Oh look ... guess who's on the latest Streets.mn podcast? Yep, yours truly. We discuss the effects of last week's Minneapolis city election, politics and transportation. It's mostly with a local focus but most things also apply elsewhere. Go listen here. Remember you can also find my local transit writing on the same site. Hopefully the impending cold weather will mean more writing.
Episode 38: Americans for Transit & debunking the small/electric car delusion
Andrew Austin stops by from Americans for Transit (twitter: @A4Transit) to share some impacts of the government shutdown and how it fits in with the ongoing austerity culture. We learn about transit diversity, labor issues and the BART strike, and review why it's critical for transit agencies to support their employees and maintain a positive work environment. That means listening to employees and riders, such as by hosting town hall meetings on buses. Later, why smaller cars, electric cars, self-driving cars, personal rapid transit and other pretend solutions fail to move us forward. The real solution is to dismantle car culture but these things promote it and leave us further from the sustainable places we so desperately need.
Check out my latest Streets.mn article critiquing the backwards transit planning process that has led Minneapolis to consider building an expensive rail line in a low-density corridor instead of improving mobility where actual needs exist.
Moreover, what are we trying to accomplish here? That’s the first question a transit planner or advocate should be asking of any proposal. I’m afraid we’re doing it all backwards. ... From the very start we have asked not “How can we improve our transit network?” but “Where should we put our next rail line?” That makes no sense.
See some facts on Metro Transit. I also mentioned two existing routes that are due for capacity upgrades: TranksLink 99 B Line bus rapid transit, Vancouver, BC. (episode 23 and/or capacity post); MBTA Green Line light rail, Boston
Why good health care depends on transit, courtesy of previous guest Scott Bogren (CTAA). Daniel shares his thoughts on a new bus route making its only stop at a major university in the largest North American city without any public transit.
Episode 37: Community Transportation with CTAA, another BART strike, and the government shutdown.
Scott Bogren of the Community Transportation Association of America (CTAA) joins us to discuss their work supporting and advocating for the growing number of small urban, suburban and rural transportation services. He interviews transit operators on his own CT Podcast and spends a lot of time on Twitter.
The second transit strike in just a few months has halted Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) subway service in San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland, with no progress made since the last time. We hear what union members are asking for, and over the weekend a runaway BART maintenance train killed two employees.
Meanwhile the social service sector of the US government has reopened without an agreement (or apology from Republicans). As an added bonus we'll be right back in the same place in three months.
Share your comments, suggestions, ideas for show topics and/or guests by emailing feedback@criticaltransit.com or contact me this way. Read my work on Streets.mn, follow the show on facebook and twitter, subscribe in iTunes (rss feed) and never miss a show. Tell your friends and colleagues, write reviews or make a donation of any amount to help support the show. I have several interviews in the pipeline, an updated and redesigned web site, and lots of material from the places I visited on my big tour.
University Ave: designed to be dangerous
My latest post on Streets.MN is a perfect example of a "stroad" (a cross between city street and freeway which works well for nobody). Somehow we designed a major transit corridor to be dangerous for transit users.
It is a known issue that most drivers don’t respect most traffic laws. Recently a reader wrote to us desperately trying to figure out what can be done to make drivers follow the law, specifically stopping for pedestrians at crosswalks along the newly reconstructed Central Corridor.Nobody talks about this major problem, yet we have people jumping up and down to chastise bicyclists for selectively following the one law drivers seem to like (red lights). First, let’s get the excuses out of the way. You know, the “I didn’t see you patiently (or angrily) waiting to cross the street” – in other words, “I am either lying or not paying attention.”
There are two ways to solve the problem: one involves a combination of frequent enforcement and expensive tickets. The other is street design: we need to plan and engineer transportation facilities that are safe and comfortable for people to use.
Read the full article and get involved in the discussion.
Episode 36: Open Streets Minneapolis
As cities respond to growing calls for safer streets and more open space, many have begun holding a series of Open Streets events where streets are closed to cars and opened to everyone else (people, bikes, skates and other non-motorized users). In most cases there is special programming including vendors, music, demonstrations and fun activities, but a few just put up some cones and let people have the street. And of course marathons, road races and charity walks are some examples of active use of streets and highways. For more info and a sampling of what different cities are doing, check out this Momentum Magazine article, the Wikipedia page and the Open Streets Project directory. Read all about the history of ciclovias (open streets) at Ciclovias Recreativas de las Américas. I took to Lyndale Avenue South on a beautiful Sunday in late June for Open Streets Minneapolis. This episode features "in the field" interviews with some of the organizations tabling as well as regular people trying out activities such and the pop-up cycle track and the slow race. Organizations represented are (in order): Metro Transit; Minneapolis Public Works Dept; Minneapolis Bicycle Coalition; Spokes community bike center; Bike Walk Twin Cities (Transit for Livable Communities, Non-motorized Transportation Pilot Program); Nice Ride bike sharing; Minneapolis Sculpture Garden; Hennepin County Medical Center; Bicycle Alliance of Minnesota. The morning event I spoke about is the Brompton US Championship (photos).
