Take the A Train

Business Week says subways are the new global "urban status symbol" (via Planetizen). Well thank god, it's not humongous stadiums.  And if they are, why isn't the ever status conscious United States building more of them?

Comments

[bri]

Amen to that! They keep saying Americans love their cars but with gas prices the way they are, I'm not sure people and their cars are 'joined at the hip' that much now.

[Paul White]

If we are going to fight for transportation improvements, lets start with this country's airports and air traffic control infrastructure.

[Michael Wells]

I remember in Flight a passage that Creative Class types in your focus groups prefer cities with rail (don't remember if it was specifically subways). Has that held up over time? Do you have any explanation?

There's been a move back to rail transit in the US, partly as metro areas get more populated and cars get to be more trouble. I was trying to get a fix on Business Week's term "Surface Tramway' and came across this:
US Urban rail transit lines opened since 1980.
http://www.publictransit.us/ptlibrary/Railopenings.pdf

In Portland we're building two systems: Light rail, for moving people distances like to the suburbs. Streetcars, which are smaller and lightweight for moving people around the central city. It seems unlikely that Portland will get dense enough to warrant subways in the near future, but these two kinds of rail are very popular. Suburbs to the North and South that voted against light rail expansion in the 90's are getting in line for it now that they've seen it work to the East and West.

[Michael R. Bernstein]

One of the reasons I've picked Albuquerque to move to (whenever I actually manage to sell my house here in Las Vegas) is the planned light rail line to Santa Fe (about 60 miles away). Stronger connections between the arts and culture hub in Santa-Fe and the engineering and technology hub of Albuquerque made the region much more attractive to me.

[RF]

Yes, yes, yes and yes - People want out of their cars, esp the young creatives. We use ours far less here, than ever before. And double yes on airports and air traffic. The US system is no descending to "third-world" standards. Everything about it, from the condition of the airports and planes, to service, and of course delays, is just terrible.

[Michael Wells]

Apologies for bringing up a side point but airlines are a key example of the mania for deregulation and its effect on standards. Electric utilities, telephone companies, savings and loans, banks. Have any of these deregulations improved service or been to the advantage of the customer? Not in my experience. Many are headed from local regulated monopolies to national unregulated monopolies.

We can't even blame it all on Reagan, airline deregulation was Jimmy Carter's bad idea.

[Matt]

How can one argue that the deregulation of airlines has not improved service? We may need to define "service" but, clearly, many more people can now afford airlines than previously were able. Also, there is much more competition as the barriers to entry have been lowered for competing airlines. Thus, the level of service has improved. However, the quality of service may not. But then again, do I really expect a white linen napkin and bottle of 2004 Argyle Pinot for my ticket that I paid $125 for to fly from Dulles to Las Vegas? No.

With regards to rail transit, where do I begin? If we look back in history at development, civilization has always preferred less density not more. To argue that in the future density is going to become higher is absurd. In order for transit to be successful the key is density. Rail transit requires high density. Thus, in the reality that we live in today, rail transit is not a cost effective option for any community. If transit is necessary, what is wrong with buses? What's wrong with deregulating transit and allowing the markets to work there? After all, public transportation began not by some government bureaucrat but by someone wanting to make a little extra cash!

If you want to expand your minds into what reality is today, look at Gurreau's Edge Cities, Klein's book called Curb Rights or Bogart's Don't Call it Sprawl.

There is no cultural bias we American's have towards transit or favor rail over buses. It comes down to dollar and cents: in terms of a "transportation culture" we value three things (in no particular order): independence, improved mobility and individuality. If a steel wheel on steel rail vehicle provides that great, if it's a horse pulling a wagon and pooping on the streets of New York back in 1900 that's great too.

[Pietro Focaccia]

Transit: An Integral Public Service
_________________________
In Southern Ontario, we have never come to grips with the need to debate the essential nature of public transit. I would argue that transit is an integral component of public service. Transit is like the veins and arteries in the human body. It serves the same kind of purpose. And it should not depend on population density in order for it to be built and it should not depend on cash fares to sustain it. A number of public utilities are not dependent on "pay-as-you-go" from the consumers who utilize those services; some of these would be the water we draw from our household taps and the roads and bridges on which we need to drive our cars. So, public transit should be a similarly funded enterprise: out of the public purse through taxes.

