The little things

Remember the NYC subway cars that were sent back because the Japanese butts for which they designed the seats aren't as wide as their American counterparts? Well, the MTA hasn't learned its lesson, and now people are complaining about armrests on the L.I.R.R. that rip pants.

This is a hybrid. This is a cross, ah, of low-sulfur diesel, electricity, Featherbed Bent, and Northern California Sensemilia

All very poor Caddy Shack references aside, this is interesting. It appears that Metro and Sound Transit (King County, Washington) have become the first transit orgs in the nation to add hybrid busses to a transit fleet.

And all it took was the highest petroleum prices ever.

Advanced petroleum economics

Here's a dumb statement I would have laughed off as idiotic had I heard it from some random person on the street:

At least the people who make gas station signs are making money churning a whole lot of "2"s.

Seriously.

Waterloo Sunset

Diamond Geezer is celebrating 25 years of the Jubilee Line in London.

My two cents: London Bridge station is friggin awesome.

Camera shy

I don't know why transit agencies are so afraid of having their stations and trains photographed. First it was New York, now New Jersey, always overestimating its importance in the world, is afraid those pale dorks with fanny packs and binoculars photographing their locomotives are terrorists, not railfans.

Seriously, does anyone think harassing harmless nerds will make the system more safe, especially with camera phones?

Unlicensed Cabbies

Check out a post on unlicenesed D.C. cab drivers on our partner blog, DCSOB.

BRT in the Netherlands

We here at third rail harbor rather mixed feelings about BRT. Those feelings aside, I’d like to point readers to an article in Mass Transit Magazine which discusses the Netherlands ' and innovative Phileas Advanced Public Transport (APT) system. Named for Phileas Fogg in Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days,” the BRT system is billed as an economical alternative to light rail for cities like Eindhoven whose relatively small population translates to modest ridership. Features of the system and it’s vehicles include:

An electric-hybrid propulsion system with an engine that uses liquid petroleum gas to drive an electric generator.

All of the vehicles' wheels except the front two are driven by individual electric motors.

Regenerative braking is used to recover deceleration energy, and excess electrical energy is stored in Ni-MeH, so the Phileas can operate up to 3 kilometers on electric power in the city center

Controllable wheels on the vehicle allow it to move sideways towards the stop.

An electronic lane assistance and precision docking system can bring the vehicle to a stop within a centimeter of its docking position. The vehicle automatically follows a predetermined route guided by magnetic plugs embedded in the road surface at 4-meter intervals.

The above features, combined with an electronic guidance and control system which ensures that vehicle locations are always precicely known, seem to me to offer a viable alternative for smaller cities, which might not be able to meet the infrastructure costs of light rail or tram systems.

Post Author: cs | 11:30 AM | Link | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

At least light rail is making money for someone

Restaurateurs have learned that even if you don't take the train to work, jumping on it to go to lunch is easier then making your way out of one of those gigantic garages.

Attracting the Business Crowd

Washington, D.C. is looking to attract the business crowd to its bus system with the introduction of two new bus routes, reports the Washington Post. The routes will run between the major train station (Union Station), the convention center, and Georgetown, a neighborhood that is sorely underserved by transit currently. They're modeled on the "circulator" model - the hop-on, hop-off bus lines that allow people to ignore schedules and quickly get from place to place within a certain period of time. It's an idea that has proved successful elsewhere, but has also been a horrendous failure.

Washington is hoping to get away from some of the concerns about buses by running new, low-profile buses from Belgium. The fares - lower than normal at $.50 a pop - will be paid at the station, rather than on the bus, and buses will have three doors that let people in and out quickly.

It looks like a good idea, and we hope it's successful. They've even gotten the local business community involved -- businesses are ponying up $500k of the $4.5 million annual budget to operate the lines.

No, it's still not for sale

Happy 121st birthday, Brooklyn Bridge!

(Props to this site for the photo)

It's a subway, not a bathroom sink

This post from Annie about women who apply makeup on the London Underground reminds me of something I witnessed on the Washington Metro last week. I was sitting on a back-to-the-side seat when a woman got on a Gallery Place/Chinatown and sat at the adjacent forward-facing seat. After Metro Center, she pulled out a nail file and clippers and began working on her nails!

