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I visited San Francisco this March and the city seriously needs better public transportation. I realized how much you really need a car to get around cities out in the West. SF isn't extremely walkable like NYC. SF has a Muni light rail train thing and I personally don't like it although they didn't seem to get too crowded. I wish they had underground light rail systems. That would mean fewer stops, and they don't have ride with traffic. It would be faster. SF sounds like a fun city to visit, the public transportation is easy to figure out for a tourist, but it's super frustrating when you don't have as much transportation available like we have in NYC and cities out East. Even Boston lacks transportation. My brother goes to college out there and can't even visit the suburbs. NYC transportation is the best if you want to get anywhere and even to the North Jersey suburbs.
What are your thoughts on Chicago's public transportation? I lived in the far flung suburbs for about a year, and always found that the Metra line did an excellent job linking the suburbs to the city, then the El connected the various inner city neighborhoods and downtown. They also have the South Shore line that links North West Indiana to downtown Chicago.
Have you visited Chicago and used the public transportation there?
I visited San Francisco this March and the city seriously needs better public transportation. I realized how much you really need a car to get around cities out in the West. SF isn't extremely walkable like NYC. SF has a Muni light rail train thing and I personally don't like it although they didn't seem to get too crowded. I wish they had underground light rail systems. That would mean fewer stops, and they don't have ride with traffic. It would be faster. SF sounds like a fun city to visit, the public transportation is easy to figure out for a tourist, but it's super frustrating when you don't have as much transportation available like we have in NYC and cities out East. Even Boston lacks transportation. My brother goes to college out there and can't even visit the suburbs. NYC transportation is the best if you want to get anywhere and even to the North Jersey suburbs.
Of course you can visit the Boston suburbs on the MBTA. It covers many suburban towns, and goes as far west as Worcester, as far south as Providence, and as far north as Lowell. You cant get to every single town, but you can still do pretty well...
I've read that the state government has at least temporarily banned the implementation of any light rail in the city, I do not know why, this seems like an overreach from the state government restricting the city itself. I still need to read up on BRT, what other major cities have BRT and have it working well?
LA comes to mind. And Boston's Silver Line from the airport. But whether they qualify as "BRT" is debatable.
Cleveland's Healthline and Albuquerque's ART are the most widely-acclaimed in the US and Cleveland's has been used as a model for TOD along BRT lines, but it's also debatable just how much of that TOD is attributed to the bus route and how much development would have happened regardless.
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Originally Posted by Mutiny77
In mass transit/urban development circles, Cleveland's HealthLine is pretty well-known; it was the highest rated BRT system in the country before the ART line in Alburquerque recently stole that designation. Many studies and articles about BRT systems in the U.S. prominently feature the Health Line as a model system.
Yes this is true, but like I wrote above it is debatable if the Cleveland line has truly been as successful as proclaimed. As you mentioned, ABQ's system has eclipsed it. One of the guys responsible for Bogota's acclaimed BRT system has been a Jax resident and transit consultant for decades and he constantly harped on the fact that for BRT to be successful it has to be bonafide BRT (see ITDP standards) which costs just as much or more than typical heavy rail or commuter rail lines.
If San Diego had a heavy rail line from the Washington Street light rail station to the City Heights transit center, and then a streetcar connecting the Park/University subway to the Park/Market light rail station, that would propel San Diego right into the serious major leagues of transit.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit the largest Light rail system (mileage wise) in the US.
I had an earlier post on this but I deleted it. Now that it's been brought up more than once I feel the need to respond.
DART may have the longest rail network, but DFW as a whole is pretty lousy wrt public transportation. DART's first/last mile coverage is terrible. Additionally, Arlington, the home of Jerryworld, Six Flags, and Rangers Ballpark, is a ginormous 400,000-person transit desert.
I suppose it's a win that they have a train to DFW, but if you're like the average DART customer you'll need to take an Uber to the DART station because it's too damn far away to walk.
Yes this is true, but like I wrote above it is debatable if the Cleveland line has truly been as successful as proclaimed. As you mentioned, ABQ's system has eclipsed it.
From a design perspective. Another rating on operations will come later.
Quote:
One of the guys responsible for Bogota's acclaimed BRT system has been a Jax resident and transit consultant for decades and he constantly harped on the fact that for BRT to be successful it has to be bonafide BRT (see ITDP standards) which costs just as much or more than typical heavy rail or commuter rail lines.
