But will it get Tony Soprano out of his Suburban?

They're testing a fancy new luxury DMU in Princeton, N.J. It's cheap to operate and has "spaciously designed restrooms." One of these days, DMUs will catch on in America, and we'll have more frequent service, less pollution and more routes.

"This car is great for an area like Princeton," said Arthur Rader, director of sales for Colorado Railcar, which manufactures the prototype. "The only way to get a guy out of his Lexus and into commuter rail is to give him something that looks like his Lexus."

Well, I know some Crips in LA who know another way to get a guy out of his Lexus, but this may be better for traffic-reduction purposes.

"That's certainly more steel than I can make in my backyard"

New subway in Shenzhen.

And yes, the only reason for this post is so I could run that headline.

I Always Knew New Jersey Was in the Dark Ages

In an effort to speed transaction times, New Jersey Transit is investing $10.9 million in upgrading its ticketing machines (and for ongoing maintenance.) But, no, they aren't putting in cool new machines like New York or D.C. Instead, they're spending the money on putting faster printers and DSL lines for credit card transactions into their current machines. That shound bring their machines up to about 1999 standards.

For more, see The Jersey Journal.

Creeping paranoia

Deported for making a home movie? I really hope security doesn't make trains as unbearable as planes.

The 9 Line is a Mighty Fine Line

The MTA should really reconsider ending 9-train service, for no reason other than the fact that it (along with the indistinguishable 1-line) is the train I took to school for many years.

I like the ring of the announcements at express stops -- "1-2-3 and 9 trains" just sounds better than "1-2 and 3 trains."

OK, I have no real reason. Leave me alone.

~$110 fares to Europe?

It may just happen, reports the Torygraph. This could mean a whole new generation of Americans who visit Europe more than once in a lifetime. Could low airfares be the end of ignorant Euro-bashing? Perhaps. But then again, the people burning Citroens in the streets aren't the kind of people who would take advantage of a cheap trip to Europe anyway on moral grounds. Their loss.

Connected to this is the new 7E7 Dreamliner, a new plane from Boeing that is supposed to be far more fuel-efficient than its predecessors. Since fuel is one of the major marginal expenses incurred by an airline and a rising one to boot, an efficient jet could mean long-haul discounters springing up everywhere. Fantastic!

We gonna rock down to... Second Avenue

Via Gothamist, we learn the NYC MTA will approve RFPs for the long-awaited Second Avenue subway.

This plan has been in the works for the better part of the last century, so I'd be surprised to see this current spurt of activity turn into actual bricks-and-mortar. Aside from the whole "we probably don't have $16 billion to kick around" issue, the main opposition to this will be the old ladies who ride the M15 and M31 buses up and down the Upper East Side, who fear "those people" coming into their neighborhood from the scary far reaches of the city. As if they couldn't just walk or take the bus.

You know, the proposed station sorta looks like London Bridge station on the Jubilee Line in London.

Portland's Yellow Line

The new Portland Yellow Line light rail trains are scheduled to start running this Saturday, according to an AP Wire story. Trains are expected to carry around 14,000 passengers per day.

Image Courtesy TriMet

Why PRT Will Ultimately Fail

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the issue of Personal Rapid Transit as of late. As a middle-school nerd, I was fascinated by the ideas of science fiction writers who predicated a world of the future where you could go anywhere you wanted by pneumatic tube or other similar, futurist versions of PRT. As a adult, I'm still fascinated by the concept but realize that it actually doesn't fit with how historical development occurs.

There are two types of development, in terms of how technology develops. The first is linear development, where innovation leads to bigger and better versions of the same thing (e.g., automobiles now versus automobiles in the 1940s). The second is when a disruptive technology undercuts an existing product with a completely different product that serves a similar function (e.g., 3.5" floppy disks versus USB key drives or even CD-ROMs).

Here on Third Rail we often compare PRT to automobile use, because they serve similar functions - carry a few people (who generally know each other) from point A to point B. PRT is generally different from regular transit, which carries a large number of people (who generally don't know each other) from somewhat close to point A to somewhat close to point B. Therefore, I'm comfortable equating PRT with automobile use - people who take PRT are the people who would otherwise drive, but don't want to deal with the hassle of parking, paying insurance, etc.

The point of the argument, then, is this. PRT is not designed to replace mass transit (subways, light rail, and trains). It's designed to replace automobile use.

For PRT to successfully replace automobiles, it would have to be a disruptive technology, meaning it would have to have a major benefit over automobiles that would so undercut the automobile market that everyone would switch to PRT in a short period of time.

The reality is that PRT does not and cannot do this -- and the reason is that the linear development of automobiles will negate the need for PRT.

