To consolidate, disseminate, and gather information concerning the 710 expansion into our San Rafael neighborhood and into our surrounding neighborhoods. If you have an item that you would like posted on this blog, please e-mail the item to Peggy Drouet at pdrouet@earthlink.net
Computers
have brought us many great things. Online shopping. Streaming movies.
Minecraft. And, lest we forget, variable speed limits.
If
you're not familiar with variable speed limits, they're exactly what
you'd think: traffic systems designed to change speed limits in a given
area, based on weather, traffic, and other factors. Variable speed
limits have been used in parts of the U.S. for over 50 years, with
Michigan rolling out one of the country's first programs in 1962 (PDF).
However,
variable speed limit systems don't always rely on advanced technology.
For example, some are designed to change speeds during particular times
of year. That's how it works on an interstate in Wyoming,
where top speeds are reduced during snowy, icy winter months. The
Cowboy State's system wasn't meant to be responsive to minute-by-minute
conditions; limits change based simply on the day of the year.
But
of course, other systems now deploy an array of sensors to assess
weather, traffic, and other factors when changing speed limits. That's
the kind of system that's headed to Atlanta, Georgia -- arguably, one of
the most congested cities in the country.
According to the Georgia Department of Transportation website,
I-285 is a trouble spot -- specifically a 36-mile stretch of it,
located to the north of the I-20 interchanges. This section, called the
"Top End", is where variable speed limits will be introduced this
September. The DOT says that it hopes the system will make I-285 safer
and less congested.
The
DOT says that it'll accomplish that task by keeping traffic moving at
the same speed. While speeding itself can cause accidents, a major cause
of collisions is "speed variance",
or travelers moving at vastly different velocities. The new system in
Atlanta aims to mitigate the possibility for differences by ratcheting
down (or up) the speed limit from a maximum of 65 mph down to 35 mph,
using a network of 176 digital signs. Though traveling down an
interstate at 35 mph is no one's idea of fun, the DOT says that it's
safer and more efficient for drivers to slow and move at the same pace
than to keep a higher speed limit, which encourages stop-and-go
traffic.
And for those who think that police are always looking for ways to write more traffic tickets (not a stretch, since many cities depend on revenue from
citations), Georgia's DOT states very clearly, "Our ability to remotely
change the speed limit on the corridor is not intended to create speed
traps. Rather, the changing speed limits are designed to create safer
travel by preventing accidents and stop-and-go conditions."
Georgia
officials say that the new system is inexpensive and easy to roll out,
with a strong return on investment. They hope to see results similar to
those of a variable speed limit system deployed in Washington state,
which curbed collisions by 13 percent and injuries from collisions by 10
percent.
For additional details about Atlanta's new variable speed limit system, check out the DOT video, embedded above.
Cash toll booths on Orange County's toll roads have been closed since May 14, 2014.
IRVINE, Calif. (KABC) --
Drivers on Orange County toll roads are getting a 30-day grace period if they forget to pay, officials announced Monday.
Those
who use the 73, 133, 241 and 261 toll roads without paying first will
have their penalties waived through the Labor Day holiday as long as
tolls are paid within 30 days. Only first-time violators may take
advantage of the moratorium.
The Transportation Corridor
Agencies, the organization that operates the 51-mile toll road network,
stopped collecting cash at its toll booths on May 14. The grace period
is meant to inform drivers of the electronic payment options.
Drivers
can create a prepaid FasTrak account to receive a transponder that can
be used on every toll road in California; establish an ExpressAccount
that charges each toll to a credit card, prepaid account or sends a
monthly invoice; or pay within 48 hours online or through a mobile app.
"Hopefully,
this additional time will help riders understand the toll changes so
they can choose the personal payment method that works best for them,"
said Todd Spitzer, a county supervisor and Transportation Corridor
Agencies board member.
About 250,000 people use Orange County's
toll roads every day to avoid traffic. About 87 percent pay with a
FasTrak or Express Account.
The new cashless system will save TCA more than $13 million over five years, according to officials.
The community meeting for Desiderio Park will take place Wednesday, June
25 from 6:30PM-8:00PM. This meeting will provide the opportunity for
constituents to give their input to the Public Works staff and review
conceptual plans.
GELFAND’S WORLD-For
our biggest traffic frustration, the daily freeway commute, there is
now a potential solution. It's new, and it won't require increased taxes
or twenty years of construction. It's a bit like something out of
Disneyland and a bit of The Jetsons. The technology is being tested
right now in California, England, Poland, Korea, and Israel.
So what's this solution to our commuting woes?
