Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Coming Up in 2017


I'm pleased to pass along another piece written by a friend and colleague. This one is by physicist and rail advocate Dr. Yuri Popov, in which he has collected information about rail projects scheduled to come into service in 2017. Here it is...

Dear urbanrailers,

Following the two major openings in the first days of 2017 - four new subway stations in New York City on January 1st and two new light rail stations in Houston today - more openings are coming this year. Below you can find a (possibly incomplete) list of urban and suburban rail projects opening for service this year in the U.S. and Canada. The list does NOT include reconstructions and rehabilitations of existing facilities; it includes new infrastructure only. If you have any additions or corrections, please voice them! If you could clarify the expected opening dates/months in the second part of the list, this would be greatly appreciated as well.

  • January - Arthur Kill SIR station (New York)
  • Winter - Warm Springs/South Fremont BART station (San Francisco)
  • Spring - streetcar Q line (Detroit)
  • May - Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (San Francisco)
  • May - Loop Trolley (St. Louis)
  • Summer - Brightline regional rail (Miami - West Palm Beach)
  • August - Northeast extension of the light rail Blue line (Charlotte)
  • Fall - Milpitas and Berryessa BART stations (San Francisco)
  • Late 2017 - 6-station TTC (subway) extension to Vaughan Centre (Toronto)
  • Late 2017 - Downsview Park transfer station between TTC and GO (Toronto)

Some time in 2017:

  • Line G (Denver) Line R (Denver)
  • Washington/Wabash CTA station (Chicago)
  • Bob Hope Airport/Hollywood Way Metrolink station (Los Angeles)
  • San Bernardino Transit Center Metrolink station (Los Angeles)
  • Potomac Shores VRE station (Washington [D.C.])

And while we are at it, there will be a number of Amtrak / intercity rail projects (mostly funded by Obama's 2010 stimulus package) coming to fruition this year:

  • Marks, MS, new station
  • Roanoke, VA, new station and service extension (Fall)
  • Lincoln corridor major upgrade
  • Piedmont corridor major upgrade (Fall)
  • Cascades corridor major upgrade (Fall)
  • Wolverine corridor major upgrade (November)

Please feel free to correct this list, add to it, or report delays.

Thanks, Yuri - helpful and encouraging!

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Rx for the RTA


Prescription 3: Do better at the periphery

Voters at the edges of the RTA district felt left out. Some liked it that way, but many would have liked to have some concrete type of service, or at least to be heard. Though their numbers are small, collectively they could have pushed RTA over the hump.That didn't happen for two very important reasons, and the result was almost all precinct in the north and west voted against RTA.
First, service to areas where people are spread way out is prohibitively expensive to provide with regular bus routes. Consequently, there were no lines on the map indicating bus routes to the far-flung reaches of the district. Instead, a small amount of funding was redirected in the last few weeks of the run-up to the election, with the idea that peripheral areas could get together and figure out what they wanted to do with the money. This was not the solution people were looking for.
Second, RTA resources were spread too thin. There are somewhere in the ballpark of 250 political jurisdictions in the RTA district - cities, towns, villages, townships, authorities, and the four counties themselves.
Trying to address these jurisdictions were the five staff members of the RTA: the CEO, Deputy CEO, one planner, one outreach coordinator, and one administrative assistant. Each of these was stretched thin and responded heroically to the challenges and requests for service and conversation, all in an agonizingly short period of time. But they were too few and the time was too short. There was no way each jurisdiction could be visited and have an in-depth conversation with someone from RTA.
The election results have not provided more staff, but they have given existing staff time to listen, explain, and tweak the plan.

