Congestion Pricing and a Utah Highway Corporation

Re: congestion pricing

Charging for what used to be free, and charging for something that is as basic an input to the daily life of many people as the food they eat, is a political non-starter. The experience of Manhattan, a literal island, with excellent transit access, suggests how very very difficult this is politically. Don't know if you are following the efforts to impose it there or not--but every special interest group is gunning like mad for a carve-out. (London saw plenty of them). 

Every limited access highway should have congestion pricing imposed ASAP. Using roadway capacity (and producing pollution) is a cost to the public, and the public should be paid for suffering it. (And to recoup the public investment).  Maybe we should be operating our limited access facilities at arms length--a regulated utility like Questar or Utah Power, where similar network phenomena are in effect.  But that's not possible, because freeway lane miles are (nominally) part of the national network. Still, there ought to be a 'Utah Highway Corporation', the only agency permitted to add capacity on limited access facilities, and charged with adding it only when financially feasible.  

FrontRunner and Joint Development

Longterm utility of FrontRunner largely out of UTA's ambit. If we build office towers next to stations, it will be great forever. If we just create Station Parks and Ebays, it's a near-criminal waste. UTA likely needs to get into the Joint Development game (albeit with a VERY limited geographic context--6 minute walk/.3 mile), with unlimited densities. Using the most proximate land for surface-level purely for bus loops is crazy.  

Oquirrah Connection Benefit-Cost Analysis

There is talk of a tunnel from southwest Utah County to South-east Tooele. There is a report on it. I'm not impressed by the BCA (benefit-cost-analysis) of the report. 

http://wfrc.org/Studies/OquirrhConnectionFinalReportAppendices.pdf

Half the benefit come from what they call "Vehicle Operating Cost Savings"

Compared with the current route to travel between Tooele, Salt Lake, and Utah counties using I80 and I-15, the Oquirrh Connection would reduce the travel distance to less than half of the No Build distance between Tooele.

This is pretty disappointing. It's pretty clear that there is an explicit relationship between trip frequency and travel time: 

 

The idea that the number of VMT is going to remain constant after such a tunnel is nonsense. The 'trip' the proposed tunnel would replace is 53 miles long. It takes 48 minutes. Say the tunnel halves that; you can reasonable expect that the number of people making that trip would double, and hence total VMT would remain the same. So half the benefit they ascribe to the tunnel doesn't actually exist. 

But it's worse than that: To get the safety improvements, they rely on the reduction in accidents per mile causes by the reduction in driving. If there is no reduction in driving, there is no reduction in accidents. So..that's 76% of the benefits. And the other 24%? Also conditioned on reduced VMT. 

Net, the Oquirrah connection would be a lot of money for ZERO benefit. Gah! 

And did AECOM consider different land use scenarios, resulting from their different transportation scenarios? Nope! The land use impacts they talk about, are when the road might have to demolish a school or despoil a natural area. No consideration the real-estate impacts.

DESPITE the fact that WFRC HAS a Real Estate Model designed to do such a thing! 

More rail?

I can't see much room for more rail in Utah. I spend a lot of time looking at it, and I'd like to use that old freight rail in Utah County, but the connection to Trax along the east bench seems sillier and sillier. Not sure how much the network interconnect with Trax weighs against the cost of making the interconnection, but likely not worth it. A combination of FrontRunner and BRT could likely do the job better/cheaper.  UTA could easily spend a decade just double-tracking/electrifying FrontRunner, and extending it N/S.

Transit does best where roadway alternatives are worst: Downtown, the U, etc. I worry about Red line ridership when Mountainview reaches I-80. (I also worry what happens to I-80. )  

Regarding "Airports and the Wealth of Cities"

Airports and the Wealth of Cities

If passengers is significant, but number of flights is not, that implies that success lies in having larger than average planes come in. Ie, a hub airport. Assuming that the the cost of flying is proportional to the square of size, while the passenger capacity is proportionate to the cube, larger planes offer lower seat-costs per passenger. Hence, the use of larger planes may also imply that the average seat-price to visit such an airport is lower. Status as a 'hub' airport also offers substantial accessibility benefits: More flights to more places, at greater frequencies, than for non-hub airports (ie, San Diego).

super linear scaling and the network effect

'Super-linear scaling' is the generic descriptive term that complex-systems folk use to talk about a wide variety of phenomena, including both network and non-network effects. (VMT:population is characterized by super-linear scaling, for example).

