Lots of new trains, just not here

The New York Times business section has an article about how European train building companies like Siemens are doing good business these days with new projects in eastern and the western Europe and Asia. The article has a very good statement about the possibilities for high-speed rail construction in the United States:

Mr. Lacôte of Alstom said three conditions had to be fulfilled for a country to turn to high-speed rail: the political will, large population concentrations, and a level of economic prosperity adequate to pay for a rail system. "In the United States you have the second two," he said. "I am not sure that you have the first."

DC's biggest chick magnet

...is apparently the Metrobus system. According to the Washington Post, two-thirds of bus riders are female. I'm sure there are all sorts of interesting sociological reasons for this, but I think most people will take it as an opportunity. Who needs an online dating service profile when you can sit quietly on an S2 with a well-reviewed book in your hands and a yoga mat on your lap, waiting and hoping for the best?

Bicycle air tunnels?

Interesting ideas from my hometown of Denver, Colorado: a company here has plans for air tunnels for bicycles. The tunnels would have an artificially-generated tail wind, allowing bicyclists in the tunnel to ride at average speeds of 25 mph. Supposedly bicyclists in the tunnel would be able to travel 10km using the same amount of energy they would need to travel 1km outside the tunnel. The tunnels would even be a profit center--the company claims they would generate profits even if running at 12 percent capacity!

One observer is not so impressed. He says the tunnels would be magnets for crime and that the glass walls would create a greenhouse. He also says the tunnels would be expensive and that they would not be all that energy efficient due to the fans needed to push air through the tunnels.

So I put aside my initial laughs of disbelief to consider the merits of this thing. I'm a bit skeptical because the company's drawings don't show all the fans that would be needed or the proof for their claim that this would be profitable (though urban transit systems produce positive externalities, they are seldom profitable to operate, and are even less profitable when one considers the capital cost.)

This looks interesting, but without more cost data who could say if it would be a good idea?

Thanks to Dennis for sending this along.

Now that the real transit news is over...

Now that things are somewhat back to normal in NYC, I'll regale you again with random pictures of transit-related things, such as this award winner for most creative use of old railroad rails.

Day 3: We now return you to your regularly scheduled commute

First Avenue, 4:30 p.m.

I heard the good news from a guy in an elevator. He just felt like sharing.

I went around more of Midtown today, venturing into Grand Central. It was packed, but it always is. Traffic was bad on the major arteries and crosstown streets, but it always is. I'd imagine that the fact that some schools are out and many people are out of town on vacation made this a bit easier. The Times says the subways will take 10 to 18 hours to restart, with buses moving sooner. I think tomorrow will be a great day for retail, a great day to eat out and a great day to visit friends across town.

As a bonus, here's a fantastic photo of the Roosevelt Island Tram (see above) about as packed as it gets, mid-river, courtesy of Flickr.

Live from off the third rail

The CTA's Holiday train derailed.

Have "Enemies of Christmas" resorted to sabotage?

Holy Infill, Batman!

Those CTA engineers planning to build a new station on the Skokie Swift line could learn something from New York's Metro-North commuter railroad. To help in-city riders get around, they built a temporary station at Yankee Stadium. Let's be clear here: there was no station there on Monday. It's Wednesday, and they have a station there. Obviously, there isn't much infrastructure required when you do fare collection onboard, but it's still pretty amazing. Still, commuters aren't too impressed:

Day 2 of the strike on Wednesday saw the opening of the temporary Metro North platform at Yankee Stadium, designed to offer a park-and-ride option off the Major Deegan. A mob of desperate commuters was expected: There were about a dozen cops, several Metro North employees, remote trucks from three television stations, even a Salvation Army van there to greet them. The only thing missing at around 10 this morn' were the cars—there were barely ten in the lot—and the people.

Too bad. Thing is, we have proof of concept. The fact that MARC trains are slowed through Halethorpe on the way to Washington because of a low platform should be even more embarrasing when a passable replacement that could shave minutes from this popular run could be built literally overnight.

All over the country, new commuter lines are in planning stages. Once the tracks are brought up to code and deals are struck with the freight lines that usually own them, cheap prefab platforms can go up next to where the permanent structures would be. Since ridership is always low initially, the parking lot doesn't even have to be very big at first. Kinks could get worked out, interest raised and transit converts created in many suburban neighborhoods.

So, who's going to impress me first?

Scenes from Midtown

A few express bus lines were not shut down by the strike. Here, police direct a large crowd of commuters to Brooklyn-bound buses.

