"Haters gettin' mad because I got a seven-day (pass)."
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| Photo: WFLD |
Hopefully collisions like this won't become more frequent as passenger rail service just keeps growing and growing ridership, and freight rail keeps gaining traffic - and shared right-of-ways become more crowded. At least in the Chicago area they have a relatively innovative program - Chicago Regional Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program (CREATE) - that has a bunch of projects that look to make shared ROWs safer for passenger travel.
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The plan is to require all attendees, with the exception of a few handicapped individuals, to use public transport to get to the events. That's a ban on cars, folks. To do so, the city will construct new train lines, extend cycling lanes, use exclusive "Olympic Lanes" on motorways, and allow no parking facilities near the stadia. The plan is here.
Considering that London is claiming that its Olympics will be the greenest ever, this step makes a lot of sense. London has one of the largest public transportation networks in the world, and it should be able to handle the traffic. The most important question, however, is whether citizens of the city will alter travel trends in the future because of investment now.
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The six new lines - the No. 6, 8 and 9 lines, the second phase of the No. 10 line, and the Yizhuang and Daxing lines, have a total length of 152 kilometers, according to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning. They will be completed in 2012.
Basically, Chicago's transit system has no reliable source of money. Over the years, management has campaigned vigorously to do something about the problem, to get the state government to institute a special tax, or to receive special appropriations from the state government.
But that hasn't happened. So now the agency expects to have to make drastic cuts. Not only will costs to ride dramatically increase, but the number of bus routes provided will be more than halved. Thousands of employees will be fired by November. The CTA expects to lose 250,000 daily riders.
This is a catastrophic situation, and it shouldn't be happening. There's a this site, where you can find out how to make sure these cuts don't happen.
In this age of improved transit just about everywhere else, Chicago doesn't need to see its system fall apart.
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The American Public Transit Association gave out its annual awards recently. The best organization awards went to:
This year's winners:
If you're a transit buff, how many of these systems have you either been on before?
]]>The simple fact is that BRT is a lot easier to implement than rail-based transit, because it can use existing roads and buses are a lot cheaper than trains. The problem, of course, is that if you don't pay enough attention to the details, BRT can really mess up. And become a major problem.
Santiago, Chile, which already has a relatively large metro system, has developed a new bus system called Transantiago. Basically, it replaced 3,000 bus companies with about 10 ones, all private, operating in a far more coordinated system. The only problem, as NPR reports, is that it's not working very well. Though it's an improvement over the old system, which was awful to the environment, using old buses, and which induced heavy traffic because of extreme competition between all the bus companies, this isn't exactly the best solution we've seen.
The city isn't exact ready for prime time, without the GPS devices on the buses found elsewhere, few dedicated bus lanes, which are essential for any BRT program, and an overall heavy reliance on the subway, which has increased traffic on that system by a monumental 1,000,000 a day!
What this story really points out to all of us is how tricky it may be to try to implement BRT, and how easy it is to mess up. BRT may seem like an easy and cheap replacement for trains, but it's not that simple.
]]>Fred Thompson
Thompson, actor, and former Senator from Tennessee, may or may not be at the top of the field - depends on who you ask. Nonetheless, he hasn't shown himself to be one of mass transit's major supporters. Or, at least, he hasn't shown any interest. Pretty much all I can find is that he helped support funding for studying improved transit in the Great Smoky Mountains, not exactly the place that really needs public transportation.
Mitt Romney
Though Romney was the governor of a state that relies extensively on mass transit, his website never mentions public transportation. We do know that when he was governor he never took the T and didn't know much about it, either. Some, though, say that he actually does have a good record in promoting public transit and smart growth, it's just that he's kept it hidden from the rest of us.
Rudy Giuliani
Giuliani was mayor of New York from 1993 to 2001, when he was replaced by (also-maybe-running-for-president) Michael Bloomberg. One would think, then, that he would with pride suggest that he's a support of transit. That said, he doens't mention on his website, like the others. But while mayor, Giuliani cut the budget for transit several times. Even so, after September 11, he did ask people to use public transportation, though New York City would be in crisis condition if the majority of people didn't use transit, of course.
Mike Huckabee
I literally cannot find any information.
Ron Paul
Paul believes that the U.S. Department of Transportation should be eliminated. Literally.
Sam Brownback
At least in 1978, Brownback wanted public transit in Kansas.
Neither Duncan Hunter nor Tom Tancredo are going to make a mark on this race, so I'm not writing about them.
Though transportation - let alone transit - is hardly the stuff that makes the major policy papers of presidential candidates, a few of the candidates have pointed out how they feel about public transport. Here's a summary:
Hillary Clinton
Senator Clinton describes how she might go about improving the country's energy situation, and she does write in a press release that "Public transit systems are under-funded and insufficiently integrated into local land use policy." Her campaign has also been endorsed by the United Transportation Workers, showing that they think that she'll be good to labor in the industry. Specifically, the candidate proposes to add $1.5 billion dollars every year for public transportation funding. While I certainly don't think this is a big enough number, it's a lot better than nothing, right? As one of New York's senators, it's perhaps unsurprising that Clinton has a positive view of transportation, and she's felt that way at least since she was running for Senate in 2000. Her husband's administration, from 1993 to 2001, by the way, was not perfect on transit, but it did provide a lot more funding for programs like the FTA's New Start than the Bush administration is now. We can assume that a second Clinton presidency would mean more money for trains and busses, at least in New York.
