains would use new bypass tracks to get around the slower-stopping local trains, providing a 25-minute ride between downtown and O’Hare Airport at a cost of between $15 and 20 dollars per rider. Rapid transit currently requires 40 minutes to make the trip. It is likely that any new project would follow similar principles, but the new committee has obviously yet to determine what plans it will advance. If any private investor is involved, changes are likely.

The superstation, located under the Block 37 project, has been partially constructed after a $250 million public investment. But the station is not completed and does not include track connections between the Red and Blue rapid transit lines, one of the primary goals of the project. Nor does it have the check-in facilities necessary to make the express service feasible at this time.

Mr. Daley’s impulse — to promote a new transportation project specifically without committing the public sector to financing its completion — certainly makes sense considering the city’s limited fiscal reserves and its other priorities, but it may also be unrealistic.

For one, reason puts in question the assumption that private investors would be willing to fund the capital costs of the airport line, no matter the cost customers may be asked to pay to ride along it. There are significant obstacles to putting the project into play, including the purchase of new trainsets; the construction of bypass tracks along an elevated line in dense urban neighborhoods; the expansion of an underground station downtown; and the possible need to create a new terminus station at O’Hare Airport. In other words, airport service of the type that’s been discussed before for Chicago would require several hundred million dollars — of somebody’s money.

Just as important, even if the project does move forward, Chicago has a responsibility to ensure that the new airport express service doesn’t intrude on the daily operations of Blue Line trains, which are arguably more important since they serve tens of thousands of riders a day. With bypass tracks, it would be technically possible to run both services on the same corridor, even as one is providing express operations and the other local ones. But ensuring the express nature of the airport trains without dedicated tracks for them would inevitably mean interrupting Blue Line operations. So even with a privately funded project, there is likely to be some loss in terms of efficiency for the publicly funded rapid transit service. That’s a problem.

Moreover, as Toronto’s recent difficulties with its own airport project demonstrate, investors looking to invest in infrastructure like public transportation may want continuous, year-to-year subsidies even just to pay for operations. Chicago certainly isn’t looking to commit to anything like that.

Image above: Chicago O’Hare International Airport Rail Station, from Flickr user ono-sendai (cc)

» As the United Kingdom encourages investors to pony up billions of pounds for its High-Speed 1 route, Chicago’s sell-off of parking assets comes back to bite.

Who knew an investment in public infrastructure could be so profitable? Or rather, are government entities being bamboozled out of the value of their own property?

About two years ago, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley sold off the rights to 75 years of his city’s public parking meters for $1.15 billion to a partnership of private companies led by Morgan Stanley. Mayor Daley pushed the city council to approve the deal, since it would mean a huge cash infusion into a municipal government facing large budgetary shortfalls. And he argued that putting the parking system in the hands of private enterprise would bring in market-based pricing, essential to improve the circulation and distribution of automobiles in the city’s downtown, but impossible to implement because of a lack of political will.

Bloomberg News, however, revealed last week that the private partnership that bought up the spaces expects to generate at least $11.6 billion in revenues over the course of the contract — producing a potential profit of $9.58 billion, twice what some anti-Daley city council staffers predicted in 2008 the city would lose by selling off the meters (an amount that at the time was considered outrageously high). Chicago, meanwhile, has virtually exhausted the initial funds it received from the deal, having done little to adapt to its local government funding shortfalls.

This situation should put a chill in the spine of those who believe that privatization of public infrastructure will benefit the public pocketbook. And it should be a lesson for politicians who advocate balancing the budget in the short-term through the sale of assets that generate income over the long-term.

Yet the City of Chicago continues to consider the leasing out to private corporations of its Midway Airport. Major candidates running for mayor in Toronto are actively discussing the possibility of privatizing parts of that city’s transit system.

And on the other side of the world, Britain’s new conservative government is hyping the lease-off of the 68-mile High-Speed 1 rail line completed in 2007 at a cost to the government of £6 billion. On Tuesday, between two and six investors submitted their final bids (currently undisclosed) for the 30-year concession that officials expect to bring in between £1.5 and 2 billion, enough to aid the cost-cutting government in reducing its deficit.

Evidence from Chicago suggests that if investors are willing to put up £2 billion now, they are likely to make several times that amount over the course of the contract. In other words, by selling off the rights to High-Speed 1, the British government may get a big boost immediately but find itself yearning for more funds several years out. What makes this agreement particularly galling is that the U.K. already had to bail out the (private) constructor of High-Speed 1 and if the private operation that runs the line eventually faces financial difficulties, the government will likely have to do something similar again, just as it has done repeatedly since the recession began.

That’s because when it comes to public infrastructure, the public seems always to take in the losses even as private companies reap out increasing profits.

Moreover, by agreeing to lease out the line, the government basically abandons any hope of using the program for the benefit of the greater good. Granting control of the infrastructure to a profit-motivated enterprise basically ensures putting existing operators in financial trouble. The infrastructure owner seems likely to demand high usage fees, and these may make the provision of low fares more difficult. Is this in the general interest of the public?