The major benefits PRT from the consumer perspective are:

1) no need to own a car
2) no need to drive the car
3) no need to park a car

We know that automobile manufacturers are already working on systems to remove a human driver from the equation. In twenty to thirty years, people won't need to drive their own cars - they'll be able to push a button on their dashboard and have them driven for them.

And we know the problem with parking is not that there isn't enough land to store all the cars. It's that there isn't enough land to store all the cars where people want to park. If you have an automated driving system, cars can self park several miles away, and you can call them up when you need to use them.

Which basically means, automobiles will ultimately develop into what current activists are calling PRT. And they're better suited to do so. We don't need to construct obtrusive elevated rails for PRT. We already have millions of miles of rubber streets which are prepared to handle the traffic. We already have auto manufacturers who can build the cars to individual specifications. We already have federal and state funding massive focused on paying for roads and street infrastructure.

All-in-all, we already have a system designed for PRT. It's just that PRT won't be in the form of elevated rail and individualized cars, because it won't be necessary. PRT doesn't have the added benefit to be a disruptive technology; its functionality will simply be incorporated into the automobile, bringing all the benefits of PRT without a major overhaul of the existing system.

NOTE: Please keep in mind, however, that I still firmly believe that public transportation is vastly more important than automobiles and should be the focus on significant funding increases. The reason for this is that most forms of rapid transit have the benefit of carrying much large quantities of people than automobiles and have other significant benefits. PRT, however, is a system that is destined to fail and funding efforts should be focused on heavy and light rail transit, where real improvements can be made.

$4 Million for PRT

Minnesota is ponnying up $4 million toward personal rapid transit, according to a Star Tribune article. THe state is looking to provide part of thefunding for a testingand training facility for PRT to be run by Taxi 2000. At present, Taxi 2000 is convincing Minneapolis that they could be a self-funding 32 mile PRT streach in downtown for under $600 million.

Which puts it at about $18.75 million a mile. Light Rail construction average $70 million per mile. Somehow I'm having trouble believing that PRT is a fourth the cost of light rail, no matter how efficient and effective they are at building it.

The free market it ain't

An op-ed piece in the Portland Oregonian explains how our suburban and car-oriented nation got that way through massive public investments and tax breaks, not on laissez-faire free choice alone. Could different incentives created a different way of life? Perhaps.

Sofrigginawesome

NYT profiles the short-line maglev train from Shanghai to the airport and concludes, as I do, that it's really, really cool, but a bit of a waste to have an eight-minute trip at 268 miles per hour. But if this thing becomes economically vaible any time soon, you can bet on two things -- one, that we'll start to see it in the U.S. replacing commuter planes and two, that we will be using Chinese imports. It may cost a little bit more to be first, but they payoffs could be immense.

Correction: An alert reader informs us the trains are from Germany. So if we ever get maglev here, we will likely be using German imports.

Bad Week for Trains

It's been a bad week for trains. Two North Korean trains collided and exploded in a train station today. The trains were likely carrying oil and petroleum gas. Initial reports indicate there may be almost 3,000 injured or killed.

More: CNN - AP (via L.A. Times) - Reuters

RJ just has to add: The headline in tomorrow's Pyongyang newspapers will be: "Glorious people's revolutionary train explosions throroughly compatable with Juche idea and advances society, Dear Leader and Light of the World announces to adoring throngs of charred bodies."

Fine with me

The government fined Metronet, the operator of several London Underground lines, about $19 million for delays and accidents.

It sort of makes you wish such options were available every time the Red Line conks out during the Friday morning rush (which is about three times in the last six months, far better than most tube lines). But who would you fine? And would the fines come from your fare?

Free speech on subway ads

Big hearing next week on whether free speech extends underground. Basically, as mentioned in DCSOB, our sister blog, the question is whether Metro can sell ad space to a nonprofit that advocates changing a law Republicans like (namely marijuana prohibition).

Not advocating breaking a law, but changing it.

Speaking of marijuana prohibition, ¡Felíz cuatro veinte!

Test Your Transit Knowledge

Watson Adventures commemorates the New York subway’s 100th year with a pop quiz. How much do you know?

The Lighter Side of Transit

CNEWS, your one stop shop for all things Canadian reports the following:

High-flying Hong Kong has found a down-to-earth solution to the problem of hauling construction materials to a mountainside cable-car project: an imported team of Canadian mules.

On a completely unrelated note, also from CNEWS, Vancouver Greeds Dalai Lama. (not my typo)

NY Rail Deathmatch, Round 2

RJ3 beat me to this story by about 2 minutes.