Despite the cries of chaos and paralysis by uninformed out-of-town right wingers, anti-union agitators and the Archie Bunker-pandering Post, people who need to get around are doing so, whether by bike, on foot or in a carpool. At 6:30, the FDR Drive at 53rd St. was moving steadily in both directions. Right after I took this photo, an ambulance sped downtown with little trouble.

The more I walk around, the more I think my Homeric trip home last night was a result of two unusual circumstances: 1) Going against the rush hour is harder than going with it because of all the lanes that switched direction to accomidate downtown workers, 2) Nguyen, my cabbie, is an idiot.

Strike causing "inconvenience"?

The NYTimes is a good paper, but often it shows its class bias. This story about television news coverage of the transit strike says "For television, this transit strike is a G-rated disaster: full crisis coverage without death or destruction, just inconvenience."

Perhaps it is just inconvenient for high-rollers like Katie Couric or the Wall Streeters who, as another Times story says, can wait out the strike in a hotel room. For me, a short transit strike in Washington would also be mere inconvenience: I could work from home.

This strike, however, is far beyond mere "inconvenience" for thousands, if not millions, of New Yorkers. Hourly workers are suffering blows to their pocketbooks right when they're trying to buy Christmas gifts for their children: if the hourly wage earner does not show up to work, she doesn't get paid. Other Times stories quote shopkeepers who say the strike has emptied their stores and that a prolonged strike would keep them from paying rent. Make no mistake, this strike is not causing mere "inconvenience."

I feel the transit workers' plight: what MTA wants will weaken the union. The strike shows how crucial the transit workers are: don't these workers who run New York's vascular system deserve a secure future? They make it possible for the Wall Street titans to make millions while bankrupting their companies. Ironically though, the strike will most harm the very same people it's intended to help: working folks. But unlike the New York Post, I wouldn't necessarily blame the union for this. Frankly, the union, MTA, the mayor, and the governor all look like clowns and goons.

Live from the expansive car wasteland...

I'm lucky enough to make an escape for this Christmas holiday. I'm in Colorado, where a strike by transit workers would be noticed only by the poor, downtrodden, and car-less. I think the TV news here would feature it, after the first commercial break.

I don't miss the clatter of the Red Line that I live next to, though. Oddly, some folks in Queens miss the rumbling of the 7. Says one: "When you spend your life hearing the screech of steel wheels over your head every two minutes, you almost forget what quiet is." I do know what he means, though. Denver seems so...quiet.

Enjoy rj's firsthand NYC notes below, and of course, more Times coverage. Looks like union leaders might face jail.

And as I use a computer that isn't logged into the NYTimes website, I notice it seems the Times has loosened its registration requirements...

Transit Strike Day 2: Fuggeddaboutit

Uberblogger Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit doesn't get it. He quotes "reader Robert Burnham":

Transit strike paralyzes city? It's just another reason not to live at such high densities.

Go burbs!

Go sprawl!

I walked across a large swath of Midtown today, and I didn't find a city paralyzed. People were out on the streets, cabs were available and stores had customers. Cutting through Bloomingdales, I found this paragon of urban retail at about 70% of crush capacity, which isn't terrific, but isn't awful either. Life goes on. Fuggeddaboutit.

Mr. Burnham and Mr. Reynolds seem to be under the impression that the suburbs are immune to transportation problems. Have those two ever been out in Northern Virginia during a two-inch snowfall? Had there been a Nor'easter, it would have been harder for commerce to continue than it has been with this transit strike. Traffic in low-to-medium density suburbs and exurbs are constantly problematic. I've done the car thing and I've done the train thing, and I've found that the occasional delay or the once-per-quarter-century transit strike is worth it to avoid the once-weekly pileup that would keep me stuck in the car, fuming, as the dinner hour came and went.

Escape from to New York, Part II

As you may have guessed, I wrote Part I in the back of Nguyen's cab, somewhere around the entrance to the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, mooching off WiFi from a nearby building. After I lost signal, I continued writing.

A cabbie and a woman in a red Taurus got into a screaming match approaching the tunnel. A car in front of me and one behind me are trading honks like mating insects in opposite ends of a tree. Honking may not get you anywhere, but it feels good.

The tunnel itself wasn't too bad, since the inbound lanes had been shaved from two down to one for the evening rush and the mess caused by drivers constantly changing lanes is the cause of a lot of the traffic.

I suppose that there comes a time, as is the case with popular nightclubs, that nobody new can come in until someone has left. At least you don't have to be female to enter Manhattan.