The number of passengers at any airport has a number of causes, but can likely be attributed to one of two factors: local demand and the agglomeration economies offered by by massification. Local demand is probably itself non-linear: larger metro areas tend to be richer, richer areas tend to fly more. But massification is probably the main driver. Cost per flight rises with the square of area, but passengers per flight rise with the cube of area. Big planes are more efficient. So the hub-and-spoke model uses small planes to massify into large vehicles. The efficiencies are such that SLC-DC flights often take me through LA. That said, there is indubitably some advantage to being on the way: I spend a lot of time waiting for flights in Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and DFW.

On Union Stations and Airports

Not sure why Americans are so into 'Union Station'. You see it in both railroads and airports. Why make multiple operators cluster together in a single location? The Union Station is a particularly American phenomena: A place where all the trains comes together. A 'union station' is nice if you are transferring between trains, or between different types of trains.It makes sense to connect the commuter rail network to the rapid transit network. But when a station is just a terminal for a particular transportation provider, why bother? Why spend all the money to aggregate it all together in a centralized location? Paris, London, Barcelona: They all have multiple passenger railroad terminals: each major provider built their own. It's worth noting, in America, that 'Union Stations' are always a civic project. And I feel I must suggest that such civic projects are a form of white elephant: a yearning for an intermodal 'Grand Central Terminal' that is neither intermodal, nor central? But only 'grand' and 'a terminal'.

Which brings to mid the question of airports: Why do we need to have a 'Grand Central Airport'? Airports with non automobile access are in the minority--only a handful have passenger rail. Providing road access (even a divided highway) to multiple airports is certainly feasible.

Why do we connect airlines to other airlines? Why shouldn't each airline have its own airport, in the way in which passenger railroads once had their own terminals. Endlessly expanding existing airports is costly: The older the airport, the more likely the land around it is urbanized, and the more difficult to expand the airport. Also the more likely that the existing airport property is already developed, and adding new airport facilities (terminals, hangers, shopping) requires demolishing existing structures, like trying to add a new couch in a small apartment.

Admittedly, it makes some sense to combine multiple airlines into a single airport: They can enjoy the agglomeration economy of sharing a bit of infrastructure no single airline could afford on its own: The runways. (And to a lesser extent consumer facilities like baggage handling and rental car stands).

But is that always worth it? The mayor of Houston (IIRC) recently said: "Great American Cities have multiple airports". There is a reason for that: There is no reason to centralize all the airlines into a single airport, especially if that airport is running up against capacity constraints.

Rose Quarter Comment

Dear Sir or Madam,

It has become increasingly clear that both the public process and the technical analysis of the proposed 'improvement' have critical flaws. Flaws that make ODOT legally liable for deficiencies in public process, and it's consultant for technical analysis. ODOT has not been compliant in releasing information necessary for public comment, and persons in positions of authority (and reasonably expected knowledge) have been duplicious about the existence of certain critical data-sets that it required the threat of legal action to secure the release of.  Nor has the technical analysis been of an acceptable standard: it reflects neither the state of the art, nor the state of the practice. The state of the art (Ewing et al 2014: Structural Equation Model of VMT in US Urbanized Areas) clearly demonstrates a strong correlation between freeway lane miles and vehicle miles traveled. Regarding the State of the Practice, the shape of the VMT line in the graph makes it appears alarmingly clear that ODOT's consultant has simply projected forward VMT counts on a single facility, without accounting for diversion to other routes, other times, and other modes. This is exactly the sort of technical issue that travel demand models were developed to overcome. That only hourly traffic volumes, rather than industry-standard AADT volumes were reported supports this conclusion.

Regarding the assumed bridge noted by City Observatory (http://cityobservatory.org/theres-a-3-billion-bridge-hidden-in-the-rose-quarter-project-ea/) and the State of the Practice: While it is reasonable and proper to include the effects of other transportation improvements in the analysis (such as a certain bridge), it is also reasonable to include proper characteristics of those improvements. Ie, a tolled versus untolled bridge.

I note with some concern ODOT's failure to engage in 'value engineering'. Rather than minimizing the required right of way and associated bridge construction costs through the use of narrow shoulders, ODOT has instead based it's analysis on wide shoulders. Given a long history of the conversion of shoulder space into 'auxiliary' lanes over time, it seems suspicious that ODOT is providing ROW in excess of projected need, at substantial public cost.