This morning a Long Island Rail Road train commuter train and an empty Amtrak train collided this morning outside of New York's Penn Station, Bloomberg.com reports. Injuries seem minimal (Bloomberg reports 11; Reuters, 30) with no fatalties, as the trains were moving slowly through the tunnels outside Penn Station in NY.

The LIRR train limped into Penn Station, so injuries to the trains weren't life threatening either, it appears. The real question in my mind is why Amtrak routinely has such bad luck with train crashes.

Update: Injury rate is now at 130, reports CNN.

LIRR Smackdown 2004

Commuter v. intercity in a New York City tunnel.

How to drive riders from a train station

1. Take one train station in the entire nationwide interurban network.

2. Make sure it's convenient to another station on the same line and to an interstate highway running next to the train line, so people can go elsewhere to avoid hassles.

3. Implement security measures that don't exist elsewhere on the system.

4. Rinse. Repeat.

The lack of an invasive security system is one of the factors making train travel in the northeast corridor faster than short-hop plane routes between many destinations. Turning tran stations into airports will drive people off the rails and on to the roads.

To paraphrase Dave Chapelle's famous standup routine, terrorists haven't attacked an American train for the same reason they don't like to take minority hostages -- the result would be complete ambivalence on the part of the government and most of the populace.

Marta, Marta, Marta

OK, that headline was really, really lame.

Anyway, MARTA, the small transit agency covering Atlanta, got screwed by the state budget again.

Atlanta, with its dual beltways, proves you can't pave your way out of congestion. When will they discover a more balanced approach?

Other options to Dulles

I know a lot of people who read this blog (probably about 6 of the 10) think BRT is a bit of a cop-out -- an excuse to do as little as possible by using an unappealing mode of transport and creating another lane of road easily convertable to highway use when unrealistic ridership estimates aren't met.

But perhaps it's worth examining for a solution to the problem of getting to Dulles Airport.

The current version of the Dulles rail proposal has a train running from the West Falls Church Metro, which requires a transfer to go into the city and stops at points in between -- an express line to the city is not possible since there are only two tracks already at capacity running in the I-66 median. The trip will take too long and requires a transfer at WFC, which is never a good thing when carrying luggage. It will also take years to complete, with the accompanying construction woes.

If plans are already in the works to run a BRT line along K Street from Union Station to Georgetown, why not run a spur from K Street to I-66 (where it can run along the shoulder) to a special lane on the Dulles Toll Road. Sattelite technology allows for the use of Metrorail farecards with distance-based pricing instead of just exact change, and other spur lines could continue elsewhere. Service along K Street would increase due to the added spurs and service to Tysons and Herndon would be possible as well without slowing down Dulles riders.

Worried people won't use it? Mark it on the Metro map, perhaps with a thin purple line. As it stands now, Dulles isn't even on the map.

Why not?

Privatized Rail Projects in the the Capital Area?

The Washington Post reports today that the Commonwealth of Virginia is attempting to turn over to a private partnership the project to build a rail extension to Dulles Airport. The project is the third most expensive rail proposal in the nation and has met significant challenges since its inception.

The private partnership, called Dulles Transit Partners, is made up of Bechtel Corp. and Washington Group International. The Commonwealth has a draft agreement with the partnership, but is apparently waiting for Federal Transit Administration approval before finalizing it. To date, the FTA has never approved a similar deal. The Post notes that, "there is no opportunity for public review until the deal is signed and becomes binding."

The Light Rail Bandwagon

Indianapolis is the latest city to jump on the light rail bandwagon. They recently selected a route for the city's first rapid transit system, according to the Indianpolis Star. And while the technology hasn't officially been finalized yet, the choices are BRT, Light Rail, or Automated Guideway Transit. Given that we know just how effective AGT is (sing along with me now..."Monorail. Monorail. MONORAIL!"), and that BRT is often the choice only when funding is completely gone, we're left with light rail -- again.

Doesn't any one (other than Thailand) build heavy rail subways anymore?

If you think this is cool, you need help

Btu per passenger-mile of major American mass transit systems.

OK, off to the loony bin now.

Strike No More

The Twin Cities transit strike is finally over, according to Workday Minnesota.

The 41-day Metro Transit bus strike will likely come to an end under a tentative agreement reached early this morning, Gov. Tim Pawlenty announced. Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1005 confirmed the settlement will be brought before its membership.

The full union is expected to vote on the tentative agreement later this week. If the agreement is approved, Chairman Bell said bus service could be restarted as early as Saturday.

Bangkok subway opens

Now we get to see whether one of Asia's most congested cities takes to alternative modes of transportation.