It's a whole new generation of a
technology that has been in existence in various forms for half a
century. It has the unwieldy name Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), but it's
a whole lot more. It carries you in privacy and comfort along an
elevated guideway, without intermediate stops and starts.
Let's start by listing a few things we would want a new
transportation technology to have, and show how the new technology
satisfies them.
First, it has to be built without a tax increase, or any tax dollars for that matter.
Second, it has to be accomplished soon -- let's say 3 or 4 years.
Third, it has to give you a quick,
private, inexpensive ride all the way across town to downtown LA, or to
Westwood, or to LAX, or to the valley.
Fourth, it has to carry you in one
continuous ride, without lots of jarring, uncomfortable stops, the kind
of interruptions you have on a bus or a subway.
Fifth, it has to be built in a style that doesn't take up much ground space, or interfere with cars or with pedestrians.
Sixth, it has to be quiet, nonpolluting, and highly energy efficient.
When you are driving the freeway and you see red tail lights start to
fill the road in front of you, what do you feel? Remind yourself of
that feeling, and now consider the fact that we can actually do
something about it.
What is this techno-fix that can make your lives easier, if only we can develop the political will to get it done?
We know that the solution is not to build another set of freeways. It
would take too long, and cost too much, even if we were able to
double-deck what we have now. Likewise, we can't build new freeways
alongside the old ones in the LA basin, because there isn't the open
ground to construct them.
So there is nowhere to build except above the ground or down below
it. The down-below version is to build tunnels in which we run trains.
These are righteous projects which we should be supporting, but they
have a limited utility in terms of the overall problem, at least over
the next twenty or twenty-five years.
Light rail is also very expensive. By the time you do the planning
and the construction, you are looking at spending at least one-hundred
million dollars for every mile you complete. The other problem is that
the process, from start to finish, is measured in decades rather than
months or years. Because tunneling is such a lengthy, expensive process
(in excess of $450 million a mile), much of our new light rail will be
above ground, which complicates life for those who live along the route.
So what is this new idea we are talking about?
It's basically similar to the simple monorail or elevated gondola
idea, but updated using today’s more robust technology. Think of a
narrow elevated rail, or guideway, from which your passenger pod hangs,
and along which the pod moves at high speed. Another variant of this
idea involves building a narrow elevated track or roadway atop which a
passenger vehicle moves under the control of a centralized computer.
Now think about a small station near where you live, where a private
passenger pod comes to meet you. You click an icon on your cell phone,
telling the system your destination, and you are whisked away in comfort
and silence. The pod takes you directly to the stop where you want to
go. No stopping and starting at every intermediate station, because you
go right past them.
Physically, the system involves putting up poles about the size of
ordinary light poles. A rail is hung from pole to pole, and carries the
passenger pods.
Why haven't we seen this type of system sooner? Largely, the answer
is that it has taken a confluence of several technologies to make the
potential into reality. Modern computer systems and sensing devices mean
that pod movements are run by electronic controls that leave the
driving to the control system. This means that you don't have to hit the
accelerator and the brake. You can play on your computer, or listen to
music, or read a book, or just sightsee.
Current prognostications are that construction costs will be about
ten million dollars a mile, enormously cheaper than the hundreds of
millions of dollars that it costs to dig tunnels for full-scale subways
and ten times cheaper than putting rail above ground. That means that a
PRT system can be built using private investment capital rather than tax
funds. The cost of taking a ride on the PRT is going to be around the
same price you would pay to take the bus, and probably will be
considerably cheaper than what it currently costs you in gasoline.
This kind of system is also much quicker to build. A truck pulls up
to the site of a planned support pole, drills a hole in the ground, and
another truck comes along and pours some concrete into a mold. A few
days later, a third truck arrives and inserts the support pole. Do this
every couple of hundred feet along a road (more or less like you would
do for lighting poles), attach the guide rail, and you're done. Arrange
to have stations for getting on and off at convenient intervals.
Stations can even be situated in buildings. All you need is an entrance
and exit at the second or third story level, and there you have it.
Now think about getting on a passenger pod at LA International
Airport and riding without stopping, all the way to downtown LA, or to
the valley, or to Westwood.
Imagine creating a PRT system that will connect up Santa Monica with
West LA and downtown. Think about the city of Los Angeles being able to
move thirty or forty thousand people an hour using PRT lines. It's the
equivalent of adding two or three brand new freeways.
Imagine being able to carry ten thousand people an hour into and out
of LAX. It's the quicker, more intelligent version of park and ride.
