Rapid Transit Network Expansion

If you start with a small transit network, and build it out over time, it gets larger and more efficient, providing more access over time through the network effect. But at some point, the dynamics switch and the operator realizes that they can get more money out of running more service on the existing service than on further expanding the existing network. (Which is financially prudent). But it breaks an implicit political bargain between city and suburb, viz: "If you pay to build ours now, we will pay to build yours later". As long as those network expansions are promised, and voters think they might be able to use them (or make use of them or benefit from their use), they'll fund them. 

But if you are an exurban commuter, you'll never see any direct benefit, and you know it, but you are still paying for it. Which means sales taxes work basically in urban areas, where they can match the beneficiaries with the payers. People who drive into the county and buy things matter less politically, because they don't vote on referendums--but still do matter, as they still do lobby for things, as NJ and NY demonstrate with the congestion charge. 

Anyway, if the transit network stops expanding, and the transit constituency ceases to include those folks, the transit providers switches to concentrating on existing riders. And then all the capital and operating costs go into providing additional mobility (more tracks, faster loading at stations, more trains/hour). And the main trouble, I think, is that transit agencies that have made that transition once have a hard time switching back to the other regime. Once you've quit building subways, it takes herculean efforts to get things like CrossRail and the Second Avenue Subway built. On the flip side, LA did manage to get the Regional Connector done. 

Another Light Rail Subway

LA is getting a light rail subway. Under construction, right now. Operating in 2022. [1]

Currently, the Gold Line and Blue Line light rail don't actually connect. The Blue Line ends at Metro Center station, and the Gold line goes through Union station. So getting between the two requires a trip on the Red Line Metro. Two transfers.

Seattle has downtown light rail runnel, and Portland has mooted one, downtown. (Portland as the one through the mountain for the Zoo station, but that's not the same thing as a downtown tunnel. Wonder who else has one?

[1] Supposed to be 2020, but guess what? Digging underground is difficult and expensive, especially in a built up urban area full of old foundations, utility conduits, historical resources (1781 founding)....

Medium Capacity Metro Systems

I was just reading up on Medium Capacity Metro systems, and one column listed capacity per hour as a criteria (20,000-30,000 persons per direction per hour) and it made me wonder how the UTA Trax stacks up. Years ago, a Portland planner explained the virtues of SLC's long blocks--we can run four car trains, when Portland can only run two-car trains. So, how does SLC's capacity stack up?

The Siemens S70 can hold 225 people, at crush loads. SLC can run four cars per train. And I know there are segments of the network that run trains every five minutes (where the blue, red and green lines share track), which is 12 trains per hour.  So: 4*225*12 is 10,880 persons per direction per hour. Which suggests that Trax is not at it's max, it is pretty close to it (10,000-12,000). 12000/4/225 is 13.3 trains per hour, or a train every 4.5 minutes. So Trax is (in certain sections) very close to capacity. And in sections with curves/turns (900 S to 400 S) probably at capacity, and starting to generate delays.

UTA should probably be looking at either an alternate alignment (400 west) through downtown for the green line, or a transit tunnel under the 400 south intersection.   

TRAX is about done in Salt Lake County

The more I look at it, the more I think that TRAX is done in Salt Lake County*. Barring an odd stretch of the Denver and Rio Grand Western Railroad, I don't think there is any unused railroad track left in Salt Lake County**.  Almost all of what which existed in years past has been removed or converted to roadway. And that means converting roadway to dedicated right of way, at which point you might as well built a BRT.

There are a few cases where light rail might be appropriate: 

• Granary TRAX along 400 W/700 South. Only a mile long, and reduces congestion on the 400 South and Main Street intersection.
• Salt Lake International Airport. Airports need circulators, and it might as well be TRAX.
• S-line to Westminster. (Maybe) Again, about a mile long. 
• 400 South to connect the Red Line to FrontRunner direct. This has been part of the long range transportation plan for a decade, without happening. 200 south is increasingly play the role of connection FrontRunner to the University, making this irrelevant. 
• Misc. streetcar, but anyplace they add a 'tram' portion (dedicated/shared guideway) to TRAX is going to have to be short, or else it will be so slow that no one will use it.
• Streetcar from Westminster to 900 East. It would connect two rail lines, and links the University to Sugarhouse.
• 9 Line SC, from 900S/400W to Indiana Ave/Redwood Road. TRAX on one end, BRT at other terminus. 2 miles long.
• The extension from Draper to the Utah County line is planned, but being put off until Utah County matures enough to support TRAX. I admit a certain amount of skepticism this will happen. 
• Red line extension to Herriman/Draper Town Centers. A bit noodely, but greenfield development without an existing roadway, so reasonable. 
• Draper FrontRunner to LRTP Highland Drive/Minutemand Drive TRAX stop. Connects two rail modes, uses the 'grayfield' of the Prison site for exclusive right of way, and makes it possible to get across I-15 by rail. Bonus points in they add a ped bridge.
• Any freeway median. BRT would be cheaper, LRT might be better. 