Respectfully,
Matt Miller
Transportation Planner
PhD Student, Metropolitan Policy, Planning and Design.

On Flying Cars

Kicking around some thoughts on flying cars: Their stupid. The idea that you can have both a car that drives, and car that flies is silly. And its' the wrong model. The proper model is the 'personal helicopter', based off of drones. The little quad-rotor radio-controlled things keep getting bigger, and more able to handle larger payloads. At TRB this year, I saw one with a 45 lb payload (IIRC). How much harder can it be to carry three or four times that amount (ie, an adult human). I assume that would be associated with an increase in the number of rotors, and the weight of battery packs. And, as with rockets, the more 'fuel' you carry, the more of your 'lift' you have to devote to compensating for that weight.

Last night, my wife suggested that the first personal helicopters are simply going to be a swing beneath a drone. And it makes so much sense: Why put the center of gravity above the propellers, as opposed to beneath them, as every 'flying car' supposes?

There are already cities where traffic congestion is so awful that the rich commute by helicopter. And indeed, a generation or so ago (before the oil crisis) we were starting to see just that--helicopter 'bridges' between the airport and the CBD.

Why not helicopter taxis? The previous limitation was cost and safety. Helicopters are far more energy intensive than planes, and far more dangerous. It's part of their essential nature: A plane can glide, a helicopter can only fall. Hence historic limitations in their operations.

Quad-rotors are totally different than helicopters. Helicopters are complex: It's not just a whirling propeller on top and back: In addition to the speed of the rotor, there is the 'pitch of the blades attached to the rotor, and the 'tilt' of the rotor itself to be able to move.

Rather than all the complexity of a helicopter single axial, a quad-rotor has four: And it moves up and down, forward and back, just by running those rotors at different speeds. It's a far simpler design, with fewer ways in which to fail. It is hence, far less likely to crash.

A helicopter is a complex machine to operate: It can both move and rotate along three axes. Hence, when something goes wrong, and the mechanics holding it balance fail, it starts twisting, dropping and yawing all at once. A disorienting experience likely to end in crashing.

With a quad-rotor, the 'balance' between forces is software control. As I reason it, a quadrotor could fly with one 'engine out'. An oct-rotor (8 engines around 4 axes) seems like it could sustain as many as three engines out. Far safer, and more fault tolerant.

The fault tolerance of multi-rotor aircraft suggest they would be far safer for urban operations: They are less likely to experience a major malfunction, and less likely to crash when they do. They are also more robust, as they benefit from over a decade of 'trial by fire' as RC.

Using the metaphor of a flying car, we get a lot of baggage-the idea that the 'flying car' will enable us to do all the 'car things' we already do: Starting from home, starting and stopping where we like with zero notice, with almost zero range anxiety. Military history is pretty clear that any vehicle that tries to do two things typically winds up doing neither of them well. 'Cars that fly' have a long history of failure, and will likely continue to exist only as 'sport aircraft' costing a half million each.

But for urban mobility, a 'copter', could be it: A way to provide rapid, point to point transportation for time-sensitive commuters, free from congestion. Owning and operating such a vehicle would be expensive. The rich would be the early adopters. Adoption of quad-rotors capable of human transportation would soon spread to commercial providers: auto-owners were not slow to realize the opportunity to act as cabs. And as technology improves (battery life, operating efficiency, reliability), an costs fall, adoption rises.

In America, providing a flying taxi (air mobility for a paying passenger) requires special training, maintenance and licensing. The FAA is very safety oriented, perhaps obsessively so. Development of personal copters may be pioneered outside America as a consequence.

Given the technical limitations of batteries (and the safety limitations of flying within urban areas) it seems likely that personal copters will be limited to short journeys for the foreseeable future: No exurban commuting possible. Flight times now max at about 20-30 minutes. Given a reasonable safety buffer, this suggests flights no longer than 10-20 minutes. I'm uncertain of speeds, but even at 20 mph, that's a radius larger than the core of most urban areas, where most Uber/Lyft rides currently take place.

The real advantage of personal copters over cars is congestion: Cars operate in two dimensions, copters in three. As a pilot once noted to me: "When you run out of capacity at one elevation, you just add another at a higher elevation". Unlike roadways, a copter-based urban transportation system could add capacity, almost infinitely, as zero cost. It makes investments in roads look almost foolish.