Los Angeles has taken on a brave experiment in light rail
construction. We can't help but be pleased that this is finally taking
place. But there are limits to light rail. There are only so many routes
we can afford to build using this technology. In addition, the process
is going to take time. Figure another few billion dollars and another
ten or twenty years to get the whole system put up.
Besides its immediate goal of providing some respite to freeway
gridlock, PRT can also provide the remaining links in a comprehensive
system that will include rail, freeways, and public streets. It will
start by taking a huge load off of the freeways that serve the commuter
and which become such a nightmare during our rush hours. Our recent
experience is that the major freeways serving commuters -- the 405, the
10, the 101, and the 110 -- are becoming clogged at almost every waking
hour. Even weekends are finding these freeways jammed at inopportune
times.
Imagine that we build a PRT to serve the 405 corridor. The
engineering is straightforward, the cost is minimal, and the need is
painfully obvious.
This is why City Councilman Paul Koretz has been supportive of the
PRT concept. His constituents, like so many of the rest of us, have been
crying out for a solution to our transportation misery.
There is lots more to talk about, including the several companies
that are developing competing systems, any one of which might work in
Los Angeles.
The Skytran corporation, located
in California, has just signed a deal to build a demonstration PRT that
will be located in Tel Aviv, using an innovative system of magnetic
levitation and electric propulsion that promises to move people in near
silence, and at much reduced energy cost. Skytran will compete with
other American companies such as Jpods.Vectus is
applying Swedish technology to a PRT project in Suncheon Bay, South
Korea. Any or all of these companies may be competitive in the Los
Angeles market.
As mentioned in the desired specifications listed above, a PRT
system, correctly designed and engineered, can probably be installed
using private investment funding, rather than tax dollars. There is no
need to add to the sales tax in order to install PRT in Los Angeles.
The political landscape
A group of volunteers has been working on educating the public and
the transportation community. (Disclosure: I am part of that group, and
although I don't have any economic interest in PRT at this time, it is a
field I would love to become involved in. We are currently talking
about creating a nonprofit educational arm of our group in order to do
public education.) That volunteer group includes an engineer who
formerly worked on the design of the Space Station and interplanetary
probes. It also includes people who originally met each other through
the neighborhood council system. We hope to explain the idea of PRT to
additional community groups and neighborhood councils over the next few
months.
Here is the link to the PRT Task Force website.
If you look carefully, you will find that different companies are
taking different approaches. One is to run the PRT cars above an
elevated roadway. You can see that in the Vectus approach, for example.
The other way is to hang the pods from a narrow guide rail, as Skytran
is doing. This approach has an advantage in terms of taking up very
little space at street level, and can be installed pretty much anywhere,
including crowded city avenues.
The major lesson is that we can supplement commuter travel without building new freeways, and without breaking the bank.
There is lots more to be said. The most important, for you the
reader, is to visit the PRT website and, if you are somewhat convinced
that we should start to think about this approach, then we invite you to
sign the petition.
The Economic Impact of building a whole new export industry
One last word. Los Angeles was, at one time, the transportation
leader for the world. The Douglas DC3 was invented and built here. The
DC6 became the workhorse of civil aviation. The Space Shuttle was built
here, as were multiple generations of top line fighter aircraft.
We've lost a lot of that lead, but this is a chance to take it back.
Los Angeles, should it decide to invite the construction of a PRT system
here, will get manufacturing businesses and construction jobs. Along
the way, we will improve our air quality through the installation of an
all-electric system of commuter transport. There is a certain urgency in
getting started, because other countries would like to compete for the
business of building and exporting PRT.
Union Station is the centerpiece of Denver's FasTracks expansion program.
DENVER—It's a vision straight out of a transportation planner's fondest dream.
In the center of the metropolis, the Beaux-Arts façade of a grand old
railway terminus, finished in robin egg-hued terracotta stone, is
cradled by the daring swoop of a canopy of brilliant white Teflon. On
one of eight tracks, a double-decked passenger train has stopped to
refuel. A few hundred yards away, German-built light rail vehicles
arrive from distant parts of the city, pulling into a downtown of
soaring condo towers and multifamily apartment complexes. Beneath the
feet of rushing commuters, express buses pull out of the bays of an
underground concourse, and articulated buses shuttle straphangers
through the central business district free of charge. A businessman,
after swinging his briefcase into a basket, detaches the last remaining
bicycle from a bike-share stand next to the light rail stop, completing
the final leg of his journey-to-work on two wheels.