It looks like they have those suicide-prevention doors like the ones stopping would-be jumpers at Westminster Station in London and all over the St. Petersburg system:

And if you can read Thai, here's a map of what the finished system will look like.

Fun with graphics

Over the next few days/weeks, I'll be working on some choices for the header graphic. Click below for some more possiblities.

The three-hour commute

Even on the weekends, getting to Mount Pocono from New York City is a 2.5 hour journey. As someone who couldn't deal with the 75-minute Baltimore-DC commute, I have no idea how these people live their lives.

What do we have to thank for this? The differential in the tax treatment of new home and repair loans, the antiquated property tax assesment system and the unequal state financing of schools.

Thousands of people commuting from Pennsylvania to New York is not the natural course of things -- it's the result of years of deliberate policies that destroy central cities and favor destruction and expansion over rebuilding.

The L train: not just cool because of the starving artists that ride it

If you're headed out to Billsburg to spend a lazy Saturday afternoon quietly getting smashed at the Brooklyn Brewery or taking a self-guided Notorious B.I.G. Reality Tour in Bed-Stuy, the train to take you there will soon be operated by a burly unionized robot with a thick accent that reminds you to "Washdaclosindaws."

Well, not really. The new L trains have automated announcements by radio personality Charlie Pellett for a few years now, and the system isn't really robot-driven -- it's a computerized communication system that allows trains to run closer to one another and will one day make on-platform information on when the next train will arrive possible in the century-old system.

Freedom to travel anonymously?

One of the many advantages of living in the United States as opposed to, say, the Soviet Union circa 1950 is that you can live wherever you like without need for a residency permit. If I wake up tomorrow and decide I'd like to live in Milwaukee, I can pack up my bags, drive to Milwaukee, sign a lease and do so without standing in line at a government office to get papers signed.

This is a good thing.

However, while Americans can relocate or visit where we want and when we want, we are losing the ability to do so without some government agency finding out.

Growing up in New York, I paid for subway trips in cash and gained entry with a token, a completely untracable transaction that never generated a paper trail or a log record in a computer. You can now only travel with a stored-value Metrocard, which, while disposible, is tracable by police if you still have the card in your possession.

Some transit systems, like Washington's Metrorail, offer a sturdier card that can hold more money and can be "wanded" over a sensor instead of going through the gate reader. Although it could save me a fraction of a second on each trip, adding up to two or three precious saved minutes after years of use, I choose not to, since the card is delivered by mail and thus connected to me by name. As a law-abiding citizen, I don't fear my current government all that much on an individual level, but I fear a future government or marketing firm inheriting years of information on where and when I travel.

In London, it's even scarier. For some passes, a serial number written on the card is connected to a serial number on a photo ID badge that riders have to bring on every Tube trip. Therefore, with a few more controls (like a requirement to provide another photo ID to get the Tube ID), no pass can be purchased without first identifying yourself and linking your pass (and the data it generates in central computers) with a name. A few policy changes justified by terror threats, and Transport for London could easily take away the ability of Londoners to use the Tube without identifying themselves.

Paranoia about some future totalitarian government aside, why is this bad? Think of the children.

In Wisconsin, Gov. Jim Doyle recently signed legislation requiring libraries to turn over a minor's book records to parents upon request. In my opinion, there is inherent value in allowing children to see things parents don't want them to see. Parents have some rights over their children, but locking them up in an information straightjacket until their 18th birthday is probably not one of them. If that were the case, there would be no broadcast TV or radio on the same grounds naughty words allowed on cable are not allowed on broadcast (which is complete bollocks, but anyway): parents have the right to keep some things out of their homes and away from their children. The Wisconsin law and others like it essentially say parents should have the same rights to stop their kids from hearing a cable comedian make a weed joke as to stop them from reading Darwin.

Now let's talk about how this relates to transit. If you have IDs linked to the transit payment system, parents may one day be able to demand a transit agency tell them where their kid has been. This would have been a disaster for me. I can remember many happy afternoons after school buying fireworks in Chinatown, exploring forbidden sectors of town or just hanging out with friends when I told my parents I was studying at the library. I haven't had to determine the cosine of anything in years and nobody has ever asked me what year the Defenstration of Prague took place, but my secret little trips have taught me lessons I still use today, such as how not to get my hand blown off when handling an incindiary device. Was the example little silly? Perhaps. But I could just have easily been studying a religion my parents thought was heresy or doing something else more noble-sounding.

Don't think private companies would solve this problem, either. Before the US turns facist and Subcommandante Ashcroft goes after people who visit red-light districts on a regular basis, some company will get the idea that they can effectively target customers by figuring out where they travel. Whether you end up drowning in a pile of junk mail instead of a vat of boiling oil, it's still a violation of privacy.

