Hey FTA~

Maybe the FTA should start mandating a minimum service threshold for the corridors it funds....with some sort of 'snapback' that requires immediate repayment if service falls below that threshold.

"The system is planned for half-hourly service once additional trains arrive, yet the project is indicative of a problem among many major transit projects in the U.S.: we’re willing to spend billions of dollars on construction, but we have less interest in paying the long-term costs of making sure trains and buses on these lines are frequent and reliable".

And maybe would should be learning from places in Europe, and start following a 'design-build-operate' model for our major transit investments. Because otherwise, when the snapback hits, transit agencies will simply cut bus service to offset the costs, and total ridership will actually be less.

Which begs the question: Why are we building all this rail? I'm a transit advocate, I ride every train I get a chance to (Atlanta's streetcar stinks, by the way), and I still wonder. When I advocated for rail  vs BRT (close to a decade ago) it was on the premise that rail could spur Transit-Oriented-Development. The reality check is that most rail spurs very little TOD, either. Mostly, it spurs park and rides. Only in a few select locations (downtown adjacent) do I ever see any TOD. And those locations are within streetcar range. So why build all the rail to suburbia? If all we're going to get is parking lots, why not build BRT? The academic research is pretty clear that it does no worse that rail at generating TOD.

I hate to say it, but rail (especially expensive rail) only makes sense for places that already have rail, either in the form of a network, or in the form of leftover freight rail. So that more rail either prevents a 'change of gauge' problem for riders (where they have to change vehicles), or makes duplicate use of rail track.

But I suppose that's the logic the New Starts program was designed to overcome: To provide a 'starter' rail system for places that didn't have rail, so they had a seed to grow from. Retrospectively (post Curitiba) it looks a little silly.

But as I reflect on it, there is another reason for rail: Guideway. When it's not just 'right of way', but actual guide-way. When you've got a vehicle moving through a tunnel, or on an elevated platform, when straying from the path would mean disaster.

Honolulu Rail

The most interesting bit about the Honolulu train was it's proposed automation: no driver, just a program. With elevated guide-way, there is nothing to crash into on the track, so all the driver does is stop and start the train--the rail guides it. No reason not to automate that. But it's what automation makes possible that is interesting: increasing frequency is no longer dependent on labor costs, but merely a matter of capital development. Running more trains per hour simply requires buying more trains. Theoretically, this could make very high frequency trains (ever 2-3 minutes) technically possible. And thus enable a transit-oriented lifestyle difficult (if not impossible) to duplicate elsewhere.

It would cost money. But it could radically reshape urbanism in Honolulu. Moreso than the area around the line itself, because a high-frequency transit spine enables the emergency of a transfer network, making is possible to get between places that aren't on the rail line, but are connected to it by bus/shuttle routes.

Honolulu rail system

In 1966, then-mayor Neal S. Blaisdell suggested a rail line as a solution to alleviate traffic problems in Honolulu, stating,

 "Taken in the mass, the automobile is a noxious mechanism whose destiny in workaday urban use is to frustrate man and make dead certain that he approaches his daily occupation unhappy and inefficient."^[20]

The failure of Honolulu to get their act together is staggering. It's an island. It has to import cars by air, and fuel by ship. All the urban development is constrained to a tiny strip along. The lack of a mass-transit system is quite puzzling. Takes a bit of reading to get to the core of it, but looks like the cause is political: it's a contest for space between mass transit and cars. (No surprise there--it's a fundamental conflict in urban transportation). And BRT doesn't seem to have entered the conversation until recently; prior to effective BRT, 'rapid' transit meant rail.

Should Honolulu have rail? Probably not. Circa 2000, rail probably looked reasonable. But that was before Curitiba pioneered BRT, and demonstrated that heavy-rail levels of capacity were possible using rubber-tracked vehicles with internal combustion engines.

Technically speaking, there are only two cases where rail transit is justified:

1. You already have a rail transit system, and you are building an additional corridor that will interconnect with it, and building more rail will eliminate the 'change of gauge' problem that continuing along a corridor would otherwise require a transfer to another vehicle.
2. A railroad line/corridor/ROW already exists and can be re-used/repurposed.  

Looking at the proposed rail line, looks like Honolulu meets neither of these criteria.  So why rail? Cars.  As I mentioned  previously, it's a fight for urban space, a fight for travel right-of-way. It proved politically easier to spend billions to build a curious heavy rail/commuter rail/light rail hybrid, rather than take roadway right-of-way from cars. (Choosing between pain today or pain tomorrow, and the public will always take pain tomorrow--something politicians endlessly exploit).  

If you can't make use of the surface right-of-way (which has been politically allocated to cars), then you have to use separated guidway--either elevated or underground. My understanding is that as a volcanic island, there is no 'digging' to be done on Honolulu: building anything underground means dynamiting through igneous rocks of various types. And elevated is cheaper than underground, regardless. (Digging through air is pretty cheap, I understand). So after the political decision to allocate all the surface space to cars was made, elevated was the only place to stick a train. But elevating a train isn't cheap: It's like building a highway consisting solely of bridges. And so the cost is in the billions. And so the project is politically tendentious. Complicating this, Hawaii has zero experience building rapid transit of any sort. 

Sadly, this is a common problem across America: we've not built grade separated transit in decades, and hence there is no professional experience in doing it. All the experience is European and Chinese. And yet the 'benevolent' requirements of 'Buy American' provisions for the FTA condemns U.S. rapid transit to autarky. Rather than import (and localize) foreign expertise, we have to 're-invent the wheel', making all the same dumb mistakes. 

Why? Because this is America, and we don't have a national rail agency. It's a federal system: the Feds fund it, but the local agency builds it. And to do that, every local agency has to learn how to do it. Which is impossible, and so most local agencies rely on consultants to provide the expertise.

And as a consultant, I can tell you, there is a strong incentive to over-state your expertise, 'stretch' related qualifications, and magnify that aspect of related projects. Because that's how you win work, and if you don't win work, you don't eat. And that includes practices like underbidding the work (saying you can do it in less time/for less money than the task will actually take). When public projects go sideways, the reasons for it are predictable. 

Rail Transit

Rail Transit makes sense where there is an existing rail corridor. Outside of that, not sure it does. Last mile links might count. But those tend to grow, into their own corridors. Any end of line location needs a place to store vehicles (which is why Central bus depots are terrible). So a rail line call never naturally terminate in a CBD--it must pass through.

That said, for single line networks, the terminal station can store one train, and operate such that when a train on one track arrives, the train on the other track departs, so there is always a track available for an arriving train. Trax operated this way for years. Now days, UTA builds long tail track at termini to store trains. Which works at peripheral locations, but not for a CBD location.

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.

Bus vs. Trains

I was reading Human Transit today, and thinking about the rail map. SLC has a similarly complex bus system. Why is not possible to have a similar map? Jared Walker has the right of it when he says 'many transit services that are stuck in mixed traffic'. This is the fundamental divide--not bus vs. train, but dedicated right of way vs. mixed traffic. Trains, being heavier and slower to stop, frequently get their own. Buses do not, and that makes all the difference.  Effective BRT means dedicated right of way