Got a hangnail that's bothering you? Fine, go for it - I can't say I haven't taken care of one in transit. But when you're getting into voluntary grooming, you're treading into nasty territory, especially with nails. When she gets off the train, someone will be treated to a seat covered in human detritus. Sure, it doesn't top the icky scale like other things that come from the body, but it's certainly bad manners to leave parts of yourself on the train and assume nobody will mind.

Breaking News: Higher Gas Prices Lead People to Look to Alternative Modes of Transportation

The Wichita Eagle reports that as gas prices go up, people look to other, less expensive ways to get around. Surprisingly, people in Kansas are buying fewer SUVs and riding busses more frequently. This revelation warranted a front page story in the Eagle, could a Pulitzer be far behind?

Also in transit news:

-For the local folks: A CSX train hit an killed a Gaithersburg, MD man.

-For the T riders: MBTA officials may conduct random identification checks this summer.

-For the Canadians: The worlds largest maker of rail equipment, Montreal-based Bombardier Inc, is paying $85,000 US per day in late penalties to Las Vegas for failing to deliver technology for the city's ambitious monorail project. Bombarfier also faces penalties for late delivery of light rail cars for a new transit system in Minneapolis.

-And for the astronomy transit geeks: A "Transit of Venus" will occur on June 8.

It's Been a Bad Week for Trains

Another train collision, this one in Europe, reports Reuters.com. An Intercity train hit another train (this one empty) near a station in Amsterdam:

A Reuters journalist on the scene said the front carriage of one of the trains was resting on top of the locomotive of the other. Several ambulances and rescue helicopters had arrived at the crash site and emergency crews were still looking for any more passengers that may be trapped inside.

That should end terrorism

Why hasn't anyone thought of banning cameras from subways before? What a brilliant idea! If terrorists can't take photos of subway trains, stations and tunnels before they attack, they will have absolutely no way of knowing where to find large groups of people to blow up. Completely lost and with nothing to compare their surroundings to, they might not even know whether they're in a subway or not and could end up harmlessly detonating themselves on an empty street corner.

Thank the good Lord for giving the Transit Authority the wisdom to deny evildoers the one tool that allows them to plan their evil activities: photography.

I think we can all rest a little easier.

Butting Heads in Texas

The AP reports on a train collision 50 miles north of Dallas. Two Burlington Northern Santa Fe collided Wednesday, closing a major rail thoroughfare. A northbound and a southbound train collided head-on. One train was empty, the other carried rocks; both were likely travelling at 45 mph or more.

Initial reports indicate that human error was to blame.

Maintaining

From an interesting article on the cost of maintaining highways:

On average, they write, "one dollar of annual highway spending reduces the annual congestion costs to road users only 8 cents." This is not a return on a one-time investment but a continuing expense; we have to keep spending that dollar to get the 8 cents.

So here's the $64,000,000,000 question: What is the cost of doing nothing? We don't keep interstate highways in hermetically sealed jars - if they're not fixed up regularly, their utility goes down as potholes cause accidents and wear on cars' suspensions. So if we're getting 8 cents on the dollar in improvement and we prevent a dollar's worth of delays and other costs, then we would come out on top.

That's an important point, as witnessed by New York's experience with subways in the 1970s. City officials thought that taking money out of subway maintainance could shore up the larger fiscal picture and keep the City out of default. It didn't stop the 1975 fiscal crisis and the so-called "deferred maintainance" cost far more in the long term than keeping the system in top shape to begin with, especially in terms of lost riders and residents.

Transit Needed to Support Growth...ya think?

According to a Baltimore Sun article, the Greater Baltimore Committee is pushing for more transit in the Baltimore region:

One GBC transportation goal is to have a shovel in the ground by spring 2010 for the start of a rail transit line that would carry passengers from Woodlawn to Fells Point as part of an expanded transportation system. It has not yet been determined whether the new line should be light rail or a heavy-rail subway and surface line.

Why, you ask?