Nonetheless, I do not want to suggest that there can be no appropriate role for private entities in the construction and management of public infrastructure. But it may make more sense to keep for-profit businesses involved only on secondary elements of a project, not have them get directly involved in the transportation element.

And in defense of the City of Chicago, Mayor Daley was likely right when he suggested that only in privatization would the city ever see increasing parking fees. But that fact strikes at the heart of the issue: selling off public infrastructure is too often a response to a lack of political will to get what is needed done.

In Chicago’s case, a politician who has won every mayoral election since 1989 claims he wouldn’t be able to assemble support for raising parking rates, so he would prefer handing out profits on meters to a private group than pushing for his cash-poor city to take the same difficult step. In the U.K., an unwillingness to consider other revenue sources forces a debt-ridden government to sell off its most valuable assets rather than milk them for all they’re worth.

For the average person, privatization probably won’t appear to have changed matters much. But the money they spend parking their cars or taking the train will be going into private hands, not public ones.

Image above: Flyover for High-Speed 1 at Ashford Station, from Flickr user Elsie esq (cc)

» London’s experience may provide a useful example for American cities looking to introduce large bike sharing systems.

Bike sharing is growing rapidly as the transportation mode du jour; not only have the standardized bikes and their docking stations invaded most major cities across Europe, but they’re now headed towards introduction in a number of American cities as well. Before investing full-scale in the purchase of thousands of new bikes and the installation of hundreds of docks, U.S. planners should be looking closely at previous experience to determine best practices in system design.

Last month, I laid out my concerns that Washington, D.C.’s new Capital Bikeshare doesn’t plot its stations close enough together for the system to be effective, at least based on the manner in which Montréal and Paris have implemented their networks. The lack of station density could prevent easy use by day-to-day users because of difficulties related to finding stations in some neighborhoods.

London, which just introduced its Barclays Cycle Hire system using 6,000 Montréal Bixi bikes and 400 docking stations spread out across 17 square miles of the center city, does not have the same problem, since its stations are tightly packed in a circumscribed area. One difficulty it might have, however, could potentially be even more problematic: Because of London’s land use geography, commuting patterns are overwhelmingly unidirectional, towards the center in the mornings and away from it in the afternoons. This may put a strain on bike sharing, since to work, the concept requires a relatively even pattern of bike pick-ups and drop-offs at every station.

American cities, which feature similar concentrations of office jobs in the inner-city core and distributions of residential areas in peripheral zones, must evaluate how London is handling this problem and develop their own coping techniques before moving forward with a major spending program.

Consider the images below of usage distribution of London’s bike share, products of a mapping system developed by Oliver O’Brien. In the mornings, thousands of people bike from the outside of the Cycle Hire zone into its interior; by the afternoon, this produces a situation in which the majority of stations in the center are full (red) and the majority of those along the edge are empty (blue). In the evening, on the other hand, the movement of commuters from the core and into the periphery produces the opposite situation, where the stations in the center are empty and those on the periphery are full.

Afternoon – 1:35 PM London Time	Evening – 8:55 PM London Time
Red dot: full station | Blue dot: empty station

For commuters intending to use the bikes during off-hours, this is extremely problematic. If you want to ride from the London jobs center to the outside of the Cycle Hire zone at 9 PM, for instance, it may be virtually impossible to find a bike; even if you do, you might have a difficult time finding a station at which to dock your bike. The same can be said for a commuter attempting to make the reverse commute at 11 AM.

Perhaps more important, this situation is difficult to handle from an organizational standpoint. Because of the fact that the managers of the system want to alleviate these problems, they have 14 trucks (one of which is pictured at the top) which transfer bikes from full stations to empty ones. Other cities with bike sharing have a similar transportation method, but London’s may be particularly overcharged because of the monofunctionality of many of the city’s neighborhoods.

The worse-case situation seems to be occurring at the bike share docks adjacent to the Kings Cross and Waterloo intercity stations. There, the Cycle Hire management company Serco is simply leaving dozens of non-docked bikes in front of full stations, cluttering up the sidewalks sometimes for hours in anticipation of them being moved elsewhere. There are a few solutions that could be implemented relatively easily, including the hiring of more trucks to move bikes around and the creation of more docking points at places with heavy demand for parking.

But both of these would require a ramp-up in operations costs. One of the great benefits of a well-designed bike sharing system is that the riders can do the moving for you, thereby reducing the onus on the operator to make sure there are an adequate number both of bikes and of empty docks at every station.

Some cities, like Paris and Barcelona, have it a bit more easy, simply because office and residential uses in those cities are not nearly as segregated as they are in London, making the flow of bikes in the sharing system multidirectional. In other words, a mixed-use city is most appropriate for the implementation of a bike share system. It is indicative that the one place in Paris where there is a massive concentration of jobs but few residences — at La Défense, just outside of the city limits– has virtually no access to the Vélib bike sharing network. The city’s planners likely understood that the result of putting docks there would be the same problems as are now experienced by London, and have resisted expanding the system into that business district.

But most American cities have no choice but to include their primary, monofunctional, business districts in their bike sharing plans simply because those business districts are in the center of the city. It will be interesting to watch Washington, D.C. and other cities attempt to cope with the problem of the unidirectional commute as their inhabitants get used to biking to and from work, but London’s experience makes clear what they’re likely to experience.

