DaninDC

Don't even get me started by mentioning "special needs" in a thread concerning RTA.

MGD, if you didn't say that was a bus in the picture, I would swear it was a train! </cynicism>

Amen.

The old self-fulfilling prophecy, eh? RTA's rail ridership numbers are way disturbing. Geez--I think even Houston's 7 mile starter line performs better than the entire RTA system. Houston! The most disturbing part, however, is the 24.5 increase in paratransit use. This is usually the backbreaker for any transit agency, and is by far the most cost-ineffective mode to operate.

Okay, so add tolls to the Interstates. That, I get. Drivers in the U.S. have not been paying the full cost of driving since the invention of the automobile. What I don't get is why a private entity needs to profit off this. To me, it's just an idea from the ideological school that claims public sector = bad and private sector = good. If someone is making a profit off public infrastructure, shouldn't it be the public? Other countries, like France, use this model, taking tolls from the Autoroutes and using them to fund the passenger rail systems. Under what is proposed here, potential revenue streams for alternate modes of travel would be diverted to privately held companies and removed from consideration for providing improved public infrastructure. But hey, someone will get rich out of the whole deal, so that makes America better, right?

I think that this plan, combined with the sudden interest of states like Virginia in paying contractors to build and operate toll roads begs a serious question. If it is so profitable for private companies to operate toll roads, then WHY IS GOVERNMENT LITERALLY GIVING MONEY AWAY? It's like selling someone your house just so they can rent it right back to you. How is this positive for taxpayers?

Well, RTA is quite pleased with themselves for spending 25 years and about $250 million on a landscaping of six miles of Euclid Avenue. Elsewhere... Streetcar plan moves forward Anacostia service could start in 2007 By Mike Rupert Examiner Staff Writer Published: Sunday, January 22, 2006 10:09 PM EST It's been nearly 45 years since streetcars were heard rumbling through streets of the District. Now D.C. transportation officials say they will get them rolling again by early next year - and the project is moving to Capitol Hill. D.C. Transportation Director Dan Tangherlini says plans for a nearly 3-mile line through Anacostia are on track, and the streetcars are expected to be in service by early 2007. And Karina Ricks, coordinator of the Great Streets Project for the D.C. Department of Transportation, said the District is working to expand the project to Capitol Hill. Ricks said the city is expected to request bids this summer to install tracks along H Street and Benning Road. The 3.5-mile stretch of road is already being completely rebuilt, and officials, with the support of neighborhood leaders, said they decided to go ahead and lay the tracks. The tracks would run from near Union Station to the Minnesota Avenue Metro station. "It's a case of measuring twice and cutting once," Tangherlini said. "We didn't want to come back in two or three years and have to rebuild the road again." Tangherlini said it could be another three to five years before streetcars are seen rolling through the area. He said the streetcars are "clean and quiet" and should fit nicely with the neighborhood's character. Transportation officials said additional options for commuters were needed along the busy corridor. As many as 20,000 people use two Metrobus lines along the route each weekday, officials said. The H Street rail project is part of $50 million being spent on road improvements in the corridor as part of the city's Great Streets initiative, Ricks said. Construction is expected to begin this fall. Streetcars Return - The last streetcar ran in January 1962 - H Street plan calls for four lanes of traffic and two lanes for streetcars - Neighborhood leaders hope project will ease traffic and parking problems [email protected] My notes: 1. The project is being funded by the District of Columbia, independent of the local transit authority (Metro). 2. District Department of Transportation chief Dan Tangherlini is now Interim GM at Metro. He lives on Capitol Hill and actually rides the subway to work. 3. The X2 bus on H Street already runs articulated buses every 10 minutes. The neighborhood in NE is relatively poor, as is the area of Anacostia where that line will run next year. This is an attempt to draw more investment to the corridor by providing better (i.e. rail) transportation options. 4. Rail projects can be built quickly--if the will is there! I don't think they have quite broken ground on the Anacostia line yet, which is supposed to open in 2007. It was originally supposed to run in CSX right-of-way, but I believe negotiations fell through. Instead, the District has decided to put the line in the street, which they've found will attract more passengers anyway. Questions? Comments?