An out-of-towner could be forgiven for thinking she'd arrived in
Strasbourg, Copenhagen, or another global poster child for
up-to-the-minute urbanism. The patch of sky framed in the white oval of
the Union Station platform canopy, however, is purest prairie blue. This
is Denver, a city that, until recently, most people would have pegged
as an all-too-typical casualty of frontier-town, car-centric thinking.
"Denver is a car town," says Phil Washington, who has been general
manager of the Regional Transportation District, metro Denver's rail
provider, since 2009. Originally from Chicago, Washington joined the
transit authority after a 24-year career in the military. "You've got to
remember, not so long ago, this was the Wild West. Historically,
everybody had their own frickin' horse. They'd strap them up on a pole
outside the saloon. Folks feel the same way about their cars."
(Washington notes that even the RTD headquarters — conjoined brick
buildings in what is now rapidly gentrifying LoDo, Lower Downtown — was
once a notorious brothel, located a convenient stroll from Union
Station.)
But in a state that recently voted to legalize the retail sale of
marijuana, change is clearly in the wind. Ten years ago, Denver's new
mayor (and current Colorado governor) John Hickenlooper began to ramp up
a campaign to convince voters to approve an ambitious expansion of the
region's embryonic light rail network. A similar plan — fuzzy on such
key details as routes and cost — had been defeated in a 1997 referendum. In 2004, the region's voters approved $4.7 billion of new debt for the FasTracks program.
The plan, to add 121 miles of new commuter and light-rail tracks to the
region, 18 miles of bus rapid transit lanes, 57 new rapid transit
stations, and 21,000 park-and-ride spots, was approved 58-to-42, precisely reversing the results of the '97 referendum. (The pricetag has since risen to $7.8 billion.)
Washington
attributes the approval of FasTracks, in part, to growing frustration
with traffic congestion. An earlier program called T-REX (for
Transportation Expansion) built not only a light rail line to the city's
southeast, but also widened Interstate 25, the region's main
north-south axis. Following the apparently immutable laws of induced demand,
increased road supply led to increased traffic. Within a year, I-25 was
just as congested as it had ever been. Voters, Washington believes,
came to the conclusion that transit offered a better path.
Another key factor in the referendum's success, Washington insists,
was a concerted public relations campaign. RTD, supported by the Denver
Chamber of Commerce and the Denver Regional Congress of Governments
(DRCOG), launched a communications blitz which had them doing
presentations in schools and city halls across most of the region's 60
municipalities.
"From the start, we made it clear we weren't competing with the car,"
says Washington. "And we explained, to the average Joe, that for only
four cents on most ten dollar purchases, he'd be getting a whole lot of
new transportation."
• • • • •
Washington traces the progress of FasTracks on a poster-sized map
clipped to a whiteboard. Light rail trains, on a track that branches
south of downtown, already offer service to Littleton and Lincoln;
extensions will see new miles of tracks penetrating even deeper into the
southern exurbs. Last year saw the opening of the first FasTracks
project, the West Rail line, running through some of Denver's lowest
income neighborhoods to its terminus at the headquarters of Jefferson
County. By 2016, the Gold Line to Arvada will offer further service to
the west, and the East Rail line will carry passengers to the airport;
both lines will run heavy-duty commuter trains powered by overhead
catenary wires. A rail line along Interstate 225 will create a loop east
of downtown, which Washington hopes will one day become a true circle
line.
Only the Northwest Rail Line, says Washington, remains a question
mark. Intended to bring commuters from downtown to Boulder and Longmont,
along 41 miles of track, it follows a Burlington Northern Santa Fe
Railroad freight corridor. A rendering of the Westminster Station on the Northwest Rail Line. By
2016, a bus-rapid transit system will offer service to Boulder, home to
a university and cluster of tech companies that make it a major
employment hub. The BRT along U.S. 36
will be more than just a stopgap; plans call for it to continue to run
in tandem with commuter rail. Washington concedes that the line will be
something less than full BRT. The buses currently on order have only one
door, significantly slowing boarding and unloading, and will run in
regular highway lanes, rather than dedicated busways.
By 2018, when all but one of the ten FasTracks lines should be
completed, a metropolitan area with a projected population of 3 million,
spread out over 2,340 square miles, will be served by nine rail lines,
18 miles of bus rapid transit, and 95 stations. Many argue it will turn
Denver into the west's most advanced transit city, vaulting it beyond
better-known peers Portland, Los Angeles, and Vancouver, British
Columbia.
"We're witnessing the transformation of a North American city through
transportation infrastructure investment," says Washington. He foresees
a not-too-distant future when Denverites will be able to access not
only light and commuter rail but also RTD buses, B-Cycle bicycles, and
car-share vehicles using a single stored-value fare card.