"When you look at this region and realize it's going to grow by 250,000 in the next 20 years, you realize it doesn't have the infrastructure that can support that kind of growth," Fry said. "Transportation has the tendency to not be looked at until it's a crisis. We can't afford to sit back and wait and allow congestion to negatively impact our lifestyle or limit our potential for business growth."

Now come on people. Didn't you consider this 15 years ago when you built a light-rail line that doesn't connect with the existing subway line?

Life skills

How hard is it to read a damn subway map?

Rocket launcher found near Atlanta subway station

WTF? Seriously, WTF? This is really, really, really scary.

Does living in a detached house give you a right to complain about your neighbors?

Another reason not to live in the suburbs.

It's as if people living out there are looking for a problem to blow out of proportion.

One badass cloverleaf

The 10-story high flyover for the D.C. Mixing Bowl, a.k.a. the Springfield Interchange, a.k.a. 395-meets-495-meets-95-meets-FSP, is set to open.

Now, if they would only pay me not to use it...

Sideways Seating

The Chicago Transit Authority is testing new seating arrangements on many CTA lines, the Tribune reports. Almost all of the 39 seats per car will be rotated to face inward, rather that forward or backward, making CTA cars look more like NYC subway cars rather than D.C. Metro cars. These new trains are being tested on all of the rail lines, except one, but aren't being used to replace all cars -- they're simply being added to the back of existing trains, so that the CTA can test response to them. The sideways seats allow approximately 10 people more to board the car.

It's an excellent and logical change. While the front and back-facing seats create a more comfortable ride (and allow you to avoid eye contact with other riders), it makes no sense not to maximize the space on these trains, especially for intracity routes. The only times when front-facing seats make more sense are on long trips, such as with London's Metropolitan line. Otherwise, you're going to get tons of people shoving in during rush hour anyway, so you might as well maximize available space.

Too Tall for Transit?

An article on CNN.com notes that many tall people have trouble travelling. Apparently. mass transit is not designed for tall people. Everard Strong, the California publisher of TALL Magazine, apparently can't even stand up straight when on the train, says CNN:

His troubles even extend to public transit. If he does not get a seat he can't stand up straight when using the San Francisco area's BART rapid transit system, he says.

Like nuclear power plant tours of the Ukraine

Railroad tours in North Korea.

If you'd like to jump the (third) rail

Please turn your attention to the links on the left, as they have been updated. A hearty welcome to three transit blogs: Route 79, which is only tangentially related to buses, but will show you how to make rogan josh (let's see Pat Crozier of Transport Blog do that!), Not on My Watch, from somewhere in the south of England and The Driver's Room, written by a San Jose transit insider.

Happy surfing!

The tram-bus, or bus-tram, or truss, or bram...

From the Torygraph, via Transport Blog:

"A new type of bus that looks more like a tram is being designed by First Group in a drive to get more passengers out of their cars and on to public transport.

The bus and rail operator said yesterday that research showed people preferred trams to buses, so it had decided to build a "tram bus"."

I think they're missing the point here. There are lots of reasons why people don't like buses, and appearance is just one of them. The main reason why I don't like buses is uncertainty. Most bus stops don't have shelters, only poles with cryptic maps and timetables that could be from 1986. At a subway station, if it's open, it means there will be another train coming around some time soon. If I'm not sure, there's usually a station agent to ask. With light rail, the stations are a little more built-up, and the presence of tracks and overhead wires proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is indeed service to this location.

Many people who will get on a train and not a bus do so simply because they feel reassured that their train will eventually roll around.

Can this be solved? Yes. More elaborate bus stops linked to GPS could tell riders when buses will arrive and clearer maps overlayed on real street maps (like they're starting to do in downtown Washington) could help. On the buses, some sort of lit-up "spider" map could give a sense of place to a rider in an unfamiliar area.

Keeping them halfway clean would help as well.

Not so lucky in Kentucky

Sorry Louisville, no ineffectual light rail for you.

What's in a name

If you ride a public bus in Cincinnati, Ohio, you're riding a bus run by the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority.

A.K.A. SORTA.

I wonder what their slogans are:

"SORTA, better than driving"

"We can get you there: SORTA."