It's already happening with cars and congestion charging. The London congestion charge scheme has cameras that read information from your car and uses a database to figure out whether or not you've paid. Efficient for them, scary for the person who would like to drive where they please without the intelligence services knowing.

Fee-for-use enthusiasts elsewhere have advocated using this technology on non-limited access roads where toll booths for those who choose not to participate in the identification system can pay are impossible. Soon, road pricing schemes will mean the loss of the right to drive or ride wherever you want without first "registering" with the government by identifying yourself and paying.

Creativity in Motion

In a boon for creativity, Charlotte, N.C. is converting a old trolley barn into a new trolley barn, as part of it's goal to run historic streetcars through downtown, according to a Miami Herald/Knight Ridder/Tribune report:

Charlotte Area Transit System officials have started work to restore the barn that has stood on Bland Street and South Boulevard for at least 90 years.

Designs aren't complete yet, but CATS and Charlotte Trolley Inc. officials hope to give the barn two fronts. The front facing the rail line running into uptown will be the functional face of the building. Six archways are planned. Four will be used for trolleys. The other two will house the building's other services.
[...]
CATS intends to operate trolleys running on electric lines uptown once it gets the necessary approvals from county officials and can train trolley employees. Service -- delayed several times already -- is expected to start in a few months, CATS officials said.

The idea is to use the barn as a catalyst for development around the area.

[Picture courtesy Charlotte Trolley - Additional Information]

Cops and conductors

NYPD is getting training on what to do in case of a terror attack in the subway, but MTA workers are not. Complaints ensue.

I'm with the transit union on this one, since a track bomb is far more likely to be discovered by a maintainance crew than by a subway cop, most of whom spend their time trying to stay awake while guarding the system's under-river tunnels.

But I still have a problem with the language used here. Since when is anyone "prepared" for a terrorist attack? Obviously, there should be procedures for re-routing trains, evacuating the injured and stabalizing infrastructure to prevent additional damage, but can MTA really be prepared in the same way it can be for a forecasted snowstorm?

How new is the DMU?

In this article, diesel multiple units (DMUs) are being touted as a new invention. While the concept of combining a diesel engine with a passenger car is indeed strange here in America, it has been widespread elsewhere for years. I took one from West Drayton to Oxford (via Slough) on my recent trip to the UK, and I appreciated the more frequent service allowed by the smaller trains.

It would be hard to imagine a huge MARC locomotive dragging two cars between Baltimore and Washington once every few minutes instead of the current setup, which involves very long trains running every hour or so. Assuming they raise the platforms, service could be far faster and more frequent at a reduced cost.

Service to Nowhere

The Toledo Blade reports on a new study by the Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments, which finds that 57 percent of jobs in the metro area can not be reached by public transportation. Thirty percent of Toledo's densely-populated areas are not covered by transit service.

On the surface, this would argue for a massive expansion of transit service. Unfortunately, previous experiments with that have not gone well:

Several recent TARTA efforts to expand service in suburban areas have achieved mixed results. A new route between downtown Toledo and Toledo Express Airport, among the destinations survey respondents listed as desired, has attracted minimal ridership during its first three months of operation - on average, 5.5 riders per day during March - despite a $2 fare. [W]ith an operating cost of more than $40 per hour, the airport bus needed a per-passenger subsidy of nearly $129 last month alone.

Which leaves a serious concern. City governments need to provide transit service to link up people with jobs -- we're clearly shown that with the massive unemployment rates in the inner city market as compared with the exceptionally low unemployment in the suburbs. But simply providing transit service isn't enough, as Toledo's example shows. The issue lies in not only setting up the right routes but figuring out what will make people actually use those routes.

London Calling...

As some of you may know, I recently returned from a two week trip to the United Kingdom. While some of my previous enthusiasm for London Transport has waned, I still must reinforce how easy it is to travel around the country when compared to the United States.

Across the next few days, I’ll post musings on various transit-related experiences. To begin with however, I want to thank our mates from Transport Blog, who we were lucky enough to meet up with over a cup of tea at a coffee shop near – where else – the London Transport Museum. It quite an enjoyable meeting, at which stories of horrible and great transit systems alike were exchanged, and at which we marveled at how politicians on both sides of the Atlantic could be so daft all of the time, even if we disagreed on the reasons why. Unfortunately, our goal to meet up with other UK bloggers went unmet, but we’ll certainly try for next trip.

One question struck both Randolph and me, however, that even the Transport Blog guys weren't sure how to answer. Instead of the three rails (two for the wheels and one electrified) on U.S. subway lines, the London Underground has four. Can someone please tell us why London needs an extra rail?