"You'll wheel your suitcase out of Denver International Airport, ride
the train to Union Station, and hop a Car2Go — or even a B-Cycle if
you're traveling light — to your house or hotel. All using one card."
It's a beautiful vision, if one undermined by an uncomfortable truth.
Denver's mode share for transit — the proportion of people who use
buses or light rail to commute — is only about 6 percent.
Contrast this with the Canadian city of Calgary, where a similarly
sized bus and light-rail fleet operating in a similarly dispersed
landscape draws in a mode share of nearly 17 percent. Even epically
sprawled Atlanta and automobile-mad Los Angeles manage to achieve almost
twice Denver's per capita transit ridership.
In
spite of all the inducements, Denverites, like eight in ten Americans,
continue to get to school or work the same old way: driving alone.
Will FasTracks make an appreciable number of people in Denver give up
their horses — or their contemporary equivalent, private automobiles?
The RTD is betting heavily that the answer will be yes. To
achieve the transition, they're planning on changing not only the
commuting habits of Denverites, but also the DNA of Denver itself,
making it into a far denser city.
It's a multi-billion-dollar gamble not only on the future of
transportation, but also on the future of the American metropolis — one
whose outcome other cities will be watching very closely.
• • • • •
A trip to Denver, "The Queen City of the Plains," once meant arriving
in one of the continent's great railroad towns. In its heyday, 80
trains a day passed through Union Station — trains like the Pioneer Zephyr,
a kinetic sculpture of wraparound windows and streamlined stainless
steel, whose record-breaking, 13-hour run to Chicago, in which it topped
out at 112 miles an hour, earned it the nickname the "Silver Streak."
Union Station, with its eight-foot-tall chandeliers and plaster
arches lined with carved Columbine flowers, announced Denver as an oasis
of urbanity in the American West. Emerging from the Wynkoop Street
entrance, travellers were met by the six-story high Welcome Arch,
illuminated with 2,194 incandescent light bulbs. Incongruously, the
arch was emblazoned with the Hebrew word "MIZPAH," meaning "God watch
over you while we are apart." (Denverites liked to kid newcomers that it
was the Native American word for "Howdy, Partner.") The grand opening of Union Station took place May 9, 2014. The
fate of Union Station mirrors the fate of rail in much of North
America. The Welcome Arch, which came to be seen as a traffic hazard,
was torn down in 1931. Private interurban lines that linked downtown to
Boulder in the north and Golden to the west disappeared with the coming
of freeways. In 1958, a bright red sign entreating Denverites to "Travel
by Train" was erected on the façade of the station. Air travel had
begun to outpace rail, and Stapleton Airport had become the new gateway
to the city. The streets around Union Station became Denver's skid row,
the stomping ground for Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady,
whose epic cross-country road trips were usually made by car, not
train. By the 1970s, many of downtown's most elegant buildings, which
went up at the height of the City Beautiful movement, had been replaced by oceans of surface parking.
Change came with the new century. In 2001, RTD partnered with DRCOG
to purchase the station and the surrounding acreage for $49 million.
Union Station, currently a construction site, will once again become the
centrepiece of a renewed Lower Downtown, now rebranded "LoDo." The
station will continue to welcome Amtrak trains bound for Chicago and San
Francisco, but will also be home to the Crawford Hotel, a 112-room
luxury property, set to open in July 2014,
with "Pullman" style rooms and suites starting at $252. Cranes
currently pivot over residential condo towers, the tallest of them 21
stories. On the north side of the station, adjacent to the light-rail
stop, a whole new residential neighborhood, Confluence Park, has
sprouted up on what used to be weed-ridden, trash-strewn rail yards. An
elementary school has opened its doors in a high-rise tower, and the
local supermarket chain, King Soopers, has staked a LoDo branch (there
are rumors a Whole Foods will follow). All told, the station
redevelopment has spurred $1.8 billion in private investment.
"RTD is one of the largest property owners in Colorado," says Bill
Sirois, the authority's manager of transit-oriented development. He
describes dozens of developments going up around FasTracks stations. On
the East Rail Line, the Urban Land Conservancy, a non-profit that
purchases land to serve community interests, has bought nine acres of
land around the 40th and Colorado station, where it's building 156 units
of affordable housing. An eight-story housing complex for seniors is
going up next to the 10th and Osage station. On the Central Rail Line,
275 new apartments are going up to on a transit plaza adjacent to
Alameda Station. All of these new developments will be within a
half-mile of a FasTracks line, well within walking distance of a
station.
