M II A II R II K
Senior Member
Is Speed Obsolete?
04/21/2010
Read More: http://www.humantransit.org/2010/04/is-speed-obsolete-.html
.....
That, broadly speaking, is the question raised by Professor Patrick M. Condon at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Condon heads the Design Centre for Sustainability inside UBC's Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and is the author of the very useful book Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities. In his 2008 paper "The Case for the Tram: Learning from Portland," he explicitly states a radical idea that many urban planners are thinking about, but that not many of them say in public. He suggests that the whole idea of moving large volumes of people relatively quickly across an urban region, as "rapid transit" systems do, is problematic or obsolete:
- The question of operational speed conjures up a larger issue: who exactly are the intended beneficiaries of enhanced mobility? A high speed system is best if the main intention is to move riders quickly from one side of the region to the other. Lower operational speeds are better if your intention is to best serve city districts with easy access within them and to support a long term objective to create more complete communities, less dependent on twice-daily cross-region trips.
- Professor Condon is interested in the urban form implications of slower transit, for which his paradigm is the Portland Streetcar, a tram in mixed traffic, stopping every 500 feet or so, that glides attractively but slowly (averaging 15 km/h, 9 mph) through the redeveloping Pearl District. Clearly, the Portland Streetcar drove not just a dramatic densification of the inner city areas it served, but a pedestrian-friendly mixed-use urban form where many of life's needs are within walking distance. That much is undeniable. In Todd Litman's terms, which I explored here, the Portland Streetcar may not have provided much mobility but it certainly improved access. But is that a reason to build lots of streetcars, and stop building rapid transit, as Condon proposes?
- Condon is consciously dismissing the value of speed. The Portland Streetcar that is Condon's model is no faster than a local bus. Virtually every street on Condon's idealised Vancouver streetcar network map already has frequent bus service running at least as fast as a Portland-inspired streetcar would run. So Condon is suggesting spending C$2.8 billion on a huge network of services that do not improve mobility at all. After this huge investment, nobody would be able to get anywhere any faster than they can on the bus system now. Condon will object that various things could be done to make the streetcars faster, but as I explored in detail here, most of those things could be done for the buses now, which means they're not logical consequences of a streetcar plan even if they're politically packaged with it.
- Today, 41st Avenue has some fast limited-stop bus service (stopping about once per km) as well as slower local-stop service. Both services are very busy. Limited-stop and local buses can share the same lane and move down the street efficiently. Local buses serve every stop, and the limited-stop buses pass them as they do. You can't do that with streetcars, at least not without building two sets of tracks in each direction and thus commandeering virtually the entire width of the street. In the real world, a 41st Avenue streetcar could only have one stopping pattern, and that would almost certainly mean more stops than the current limited-stop bus makes. So riders of that limited-stop service -- which is such a large market that it's been studied for further upgrades -- would end up on something that runs slower than the service they have now.
- If turning buses into streetcars causes all those streets to redevelop, with dramatically higher and yet walkable density, wouldn't that be a good thing? That wouldn't improve mobility, but it would improve access. We wouldn't have to go as far to do things, because everything would be closer. Yes, but Condon needs you to believe that (a) such redevelopment won't happen anyway and (b) no such redevelopment will happen if we just keep improving the already-intensive bus system while adding one or two rapid transit lines. The reason streetcars currently trigger investment is that the rails in the street symbolize mobility. The development happens not just because of what will be in walking distance, but because the rails in the street suggest you'll be able to get to lots of places easily by rail. So rails in the street create redevelopment, which improves access. But they do that by offering an appearance of mobility.
- Let's imagine 41st Avenue 20 years from now in a Condonian future. A frequent streetcar does what the buses used to do, but because it stops every 2-3 blocks, and therefore runs slowly, UBC students who need to go long distances across the city have screamed until the transit agency, TransLink, has put back a limited-stop or "B-Line" bus on the same street. (Over the 20 years, TransLink has continued to upgrade its B-Line bus product. For example, drivers no longer do fare collection, so you can board and alight at any door, making for much faster service. Bus interiors and features are also identical to what you'd find on streetcars, just as they are in many European cities.) Suddenly, people who've bought apartments on 41st Avenue, and paid extra for them because of the rails in the street, start noticing that fast, crowded buses are passing the streetcars. They love the streetcars when they're out for pleasure. But people have jobs and families.
- In fact, the scenario I just described on 41st Avenue is not all that different from the changes that led to the first demise of streetcars, in the mid-20th century. Condon, like many, argues that introducing streetcars is a return to something that worked well in the past, so the idea seems like a logical extension of today's "neo-traditional" concepts of good town planning. But as this marvelous 1906 video shows, streetcars worked well around 1900 because there were very few cars or buses. Not much got in the way of a streetcar, and no competing transit service could run faster than it did. That's not the reality of the 21st century street. And however much we wish it wasn't so, we choose our transportation mode from among the available alternatives, so a solution that worked when there were fewer alternatives may not work as well now.
- Is it really true, as Condon suggests, that sustainable urban form, with fine-grained mixtures of uses that permit most of life's needs to be met close to home, will grow better around slow transit, like a streetcar, as opposed to something fast like a subway? As I think about the great urban spaces I've seen, at many scales, on many continents, I am simply not convinced that highly civilized urban places benefit from transit being slow. Most great cities of Europe, North America, and Australasia grew around streetcars at a crucial stage in their history, but in many such cities -- certainly in most of the major cities of Europe -- comprehensive rapid transit systems were built a bit later, and these either replaced streetcars entirely or shifted them to supporting roles as connecting services. When I think of really healthy, vibrant, exciting neighborhoods in Europe, or in New York City, I think of places with subway stations.