Closing off streets is almost never a good idea, as it disrupts the traffic grid, concentrating more vehicles onto less roadway, and eliminating redundancy in the network. Furthermore, surrender or sale of the publicly-owned right-of-way could potentially restrict access to existing utilities under the street, or limit expansion of the transit service through the area. I just don't see how this could be a *good* idea.

It would set a bad precedent. The city cannot turn control of the publicly-owned transportation network to private entities. This is, of course, unless the city really wishes to lose all control of the planning functions it does have. I'm fed-up enough with all the streets the federal government has closed down in DC in the name of "security"....

Wow! That's awesome. I've been through there quite a few times on the train, and have been amazed at how little development there is nearby. Imagine being able to walk to the train station, and from there, take a quick ride to the Back Bay or South Station. In the other direction, it would be a piece of cake to get to Providence, or you could catch Amtrak to New Haven, Stamford, or New York. Might as well take advantage of the existing infrastructure, right? Too bad Ohio would rather spend more money on unneeded freeway lane-miles than use what's already existing and paid-for.

I think that's what frustrates me about Cleveland and RTA (and NOACtion)--they don't see that they could easily buy into the Rapid and a commuter rail system as the skeleton on which to hang the economic development of the area. There isn't any reason they can't--they just won't. I haven't had the "pleasure" of riding Septa in Philly, so I can't really do a direct comparison. I can't say I've ever heard anything good about it, though.

clvlndr, while you make good points, zoning has a lot to do with it too. Philly seems to have been preoccupied with "megaprojects" like the Liberty Place skyscrapers, and the new stadia (located away from transit, no less) in recent years, and hasn't really encouraged new TOD, much less preserve decent transit service. The success story you note (DC) meanwhile intentionally located the new arena above a subway station, and will build the new baseball stadium next to a subway station. You can have transit infrastructure, but that doesn't mean the TOD will happen automatically (see Atlanta, Baltimore). By definition, though, TOD must have the transit component, and Cleveland is lucky in this regard. Cleveland just doesn't have very good zoning, and a lot of the transit stations are poorly located to take advantage of TOD, which in turn leads to the woeful underperformance of the lines. As you hinted, DC has seen a tremendous amount of TOD, but only because it was planned for. In fact, it was expected that wherever the subway was built, investment would follow (which is why Georgetowners didn't want a station in their historic neighborhood). Arlington County, VA, in particular, overhauled its zoning regs in order to concentrate development at the rail stations instead of just throwing down rail and playing "wait and see". The results have been mind-boggling to say the least, as 90% of new development in that county is within walking distance of a subway station. DC has also been successful because the service is good and well-maintained. That, and compared to the other cites, there aren't really any freeways criss-crossing the city, so the subway is an extremely competitive mode of travel. Just for fun, betcha didn't know the DC Metro carries more passengers than the subways in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and San Francisco combined.

That's awesome! I think we need a new thread for "not fooling anybodys".

Actually, Amtrak is pretty damn good and reliable along the Northeast Corridor. Otherwise, looks about right, although you forgot "rickshaw".

Oh, don't worry. If there is such a thing, Joe Calabrese will find it.

Thanks, mrnyc. I also forgot to add the human factor. With BRT, there is a lot more room for operator error (read: accidents). In rail systems, it is possible to have the entire operation computerized. For example, on the Washington Metro (while not a LRT system) the operator's main responsibility is to open and close the doors and announce the stops. Computers regulate the speed and braking of the trains. That, and if you happen to have an operator who is drunk or overly fatigued (Lord help us), there are only so many ways a rail car can veer.... As mrnyc pointed out, too, less service can be a hassle. I know that in Boston, the streetcars typically come every 5 minutes or so. This means that where all the branches converge downtown, there is typically a trolley coming through every 60-90 seconds. Try doing that with buses. X, I don't think you're alone. A big part of the reason rail systems enjoy higher ridership than buses is precisely because of the ride quality, whether real or perceived.