Surface Transportation

If we look at the history of long-distance transportation in America, it starts with low-cost right of way. We stuck with ships for decades. While railroads operated within and near cities for decades, getting the transcontinental railroad built took huge subsidies. After the transcontinental railroad, the next time a non-subsidized boom in transportation took place, it was in air travel. It was like water travel all over again: all governments had to do was build a 'port' to plug into the network, and enjoy the access it provided. Building the second surface transportation network (1st = transcontinental railroad, 2nd = interstate highway network) again required billions in subsidy: Neither the right of way nor the infrastructure came cheap or quickly.

In Europe, there was no need (or desire) for a transcontinental railroad; the urban distribution (a great many historic cities no great distance apart) supported the gradual and incremental expansion of surface transportation networks (both road and rail). I suspect that commercial aviation came later to Europe than America, simply because the competition was fiercer, because the trains were better. Adoption of jet aircraft were slower as well: while the capital costs of upgrading rail lines is higher, operating costs are lower.

Within an urban transportation context, personal transportation relied on human muscle, animal muscle, and the internal combustion engine. All relied on a network of 'improved' surface transportation routes.

Mass transit has always had an advantage in urban areas, simply because it required less space per person: more people could be fit into a single vehicle. True of horse-cabs, steam railroads, steam ferries, electrified inter-urbans, diesel trains or natural-gas buses. Without massification of passenger flows, every passenger trip requires a vehicle. And every vehicle requires both space to move, and a space to be stored when not moving. Due to their weight, vehicle storage can only take place on the ground, or within special structures. The problem of vehicle parking is the most fundamental limitation on any form of personal vehicular transport: Where do you put all the horses, bicycles, cars, and/or personal copters?

Finding a place for vehicle storage is a constant problem for central cities: Doesn't matter if the vehicles under consideration are trains, buses, automobiles or bicycles. And when land is expensive, stacking them in structures becomes an attractive proposition.

'Garaging' difficulties are a serious limit to an urbanism based on personal copters: as aircraft carriers demonstrate, doing so requires both an elevator and a crew. While 'automated pickers' like Amazon's warehouse robots might replace the crew, the need for access remains.

There are two ways to garage vehicles: Either each storage unit has its own access (a 'garage door') or they share a door and an access alley between the storage unit and the shared door. The movie, the Fifth Element showcases the former. In the Fifth Element, flying cars are the norm. The urban form consists of long, skinny, tall buildings (to maximize exterior surface area), maximizing the number of units with direct external access. Corbin Dallas's apartment is a coffin a single parking slot wide, windowless.

In such a world, why build a shared access alley? Why internalize vehicular circulation within a building, when it can be provided by public right of way? Far better to front each garage onto the public right directly: (Like curb-cuts onto arterial streets).

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Congestion and the Third Dimension

Any time two vehicular routes cross, congestion results. They have to share the capacity of single space, something only feasible to accomplish through time separation: each route taking its turn to cross that space, by traffic signal. Preventing the congestion of intersection between two routes requires shifting the surface transportation system from 2 dimensions into 3: One route must cross over the other, either elevated or subterranean. Doing so is costly: Vehicles are heavy, possible grades are limited.

Some of the most epic public work projects of our age are highway interchanges: Lofting long ribbons of concrete into the sky to permit routes not only to pass over one another, but to permit traffic on those routes to merge and diverge onto one another.

The cost of building all the 'sky bridges' that allow our limited access highway system to function is astronomical, both in terms construction and maintenance, and of the opportunity cost of urban real estate (no highway pays property taxes).

Let us propose an alternate paradigm for urban transportation: Where we reduce congestion of intersecting routes by ascending to the third dimension. Except without the astronomical costs of building the infrastructure to do so. This is what the personal copter would offer.

Imagine an alternate world, the Hindenburg did not burn. Zeppelin development continued, become more comfortable and reliable. The 'anchor masts' at the top of the Empire State Building became the norm for skyscrapers. A continental network of such vertical termini developed. Imagine the emergence of a world where every major skyscraper has a landing pad for multi-rotor copters at the top, an esplanade where the passengers embark and disembark.

One Car

My household owns one car. Insurance is $60 a month. My wife tells me we run about $100/month on gas. (Car gets only 18.7 mpg, but it was cheap, so oh well). We drive a relatively tiny amount. (7000 miles per year). I always wonder if we'd be better off not owning a car, and using Lyft/Car Rental instead.