I popped out in Manhattan a little over two hours after I left the airport. First Avenue was an unholy mess, so I decided to leave Nguyen and the owners manual to his new cab and walk the rest of the way home, about three-quarters of a mile, with all of my luggage. It wasn't pleasant, but it could have been worse.

Escape from to New York

Greetings from a NYC taxicab.

It could be worse. This cab’s driver, Nguyen, told me that he just got this cab brand new about an hour before he picked me up at LaGuardia. It’s a spacious Ford Explorer, one of only a few such cabs in New York. It’s still got the new-car smell.

But it could be better. I only turned my computer on after 90 minutes crawling across Queens. We’ve been approaching the Queens Midtown Tunnel (Nguyen’s idea, not mine) for the last half hour, with progress measured in feet, like a WWI battle. As we sit on Borden Avenue, Nguyen futzes with all the switches and dials. I’m happy to report that the front and rear wipers work, as does the stereo, which he adjusted as a Saab just cut us off.

Nguyen has a lot of opinions on the transit strike. Unfortunately, I understand every fifth word he says. I should be home in another hour, if I'm lucky. Which I won't be.

WMATA Riders Advisory Council on the radio

Hear Dennis Jaffe and Stephen Cerny, two members of Metro's new Riders Advisory Council, today on the Kojo Nnamdi Show. It will be their job to talk some sense into the Metro board and managers. The program airs at around 1:30, and a free audio archive is also available at that link.

A Question for the MTA

If you're working out a contract with your transit workers union, why on earth would you set the expiration date for the dead of winter?

New York City transit halted by strike

This is the first New York transit strike in 25 years. Complete coverage: New York Times, New York Daily News, CNN (with videos).

News reports say police watched over entries to the subway that had no gates. This is not a subway that's designed to close. Reminds me of a 24-hour Denny's restaurant that had to close because its pipes burst or something. Nobody could find the keys to the front door!

Where the Railroads End...

What do you do when the rail link to your hometown gets cut and you're left with an unused track and unused train station? If you're a small town in Tasmania, you turn it into a strip mall anchored by a "pancake train" restaurant.
 

Belly of the Beast

It looks more and more likely that New York will enjoy its first transit strike in 25 years.

Guess which intrepid transit blogger is touching down at LaGuardia tomorrow afternoon with no good way to get into Manhattan?

That's right, I'll probably be sharing a cab with two snooty Upper East Side society types who don't want to get road salt on their furs and one downtown school teacher with 11 kinds of flu.

My sympathy for organized labor goes only so far...

Greetings from the "high quality of life" exurbs

I'd trade the extra room of a cookie-cutter McMansion way out in exurbia for freedom from this sort of mess in Frisco, Texas:

"I can't count on him being home before 7 o'clock," she said. "Even if he leaves the office at 5:30, he's not here until 7. This morning, he left at 5:30 and it took him 35 minutes. But if it's raining outside, he can count on a two-hour drive."

Ms. Gray has been able to volunteer for her neighborhood association and local PTA, and to become a cheerleading coach at school. But her husband's uncertain schedule keeps him from volunteering in community activities.

[...]

"We don't really see our neighbors so much anymore," Mr. Kinnunen said. "We all drive into our back alleys and into our garage, and that's that."

But really, why renovate and risk of living near people with a different skintone when all you have to do to avoid it is spend an ever-increasing portion of your life in a car?

NYC transit union begins limited strike

After the strike deadline passed, the Transport Workers Union decided to delay for four days a decision on whether to strike the NYC bus and subway system. However, the union has launched a strike against two private bus companies in Queens that will be transferred to MTA's control.

No contract, but no strike

Negotiations between MTA and the TWU have been called off so negotiators can take a break. Even so, the workers are not on strike.

That's great news for Julie Fisher, an actress in Brooklyn. "If the trains had not been running, she might have missed a chance to play Uma Thurman's body double."

More NYC transit talks coverage; WMATA council selected

The NY Times has a good page listing its stories about the contract talks between MTA and the union. Meanwhile, it looks like the NYC government and MTA need to talk to each other: the city says some services such as Long Island Railroad and Metro-North will not be affected; MTA says otherwise.

In other news, WMATA is readying its Riders Advisory Council. Among those selected was Dennis Jaffe, who prodded Metro to establish the council in the first place. WMATA must have figured Dennis would cause less trouble if he's on the council. Also picked is a co-founder of Metroriders.org.

NYC girds for transit strike

The strike deadline is tonight. Mayor Bloomberg has a raft of emergency measures in case of strike, including allowing passengers to haggle with taxicab drivers about fares.

If Metro in Washington went on strike, I'd just stay home from work. A New York strike would be quite a spectacle, but getting to work in the middle of it would be no fun.

