DaninDC

Sparkle, do you know WHY Boston is a dense city (the East Coast thing is irrelevant)? It's because they never gutted the place with freeways. Cleveland and Cincinnati used to be just as dense. Please visit that wonderful city. You might be surprised at how much you learn. You can start increasing your persons per vehicle by taking someone else to work every day. Put up or shut up.

I agree. The current Administration is trying to sell American cities this false bill of goods as a one-size-fits-all transit solution. When Jennifer Dorn (FTA Administrator) stops driving and starts taking the bus to work, I might start taking the idea of BRT seriously. BRT almost never ends up being the locally preferred alternative, even after weighing costs. In the Dulles corridor in Northern Virginia, several proposals were floated, including building BRT, and then converting to Metrorail (heavy rail subway). Although the Metro alternative had considerably higher capital costs, the projected ridership was over FOUR times higher due to the quality of service obtained by rail. Needless to say, Metro (sans BRT prelude) became the locally preferred alternative.

Sparkle, thanks for being an ideological troll. I give you points for trying. Any salesman pushing such an obviously flawed and failed product deserves credit for such efforts in the face of incontrovertible evidence against his position. Density along *corridors* is necessary for transit. Persons per square mile applies to an area, not a linear strip. Where do you get your road numbers? Source for one lane of freeway carrying 2500 VPH at 60 mph? I've never seen it higher than 1500. What metropolitan area has an average vehicle occupancy of 1.2 during rush hour??? Highway corridors are the WORST places for rail transit. Bad pedestrian access (at best) and lack of density (see your own damn post). Boston's Green Line, which is over 100 years old, carries over 250,000 people per day. How many freeways do you know have that distinction? Beautiful city, too.

Succinct reply to above: 1. Note San Francisco hilly terrain. What's your point? 2. Physical expansion is not dispersion. Our metropolitan areas are currently expanding exponentially with respect to population growth. Witness Greater Cleveland, which has had zero net population change in 35 years, yet continues to sprawl. 3. Some of us like to get off our asses and walk to things. Like the store. Or the bar. No one says you have to live next to a chemical plant. If you don't want to live above a store or a bar--then don't. Please don't mandate, though, that buying a loaf of bread must be a 45 minute ordeal involving a car trip. Some of us like to get off our asses and walk to things. 4. You get what you pay for. Nostalgia? Pardon me while I stifle my laughter. New York must be the most backward, old-fashioned place on earth, then. People aren't as dumb as you think they are. Just because you market something heavier doesn't make it a better idea. Keep half-assing things, and let me know how it works out. Next time you're stuck in a horrendous traffic jam, I want you to think of me: crashed out on the subway, listening to my ipod, and going anywhere I need to go for less than what you spend on gasoline.

Which is it? Is BRT flexible, or are the routes fixed? They don't seem all too fixed to me--who's to say the transit authority won't change the route over time? It ain't too hard to follow a different street, ya know. Heck, GCRTA changes routes more than they change their underwear. If you have ever ridden a subway, and then ridden a bus, you would never EVER make the claim that BRT is an acceptable substitute for rail. I would love to find one, just ONE person promoting BRT, that is an actual transit rider. Instead, we get a bunch of cheap bastards who want to stick it to transit riders by giving them the smallest carrot possible, then pour billions and billions of dollars into unfettered freeway expansion, which not only renders the transit system useless by spreading development, but only creates worse traffic problems.

You can't gauge appropriateness of transit on the basis of minimum population density per square mile. You have to examine individual corridors, much as highway engineers do. BRT sucks. There's nothing "rapid" about it, and flexibility is actually a very negative aspect of transit lines. No one wants to have to guess where the line is going to take them. You get what you pay for. Rail has a proven record of spurring high-density development clustered around stations. This, in turn, promotes walking, bicycling, and other non-automobile forms of transport. It also makes the bus system work better, by allowing buses to serve shorter routes, where they are more effective, and feed into the rail network. Widely dispersed job centers are a symptom of the disease of highway-mania. What's your solution--build ever-more highways? An interstate highway lane can move 1500 cars an hour. A light rail line can move ten times the amount of people in the same amount of space. Do the math. In the 21st century, the cities that remain relevant are those who will stop making excuses, and have the guts to invest in infrastructure. After all, how do you expect private investors to bring their money, if the public won't even invest in its own city?