For most of our trips (groceries, work), Lyft would be fine. If I added $100 a month into an account, that's ~20 trips from home to grocery, etc. But we went car-less for a bit, and the killer was the trips we didn't make. Partially, that was elective. But partially not.

Elective trips, it was a budget thing. As is, our car-use is in the budget. It's budgeted for. Money is allocated to it. But while car-less, things like Lyft were coming out of the 'fun money' budget. And it was always an unexpected expense. Had we had a 'balance' that we added to monthly, I think we would have made more use of Lyft for regular travel.

It's the 'partially not' that was the killer. We didn't go camping. We didn't go skiing. We didn't visit friends or family nearly as much. (We tend to visit family on Sundays, during which time transit is largely useless). I would like to claim we could have rented a car. But car rental places aren't nearby. The cheapest place to rent a car is the airport. Which is like 4 miles away. Which is a 45 minute journey by light rail (including a 10 minute stand-in-the-rain transfer). And at the counter, even with the car reserved, with ID and credit card on file, it would take another 15-25 minutes. Renting a car wasn't just cost-expensive, but time expensive. And an unpleasant hassle. And when all we wanted to do was get out of town, it was prohibitive. Trying to pick up a car to drive to Moab, and killing that time is hard, when you know that the cost is time-not-spent in Moab, and time off-work (vacation burned).

Overnight trips also a pain: Got to have it back by 11am, or it's another day. So if I go visit the inlaws in Idaho (3 hours away) I have to leave at 8am, which means I have to get up at 7am, which is not how I want to spend my weekend.

Hourly car-rental doesn't cut it either. The car-share that used to exist (and which I made use of) no longer seems to exist. No shock there--even while carless, it was never convenient enough to be useful. (Ubiquity matters). I used it a number of times, but it was hourly, so it was always stressful trying to get things done within the hour. (Like trying to get back to your car when the meter is running). It was good for pickup/drop-off stuff, but terrible for shopping (who wants to shop on the clock?).

So when we pay for a car, we aren't really paying for the mobility, per se. We're paying a lot extra for the mobility on demand, the 'freedom' if you will. Freedom from hassle, freedom from opportunity costs, freedom from time-pressure.

But as the saying goes 'Freedom isn't free'. And we pay a lot for it. $160/month+repairs+cost of car. (I'd estimate the cost of car at $135/month, assuming a  2009 Toyota Camry as a reasonable replacement).  But it does seem to be worth it.

That said, I love living someplace where one car _is_ a viable option. If we lived someplace suburban, we'd need two cars, or else every time the car left, it would strand 2+ people at home with no transportation access.

"Shared vehicle, doesn't park, doesn't occupy curb space"

"Shared vehicle, doesn't park, doesn't occupy curb space"

This was the claim I heard made about shared vehicles. First off, the vehicle is rarely 'shared'. If the driver is in the vehicle, that's not a 'shared' ride. You are being chauffeured. The driver is not a passenger. (If I drive my kid to school, it's not a 'shared ride'--I'm driving him to a place, being a 'taxi-mama'.) It's only a shared ride when there are 2+ passengers in the car. Which is rare. How rare? In my experience, perhaps 1% of all the rides I've ever taken, did I share a ride with someone. (And that was in a major metropolitan city).

"Shared vehicle, doesn't park, doesn't occupy curb space"
A TNC is just a dial-a-ride taxi with a better fare structure. Taxis occupy curb space. They aren't in motion all the time. (Or perhaps even most of the time). They _do_ require parking space. That said, taxis are probably in motion more than TNCs, because they spend much of their time 'cruising' for fares, rather than parked and waiting for fares. So Taxi's probably take up more road space  than a TNC would (a moving car taking up about 3x as much space as a parked car, due to safety-required separation between two moving cars.)

I have seen Lyft Vehicles, pulled over on the side of the road, checking their phones, as they wait for Google maps to locate their next fare in the queue. (Peak times, not so much, as trips get added to the queue faster). 

Do they take up space in the middle of the day? Ie, do they take up all-day parking space, the way that a car driven to work does? No, clearly not. But cars still need to be stored someplace. (Likely in whatever suburban wonderland TNC drivers live). Which brings up a VMT issue: If a TNC driver drives someone to work, then drives home. Then, in the afternoon, drives someone from work to the grocery store, and then someone else from the store to home. Then they drive themselves home. Point being that the driver made two trips home (one morning, one evening) to drive one person to and from work. So if we assume that everyone will take a TNC to work, VMT is going to explode. Rule of thumb (from a PhD student who drove UBER was he drove 1.69 miles for every passenger mile). So 69% more VMT, to achieve the same amount of mobility? The roadway network will never withstand that kind of increase.