OOPS: update: the strike deadline is early Friday morning, not Thursday morning.

New Orleans streetcars running again

For the first time since the flooding, they are rolling down Canal Street. NPR has audio.

CTA to build new infill station on Skokie Line

With $9.2 in federal funding, the Chicago Transit Authority is going to build its first new station since the Orange Line to Midway airport was completed in 1993 - an infill station on the Skokie Swift line, a short shuttle run between (take a wild guess) Skokie and the Howard station on Chicago's northern border.

The Yellow Line station, which officials hope will be completed in 2008, is to be built downtown, just north of Oakton Street, west of Skokie Boulevard, next to the massive new Illinois Science + Technology Park.

Intermediate stops on the Yellow Line aren't a new idea, but it has been more than half a century since such service existed. In fact, the line was abandoned in 1948 and started up again as a two-stop shuttle in th 1960s as part of a federal program.

One wonders why the CTA can't run Yellow Line trains downtown on a limited basis, as they do for the Purple Line, which runs between Howard and Wilmette through Evanston, with express service to the loop during rush hours. There may be limited capacity on the loop itself, but why not run it on Red Line tracks down the State Street subway, terminating at Roosevelt? According to this track map, there is a connection at 13th Street between the subway and the Green Line el, from back before the completion of the portion that runs down the middle of the Dan Ryan Expressway. Running a rush hour express to and from Skokie, especially with this new station at the Science + Technology Park, would make a lot of sense for commuters in both directions.

MTA takes over all NYC Buses

Most visitors (and many natives) who don't venture much outside of Manhattan think that only New York City Transit runs the in-city buses there, but NYC actually has, or more correctly had, several different bus companies. On November 30th, the MTA signed a final agreement to take over the last 7 private bus companies and run them as MTA Bus.

Same Amtrak hypocrisy, different day

First, Congressmen want Amtrak to continue unprofitable runs through their low-ridership rural areas while attacking the subsidies that would make it possible. Now, it's vegetables.

Amtrak certainly knows how to lose money, but the railroad says it can lose less if only it can get out of the business of hauling cars of "premium" freight like perishables behind its cross-country trains.

Instead, Congress has told Amtrak to increase sharply the number of carloads it hauls or forgo $8.3 million in additional federal money.

The order, contained in the transportation bill signed by President Bush last month, was inserted late in the process by Representative Joe Knollenberg, an appropriations subcommittee chairman from Michigan. The Detroit businessman who owns the only company that supplies such rail cars happens to be a large donor to Mr. Knollenberg, a Republican, and other Michigan lawmakers.

First of all, authors Matthew Wald and Glenn Justice, please spare the snark about losing money. The American auto industry is losing money while accepting the benefit of billions in highway construction and maintainance funding that we call "infrastructure" and not "auto subsidy" while Amtrak's track costs are "subsidized." Airlines are losing money hand over fist, while their airports are owned by state or local governments, who love to lavish their terminals with bond-funded makeovers and expansions. Frankly, no reporter who so much as touches on transportation issues should be so myopic as to single out Amtrak as a money loser.

Second of all, Rep. Knollenberg is an idiot. When the Times pointed out that veggie-hauler ExpressTrack got Congress to give Amtrak $8.3 million and forced it run an operation that would lose far more than that, he said he'd reverse course on the legislation. How dumb does he think we are? The Times isn't going to follow up on this, so all he has to do is wait it out and his bigshot contributor will get what it wants just in time for the next election cycle, when Rep. Knollenberg can rake in some fresh dough at Amtrak's expense.

This is where former-Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-San Quentin) had it right and Knollenberg had it wrong - you can't squeeze blood from a stone. If you take a few grand in campaign contributions (or direct bribes, in Cunningham's case), you beef up the appropriations for whatever agency is most likely to give your patron money. Then, the agency turns around and due to the strings to added to the bill, awards the patron a contract for many times the value of the campaign contribution. The Congressman gets re-elected, the patron turns a tidy profit on the deal and agency is stuck with some junk it doesn't need. The problem with using Amtrak this way is that unlike, for example, the Defense Department, Amtrak is foolishly expected to make money in a sector where it bears infrastructure costs that no competitor has to bear.

NYC cabs get video screens, credit cards

New York City cabs will get video screens that will show ads and allow riders to pay with a credit card.

WMATA board discusses ouster of general manager

Members of the WMATA board of directors are discussing getting rid of current CEO and general manager Richard White. They are disillusioned with his recent performance.

It's about time they get rid of him.