The biggest success story remains downtown, whose residential population has reached 17,500,
a 142 percent increase since 2000. All told, FasTracks investment has
brought seven million square feet of new office space, 5.5 million
square feet of new retail, and 27,000 new residential units. Driving
demand for TOD, says Sirois, is Denver's changing demographics.
"We have a huge population of empty nesters," he says. "More and
more, they're ditching their suburban homes and moving downtown."
Since the Great Recession, Denver has also become a hotspot for Millennials,
knocking out such car-centric rivals as Phoenix and Atlanta. Members of
Generation Y are less likely to own cars (or want to own them), and
more likely to opt for transit or active transportation. They are also
multi-modal by instinct: a recent survey found that 70 percent of those in the 25-to-34 age range reported using multiple forms of transportation to complete trips, several times a week.
All this bodes well for the future of FasTracks. RTD is counting not
only on increased residential density around stations, but also the network effect
— the synergy that happens when new transit comes on line, making more
parts of a region accessible to more users — to drive ridership forward.
"The system is developing and merging," says University of Denver
transportation scholar Andrew Goetz. "The opening of Union Station is a
major threshold. It's the intermodal heart of the network, bringing
together rail and the regional bus system. The connectivity we're going
to see as a result is going to be quite impressive."
"I remember, seven years ago, I'd be driving down I-25, and it would
be completely gridlocked," says Max Morrow, the owner of Max Lunch, a
lunch counter next to Union Station. "A nightmare. In every car there's
one person. And I'd look over at the light rail line that had just
opened, and there'd be literally two people on every train. Now the
trains are starting to get full. People in Denver love their cars, but
they're beginning to figure out the train system, and they're using it."
Morrow, who is in his forties, says he needs a car to carry supplies
for work, but believes he'll be leaning heavily on FasTracks. "I'll be
taking it downtown for ball games. You can sober up on the way home. As
soon as the airport line's open, that's the only thing I'll use. I'll
never drive out there again."
Morrow's employee, Zed Ireland, who is in his late twenties, already
relies on light rail. "There's a bus stop behind my house. I take the
bus to light rail. It takes about half an hour to get to work. Two forms
of transit, it's not bad at all.
"When our baby is born"—Ireland and his wife are expecting their
first—"we'll probably get a car. But it'll be mostly for my wife. I'll
still take public transit. And if we move, it's going to be close to a
light rail line."
• • • • •
There's a surprising amount of buy-in on FasTracks, even from
traditional opponents of rail on either side of the political spectrum.
Libertarians, who in many cities oppose rail projects as big-government
"boondoggles," have been remarkably silent in Denver. (This may be
because the president of the local free-market think tank, the
Independence Institute, is a former chair of the RTD board.) In Los
Angeles and other cities, opposition to rail has also come from groups
on the left, who label it Cadillac transit for the middle class, and
argue lower-income workers could be better served by improved bus
service.
Construction at the 38th and Blake Station, which is targeted for transit development in the future."I think FasTracks is a great system," says Melinda Pollack, a founding member of Mile High Connects,
a group that brings together non-profits and foundations to advocate
for affordable development close to transit. "When all the lines open,
it's really going to change connectivity for people. We're trying to
make sure that low-income people don't get pushed away from the
stations." The group's goal is to have two thousand units of affordable
housing opened near stations in the next decade.
Such bipartisan support gets to a deeper truth about Denver: The
region's deeply collaborative political culture has made it one of the
most high-functioning metropolitan areas
in the nation. In the wake of suburban tax revolts in the 1960s,
central city and neighboring communities chose to cast aside rivalries,
cooperating to build stadiums and a new airport that would benefit the
entire region.
The RTD has also reaped the rewards of regionalism. Rather than being
forced to work with a variety of smaller agencies, RTD (like
Vancouver's TransLink and Portland's TriMet) has authority over a large
service area, allowing it to streamline the riding experience for users.
Denver's reboot as a train town isn't based on wishful thinking, or
blind nostalgia for Gilded Age choo-choo trains. The engineers of
FasTracks are well aware that Denver International Airport will continue
to be the true gateway to the region. But as Kevin Flynn, an RTD public
communications manager who drives me out the airport terminal worksite
points out, once off the plane, travellers will be able to ride
escalators down to a platform to trains that will offer access to an
entire region.
"I think our riders will be pleasantly surprised by our commuter
rail," says Flynn "They'll be able to roll right on to our commuter rail
from the terminal, with bicycles, ski bags, golf bags, wheelchairs,
strollers, or whatever they're carrying."