Prescription 4: Make better use of existing resources

The RTA has certainly used existing resources in a great way, but with more time, there are more possibilities for even better.
First, sit down with the big corporations that supported the RTA with lip-service and also with campaign funds. These include Ford and GM, which might surprise people. They also include supporters of M-1 Rail, whose finances were limited for more transit projects while M-1 was under construction. The big medical and educational institutions, the so-called "meds & eds", benefit tremendously from public transportation - and they know it - though their pockets are not uniformly deep. Real estate brokers and owners are big beneficiaries of transit as well, though not all may appreciate the fact.
It may surprise some of you to learn that there are enlightened banks and finance corporations with a great interest in public transportation. Comerica and Morgan Stanley are two that have demonstrated this with "cash on the barrel head". If you think about it, the connection between banks and the value of real estate makes the reason for their interest clear.
President Donald Trump appears to be supporting some kind of plan to encourage private investment in infrastructure. Whether or not that will work for transit - or anything else - remains to be seen. But the general drift is clear: away from providing federal funds for infrastructure, including transit, and toward relying on private capital.
In addition to financial resources and corporate know-how, there are infrastructure resources which I believe could be better utilized in the Transit Master Plan. There are some under-used rail lines that would provide speed and ease of access in several corridors, though the low-hanging fruit - the Ann Arbor to Detroit corridor - has already been included in the plan. Despite the appearance of easy availability, the use of rusting rail corridors requires pretty intensive capital outlay, making it impractical if it's totally funded by taxpayer dollars. And most Detroit area rail corridors are actually heavily used by their freight-hauling owners, and could be shared only by compensating those owners with large sums.
Other infrastructure resources include the expressways - built and maintained with a tremendous outlay of taxpayer money. Though these are famously congested during peak hours, there are many U.S. cities which successfully use their expressways with various techniques to speed up express bus service. I have proposed creating a bus-beltway using I-94, I-275, and I-696, which would tie most of the RTA's crosstown routes together. Yes, this too would require more resources, but relatively little compared to the rail corridor options.
Finally, the airport is a great existing resource. Sure, there has been some pretty serious difficulty with arrangement for buses there, but it's worth pushing for. The airport authority has a new CEO, so there's hope for a more cooperative approach.
To be continued...

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Rx for the RTA - Part 1

The period of shock and disappointment many of us felt after November 8, 2016, should be behind us by now. Sure, many of us are still not happy, but it's time to look to the future.

Transit funding in Southeast Michigan failed that day, but only by less than 1% of the overall vote. What can we and the RTA do for the future? We - the transit advocacy community - have many and differing ideas, but we each need to throw our ideas into the pool and let the best ones float to the top.

I have lots of ideas, based on my interaction with the RTA over the last few years and my contacts with people in the Washtenaw County area. We'll see if any of them float. I'll give you the first few today, and put the rest up bit by bit.

Prescription 1: Do not take the "defeated" pill

Time is actually on the side of transit. First, because transit funding gurus have found that the best predictor of success on a transit ballot issue is failure on the previous attempt. And more fundamentally, people don't like to vote for an agency they have no acquaintance with. AAATA and SMART both won recent funding requests with over two-thirds majorities. People know them, see their buses on the street, and some even ride them. That can't be said for the RTA. But neither advocates nor RTA staff and board should let their heads hang down. Megan Owens struck exactly the right note Monday night (January 30) at the Transportation Riders United  (TRU) Annual Meeting, where she maintained that 2016 was an "excellent" year for transit in Southeast Michigan, and pointed to numerous advances.

So my first prescription for the RTA is to cheerfully do as much as possible, as openly and publicly as possible, and get back on the ballot as soon as possible - that's November, 2018.

Prescription 2: Swallow and digest the election results

Where did the vote go in favor of the RTA? Where did it go against? Talk with the anti-transit communities and find out what they want. Talk with the areas where the vote went in favor - find out what they liked, and what RTA could do better.

Don't allow past mistakes to be repeated. Specifically, don't air messages that could be interpreted as negative to SMART, DDOT, AAATA, or the People Mover. Don't allow a public relations firm to take charge if they have no experience with transit initiatives. Probably no single firm has the expertise needed: knowledge of Southeast Michigan, and a track record of success with transit proposals. Probably a team of two firms would be the best solution.
To be continued...