Barack Obama
Senator Obama has voiced his support in the past for transit improvements for his neighbors on the South Side of Chicago. And his wife was on the citizen's transit board there, too. In Washington, Obama's been a supporter of developing new fuels for automobiles, but his focus hasn't been affixed to mass transit. He hasn't written any bills that would specifically address the problems of mass transit. On his campaign webpage, he talks a lot about improving the environment and meeting energy needs, but he only mentions public transportation as a device to deal with poverty. I think most readers of this site agree that while public transportation is clearly important for the poor, it should be improved for everyone's benefit.
Edwards, the former Senator for North Carolina, has demonstrated an interest in expanding public transit in rural areas for the older members of our society. But other than that, he - as far as I can find - doesn't mention public transportation at all on his website or in any press releases. That's interesting, especially for someone who claims to be interested in creating an equitable society.
Bill Richardson
Richardson is the governor of New Mexico, and in that post, he's demonstrated a strong willingness to deal with issues of transportation, such as in the creation of the new Rail Runner commuter rail project. Some people think that his campaign presents the most compelling push for public transportation of all of the candidates, because of the strong support for the issues he's shown in the past. He's also given speeches in which he states that he wants to see non-oil based vehicles driving transportation into the future. He's a good candidate on this issue.
Dennis Kucinich
Long seen as the most progressive of the candidates, Congressman Kucinich represents Ohio, where he's argued against decreases in transitin Cleveland. He's also been willing to admit that auto-dependent land use and transportation are causing environmental problems, something other candidates don't seem to be mentioning. He, along with the rest of the candidates, doesn't seem to have any specific platform on how to improve the federal government's role in transportation, though.
Joseph Biden
Senator Biden of Delaware, it appears, commutes home everyday from Washington. He's worked to increase funding for transportation projects in his home state. He's also been one of Amtrak's biggest supporters, which makes sense since Delaware relies so much on Amtrak service for commuting to New York City and Philadelphia. Other than the support for Amtrak, though, Biden hasn't been that involved in providing for improved bus and rapid rail systems in the United States.
Christopher Dodd
Senator Dodd of Connecticut does propose improving mass transit for the whole country, though of course, he places the issue far down on his list of priorities. Though he doesn't seem to have been wild in the past about the prospect for improved transit, he has been very interested in improving the security of transit systems.
Mike Gravel
Gravel is, to put it lightly, very unlikely to win the presidency. He's the former Senator from Alaska, and considered low on the list of candidates. Even so, he's very earnest and perhaps the most straight-forward of all the candidates. Interestingly, he often uses public transportation to get to events. And he wants a national maglev transportation system, something I don't think anyone else is arguing for. It's unclear what else, exactly, he's pushing for in this direction.
That rounds up the Democratic candidates. I'll write about the Republicans and their feelings soon.
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Like other transit systems around the country, New York's is facing some budget difficulties, and it's considering raising fares. The Metropolitan Transit Authority feels that it's necessary to increase costs by between 6 and 8 percent, for bus, rail, and subway riders, in order to avert future budget problems even though the authority expects to receive a $1 billion surplus this year alone.
Of course, we've discussed the issue of fares on this site before, though in the past, we've considered whether or not free fares might make more sense than ones that actually cost money. The MTA thinks that New Yorkers need to pay up to $2.25 cents for the ride (though it looks like that increase, from $2, is more a consequence of deficiencies in the authority's machines than anything else). Lee Sander, Chairman, says the hike is necessary if we want to avoid the kind of crisis the New York Subway went through in the 70s and 80s, when basically all maintenance was simply ignored.
And of course, he's right. Most New Yorkers don't want to see their subway rot again, that's why they're so excited about the prospect for a new Second Avenue Subway and the extension of the 7 Line. And the authority isn't exactly doing a poor job in managing its existing money; the worst an auditor could come up when it investigated the spending of the agency with that the authority's museum train was losing about $10,000 a year; that's almost nothing for a huge operation like the MTA.
Nevertheless, the question we must ask ourselves is whether customers should be paying more to make sure the MTA stays healthy. Shouldn't the state and city, which benefit economically from a good transit network, be willing to pitch in more? And isn't the idea of increasing transit fees by 6-8% clearly regressive, targeting the poor rather than the rich? Considering the whole point of transit is to equalize the mobility playing field by making it cheap for everyone to get around, this cost increase seems anti-transit.
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Have you ever looked closely at the beautiful Petworth Metrorail station mural? The one celebrating the morning rush hour in Washington DC?
It spans the entire street escalator landing with scenes of commuters rushing to work via public transport.
This morning I took a minute to check it out and found an interesting little detail: a red symbol on a coffee cup.
Does the mark signify a ban on all coffee, or all open coffee, or just spilled coffee in WMATA transportation facilities? There is already a ban on drinking or eating on Metrorail and Metrobus.
Or does this mean Metrorail is against coffee even in metro art?
]]>Observers say it won't be an issue because one side (the transit agencies or the legislature) will back down at some point this week.
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My first commuter train ride was the CalTrain from Santa Clara University to the 22nd Street Station in San Francisco, a ninety-minute ride north.
This little trip started at the Santa Clara railroad station, a cute little building run by the South Bay Historical Railroad Society as a well stocked railroad museum. Complete with a full display of signals (the museum's specialty) and a room of model railroads, I was almost sad when the train came.
But not once I was on the train itself. There I found a joe-cool two tiered seating system, with wide benches and tables on the bottom floor and single seats on a second floor. And the seats were surprisingly comfortable, plush and soft, perfect for a siesta after a six-mile run earlier.
The only downside to my journey was its length. While Caltrain was cheap ($7.50) it was not fast. We stopped at every suburb between Santa Clara and San Francisco to pick up or drop off a few plebeians, and by the outskits of San Francisco, I was ready to exit.
Still, CalTrain is way better than driving Highway 101 up the coast.
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| Photo: Charlotte Area Transit System |