Ticket to Ride

JMD @ Transit Utah had a fine idea, of listing all the transit systems he has ridden. So I thought I'd do the same.  I'll use his list as a starting point. I've added a few. Bold indicates systems I've ridden. 


Heavy Rail:

1. San Francisco Bay Area - BART (Most recently 2007)
2. Washington DC - Metro (2007 & 2009)
3. New York- Subway (Many times, 1994-2009)
4. Los Angeles - Metro Rail 
5. Miami - MetroRail 
6. Atlanta - Marta (2010)
7. Boston - "T" (2010)
8. Chicago - "L" (2010)
9. Baltimore - Metro Subway
10. Philadelphia - SEPTA 
11. Philadelphia - PATCO 
12. New York/New Jersey - PATH

Light Rail Lines

1. San Francisco - Muni (2007)
2. San Diego - Trolley
3. Portland - MAX (Expo 2000, Airport Line 2007)
4. Salt Lake City - TRAX (2002-2010)
5. Denver - The Ride 
6. Seattle - Central Line 
7. Pittsburgh - "T" 
8. Boston- "T" (2009)
9. Dallas - DART
10. Baltimore - Light Rail
11. Philadelphia - Light Rail
12. Camden - River Line 
13. Newark - NJ Transit
14. San Jose - VTA
15. Minneapolis - Light Rail
16. Charlotte - Lynx
17. Jersey City - Hudson/Bergen Line
18. Oceanside - Sprinter 
19. Buffalo - Metrorail 
20. Cleveland - Light Rail
21. Houston - MetroRail 
22. Phoenix - Valley Metro (2009)
23. St. Louis - Metrolink
24. Norfolk - Tide

Commuter Rail:

1. San Francisco - Caltrain
2. Los Angeles - Metrolink 
3. Miami - Tri-Rail 
4. Salt Lake City - Front Runner (2008)
5. Portland - WES 
6. Washington DC - MARC 
7. Dallas - Trinity Railway Express 
8. Chicago - Metra 
9. Philadelphia - SEPTA 
10. Washington DC - VRE
11. New Jersey - New Jersey Transit
12. San Jose - ACE 
13. Nashville - Music City Star
14. New York - Metro North 
15. New York - Long Island Railroad (2005, 2007, 2009)
16. New Haven - Shore Line East
17. Boston - MBTA
18. San Diego - Coaster
19. Seattle - Sounder 
20. Chicago - South Shore
21. Austin - Capital Metro
22. Minneapolis - North Star
23. Albuquerque - Railrunner
24. Dallas - A Train 

AGT/Miscellaneous

1. Seattle - Seattle Monorail
2. Las Vegas - Monorail (2007)
3. Miami - Metromover (2007) 
4. New York - JFK Airtrain (2007)
5. Morgantown - WVU PRT 
6. Detroit - People mover 
7. Las Colinas (Dallas) - PRT 
8. Jacksonville - Skyway 
9. Newark - Airtrain

Streetcars:

1. San Francisco - Cable Cars (2000, 2007)
2. Portland - Portland Streetcar (2007)
3. Tacoma - Link 
4. Seattle - Seattle Streetcar
5. Dallas - McKinney Ave Trolley heritage line
6. San Francisco - F Line
7. Charlotte - Charlotte Trolley heritage line
8. Kenosha - Kenosha Streetcar heritage line
9. Little Rock - River Rail Streetcar heritage line
10. Memphis - MATA Trolley heritage line
11. New Orleans - original streetcars 
12. Philadelphia - Girard Line original 
13. Savannah - River Street Streetcar original
14. Tampa - TECO heritage line
15. Tucson Trolley (2009)

Bus Rapid Transit

1. Boston 'Silver Line' (2010)
2. UTA MAX (2011)

Bus Systems

1. Los Angeles - RTD/Metro
2. San Francisco - San Francisco Muni
3. Spokane - Spokane Transit Authority
4. Salt Lake City - Utah Transit Authority
5. Seattle - King County Metro and Sound Transit
6. Portland - Tri-Met

Long way to go to ride them all. But there have been a number of cities I've visited, where the system seemed too similar to what I already knew to bother ride. Denver and Baltimore LRT systems being notable examples. But there are a fair number of cities I've visited that I didn't get a chance to explore the transit system.