"SORTA: Reliable!"

Atlanta Taxation Districts

Atlanta is contemplating a tax district to pay for a 22-mile transit loop, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

A tax allocation district uses additional taxes from the increased property values caused by development in a certain area to pay for public improvements in that specific area. Atlanta currently has five such districts, including the Atlantic Station megadevelopment in Midtown.

But former City Council President Cathy Woolard, who has been the Belt Line's most ardent political advocate, said using a special tax district to fund a project like the Belt Line is unprecedented in Atlanta and rare nationwide.

There remains a concern about whether the tax allocation district can actually generate enough tax revenue to qualify for federal funding (50% of the project must be locally funded to qualify for federal funds). Interestingly, they're projecting the cost of building the light rail line at between $250 million and $450 million -- at 22 miles, that puts it between $11.3 and $20.5 million a mile, which seems awful low to me.

[More Information on the BeltLine]

And stay out!

So the Republican National Conventioneers won't use the subway for their convention this summer (well, not quite summer, more like week before 9/11).

So what. New Yorkers don't want you there anyway. Speaking as a former long-time straphanger, I can firmly say I wouldn't want to find myself rushing down a flight of stairs in an attempt to catch an uptown N train to find Rick Santorum blocking the passage, lecturing his friends on how the smell is a sign of liberal decadence and the decline of western civilization.

I don't care.

And if he remained in my way, I would not hesitate to shove him.

One of the things that makes drivers so unwilling to switch to transit is that they don't like being around people they don't know without a pane of glass separating them. Conventioneers probably don't want a rude awakening about life beyond their subdivision, so it isn't up to New York to give it to them.

(hat tip: Gothamist)

Blinded by the (length of your) flight

Or, why slow and steady sometimes does win the race

From an article on the financial failure of the Channel Tunnel:

And then there are rivals that barely existed in 1994: budget airlines.
There are 50 daily round-trip flights between London and Paris, most of
them much cheaper than a Eurostar ticket; many travelers think planes are
quicker even though the train is much faster city center to city center.
The rail journey between central London and central Paris is two and a
half hours; while the flight itself is only an hour, once airport travel
is taken into account, the journey is much longer.

I also find this phenomenon true in the U.S. You can take a 3.5 hour train ride from the middle of Boston to the middle of New York City. For more money (depending on special deals, time of booking and time/date etc...), you can take a 45-minute airplane ride from the periphery of Boston to the periphery of New York City. Add to that 30-minute cab rides at both ends and the suggested two-hour advance arrival for domestic flights, you don't really get where you're going any faster. Even if the plane cost as much as the train, the cabs would easily make the journey more expensive.

So why do people take the plane? They like it for the same reason people set off from a green light like it's a drag race even if they can see they will have to stop for a red light and will leave the next intersection at the same time a slower driver will. When it comes to travel, man is not a coldly rational homo economicus - he wants to reach maximum speed instead of minimum time, even if time has value.

They don't belch smoke, but they do poop

An interesting developing-world transportation idea in South Africa:

[North West] Province officials, working in conjunction with South Africa's bureau of standards, have developed a donkey cart with reflectors, a canopy for cover and padded bench seats that are removable to accommodate wheelchairs or freight. The idea is to soon have fleets of government-sanctioned donkey carts carrying children to distant schools, farmers and their produce to markets, and the sick to clinics, all at low cost and without creating a menace on the rutted tracks that pass for roads in the province's remote reaches.

Better donkey carts? Why not? Often, the most dramatic marginal improvements come on the bottom of the scale: think about how much the investment into donkey-cart research would have produced if focused instead on auto safety or faster trains (probably not much). The cart program in South Africa is just like the advances in rickshaw design in India that make life better for millions at low cost.

Cheaply remedying underinvestment in improving the most common modes of transport across the world should be a major focus of our aid packages, since better transportation means more access to healthcare, better opportunities for agricultural marketing and a higher chance children can go to school.

D'oh! BART gets slammed on Ridership predictions.

According to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, a 16.3-mile proposed extension of BART from Fremont through San Jose to Santa Clara is one of the least cost-effective potential projects in the U.S. -- with two of every three seats empty each weekday, reports the Mercury News.