 Of course, it might. If the demands on the roadway network were spread over a wider period of time. Presumably, fewer drivers want to drive during congested conditions, because it's slower. And while they get paid both per mile and per minute, I believe the incentive structure also pays them by trip. So there is a strong incentive to maximize the number of trips you make. And even if not, it's better to be earning for both miles and minutes than sitting in traffic. 

So you have fewer drivers during congested times, and people have to wait longer to take a TNC during congested times. (So the reliability declines, and more drivers are inclined to say "Screw it, I'll just drive myself"). At which point, you've basically enacted congestion pricing. Ie, when things are congested, it costs more to drive.  

Uber and Lyft are NOT transit

TNC are  not mass transit; it's a taxi. (There is no massification)

Shared ride _is_ transit. It's a jitney. Jitneys also follow routes. 

The idea that you can combine the 'on-demand' dial-a-ride of a taxi with a jitney is fallacious.

How much detour are you willing to tolerate? And when does it make sense to stop and add another person.

Massification relies not only on spatial convergence, but also temporal convergence: 

Same people in the same place at the same time. 

Which implies it will mostly take place during times of peak demand. 

Which becomes the classic transit agency problems: Sufficient peak capacity is excess off-peak capacity.

The real innovation of TNC's is not the 'dial-a-ride'. It's the ability to use 'surge' pricing to manage the match between supply and demand. It both reduces demand (through higher prices) and draws in additional drivers (through higher fares). 

This is core to the whole TNC model, as it draws in latent supply.

'Latent supply' is how the whole TNC thing works. Most cars are parked most of the time.

Commuting in the morning, the commute+shopping in the evening.

wiki on BRT:

As this will probably fall afoul of wikipedia's ban on primary research, thought it was worth repeating:

When TransMilenio opened in 2000, it changed the paradigm by giving buses a passing lane at each station stop and introducing express services within the BRT infrastructure. These innovations increased the maximum achieved capacity of a BRT system to 35,000 passengers per hour.^[44] Light rail, by comparison, has reported passenger capacities between 3,500pph (mainly street running) to 19,000pph (fully Grade-separated). "From these findings … there is little evidence to support the view that [light rail] can carry more than busways.".^[45] There are conditions that favor light over BRT, but they are fairly narrow. To meet these conditions you would need a corridor with only one available lane in each direction, more than 16,000 passengers per direction per hour but less than 20,000, and a long block length, because the train cannot block intersections. These conditions are rare, but in that specific instance, light rail would have a significant operational advantage. However, "... any perceived advantages of [light rail] over BRT are primarily aesthetic and political rather than technical … due to the perceived capacity constraint of BRT there are currently no cases in the US where [light rail] should be favored over BRT."^[46]

 44) W. Hook, S. Lotshaw and A. Weinstock (2013). "More Development For Your Transit Dollar. An Analysis of 21 North American Transit Corridors" (PDF). Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. p. 20.

 46) W. Hook, S. Lotshaw and A. Weinstock (2013). "More Development For Your Transit Dollar. An Analysis of 21 North American Transit Corridors" (PDF). Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. p. 21.

Quibbles

Reading: New York Does TOD Right

 "Stuart Lerner, Executive Vice President Infrastructure, Stantec"

Claims that TOD is associated with streetcars. I feel compelled to quibble. I recommend he read 'The Electric Inter-Urban Railways in America". Trolleys and trams are electified versions of the horse-drawn railcars, a competing technology to the 'BetaMax' of cable cars. Trams and trolleys are the first suburban transit, focusing on moving people from all those 'streetcar suburbs' into the central city. Hop on, hop off, low speeds, stops but no real stations. Much more like buses.

TOD, in the sense of Calthorpe's concept from the 'New American Metropolis' of mixed use communities wrapped around a transit station, would be better associated with railways. Specifically with commuter railway suburbs. Today, they don't seem very far from the CBD, 3-5 miles, maybe. (Although wiki says the railway suburbs in Boston reached out to 15 miles). Regardless, too far away from the CBD to commute without railways. They were just independent towns that the railway happened to stop in. Until some clever people realized it was possible to live there, and take the train in every morning, and out every evening. Independent towns, too far away from the CBD to get there by any other mode. And the first commuter railway suburbs were born. People still walk to the train, to station (likely near the 'main' street), because there weren't cars then. Zoning wasn't legal, so you had a mix of uses and density. If I had to name the first TOD, and the first transit system to induce TOD, this would be my suggestion.