Maybe your urban form and density are such because you got rid of your transit system and started accommodating cars instead of people.

http://www.metrostlouis.org

Come on out for a visit, PigBoy! I laugh at the provincial suburbanites who claim that transit will bring "undesirables" into their plastic paradise. Like the undesirables would want to be there, anyway. There are many neighborhoods in DC and environs that are far nicer, far more expensive, and yet far more desirable than any craptastic vinyl-sided American Dream just because they are within walking distance of the subway.

Then instead of jumping to an uninformed conclusion, keep your eyes and ears open. Those of us who ride Amtrak on a semi-regular basis are well aware of the positive changes that have happened under David Gunn, and are thus understandably skeptical about the administration's plan for disposal of Amtrak. IMO, Gunn made Amtrak more professional and raised the bar quite a bit as far as customer service is concerned. Granted, this is only my perception, and merely based on my experiences riding the train. It will be interesting to see if there are any negative changes. I'll see if I can pick the brains of the train crews when I go up to Boston next week. For those who don't ride the trains much, if at all, and are interested in the outcome of this, I would suggest keeping an eye on the New York Times and the Washington Post, both of which usually cover Amtrak news pretty well. I would imagine the Philadelphia Inquirer and the paper in Wilmington, DE will carry news on this too.

Gunn's firing is incontrovertible evidence that this Administration is completely out of touch with the people of this nation. Pretend folksiness aside, of course. I think the CEO of our country has a real problem with competence....

Does this mean Gunn is available to come back and run the Washington Metro system? :-) Mike "heckuva job" Brown is apparently off the federal payroll now, despite being fired several weeks ago.

Agreed, noozer. Gunn's firing was entirely political. I, for one, have been quite pleased with Amtrak since he took over, but the ridership gains speak for themselves.

Looks like next Tuesday will be interesting on the Hill. Gunn has pretty wide bipartisan support in Congress. Time to set the TiVo to CSPAN!

Real simple: expenditures on road projects versus increase in revenue directly attributable to said road projects. Ohio has been building ever-more roads for 50 years without a corresponding increase in income or employment. Building roads is probably the most expensive way to increase employment, and even then, it's not a guarantee--refer to the discussion above on displaced investment.

Hell, if building and operating roads is profitable, I'm going to have to quit my job and start my own road network.

Look at some numbers, make comparisons, and report back with what you've learned.

No one said interstates don't generate development. The problem with interstates is that the development they do generate is haphazard in nature, and generally of a low quality. The new development generated often is parasitic of existing development, absent population growth (see Greater Cleveland, Metropolitan Detroit), and the money funneled to the interstates diverts money that could otherwise be earmarked for maintaining existing infrastructure. A big plus for improving passenger rail is that much of the infrastructure is already built, so the capital improvement costs are far lower than if you were to build an interstate highway with equivalent capacity. All pro-rail folk are asking is to effectively utilize the limited resources we already have, which is TRULY the conservative point of view. If Bush wants to cut a subsidy--cut the $400,000 annual presidential salary, 'cause he sure as hell doesn't need it.