Where I've been: Salt Lake City, New York City, San Francisco, Portland, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Paris, Amsterdam, Monaco, Nice, Rome, Seattle, Los Angeles, DC, San Diego, Albuquerque, Tucson, Yuma, Denver, Vegas suburbs, Baltimore, DC suburbs, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Boston, Chicago.... 

Mode Share

As American Community Survey 5 year estimates become available, I'm starting to see more and more posts like this one, discussing the changes in mode share. The pattern seems pretty consistent: Carpooling is down, but bike usage is significantly up. On one level, it's frustrating--I think many transit advocates were expecting to see a surge in transit use. After all, substantial amounts of transit infrastructure has been built in the last ten years. Transit systems that didn't even exist in 2000 (SLC, Denver, Houston) are now well developed. I expect anti-transit partisans will harp on this. But all is not grim--single occupancy cars LOST market share, despite the fact that they are still receiving the vast majority of Federal Funding. 

Compliments of Steve Berg

Great blog post from Net Density today. Specifically:

Urbanists are accused of wanting to take away people’s cars and force them to live in tight quarters, but that’s absurd. Urban-style living isn’t for everyone. People should live where and how they want. What urbanists do favor, however, is a system of rules and prices that fairly reflect the costs of people’s decisions. Those who prefer to drive long distances and occupy large footprints should pay a fair cost. Those who choose smaller footprints shouldn’t be penalized by cumbersome rules or burdened by price systems that continue to reward inefficiency and heighten risks to the environment and to national security.

These don’t seem like elitist or radical positions to me. They seem reasonable and downright conservative, even patriotic. They pose no threat to personal liberty so far as I can see. Most important, they are proactive. I’d rather anticipate the future than try to recapture a past that’s already behind us.

 

Homelessness

I've spent a strange amount of time talking with the homeless. Partially as a result of so much time spent walking around various cities, and partially because I was willing to hold a civil conversation. But mostly, I am forced to believe, because I didn't look like I had any money. What I wore was thrifted, worn, slept in, and stained. But I had some great conversations. But when I got an office job, that changed. There was a lot less mutual civility, and the panhandling was a lot more aggressive. I was less a person and more of an ATM.

Homelessness makes most people uncomfortable, for both reasons of wretchedness and panhandling. Its easy to wish they would just disappear and stop bothering us. But I think we do most of the long-term homeless a real disservice. There are some that live reasonably decent lives, on combinations of grifting, begging, charity, and working. And there are some that are a wretched mess. Our experience with the former makes us try to banish the latter.

I've become a big believer in the 'housing first' strategy to end homelessness. Talking to service providers, I've come to realize that the vast majority of the homeless population are temporarily homeless. A couple of months here and there, getting a new job, money for a deposit on an apartment, whatever. But you've got a hard-core who are homeless for years, if not decades. From what I've read, that hard-core consumes 80% of the system resources, in outreach, medical treatment, police complaints, counseling, etc.

Housing can be done cheaply and easily. Land price chews up about 20% of the value, and half of that space is typically used for parking. Eliminate that, and you can build at some pretty high densities, even with three-story walk-up apartments. Windows and natural light should be mandatory, of course.

Of course, excessive concentration should be avoided. Just because you can build at high densities doesn't mean you should build a whole lot at high densities. The rule of thumb I've heard is that no more then five percent should be subsidized, or else the price of market rate units will be affected. The structure itself can be done pretty cheaply. Appliances would be a great place to cut costs. I live in an apartment. It's not a great apartment, but it has a stove with range, micro-wave, and dishwasher. All in all, a lot of expensive alliances. But you can eat pretty well with a two-burner hotplate and a microwave. I'll call a full-sized refrigerator a waste as well. I certainly don't use more than a fraction of mine.

Beyond that, I'll leave it up to the architects.