Suprising for BART, which tends to be a pretty good transit system.

BRT in Tanzania, and a suggestion

Via AllAfrica.com. This may not be a bad idea, but I think a better idea would be marking off dedicated lanes on major thoroughfares for the private jitneys that serve as the only public transport in large swaths of major African cities instead of keeping those lanes for a new BRT system.

Auto accidents are a leading cause of accidental death in the third world, taking the lives of productive people not already ravaged by AIDS or malaria. If the relavent authority required a bus permit of some sort to use the lanes, the private providers, with extensive existing networks, could be required to pass some sort of minimal safety inspection to get a permit. Traffic flow is improved, government doesn't have to run the buses and taking public transport becomes a little bit safer.

UPDATE: If any of you know any good books about informal developing-world transit systems, let me know. Most of my knowledge on the subject comes from scattered news reports and Hernando de Soto's The Other Path, which looks like it's back in print. For those of you who haven't read it, it's one of the best economics books I've ever read. However, for the reader new to de Soto, I'd suggest reading his second book, The Mystery of Capital, instead, as it was originally written in English and is thus a much easier read.

Friday Morning Transit Esoterica

Did you know that Tube drivers get standard-issue Doc Martens with a little Underground logo tab? If so, what's wrong with you?

(via Going Underground)

Ain't nothing but a political economy thang

Businessmen are lining up to support Amtrak in the Northeast Corridor.

The annual wrangling over Amtrak is the result of a bizarre bind that has cursed this particular state-owned enterprise. Let's run through the vicious cycle.

- Amtrak gets funded just enough every year to limp along. That money comes with all sorts of strings forcing it to run unprofitable lines and stop an unprofitable stations.

- Congress justifies this budget because ridership is low.

- Amtrak can't make investments to increase ridership because of its budget.

- Each year, the odds of selling off profit-making services goes down because track and train maintainance doesn't get done because Amtrak is limping along on a minimal budget. Any purchaser would have to spend at least the entire purchase cost all over again to bring the system to a respectable standard. The profitable lines won't be sold either, because Congress will still want to run the unprofitable lines, but won't want to make up the loss of profits from the good lines through subsidy. Given these constraints, it's cheaper for the government to keep the system on life support than to revive it.

Seems like the perfect dilemma, doesn't it? Can't sell it. Can't kill it. Can't muster the willpower to improve it. Can't rationalize it.

Rides of quiet desperation

On the Metro home earlier this week, a man stuck his hand in the doors as they were closing, prompting the conductor to open the doors again so he could enter. I thought of saying to him, “you’re the reason why trains bunch up and arrive late,” but I didn’t, fearing the grumbles of other passengers and thought of sitting next to the guy for three more stops until I disembarked.

Upon reflection, that moment reminded me of an incident two years prior: I was walking down the street with my then-girlfriend and some other friends, waiting on line to get into a club. On the curb next to the line, a haggard-looking man hawked his wares. He had a car stereo, some hubcaps, a portable car vacuum, the top of a car cigarette lighter and some other stuff that was very obviously ripped out of somebody’s car. Making the mistake of looking at the stuff, the man made his pitch to me. Of course, I could have mumbled something about not being in the market for a car lighter-top, but I already had too much to drink to let this pass.

“Where did you steal those?” I asked. Someone broke into my car in that very same neighborhood earlier that year.

“I didn’t steal anything,” said the man. “Someone paid me to clean their garage, and they said I could keep all this.”

With my girlfriend starting to look a little nervous at the prospect of my getting in a fight with a guy who sells stolen car accessories on the street, I decided to back off.

How does the incident with the man who stuck his hand in the door connect with my harassment of the guy fencing car stuff in the street? In one situation, I saw something I didn’t like and I said nothing. In the other, I spoke up.

Every day, people face indignities and hassles on public transportation. People hold the doors open for friends rushing down the stairs. Fit young people refuse to give their seats up for the elderly and pregnant. People play music so loud you can year it through their headphones. People have loud arguments on cell phones. In mid-1990s New York, it was worse – people flaunted rules against smoking, urinating, boom boxes and just about everything else, on trains full of people. Most people just moved to another car.