Not appropriate 

• Fashionplace TRAX to the U, via I-215 and Foothill. Better as BRT. 
• Sugarhouse to Parley's Transit Center. Via roadway, so better as BRT.
• Highland Drive from end of Blue Line to 1100 East in SLC. Better as BRT. 
• Daybreak-to-Draper along 114th South. Better as BRT.
• 'Cottonwood Coaster' from Historic Sandy TRAX to Cottonwood Transit Center. Better as BRT. 
• Draper Town Center to nowhere(?), along 123rd. No rail terminus, no connection to TRAX or Frontrunner on the east end.  I understand the desire to connect this end of the Red line extension to the rest of the valley, but TRAX is not the way to do it. 
• I specifically disdain the DGRW Garfield Branch between Magna and the Old Bingham Highway. No major uses connected, and substantial out of direction travel. 
• DGRW Branch from Old Bingham, to 5600 West, North to Amelia Earhart Drive and thence to the airport. The 5600 West portion is better as BRT, and connecting to the airport would require constructing substantial track is an area already full of ramps. Converting the rest of 40th West to freeway standards provides better airport access.  A BRT from the airport to the business park and thence south on 5600 South is likely just a better alternative. Converting the DGRW branch from railway to exclusive BRT would be better than TRAX.

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*I know it's still in the running for Mountain Accord in Little Cottonwood; but so are a BRT and a cable car system. I laughed at the idea of a cable car, but if the ski resorts want to fund one over Guardsman Pass, it's their money.

**The extension from Draper to the Utah County line is planned, but being put off until Utah County matures enough to support TRAX. I admit a certain amount of skepticism this will happen.

Transit Phases

Urban Transit in the United States has six major phases**:

1. Street Railroads
2. Subways/Elevated
3. Street rail
4. Bus-titution
5. M/ART
6. Light Rail

Street Railroads is exactly as advertised: Railroads reaching the city center, run on city streets. Noisy and dangerous, they are largely extinct. Most cities relocated several of them to a common corridor (typically as part of a Union Station effort). Building a 'viaduct' over them was a popular addition after WW2. Never electrified, they belched smoke and scalding steam as they traveled

Subways/Elevated were the first round of solutions to street railroads. Two solutions emerged: elevating them, and under-grounding them. As elevating is cheaper than excavating, it was the preferred alternative. (And railroads already knew how to build viaducts). Manhattan once had elevated rail-lines running down second and 9th avenue (of which the High line is the remainder). London forced another solution. The 'City of London', the original Roman square mile inside the greater metropolis of London has its own municipal government. Disliking the nuisance effects of railways, they simply banned them on city streets. (And now you know why London has so many railroad stations). But the value of bringing a rail-line INTO the center of London was simply too great, and so the Under-grounding began, in 1863. Chicago, with it's plethora of railways, still maintains its elevated stations ('The El').

Street rail: Everyplace with even a presumption of being a 'city' built a street railway. Using railroad track, these were smaller, lighter vehicles called 'trolleys'. There were a handful of attempts to draw them using engines, but electrification (using the pantograph) became endemic.* 

Inter-Urbans: A hybrid streetcar/railroad deserves a passing mention, if only for it's later importance for light rail. Combining street-running sections in urban centers, and railroad right of way between cities, they filled a niche market, typically by connecting urban destinations to entertainment or educational institutions. Some used trolleys, and some were special 'school trains'. 

Bus-stitution represents the dark age of urban transit. (To those who love trains, at least). Worn out trolleys were replaced were shiny new buses. (Cue Roger Rabbit). Streetcars were already in decline beforehand. The only rail routes to survive were underground/elevated systems, or places with awkwardly narrow tunnels. 

M/ART refers to the period between WW2 & the advent of light rail in the United States.  But in 1970, we recognized we had 'an urban transportation problem', which is the preferred euphemism for the explosive growth in traffic congestion.
Transit was the clear solution. But even the solution was a problem. Private companies had built most of the transit infrastructure before 1928, and municipalities getting into the game only in response to their failure. But no private entity was willing to build transit in 1970--competition from the automobile was just too fierce. Conservative pundits love to argue that this reflects the innate attractiveness of the automobile. They also love to ignore the billions of dollars in Federal subsidy provided for the Interstate Highway system. So, it order to compete with the automobile, transit projects required a subsidy. Given that the 70's were sort of the high-water mark of 'big government' and centralized planning, it became a Federal project.