Construction on the I-225 Rail Line, with expected completion in 2016, from May 2014. Manufactured by Hyundai Rotem, the new low-floor trains
(the next generation of the Silverliners already operating in
Philadelphia) will reach maximum speeds of 79 miles per hour. Swiftness,
arguably, will be a less salient feature than frequency. Unlike
traditional commuter rail, which too often offers only once hourly (or
worse) service outside peak periods, FasTracks trains will run with
headways of as little as 10 minutes. They will also offer superior
connectivity. As Flynn points out, military personnel and veterans from a
seven-state area will be able to fly into Denver and ride trains to the
Veterans Affairs Hospital at the Anschutz medical campus, a hub that
already employs 40,000 people.
Back at the agency's headquarters, in LoDo, Phil Washington explains
that RTD is building transit for a metropolis that, though born around
rail, largely grew up around the needs of the automobile.
"There are at least five major employment centers in the Denver
region." Apart from downtown, the Anschutz medical center, and the
airport, Boulder and the Denver Tech Center, on the Southeast Rail Line,
are significant magnets for commuters. "The reverse commute we're
seeing to these centers is incredible. Tons of folks."
It's a reality echoed in many decentralized cities, especially in the
west and south: Only one in five jobs in Denver is located within three
miles of downtown. For the time being, light and commuter rail may
deliver people to what looks like a low-density landscape of office
parks and park-and-rides. (Which doesn't preclude future technologies,
like autonomous buses and cars, delivering people from rail stations to
low-density workplaces and suburban and exurban homes.)
By building a multi-poled system, RTD is tailoring transit to the
contemporary metropolis. Crucially, by building it in conjunction with
high-density transit-oriented development, the agency is also scheming
to change the very nature of the American metropolis.
That's why, when it comes to the future of transportation on this continent, Denver may be the city to watch.
Surveying the airport construction site, where a hard-hatted Mayor
Michael Hancock was presiding over the topping out ceremony for the
Westin Hotel, I played the devil's advocate and asked Kevin Flynn if
spending billions on transit in what has long been a car town was really
worth it.
"Before it was a car town, Denver
was a train town," he told me, with a smile. "For the time being, our
infrastructure hasn't caught up with our ambition. Come back in a few
years, and it'll be a completely different story."
SACRAMENTO >> A San Rafael-based group that opposes
California’s high-speed rail project filed a lawsuit Monday contesting
the state’s plan to fund it with money from a greenhouse gas emissions
program, arguing that building the $68 billion bullet train would create
more pollution than it would reduce for at least a decade.
The
Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund filed the lawsuit in
Fresno County Superior Court against the California Air Resources
Board, the state agency responsible for ensuring California meets the
emissions reduction targets in its landmark global warming law, AB32.
The suit alleges the board downplayed the harmful effects on the
environment and exaggerated the potential environmental benefits of
high-speed rail in its scoping plan, allowing the state to claim the
bullet train will help the state meet its greenhouse gas reduction
targets.
The suit came just a week after the state Legislature
approved Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to give high-speed rail $250 million
from the state’s cap-and-trade pollution fees in the upcoming fiscal
year and a quarter of the program’s future revenues. Some environmental
groups initially opposed the plan.
The lawsuit says the scoping plan relied almost entirely on the
California High-Speed Rail Authority’s “inadequate” environmental
analysis “without doing its own independent analysis and evaluation of
those impacts and their significance” as required under California’s
strict environmental laws.
It says the board also failed to
consider the pollution associated with “manufacturing the many thousands
of tons of cement that would be needed for the project’s construction.”
A
spokesman for the Air Resources Board, Stanley Young, said in an email
that high-speed rail has been integral to the state’s AB32 plan since it
was developed in 2008.
"Not only will it be constructed with net-zero emissions, but it will
dramatically reduce car miles traveled in the state,” Young said.
The
California High-Speed Rail Authority did not respond to a request for
comment Monday. Spokeswoman Lisa Marie Alley has called the agency’s
environmental review “perhaps the most comprehensive analysis document
ever prepared in California.”
The transportation group’s
president, David Schonbrunn, said he submitted written and oral comments
to the air board about the thousands of tons of cement that were not
accounted for in the plan, but the lawsuit says ARB failed to respond as
required by law.
The suit also claims the agency is required to ensure its
environmental assessment considered a reasonable range of feasible
alternatives to reduce the project’s carbon emissions, such as using
fewer raised concrete viaducts, but it did not do so.
The group
wants the court to order the ARB to rescind its inclusion of high-speed
rail in the scoping plan and to invalidate funding for it from the
greenhouse gas emissions reduction fund.