Why? Because people will endure quite a bit because they refuse to stand up for themselves and say what everyone else is thinking. When was the last time you told someone with their hands in the door that they should have waited for the next train? When was the last time you told someone that people who didn’t want to walk up escalators should move to the right?

If people don’t know what they are doing is wrong, they won’t stop doing it. Enough people stand up for their own comfort, and fairly soon, verbal requests won’t be necessary.

Many people will tell you that they are afraid of confronting bad behavior for fear of what the person they are chastising will say or do. First of all, 90 percent of people either honestly don’t know they are bothering anyone or secretly know it’s wrong but are emboldened by the lack of response. These people will comply with a reasonable request. As for the other ten percent, does anyone really think they’re going to get enraged, stab the complainer, then sit down quietly until their stop? A train car full of people is one of the worst places in a city to commit a crime. With a little work, it could be one of the worst places to act like a selfish idiot.

How can we get people to feel comfortable requesting civilized behavior from other passengers? Already, campaigns are in place in London, Washington and elsewhere to encourage people to speak up if they see a package they think may be unattended. Why not expand the campaign to get people to verbalize more often? Perhaps something along the lines of “only you can prevent jerks from ruining your commute” or something similar.

Speak up people! There is strength in numbers. You have nothing to lose but your mild sense of aggravation!

The explosives are blowin' in the wind

Tested at the train station in New Carrolton, Md., this is cool, sort of:

The monitor, built by GE Ion Track, puffs air at the passenger and sweeps the air into an overhead chamber that assesses whether molecules in the air could be components of explosives.

Apparently, however, it can get confused by cologne and hand cream.

George Pataki must be getting a percentage of this

...Or else he must be really, really dumb. After spending tons of money on a light-rail link between Howard Beach, Jamaica and JFK airport, he now decides we need a one-seat ride between the airport and Manhattan.

This would require fixing an existing tunnel to deal with the different rolling stock, or building a new tunnel under the East River to the tune of $6 billion. Had they just run an LIRR spur from Jamaica instead of using a completely different type of train, this wouldn't be a problem.

Feelin' HOT, HOT, HOT

HOT lanes in Maryland? You'd better believe it.

Thunk!

...Was the sound the Australian-made Rochester-to-Toronto Ferry made over the weekend when it hit a New York City pier en route to Rochester, sustaining minor damage.

The boat had a 7.5-metre gash on its starboard side above the water line and two 10-centimetre-square pieces of piling wood were stuck in the hull.

Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting the Rochester-Toronto ferry, now with more windows!

What's wrong with the NYC subway map?

It didn't take that long as a tourist in London to figure out that the tube map has very little grounding in geographic reality. The Circle Line certainly does not run in a straight line except for some wide 90-degree curves, and the distance between any two stations on the far end of the Metropolitan Line is far greater than on the Central line through the heart of London.

But the New York subway map is different: It takes far more lines and lays them on a fairly geographically-accurate map of New York City, complete with neighborhood names, points of attraction and connections to other modes of transport in far more detail than the little National Rail symbol on the tube map.

Sure, it's big, but so is the city. Of course, MTA could offer a Manhattan-only subway map for tourists, but why should we deny them the right to block up outer-borough streets with their slow walking, five-abreast groups?

Which brings me to a guy who has a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

"The last sore thumb is the subway map," Eddie Jabbour was saying, excitedly. "This is from Ed Koch. It's been 25 years, man. Like, hello!"

Maybe because there haven't been major changes to the geography of New York or its subway system since Ed Koch. London has had the same format for its map since the 1930s, and it's worked out fine for them, even with the addition of new lines.

Of course, it's not like Mr. Jabbour or Newsday is going to show us the new map or anything.

Here's my rule on the subway map: If you can't understand the map, you probably won't fare that well in the actual system. Consider it a gatekeeper to prevent packs of hungry and scared Nebraskans from permanently roaming the tunnels.

UPDATE:: Welcome Gothamistas! Feel free to check out the Thirdrail front page and sister-blog DCSOB, which is like DCist, but different.