None of them did terribly well, at least at first. They had very high costs per rider. For some of the systems, for some years, it would have been better to either a) buy everyone a cheap car, or b) put all of the money into buses. They've done better over time, as traffic congestion has worsened, and developers have responded to the accessibility premium of locations near them, so more things are near them. BART won its spurs when the Bay Bridge collapsed. The DC metro has become the most-ridden transit system in the US.

Light Rail The return of the inter-urban! Known as 'City-Rail' (Stadtbahn) in Germany, it made use of freight right of way, with street running portions in the center of cities. APTA called them 'light rail' so suburbs would accept them. Successful, at least judging by their popularity.  They make use of a variety of types of running-way.

Streetcars are history repeating itself. They are street-rail come again--trolleys operating in mixed traffic.  Portland has made them famous, and their use as a successful economic development project means that every major city in America is either building one, or planning to. The dividing line between street cars and light rail is not a clean one. (Salt Lake has a 'streetcar' in its own railroad corridor, and a 'light rail' on a city street'.)
Both make use of all types of running way. Streetcars generally have shorter lines, smaller vehicles, lower speeds, and more frequent stops. My analysis showed that average stop spacing is most distinctive. Portland, Tucson and the Tacoma Central Link all have an average stop spacing about half that for other systems. 

*Yes, cable-cars existed. Yes, a number of hilly places used them, most notably San Francisco. But even more places used funiculars, and I'm not mentioning them. Today, they are both simply exotic survivals. 

**BRT will require discussion elsewhere

**CRT too. 

A Concise History of Rail Transit in America

Modern transit comes from two historic lineages: Steam railroads, and horse-cart street railways. To operate in an urban environment, steam railroads underwent a number of modifications. To reduce conflicts with street level traffic, were either elevated or under-grounded. At some point, they were also electrified, typically use a third-rail system. Once that occurred, expansion required the continued use of grade separated, exclusive guideway, so no one touched the third rail and died. In contrast, street railways were electrified as trolleys, using a pantograph. (Cable-cars can be thought of as a 'dead branch' alternative to electrification). The converging modes of electrified heavy rail and street railways were hybridized as the "Inter-urban". Electrified the whole-way, using a pantograph, and running in a mix of at-grade and tunnels. After the second World War, almost all pure street running 'trolley' systems were 'bus-tituted' out of existence, while some inter-urban systems survived. The survivors all had some off-street running-way, viz: RTA Streetcars, San Francisco cable car, MBTA Green Line & Ashmont–Mattapan High Speed Line, SEPTA Subway–Surface Lines: Suburban Trolley Lines & Girard Ave Trolley, RTA Rapid Transit: Blue and Green Lines, Newark Light Rail, Muni Metro. Between ~1930-1972 is sort of a 'Dark Age' for urban rail--almost nothing new is built. Then there is a resurgence of heavy-rail systems to deal with traffic congestion: BART (1972), Washington Metro (1976), MARTA (1979), Baltimore Subway (1983), and Miami-Dade (1984). All run at-grade in the suburbs, and in tunnels in the city center. About 1980, America adopts the Stadtbahn/'City Rail' concept from Germany, and APTA coins it 'Light Rail'. It runs at-grade in the suburbs, and at-grade in the city-center, like the inter-urbans. Being regulated as 'light' rail, it is allowed to operate in mixed-traffic with cars, making it easier/cheaper to build. Over time, the surviving inter-urbans are rebuilt/revitalized, making use of the same vehicles as the new 'Light Rail' systems. Circa 2001, Portland reinvents the 'streetcar', which runs at-grade, in mixed traffic, with smaller vehicles, and making extensive use of single-track.

Now, to get back to what is 'Rapid' transit: Rapid transit is something that has it's own (unshared) guideway. Subways, elevated rail, commuter rail all clearly meet this standard, as do most of the 'Metro' systems of the 1970's heavy-rail revival. But the surviving inter-urbans and new light rail systems are a confusing mix: They have portions of exclusive guideway, so they have rapid transit portions. But LRT means 'Light Rail Transit' rather than 'Light RAPID Transit'. This gets confusion in the context of BRT, which actually means 'Bus RAPID Transit'. BRT gets developed in Latin America as a sort of bus version of a heavy rail system--buses with unshared guideway. But that's another topic. In summary: HeavyRail = Rapid, Streetcar !=Rapid, LRT !=Rapid...but does have sections that could be. (Cable-cars get lumped in with LRT largely on the basis of Cable-car != heavy-rail.)