Images above: London Cycle Hire bikes being moved about the city, by Flickr user Tom Anderson (cc); and Status of London’s Cycle Hire stations (17 and 18 August 2010), from OOBrien.com (cc)

» New applications require state commitment of at least 20% of costs for the first time.

For those searching for evidence that interest in high-speed rail extends beyond the borders of the District of Columbia, look no further than the announcement yesterday by the United States Department of Transportation that it has received 77 applications worth $8.5 billion for the agency’s next allocation of construction grants. States have oversubscribed to a program that only has $2.3 billion in Congressionally approved funds to distribute this year — and have done so after committing to paying at least 20% of project costs.

In January, the DOT released $8 billion in funds to a select group of projects; at that time, states submitted more than $100 billion in proposals. But there was no obligation then for states to contribute to those programs, thus this most recent announcement demonstrates a solidification of state support for high-speed rail.

The federal government is expected to announce the winners of the award dollars on September 30th.

This time around, ten states have submitted applications worth $7.8 billion for long-term, large-scale corridor development and eighteen states have asked for $700 million in construction-ready, relatively small-scale projects. Depending on their specific demands, states have submitted their requests in single or multiple applications. But all states will be required to demonstrate local support for one-fifth of project costs in order to receive federal grants. As calls for Congress to limit spending in the future seem to be increasing, there is a strong likelihood that the DOT will make such contributions mandatory when considering allocations from now on.

The free ride for federal stimulus grants has come to an end. And that’s a good thing, because only states that are investing their own funds should benefit from national dollars. In the past, the U.S. DOT has awarded states only a portion of the funds that they initially request because of a desire to distribute nationwide and a general limitation of overall funds.

States that have applied (the data on the chart above is incomplete, pending more information) generally represent the usual suspects. Florida and California, pursuing the nation’s only two true high-speed rail programs, each have requested more than one billion dollars. For Florida, a full grant award would mean enough money to complete the Tampa-Orlando high-speed project. Though the federal government is unlikely to provide the entire amount requested this fiscal year, the Obama Administration has made clear that it considers the Florida project one of the most important, since it will be the first fully new corridor and represent a milestone for fast train systems in North America. So the Sunshine State will undoubtedly get some money later this fall and the rest of the funds next year.

But California has made a much larger local contribution than its eastern peer, its voters having approved a $10 billion contribution to the San Francisco-Los Angeles corridor in 2008. The state’s $1.58 billion request is relatively minor considering the program’s more than $40 billion total cost and the fact that the federal government has only approved $2.34 billion thus far. But the state is clearly limiting its ambitions; California has asked for $582 million for corridor improvements along existing intercity rail corridors and $1 billion for one of four new high-speed corridors.

California’s move may also be motivated by an interest in pushing away from the state’s responsibility the decision about which section of the full San Francisco to L.A. line to begin with. Four projects “of independent utility” are feasible for a cost of about $1 billion, including the electrification of the existing Caltrain line between San Francisco and San Jose; the construction of new track between Los Angeles and Anaheim; the construction of new track between Bakersfield and Fresno; and the construction of new track between Merced and Fresno. Each of these projects will be necessary for the full program, but if that is put off for years or even decades, these projects will be operable alone.

Yet the High-Speed Rail Authority likely wants to avoid picking one to prioritize since that would make it appear interested in one part of the state more than another; that’s why the federal government is asked to decide, a smart political move. From that perspective, Washington has a hard choice: If it picks one of the former two sections, in the Bay Area or Los Angeles metropolitan areas, it would be doing more for people today on commuter routes; on the other hand, if it picks one of the latter two sections, in the Central Valley, it is more likely to aid more in the completion of the full high-speed program.

New Jersey has asked for $885 million, mostly for the Portal Bridge project that will increase capacity along the Northeast Corridor.

Illinois and Iowa have applied jointly for a $248 million grant to connect Iowa City, the Quad Cities, and Chicago with a new intercity rail route. This project would eventually allow two daily round trips between the destinations with maximum speeds of 79 mph.

Other states have submitted minor applications for less noteworthy projects. New York has a number of small projects on its priority list that would, among other things, replace signals between New York City and Albany; construct new stations in Schenectady and Niagara Falls; and improve track in the Syracuse area. North Carolina has asked the federal government to provide $290 million to improve the main line between Raleigh and Charlotte with new bridges and track improvements for better stations in several cities. Connecticut wants $220 million to match the $260 million it has already pledged to improve services along the corridor between New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield. Michigan has a series of projects worth $385 million (of which the federal government would pay $308 million) to speed operations between Chicago and Dearborn. And Massachusetts has requested $32.5 million to expand its South Station from 13 to 20 tracks.

Other projects have been submitted for funding as well but I do not have information on them at this time.

With the exception of Florida and California, each of these applications represents steady but not radical improvements in the nation’s existing passenger rail system. All of them are reasonable investments, especially since states have committed to paying some of the costs, but funding limitations at the U.S. DOT will continue to be an obstacle in the way of real advancements towards true high-speed rail.

Map updated 28 August