I agree that BRT has to be bonafide BRT (and not allow BRT creep to occur) in order to truly work but it's still significantly cheaper than a rail-based system. ART in Alburquerque cost $137 million for 9 miles; the Silver Line extension of Metro in Northern Virginia cost $3 billion for 12 miles. Using light rail as a point of comparison, the Blue Line extension in Charlotte is about 10 miles long and cost just over $1 billion.
The autonomous vehicles are coming. Pretty well inevitable at this point.
With their arrival rail becomes unthinkable. The AVs provide a wide range of transit vehicles from jitneys to large buses that can be freely intermixed. And they enable such things as effective express service to precise addresses while allowing convenient placements of numerous stations.
May still be room for the BRT if designed with a view for the future. But rail has now reached the end for hauling people.
The autonomous vehicles are coming. Pretty well inevitable at this point.
With their arrival rail becomes unthinkable. The AVs provide a wide range of transit vehicles from jitneys to large buses that can be freely intermixed. And they enable such things as effective express service to precise addresses while allowing convenient placements of numerous stations.
May still be room for the BRT if designed with a view for the future. But rail has now reached the end for hauling people.
It's not one or the other. You can't automate congestion out of dense urban cores. As long as humans live in cities there's gonna be a need for compact transportation that can hold a ton of people.
It's not one or the other. You can't automate congestion out of dense urban cores. As long as humans live in cities there's gonna be a need for compact transportation that can hold a ton of people.
You miss the point. AVs will out haul light rail comfortably on equally compact layouts. And they easily move their capacity with the need. And with much greater flexibility.
I had an earlier post on this but I deleted it. Now that it's been brought up more than once I feel the need to respond.
DART may have the longest rail network, but DFW as a whole is pretty lousy wrt public transportation. DART's first/last mile coverage is terrible. Additionally, Arlington, the home of Jerryworld, Six Flags, and Rangers Ballpark, is a ginormous 400,000-person transit desert.
I suppose it's a win that they have a train to DFW, but if you're like the average DART customer you'll need to take an Uber to the DART station because it's too damn far away to walk.
With DART, each individual city can decide not to participate and have its own public transportation. It has always seemed as if Arlington has always wanted to be recognized as its own city and not a giant suburb, (although it is). Arlington chooses not to have any public transportation.
Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia:
"For many years, Arlington had the notorious distinction of being the largest city in the United States that was not served by a public transportation system.[65] Between 1980 and 2013, voters rejected three separate ballot proposals to bring public transportation to the city, though certain political and economic realities particular to North Texas made successful passage of those measures arguably more difficult in Arlington than in other parts of the state or country.[65][66] On August 19, 2013, the two-year pilot project known as the Metro Arlington Xpress (MAX) bus began offering weekday bus service between College Park Center (on the campus of The University of Texas at Arlington) and the Trinity Railway Express (TRE) CentrePort Station near DFW Airport, with a single stop near the Arlington Entertainment District. From the TRE station, riders could take the TRE to Fort Worth, Dallas and points in between, all of which are served by comprehensive public transit systems.[67] The MAX program was funded primarily by the City of Arlington and The University of Texas at Arlington, with contributions from local businesses.[68] The service was run through a tri-party agreement between the City of Arlington, the Fort Worth Transportation Authority and the Dallas Area Rapid Transit. City Council extended the MAX bus service beyond the original two-year pilot timeframe through annual contracts until Dec. 31, 2017. The City of Arlington has a lower than average percentage of households without a car. In 2015, just 4.7 percent of Arlington households lacked a car, which dropped to 3.7 percent in 2016. The national average is 8.7 percent in 2016. Arlington averaged 1.89 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8.[69]
In January 2017, Arlington was part of a Texas state-wide designation as an Automated Vehicle Proving Ground by the U.S. Department of Transportation.[70] In August 2017, Arlington launched the first autonomous vehicle shuttle service in the United States offered by a municipal government to the general public on a continuous basis.[71] Named Milo, the autonomous electric shuttles provide service during major events at Globe Life Park and AT&T Stadium, connecting remote parking areas to the stadiums.
Arlington also offers an on-demand rideshare service, in partnership with the company Via, which began in December 2017.[72] Riders can request a pickup from a six-passenger van within a designated service area, which covers key destinations within Arlington as well as connecting to the Trinity Railway Express CentrePort Station."
Clearly it is not DART's fault that Arlington is a large public transportation black hole. I think the majority of the Metroplex is pretty well covered, especially Dallas itself.
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Is there any reason for light rail at this point?