Gross mistakes have been made in a number of places in Southern Ontario because of the belief in the "density" and "user-pay" philosophies. Up to about the 1950s, there were a number of electric tramway systems operating on their own dedicated rights of way. For instance, such a series of lines used to connect the City of Welland to St. Catharines and Port Dalhousie through the town of Thorold in the centre of the Peninsula. A line also ran from Thorold to Niagara Falls. (Note: I am not clear about other connecting lines which might have existed in those locales.) That rail service was efficient and well-used. But, apparently, it did not bring in enough money to sustain it through the fare box. So, the rail lines were ripped up. And replaced with buses only; which also used to run when the electric line existed. (I'm not sure if the rail rights-of-way still exist but, if you drive in the area, you do still see former railbeds that have not been built upon.) Similar electric lines also existed in other Southern Ontario communities and those were also discontinued. Note: a report released yesterday, essentially on the economic health of certain areas of Canada, placed St. Catharines in the Niagara Peninsula, near the bottom of the list. One wonders if the gutting of transit has not played a part in this decline of a City that once was one of the "model" small cities of Ontario.

Note: another such mistake was made in Bermuda. And for anyone who has experienced the jarring bus rides which replaced the rail system in that country, also in the 1950s, the now abandoned rail lines, often in sight of the bus routes, generate a vision of comfort and efficiency sacrificed, and visual vistas abandoned.

By way of contrast, the City of Vienna has a remarkable, integrated subway, electric surface and interurban network of transit lines. The building of subways is an ongoing project; at last contact, they had a policy of building one kilometre of subway a year. I have never seen a transportation article informing us on how such a system is funded and the kinds of people who have the insight necessary to propel such projects forward. Perhaps we can learn something from them.

Currently, Mississauga with its 700,000 (plus) residents, the sixth largest City in Canada, and growing by tens of thousands yearly, has a bus service that is well-used on certain lines but less-well used on many other lines. It's a chicken egg thing. An underused line starts in the southwest corner of the City at the Clarkson GO station. But, if you took that bus to try to get to the City Centre, it would take you over an hour. By car, the trip can be done in about fifteen minutes. Another trip from Clarkson to Pearson International Airport would take about two hours plus by bus. By car, it can be done in twenty-five minutes, plus or minus, depending on other traffic circumstances. (As the buses travel on certain lines, almost empty at off-peak times of the day, I wonder what the economics are of running near-empty regular-sized buses rather than having the flexibility to operate much smaller vehicles during operating times outside of the rush hours.)

Mississauga is opting for a light-rail transit system to run down its main artery, Hurontario Street. It is to run from Port Credit in the south up towards some unspecified northern destination in Brampton. It is also again promoting bus rights-of-way on one or more of the highways which pass through the City.

I would suggest that such planning is short-sighted. Such surface transit should not be the main mode employed to move people. It is useful in certain areas of a city, but, to efficiently move people without interfering with the cars and autos which are not going to go away and will long be with us, the way to move people is to build subways.

Given the current number of people in the cities west of Toronto, and the ever-increasing populations of those cities, the three levels of government should be cooperating to see that a start is made "now" on constructing an integrated subway system west of Toronto. (As an aside, an aerial view of westbound traffic out of Toronto is an awesome sight. And, if you happen to be trapped on Highway 5, Dundas Street, and you are trying to get to Flamborough and the huge developments now being constructed near Highways 5 and 6, the part of Hamilton on top of he escarpment and west of downtown Hamilton, well, good luck with that if you hope to get to your destination in under ninety minutes. And, if you want to get from Flamborough to downtown Hamilton and you don't have a car, well, as the saying goes, "You can't get to there from here."

Yes, subways are not financially self-sustaining, especially when the density is less than perfect for that kind of construction. But, in twenty or fifty or a hundred years, when the need for subways will be long past due after the population of the time will have been sitting in immovable traffic congestion for years longer than necessary, those lines will have to be built at a cost that will be many multiples of the cost of such lines had they been built in the years of the early millennium. That is "now".

However, politicians, like the captains of many industries, can only see/plan as far as the next financial quarter (or next election). And so the jobs that should be done, continue to be put off by a government and a public who both lack the "vision thing". (And no, we will not be flying in our own private helicopters, parked in our driveways, in ten years or ever.)

*****

[Michael Wells]

Matt,

I was recently booked on Delta for four flights. Three of them were canceled and I missed the fourth because the connecting flight was canceled. On one of the replacement flights, American through Chicago, we waited an extra four hours while three (3) planes were discovered to be unservicable. Yes, its cheaper to fly -- if I want to go to Orlando. But if I want to go to a smaller city a few hundred miles away, it's much more expensive. A couple of years ago it took me twenty-four (24) hours to get from Portland to Kansas City because of canceled flights. That's how I would argue that deregulation has not improved service, because the airlines can jerk us around at will in their fevered attempts to avoid bankruptcy.

"If we look back in history at development, civilization has always preferred less density not more. To argue that in the future density is going to become higher is absurd." The facts are otherwise. The history of civilization is of people moving to cities. Half of the world's population is now living in cities, because people are moving to more dense places. I look around the city where I live and see new light rail filling cars to standing room because of increasing density. This is public transit. The private company went bankrupt in 1969, which is why we now have public transit. Buses have their place, but they're caught in traffic with the cars.