Please send in your questions, comments and suggestions for future topics and guests to feedback@criticaltransit.com or via the contact page. Follow my work on Facebook and Twitter, and contact the people I interviewed for more information and inspiration.
Episode 35: The Efficiency of Transit & Listener Questions on Transit Operations
In this episode I debunk the myth endorsed by Freakonomics in their episode on Mass Transit Hysteria and peddled by many others that cars are more efficient than transit. Each transit route is part of a network which may serve many functions that we believe contribute positively to our society. Transit is a public benefit. Most of the episode is devoted to listener questions on transit service design and operations:
- How to design a late night transit network,
- The value of pulse point hubs and transit centers (and why transfers are good),
- How to keep buses on time and minimize bunching,
- Whether a series of coordinated green signals lights actually helps buses (not unless you have built-in transit signal priority) or is just a ploy by traffic engineers to pretend to support transit.
- The fine hosts of the Progressive Podcast share their thoughts on using sustainable transport in places where being car-free is not so common. Listen to their show for informed commentary on political, social and cultural issues as well as sustainable transportation.
Episode 34: Transit News, Listener Feedback, Lessons from Pittsburgh
IMAG3552
IMAG3666_PGH_Sched
Finally a new episode with your feedback as well as some thoughts on recurring transit strikes and worsening climate change. I share some lessons from my experience riding buses and trains in Pittsburgh, including what kinds of information is important to visitors, new residents and seasoned transit users.
Links to people, places and systems mentioned on this episode:
San Francisco BART transit strike; flooding in Calgary and Toronto; train explosion in Quebec; good news for wildfires; Progressive Podcast Australia; Bikes on Metra commuter rail (The Chainlink forum); riding Divvy bike share (Chicago); Port Authority of Allegheny County (Pittsburgh bus/rail operator); Bike PGH; struggling city of Braddock; ("mini-Detroit"); Stockholm congestion pricing; Bill Lindeke, GaryRidesBikes, Copenhagenize, StrongTowns, walking_boston, bostonrailfan, TheTAdventure.
UPDATE: Walking Bostonian (@walking_boston) wrote a great summary of the transit situation in Pittsburgh.
Please contribute to the growing conversation about sustainable transportation and spread the word by sharing my work on your favorite social media outlets. Send in your feedback by emailing feedback@criticaltransit.com or using the contact form at criticaltransit.com.
Episode 33: Grease Rag Minneapolis bike collective
I'm back with a tour update and an inspiring interview with a member of Grease Rag, a Minneapolis bike group offering education and support to women/trans/femme cyclists. The growing collective hosts several monthly open shop nights around the Twin Cities as well as day and overnight rides, discussions and other events which build community and connect people with helpful resources in a positive environment. Lowrah joins me to share her biking story and discuss approaches to supporting new and current cyclists. Learn how we can all be more welcoming, supportive and sensitive to the tension that various forms of privilege can create. Find out how you can get involved at GreaseRag.org or on Facebook or Twitter.
Livable streets advocates always seem to think that for political reasons they need to make clear they're not anti-car. But I am. I hate cars with a passion. Cars are entirely responsible for the dismal state of our built environment and its negative effects on society. Sure, they can be useful for moving big stuff, but virtually all car trips are totally unnecessary and millions of us do just fine with bikes and buses. My case for why these dangerous steel boxes have to go, finely tuned while navigating around them on my peace-loving bicycle. Also see Right of Way and 50 Reasons Why Cars Suck.
Speaking of bicycles, I will be in Minneapolis next weekend for the Brompton US Championship, a folding bike ride and race that promises to be a fun time. It takes place June 22 and 23 at the Open Streets event in Uptown.
Gareth wrote in from Toronto about the latest mayoral scandal (background) and prospects for a sustainable transit funding plan. Meanwhile the TTC wants to absorb and expand the city's Bixi bike sharing network but Mayor Ford is again being an obstacle. In New York, residents and visitors (including me) are already enjoying North America's largest bike share system, CitiBike: blog, video, interviews with idiots.
Music comes from Rock The Bike's Pedal Powered Stage (video) at Sunday Streets, May 2011, San Francisco.
Send comments, questions, suggestions for topics and guests or anything else to feedback@criticaltransit.com or use the contact form above. Follow me on Facebook or Twitter for near-daily micro thoughts.
Transforming Amtrak to a useful and sustainable network
There is very little intelligent discussion of how to improve passenger rail in the United States (and Canada for that matter). It should be our goal to provide a useful, efficient, reliable and affordable transportation service, not merely to make money as most Amtrak critics seem to think. When discussing Amtrak, advocates typically fall in two camps: the more libertarian group believes everything except the profitable Northeast Corridor is a waste of money and should be discontinued; others see this attack and vigorously defend all existing services. Then there are the regional non-profit groups working to raise large sums of money for a few isolated high-speed rail lines.