Not quite. What gets ignored by the pro-BRT crowd are the actual performance characteristics and limitations of the modes. Just because you make a bus look like a train, does not mean the bus is going to behave like a train. Sure, BRT uses light-rail routing characteristics--fewer stations spaced farther apart, perhaps even a system of pre-boarding fare payment. There are marked differences between the vehicles themselves, though. Light rail operates on steel wheels on steel rails. The coefficients of static and kinetic friction are far lower for steel-on-steel than for rubber-on-asphalt. What this means in practical terms is the diesel motor of a bus must generate more power than the electric motor of a train. Since diesel engines also have more moving parts, they require more maintenance, and are more prone to breakdowns. Second, the life of a bus is far less than that of a rail car. Buses last, on average, about 12-14 years. Rail cars can last for several times that. In fact, there are PCC cars from the 1940s that are still in operation in North America. Since a thorough life-cycle cost analysis is never done when comparing BRT to light rail, the added expenditures of multiple bus fleets is never factored into the "lower cost" of the mode. Third is ride quality. Buses have much poorer acceleration and deceleration characteristics than rail. Because buses spend more time accelerating and decelerating, they are not able to achieve as high of an average speed over the same route as a train. The ride also suffers, because it is dependent on the quality of the streets, which as all Clevelanders know, tends to be suspect. With regard to routing, pro-BRT folks tout the flexibility of buses as an asset. Flexibility is a negative quality--redundancy is an asset. Even though special "stations" can be built for BRT, there typically is no permanence to the routing. The line could theoretically be moved to a different street, or eliminated altogether. On the other hand, rail infrastructure is permanent and fixed, which leads to increased investment along the route (and thus more stability in the affected neighborhoods), and increases ridership.

Wimwar, how would light rail take up too much space in a median, but BRT would not? Assuming a standard track gauge of 4'-8-1/2", and vehicle widths no greater than 10 feet, how do trains take up more room?

What I've forgotten to say in all this is that I think the rest of the project is fantastic. IMO, there aren't nearly enough mixed-use developments in Cleveland. I have to ask, though. How many surface parking spots is this garage replacing?

X, by "status quo", I mean perpetuating the automobile-dependent lifestyle. No matter how much lip-service is paid to things like the Euclid Corridor project, or bike lanes, we all know that car is king in Cleveland. There simply isn't a world-class city anywhere that relies on the automobile as the primary means of transport. I get the feeling that everyone else on this thread is looking at this project in a bubble--that is, as a nice little project on CSU's campus. I see it as a dangerous precedent that undermines investments in transit, present and future. Not that roads and parking and all that aren't necessary in a city, but Cleveland has more parking than it knows what to do with. I don't think anyone can suggest that night-time commuter students need different parking spots than day-time office workers. Isn't that a redundancy that can be done without? Because our automobile-dependent nation expects cheap parking everywhere, you have a spot at the office, a spot at home, a spot at school, a spot at the grocery store--there are literally 4 parking spots for every car in America. Wouldn't you rather have even more land available for development? Why is CSU providing a subsidized good that is already in plentiful supply (if not oversupply)? And yes, if you click on the link to the A/E website, this project is designed to tie in directly to the Euclid Corridor project. I agree that a better transit system is needed. You can't just keep building the parking, though, hoping that the better transit system materializes one day. What happens is that RTA will claim (and rightly so) that "everyone wants to drive", simply because an environment has been created where its difficult to do anything BUT drive. This is why after 25 years, Cleveland is getting one marginally improved bus route, while other cities build entire rail systems. Initiative needs to be made on both fronts simultaneously. RTA began with the improved service on Euclid, but there's no follow-up on the other end, and this $9 million investment in parking (my guesstimate for the parking component alone) directly undermines that by offering a subsidized competing mode.