Commuter railways aren't rapid transit. You can't steer a train, and stopping one takes a long time. They aren't really suitable to urban rapid transit. I forget the exact order of the first rapid transit systems: IIRC, London (1863) was the first ever, with Boston claiming the first in the US (1897) , followed by New York (1904) and Philadelphia (1907). In any case, the first subways were just steam railways run underground. London went for subway first (during the US Civil War!) because their 'city council' outlawed surface-running roadways within the City of London. (City of London is only  square mile, and they were concerned that the whole city would become one big rail-yard). Also why the railroad stations (St. Pancras, etc) are at the edge of the medieval city. In the US, most cities tried to solve the issue of steam railroads colliding with (and crashing into) people, carts, horses, by building elevated rail. Not sure why Boston went for subway first--I suspect because Boston lacks a grid, and so there aren't any straight roads for an elevated roadway to follow.

I forget what Vuchic suggests is the appropriate spacing for commuter rail (and don't have the books handy) but a sample here suggests an average of 1.7 miles between stations. Not nearly the half-mile radius of rapid transit, but a big contrast to the 5.8 mile average spacing (88 miles, 15 stations) of the UTA FrontRunner. 

To get back to TOD: When Calthrope published the New American Metropolis, using the term 'Transit-Oriented Development', nobody was building heavy rail. Post-war attempts to build heavy rail hadn't really panned out. Money diverted from the bus network meant that their construction had actually reduced transit ridership. 

• Cleveland (1956)
• Bay Area (1972)
• DC Metro (1976)
• Atlanta (1979)
• Miami (1984)
• Los Angeles (1993)

Calthorpe operated in the Bay Area, so by the time NAM came out, the limits of BART were already well established. It cost too much, so too little of it was built. (Check out the Vision networks to see how much unbuilt BART didn't happen). So Calthorpe proposed light rail (and bus) as the intended transit mode for TOD).  Light rail is rapid transit, with an average half-mile spacing. With that vision I get the idea that Calthorpe wasn't just proposing a few lines, but a 'New Urbanism', a transit-centric urbanism. Perhaps something like Christaller's work, centers connected to centers by rail. 

Dear Sir or Madam,

It has become increasingly clear that both the public process and the technical analysis of the proposed 'improvement' have critical flaws. Flaws that make ODOT legally liable for deficiencies in public process, and it's consultant for technical analysis. ODOT has not been compliant in releasing information necessary for public comment, and persons in positions of authority (and reasonably expected knowledge) have been duplicious about the existence of certain critical data-sets that it required the threat of legal action to secure the release of.  Nor has the technical analysis been of an acceptable standard: it reflects neither the state of the art, nor the state of the practice. The state of the art (Ewing et al 2014: Structural Equation Model of VMT in US Urbanized Areas) clearly demonstrates a strong correlation between freeway lane miles and vehicle miles traveled. Regarding the State of the Practice, the shape of the VMT line in the graph makes it appears alarmingly clear that ODOT's consultant has simply projected forward VMT counts on a single facility, without accounting for diversion to other routes, other times, and other modes. This is exactly the sort of technical issue that travel demand models were developed to overcome. That only hourly traffic volumes, rather than industry-standard AADT volumes were reported supports this conclusion.

Regarding the assumed bridge noted by City Observatory (http://cityobservatory.org/theres-a-3-billion-bridge-hidden-in-the-rose-quarter-project-ea/) and the State of the Practice: While it is reasonable and proper to include the effects of other transportation improvements in the analysis (such as a certain bridge), it is also reasonable to include proper characteristics of those improvements. Ie, a tolled versus untolled bridge.

I note with some concern ODOT's failure to engage in 'value engineering'. Rather than minimizing the required right of way and associated bridge construction costs through the use of narrow shoulders, ODOT has instead based it's analysis on wide shoulders. Given a long history of the conversion of shoulder space into 'auxiliary' lanes over time, it seems suspicious that ODOT is providing ROW in excess of projected need, at substantial public cost.

Respectfully,
Matt Miller
Transportation Planner
PhD Student, Metropolitan Policy, Planning and Design.