And finally: Metro!=Heavy-rail, but Metro ⊂ Heavy-rail. Freight, Metro, Subway, Elevated, Commuter Rail ⊂ Heavy-rail.

=     Equal to
!=    Not equal to
⊂    Is a subset of.

UTA needs to plan more light rail

UTA needs to plan for some more light rail. It's like planning for arterials roads--it represents a key link in the transportation network. Think of it this way: Commuter Rail = Highway. Thus, without to connect to, a 'highway to nowhere'? Governance scale also relevant--Commuter rail is the MSA, light rail a County-level project, and street-car a city level project. However, for roads, the Feds pay for most of the highways, the state pays for the major roads (most arterials are 'state highways'), and only the smaller roads are actually handled by cities. On that analogy, there is actually no transit 'small' enough that a city can handle it.

Regardless, Salt Lake County has it's light rail, and Weber, Davis and Utah all have commuter rail now. But UTA wants to build something--they've developed the capacity, and well, 'when you've got a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail'. I'm unpersuaded about the value of streetcars (however awesome Portland's has been), but still devoted to light rail and it's capacity for doing the things a bus can't do.

Light Rail Lines

I just spent a pleasant couple of hours looking at light rail lines. There are a surprising number coming in at greater distances than I expected. I thought the 'minimal operable segment' would be about 15 miles. I did not see that very often. Lines actually coming in between 7-20 miles, with the 18-20 range well attested to. (Not counting the bizarre Tacoma Link at 1.6 miles). Difference in initial distance seems to be the availability of an existing rail corridor. If you've got one, it's easy to go longer. Without one, using ROW from a freeway, or street right of way, the costs and complexities are higher, and the initial line tends to be shorter.

Growing a Transit Network

As far as I can tell, building a good rapid transit system is pretty simple: Good planning and incremental investment. That seems to be why San Diego has done well, Salt Lake has done well, and Denver's Fast-Track is a bit of a boondoggle. Doing it incrementally makes it possible to apply 'lessons learned' to subsequent expansions. It could be argued that SLC's last expansion (4 lines at once) 'overdid it', but I don't think so. While it was funded as a package, UTA has been pretty clever in phasing the construction time of the different lines so that everything hasn't been happening all at once. The South Jordan and West Valley lines started service on the same day, but neither the Airport nor Draper lines have completed construction. I suspect that made it possible to re-use construction equipment/staff time on the different lines.

TRAX vs. Bus

Living in a suburb of Salt Lake city, I walked a mile to reach the TRAX Light Rail every morning. It's not uncommon for me to walk a mile home from the TRAX. But I've NEVER walked that far to catch a bus, despite years of being car dependent. Part of that is Salt Lake Counties peculiar geography--in a mountain valley, it's hard to more than a mile or two from a TRAX station. But part of it is the sheer dependability of TRAX. I'll walk a mile rather than wait 15 minutes for a bus, even heavily loaded. It is less uncertain and less boring. 'High capacity' transit is bundled with a whole host of other transit improvements, and those improvements provide a great deal of the benefit we associate with rail transit.

Stop Spacing and Mode

I was reading a post on stop spacing at Human Transit where Jarrett Walker talks about streetcars vs light rail, and makes the distinction:

The terms streetcar/tram and light rail will be most useful if we use them to refer to the prevailing stop spacing, not the exclusivity of the right-of-way. 

Staring at the last graphic, I had an epiphany: With the addition of so many stations in downtown, and such indirect routing, TRAX is being asked to operate as a streetcar. It's kind of an open secret that the TRAX ridership between the Arena Station and the Salt Lake Central Station is terrible. Old Greek Town station is FAR too close to both Salt Lake Central Station and Planetarium Station. Salt Lake's blocks may be 660' long, but stop spacing for transit is supposed to be about twice that. 

From 10000 South in Sandy to about 500 South (Courthouse) in Salt Lake, stations on the TRAX line are about a mile apart. The 900 South stop breaks the pattern, but it was a mid-point stations added later as an early effort by UTA to promote TOD. SLC then-Mayor Rocky Anderson then demanded TWO additional stations when the TRAX line was extended from Arena to Salt Lake Central Station. But as a result, between 1300 South and Salt Lake Central Station, there are now NINE TRAX stations over a distance of 3 miles, and it takes about half hour to cover the distance. That gives it an average speed of about 10 minutes a mile.While the stop spacing is reasonable for 'local' transit service, it's kind of a waste to use Light Rail for that purpose. TRAX covers the distance between 10600 South and 1300 South in LESS time than it takes to wind through downtown.

Ergo, efforts should be made to preserve TRAX for rapid transit, and use a different (and less expensive) vehicle for downtown circulation. Perhaps a streetcar....