AB32 aims to cut California’s greenhouse gas production to 1990 levels by 2020.
You know that it's a bit uncommon for white people to take the bus in L.A. when a "how to" guide is published. In 10 Things to Know About Taking a Bus in Los Angeles, Liz Shannon Miller depicts a ride on the Los Angeles Metro bus system as an exotic and thrilling experience.
"I've been asked two or three times whether I'd gotten a DUI - for
many, that's the only logical reason a white girl with an iPad would be
taking the bus at all," she writes. Lots of L.A. people do take the bus
regularly. But among 1 million daily users in L.A., most don't have
Miller's skin color. Why?
U.S. Census data show that Los Angeles public transit riders are among
the least-representative, demographically speaking, of the city in which
they live. White people comprise 32 percent of all L.A. commuters
regardless of whether they drive or ride, for example. But only 11
percent of public transit riders are white (and only 9 percent of bus
riders).
governing.com
Yet in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago there's only a few
percentage points difference between those cities' total white
populations and the percentage of white people who use public
transportation.
Courtesy governing.com
Click image to enlarge.
So what's the beef with public transit, white Angelenos?
Some say it's the stigma of taking public transportation, especially the
bus. Four years ago, bus rider Jacqueline Carr got a lot of attention
for postings in her then-blog, Snob on a Bus. She told the Los Angeles Times:
"I felt like I was too good for the bus. ... I think there's a social
understanding and a construction around that if you take the bus, you
take it because you don't have money. There's a social standard.
Obviously I had bought into that."
But Jarrett Walker, who has designed transportation systems in multiple
cities, says stigma and social standing are not what's keeping L.A.'s
white folks in their cars.
In a blog post, he points out that white residents are more likely to
live in low-density areas where bus service is not common or practical.
Meanwhile, the population of the area served by Metro is well over 70
percent people of color, "which means that the number of white bus
riders is not far off what we should expect."
Walker tells L.A. Weekly:
"There is no reason to believe that Angelenos are irrational about
their transportation choices. ... I believe a transportation system is
reflective of its usefulness. The focus should be on making a more
useful system. Do that, and [increased] diversity will be a side
effect."
Walker argues that the way to get bigger ridership more reflective of
Los Angeles is to increase density along L.A.'s transit lines: add
special transit lanes for buses (as the city is currently creating on
Wilshire Boulevard) and push for transit-oriented developments (TODs)
that feature high-density buildings filled with offices and housing near
the major transit routes.
But others doubt that creating extra density along the routes will
dramatically change L.A.'s ridership demographics. Given the choice,
wealthier consumers (who are disproportionately white) may not ditch
their cars.
The National Complete Streets Coalition, which
advocates for encouraging bicycling and getting buses moving by
redesigning streets and transit stops, argues:
Buses get stuck in traffic, and their progress is further slowed by
the constant need to merge back into the flow of traffic after pulling
over to pick up passengers. Stop-and-go bus service discourages use,
increasing traffic congestion by those who choose to drive instead.
Wendell Cox, who served for three terms on the late Mayor Tom Bradley's
Transportation Commission, is among those who criticize the push now
underway in Los Angeles, and led by Metro and top elected officials, to
create dense new business/housing corridors that theoretically will feed
those who live and work there onto the transit lines.
He agrees with Walker that race is a distraction - "It doesn't make
sense to focus on the demographics" - but he also thinks that building
TODs near transit stops is a waste of taxpayer money.
He says that unlike New York, San Francisco or Chicago, L.A. doesn't
have job concentration in a single downtown area. It has several
downtowns. So while building housing along the Gold Line between DTLA
and Pasadena may help a few more professionals get downtown, there are
relatively few of them to justify the costs.
"The densest area of downtown L.A. only represents 2.5 percent of the
city's jobs" Cox says. So in almost all cases, it makes more sense to
drive to work for those who can afford a car.
Unless residents who live in the transit-oriented developments that have
been popping up along the Red Line, Gold Line, Blue Line and Expo Line
have jobs in locales directly accessible by rapid transit - rail or
bus - they probably will continue to drive.
"I am a proponent of public transportation where it makes sense. But Los
Angeles, in most cases, is a place where you can't compete with the
convenience of the automobile," says Cox.
As long as the decision comes down to what's the quickest commute, both
Cox and Walker agree that most who have a car - regardless of race -
will get behind the wheel.
Walker still sees great hope for getting people in L.A. to ditch their
cars if the transit system is made more practical and wide-reaching.
It's worth noting that the white commuter/blogger featured in the L.A. Times piece only started taking the Metro bus when the lease on her Jetta expired.