The purpose of any planning is to evaluate your performance and work to achieve your previously defined goals. Yet ever since Amtrak was created 40 years ago to stop the bleeding of bankrupt private railroad companies, we have never defined any goals for intercity rail service. That’s probably why Amtrak fails at one of the top priorities for any transportation service: usefulness.
This is the main problem with our intercity passenger rail non-system: it is unsustainable because it is completely useless to the vast majority of Americans. Even for people like me who love riding trains, it can be very difficult to plan a trip on the infrequent, slow services. If you’re not a rail fan and don’t hate flying, air travel is likely to be your mode of choice, even if you would rather take a train.
These are the main deterrents to using intercity passenger rail in the United States (same for Via Rail in Canada):
Lack of geographic coverage. Amtrak operates a handful of regional routes and even fewer long-distance lines. Many important cities are served indirectly, in only one direction, or omitted entirely. All east-west long-distance routes go far out of their way to meet in Chicago. Stations are often located outside of the walkable areas where people want to be and lack convenient local or regional transit and intercity bus connections. While most Americans live somewhere near a train route, few live near a service that is useful to them.
Infrequent service and poor schedules. Amtrak owns and manages very few of the corridors on which it operates, meaning that it adheres to the rules and capabilities of its host railroads. The private freight operators are not bad people; they just have different priorities which are dictated by the needs of transporting cargo over long distances on very long train sets and shifting it to/from trucks. As a result of these constraints, most Amtrak lines run only once per day and often at times that are inconvenient to potential passengers. For example, Cleveland and Toledo are served only by the Lake Shore Limited (New York/Boston - Chicago) and the Capitol Limited (Washington - Chicago), which both pass through only in the middle of the night.
Slow travel & frequent delays. Since Amtrak does not control its running ways, its service quality can only be as good as its host railroads will allow. The top speed of 79 miles per hour is considered low by international standards, yet many segments don’t even allow that speed. It all has to do with the condition of the tracks, capability of the signals, and what/how other trains using the line. Schedules and sidings (extra tracks for passing) are often designed to deal with these issues but the most complicated schedule only works if you stay on time. An example of slow travel is the Empire Builder route which serves Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Chicago on its eastern end, but is too slow and often delayed for most people to rely on it.
Cost. In most places Amtrak is reasonably priced and easily beats the cost of driving or flying, but in high demand corridors such as California and the Northeast Corridor, the prices can be unaffordable for most travelers. Buses provide much cheaper travel on the same corridors but are unreliable as they must operate in heavily congested traffic, a glaring example of income inequality.
What’s missing from every Amtrak discussion I hear in transit circles is the need to build and maintain an intercity and regional transportation system that is useful to people. All four of the above issues can be solved if we invest in infrastructure upgrades that would permit fast, frequent, reliable service everywhere it is needed. With this approach, some segments will yield a good farebox recovery ratio, and it would also hopefully prompt a serious discussion on what we’re trying to achieve with our rail service.
So far we have only done the equivalent of local transit service cuts: eliminate some routes to make it look more efficient on paper while in reality the network erodes and loses riders in a death spiral.
Episode 32: La Crosse, Wisconsin: small city and rural transit
We look first at the small radial bus system transit run by the La Crosse Municipal Transit Utility, which I rode on Fare Free Day. Service Rep/Dispatcher Sonna Severson explains the system, then Director Keith Carlson explains some of the issues and what they've been working on. I toured the MTU service area, rode one of their brand new hybrid buses and enjoyed the two-year-old Grand River Station, a beautiful indoor/outdoor transit center which functions as a pulse point hub for ten fixed routes and Jefferson Lines intercity buses.
When I accidentally discovered the very new Scenic Mississippi Regional Transit, I had to take a ride. I share some audio from the trip as bus driver Carrie tells us about the service and who is using it. Regional Transportation Planner (MRRPC) Peter Fletcher explains the process of starting a new transit service in Wisconsin, the complex public-private partnership that funds SMRT, and how it's going so far. The service is operated by Running Inc., which also operates a regional shared-ride taxi company. Some publicity and coordination with MTU schedules, and a spot in Grand River Station, would help the ridership grow.
I biked from La Crosse north along the Mississippi River to Winona, Minnesota, my next stop, in the dark on country roads without my regular dynamo taillight. I blame Brompton for selling me an inferior halogen headlight which caused my inferior rear light to burn out, but thanks to the great folks at Calhoun Cycle in Minneapolis for replacing it and getting me on my way. [UPDATE: Eventually I replaced these with a good Busch & Muller LED light set that's been flawless.]
Read and contribute to the rural transit resource library of the TROUT in Bancroft, Ontario. Learn about the Brompton US Championship race which will take place during Open Streets Minneapolis on June 23.
Most of this episode was recorded during the first few days of April. Please send your questions, comments, ideas for show topics and guests to feedback@criticaltransit.com or using the contact form. Follow me and my work on Twitter @criticaltransit or Facebook.