Google Transit Trip Planner

Try it. Currently works only in Portland, Oregon, but other cities might be added later. It combines Google Maps with transit schedules. Pretty neat.

South Ferry Station Meets the Battery

The MTA has hit a wall while trying to build the new subway station at South Ferry. Literally.

Nothing but a G thang

I've only had a few experiences with the New York subway's G train - most of the cool stuff along its route has only opened up in the seven years since I moved out of the city - but all three times were awful. These trips have involved waiting for what seemed like forever in Brooklyn for a shortened and crowded train at an ungodly hour of the night and sitting in an empty car for 15 minutes in Long Island City, waiting for it to get moving again. You'd think that a crosstown train that avoided Manhattan completely would be fast, empty and awesome. It isn't, and people are complaining:

"Just put lights on the tracks and we can walk - it'll be faster," said Jonathan Lovett, 46, a letter carrier whose house is a few steps from the Clinton-Washington station in Brooklyn. His advice to the G-line neophyte: "Bring an extra battery for your MP3 player."

But the line does provide a vital, if erratic, link between the city's two most populous boroughs, and G detractors may be surprised to know that weekday ridership has risen 10 percent since 2000. Much of that has resulted from residential growth in neighborhoods like Long Island City, Queens, and Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Fort Greene, in Brooklyn.

How are all the Upper East Side prep school kids going to get to Northsix without clogging up Union Square?

Segways at BART station to be available for check-out

The Pleasant Hill BART station will become a test site for multimodal transportation. The famous Segway standing scooter will be available at the station in the spring as part of a test program to see if riders will use the devices. The more time-tested (and cheaper) technology of the bicycle will also be available, as will a new car-sharing program.

Funding for the programs seems to come from a hodgepodge of grants; BART has contributed land but otherwise does not seem to be directly involved.

An incompetent WMATA attempts crowd control

Metrorail is buckling under the strain of increased ridership. Metro will take some steps to help move people along quickly and ease the load. Wash. Post story; Metro press release.

The steps will be modest and, I think, ineffective. Metro will be placing stickers on the platforms to indicate where train doors will open, so that people will queue up in the right spot on the platform. The stickers will also deliver a subtle hint to stand to the side of the doors to allow passengers to exit the train. I remember Metro's last attempt at floor stickers. The stickers deteriorated within weeks, with large pieces of them coming off. Metro eventually removed what was left of them. Metro's press release gives no indication that the agency suddenly found a more durable sticker material, so hopefully they will have workers constantly applying new stickers.

Even if the stickers, well, stick, they won't be all that effective as long as Metro can't get trains to stop in the same place on the platform. Often they miss platforms entirely, inconveniencing customers as they have to double back from the next station.

Metro will also change the door chime and the verbal "Doors closing" warning, presumably to make them more stern. Currently people hear the chime and then race for the doors, sometimes sticking hands and personal items in the doors in an attempt to keep them open. A certain degree of this behavior is inevitable in a city where people don't want to wait 150 seconds for the next train. But changing the door chimes won't help. Something that might help is retraining train operators. Many of them use the "Doors Closing" warning as a device to hurry crowds: they will sound the chime several times in rapid succession--sometimes more than five times--before closing the doors. They will sound the chime even as masses of people are still crowding into the train. These operators use the door chimes to say: "hurry up." No wonder people do not take the chime seriously.

Metro will also put up signs telling people to stand to the right on escalators. Tourists are baffled and dazzled enough as it is and few will notice the signs. Most small groups of tourists (two or three, say) will stand aside if politely asked. The large mobs of tourist crowds are just trying to keep themselves herded, and asking them to move is impossible. They won't notice signs.

I would bring all this up in Metro's lunchtime online chat today, but I am increasingly convinced that this is a rudderless agency. It screws up on safety protocols, which results in dead workers and suspicious bags rolling through crowded downtown stations. It can't get work permits for escalator repair. Millions of dollars of revenue go missing from its parking lots. It botches crime reports. It buys empty buildings and then leases additional office space. It takes months to rebuild escalators, with some escalators sitting empty and barricaded for months with no apparent reason.

Worst of all, none of the important folks realize this is a rudderless agency. If I was on the board I would have fired general manager Dick White after millions was stolen from parking lots under his watch. The board kept him. There is a culture of incompetence in the agency, and it starts at the top. Management isn't doing anything about it. Neither is the board.

No, bringing this up in some dumb online chat won't help.

Time based map

Most subway maps are based on some relative notion of distance. A design student in London created an interesting test map of the Underground based on time - amount of time it takes to travel from his particular station, in zones.