.....
04/21/2010
Read More: http://www.humantransit.org/2010/04/is-speed-obsolete-.html
.....
That, broadly speaking, is the question raised by Professor Patrick M. Condon at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Condon heads the Design Centre for Sustainability inside UBC's Department of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, and is the author of the very useful book Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities. In his 2008 paper "The Case for the Tram: Learning from Portland," he explicitly states a radical idea that many urban planners are thinking about, but that not many of them say in public. He suggests that the whole idea of moving large volumes of people relatively quickly across an urban region, as "rapid transit" systems do, is problematic or obsolete:
- The question of operational speed conjures up a larger issue: who exactly are the intended beneficiaries of enhanced mobility? A high speed system is best if the main intention is to move riders quickly from one side of the region to the other. Lower operational speeds are better if your intention is to best serve city districts with easy access within them and to support a long term objective to create more complete communities, less dependent on twice-daily cross-region trips.
- Professor Condon is interested in the urban form implications of slower transit, for which his paradigm is the Portland Streetcar, a tram in mixed traffic, stopping every 500 feet or so, that glides attractively but slowly (averaging 15 km/h, 9 mph) through the redeveloping Pearl District. Clearly, the Portland Streetcar drove not just a dramatic densification of the inner city areas it served, but a pedestrian-friendly mixed-use urban form where many of life's needs are within walking distance. That much is undeniable. In Todd Litman's terms, which I explored here, the Portland Streetcar may not have provided much mobility but it certainly improved access. But is that a reason to build lots of streetcars, and stop building rapid transit, as Condon proposes?
- Condon is consciously dismissing the value of speed. The Portland Streetcar that is Condon's model is no faster than a local bus. Virtually every street on Condon's idealised Vancouver streetcar network map already has frequent bus service running at least as fast as a Portland-inspired streetcar would run. So Condon is suggesting spending C$2.8 billion on a huge network of services that do not improve mobility at all. After this huge investment, nobody would be able to get anywhere any faster than they can on the bus system now. Condon will object that various things could be done to make the streetcars faster, but as I explored in detail here, most of those things could be done for the buses now, which means they're not logical consequences of a streetcar plan even if they're politically packaged with it.
- Today, 41st Avenue has some fast limited-stop bus service (stopping about once per km) as well as slower local-stop service. Both services are very busy. Limited-stop and local buses can share the same lane and move down the street efficiently. Local buses serve every stop, and the limited-stop buses pass them as they do. You can't do that with streetcars, at least not without building two sets of tracks in each direction and thus commandeering virtually the entire width of the street. In the real world, a 41st Avenue streetcar could only have one stopping pattern, and that would almost certainly mean more stops than the current limited-stop bus makes. So riders of that limited-stop service -- which is such a large market that it's been studied for further upgrades -- would end up on something that runs slower than the service they have now.
- If turning buses into streetcars causes all those streets to redevelop, with dramatically higher and yet walkable density, wouldn't that be a good thing? That wouldn't improve mobility, but it would improve access. We wouldn't have to go as far to do things, because everything would be closer. Yes, but Condon needs you to believe that (a) such redevelopment won't happen anyway and (b) no such redevelopment will happen if we just keep improving the already-intensive bus system while adding one or two rapid transit lines. The reason streetcars currently trigger investment is that the rails in the street symbolize mobility. The development happens not just because of what will be in walking distance, but because the rails in the street suggest you'll be able to get to lots of places easily by rail. So rails in the street create redevelopment, which improves access. But they do that by offering an appearance of mobility.
- Let's imagine 41st Avenue 20 years from now in a Condonian future. A frequent streetcar does what the buses used to do, but because it stops every 2-3 blocks, and therefore runs slowly, UBC students who need to go long distances across the city have screamed until the transit agency, TransLink, has put back a limited-stop or "B-Line" bus on the same street. (Over the 20 years, TransLink has continued to upgrade its B-Line bus product. For example, drivers no longer do fare collection, so you can board and alight at any door, making for much faster service. Bus interiors and features are also identical to what you'd find on streetcars, just as they are in many European cities.) Suddenly, people who've bought apartments on 41st Avenue, and paid extra for them because of the rails in the street, start noticing that fast, crowded buses are passing the streetcars. They love the streetcars when they're out for pleasure. But people have jobs and families.
- In fact, the scenario I just described on 41st Avenue is not all that different from the changes that led to the first demise of streetcars, in the mid-20th century. Condon, like many, argues that introducing streetcars is a return to something that worked well in the past, so the idea seems like a logical extension of today's "neo-traditional" concepts of good town planning. But as this marvelous 1906 video shows, streetcars worked well around 1900 because there were very few cars or buses. Not much got in the way of a streetcar, and no competing transit service could run faster than it did. That's not the reality of the 21st century street. And however much we wish it wasn't so, we choose our transportation mode from among the available alternatives, so a solution that worked when there were fewer alternatives may not work as well now.
- Is it really true, as Condon suggests, that sustainable urban form, with fine-grained mixtures of uses that permit most of life's needs to be met close to home, will grow better around slow transit, like a streetcar, as opposed to something fast like a subway? As I think about the great urban spaces I've seen, at many scales, on many continents, I am simply not convinced that highly civilized urban places benefit from transit being slow. Most great cities of Europe, North America, and Australasia grew around streetcars at a crucial stage in their history, but in many such cities -- certainly in most of the major cities of Europe -- comprehensive rapid transit systems were built a bit later, and these either replaced streetcars entirely or shifted them to supporting roles as connecting services. When I think of really healthy, vibrant, exciting neighborhoods in Europe, or in New York City, I think of places with subway stations.
.....