One could argue that the interstates merely displace investment--not create it. If interstates were truly the engine of economic growth that some claim they are, then we wouldn't have hollowed-out cities like Cleveland, Cincinnati, or Detroit, among others. Surely, Houston and Atlanta would have far-outpaced New York as the economic powerhouse of the nation instead of becoming the traffic-clogged smog havens they are. I'm sure you are aware that Amtrak carries over 50% of the combined air-rail market between Washington and New York (including the highly profitable airline shuttles). Imagine what would happen, then, with the elimination of train service. You're talking about increased air congestion, which would ripple through the rest of the nation. You're talking about adding multiple lanes onto I-95 and the New Jersey Turnpike, all of which would quickly become congested. I think its laughable that the current Administration wants to turn Amtrak over to the states. Many states already DO operate their own rail service, and others heavily support additional Amtrak service within their state. New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois, California...all of these states have seized the opportunity to support passenger rail beyond what Amtrak provides. For all the strict-constructionists in the Administration, the Constitution specifically gives Congress (NOT the States) the power to regulate INTERstate commerce. How about Congress taking responsibility that lawfully belongs to them? Not all of what is being proposed for Amtrak is all bad. A rail trust fund with 80/20 funding is pretty much dead-on what rail passengers have been lobbying for all these years. Considering how well the airline model has been working, though, I don't think it's appropriate to follow that lead. The Northeast Corridor trackage (as well as a section in Michigan), signaling, power, catenary, and many of the stations (including Union Station and Penn Station) are all owned by Amtrak. The federal government needs to ensure these properties are, at minimum, brought to a state of good repair if it seeks to divest of them. This is just irritating to me. FDR once said that a conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who refuses to learn how to walk forward. If the "free-market" ideologues would just go back 35 years into history, they would understand that their dream of for-profit passenger rail is never going to happen.

Obviously, ink. That's why Ohio is the most economically competitive state in the nation. It's gotta be all the gas stations, cheap motels, and fast food joints springing up along the interstates. Woo hoo!

At least you don't have a tax-evading former crackhead on your city council!

That's too bad, KJP. One would hope that the mayor of a big city could see the link between public transportation and economic development. We need to have Mr. Jackson meet with Mike Bloomberg and go for a ride together on the 6 train. The lack of attention to development of transportation options (considering that Steelyard Commons is promoted on the premise that residents won't have to travel outside the city) is appalling. I'm very disappointed in RTA in that they instead of performing a fair, obective analysis of transit options, they are ready to dive head-first into an unproven technology. At the very least, they should look at the results LA has achieved (or failed to achieve), because I'm pretty sure their Red Line subway far outperforms any of their BRT lines. Penny-wise and pound-foolish, but I'm preaching to the choir. If Calabrese really has that much inattention to capital projects, then he should be demoted to some kind of VP of operations. A General Manager position, by its nature, requires attention to all aspects of the operation. Time to start kicking Frank Jackson in the ass to remind him how a real city is supposed to function.

I know I've been a curmudgeon about the Euclid Corridor Project from the get-go. I guess that as someone who rides the subway every day, RTA's logic doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. What would make me a little less edgy, was if RTA actually had some long-term plans for system expansion and improvement. It just seems to me that they're willing to "build" this one bus line, and then call it a career. Whatever happened to planning for the future? No matter who wins the mayoral election, I think he/she needs to realize the importance of transit to the city, and develop a better working relationship with RTA to coordinate land-use, development, and transit improvements.

Thanks, KJP. I think I got CTA's Outer Loop project confused with Metra's STAR route. I like the added degree of redundancy, which has been needed in Chicago for about 100 years. What I want to know, is do they really think they can run this "Gold" Line through the existing Red Line subway without affecting headways? From what I recall, the Red Line is "bumper-to-bumper" through the State Street subway during rush hour, especially since the stations through that stretch are at most 1/4 mile apart.

The Euclid Corridor project is anything but permanent, which is why it's such a shame it's taking so much time and money. All one has to do is send the buses down a different street, and any investments along Euclid are undermined. Not too hard to do that. While I'm thinking of it, I've read that Arlington County, Virginia realizes a 19% ANNUAL return on its investment in the Metrorail system, due to increased property values surrounding the subway stations. Anyone want to venture how close RTA comes to that figure along the Euclid Corridor? For what it's worth, 90% of all new development in Arlington is on 10% of its land. To my knowledge, the "outer loop" proposed for Chicago will be commuter rail in the suburbs, connecting the spokes of the existing Metra commuter system, and stopping at ORD.