While a garage is certainly preferable to a surface lot, this project is still reflective of a backward approach to development. Why spend over $200 million on the Euclid Corridor project if you're just going to build parking garages at the stations? What incentive, then, does anyone other than the poor, elderly, and disabled have to do anything other than drive? It would be nice to think that at some point, a rational person would say "Okay, we have enough parking garages." Continually promoting the status quo as the only way to do things until some magical moment in the future arrives to change everything has just one flaw--the future never comes. It's like investing money in bonds with the irrational hope that one day, you'll achieve the same returns as stocks. An initiative needs to be made at some point to change the status quo, or the results will never change. Hell, look at Detroit. While Detroit has seen some considerable success in recent years, especially given how far that city has fallen from grace, there are dramatic roadblocks that keep it from reaching its full potential. For each new building that gets erected or redeveloped, an almost equally-sized lot must be taken (either an empty lot or by demolition) to build a monstrous parking garage. For the 14-story Compuware building, a 12-story parking garage had to be built next door, even though Detroit probably has more parking lots in its downtown than any other city in the U.S. At full build-out, the downtown would thus be 50% parking garages. Is that the kind of city you want to create on the North Coast? Does anyone realistically think that at any point, someone would look at a downtown that consists of 50% parking, and decided that there is sufficient density to support an expanded rail transit system? I'm sure KJP will correct me if I'm wrong, but part of the reason RTA has the worst-performing rail lines in the nation is precisely because of the abundance of cheap parking in Cleveland. X mentioned DC (among other cities) as one of the few cities where developers don't have to worry so much about providing parking. Well, the Metro didn't magically show up in the 1970s. A conscious decision was made to build a world-class transit system and focus development around the stations. As a result, empty lots got developed, and densities increased, which led to further use of the transit system (see how this is self-perpetuating?). Even 30 years later, redevelopment is still occurring, and following the routes of the subway tunnels across town. RTA is trying to provide a better transit option along the Euclid Corridor, but the follow-up with regard to development isn't there. Cleveland continues to proceed with the suburban mentality of assuming everyone wants to drive. What's worse is that, as KJP pointed out, CSU will more than likely subsidize the parking spots. So, you could build this garage for $15,000 - $20,000 per spot, with the fees charged barely covering the annual maintenance costs, or you could have profitable leasable space that generates tax revenue, employment, and contributes to life on the street. As far as I'm concerned, it's a no-brainer. You can pave over the entire City of Cleveland if you want. At some point, you'll have a million different places to park, but no reason to park there. The mindset has to change--Cleveland's fate depends on it.

I'm not intending to insult anyone on this board. It maddens me that Cleveland keeps doing things the same way, yet expects different results. A transit hub and a parking garage are completely incompatible uses, and given Cleveland's proclivity for automobile-oriented development, it's not too hard to figure out which investment will suffer. Given the hundreds of millions of federal money (mine as well as yours) being poured into the Euclid Corridor Project, CSU should not have to replace *every* single parking spot. It's not as if there is a massive parking shortage, especially at night. The idea that this reshuffling will promote TOD is laughable, as a parking garage is the single worst kind of "TOD" you could ever hope to have. This isn't rocket science or magic. You simple cannot have dense, walkable neighborhoods if you insist on maintaining the same number of parking spaces everywhere you go. You'll run out of real estate before you can build a critical mass--no matter how many garages you erect. Dead downtowns like Detroit and Baltimore are testament to this. I know my opinion doesn't matter much because I'm just a loud-mouthed asshole who moved away. Just consider that there might be a better way that the status quo.

Well, those are 600 people at CSU that won't be riding the bus, right??? Come on people. Think holistically! I can already hear hundreds of millions of dollars being flushed down the drain. Hell, RTA probably loves that CSU is undermining the Euclid Corridor Project--that way they can justify not making any future capital investments in the transit system. Cleveland is forever shooting off its own foot, and wondering why the hell it has difficulty walking. Fucking open your eyes.

Um, I disagree. Doesn't the construction of 600 parking spots undermine use of the transit center on the same site? No wonder RTA is a P.O.S.

DC was the original gridded city in the U.S., as per the L'Enfant Plan (don't let the diagonal avenues throw ya). New York, up to that point in time was semi-gridded in what is now lower Manhattan, but didn't develop the rectangular grid throughout the island until the 19th century. I don't think there is such a thing as a "Great Lakes" layout. Cleveland's layout is more like a New England town, in that its origin is on a central public square. This makes sense, considering that the land was owned by a company from Connecticut. The long avenues traversing the city are merely extensions of the streets traversing or radiating from the square. Detroit's layout was originally based on a plan by Judge Augustus Woodward, who adopted elements of L'Enfant's plan for the District. Chicago's layout is more akin to Manhattan, considering that after the Great Fire of 1871, the city became industrialized (mechanized, if you will) and adopted a regimented grid.