Triangle Regional Transit

[monsoon]

That is an interesting move and IMO one that is needed. Maybe they should setup a structure similar to the MTA in the Charlotte area.

[ChiefJoJo]

I attended the meeting and I guess it wasn't that important afterall (no major guiding principles or outreach decisions were made)...

The most important thing they did was to form an advisory board made up of DCHC and CAMPO members who would make recomendations to the MPOs next year on what the new transit vision should be.

Maybe they should setup a structure similar to the MTA in the Charlotte area.

[ChiefJoJo]

WRAL story on the meeting yesterday where the members of the two MPOs approved forming a transit advisory board that will make recomendations to the MPOs later next year.

Metro.m, if you mean they should set up a structure that is made of mayors and county commissioners from the region, then that's what is happening here. One of the downfalls of the TTA BOT is that mayors and county commissioners or city councilors were not ALL required to be members of the board--such as Raleigh, and Wake County, the largest city and county in the region. The leaders who make the land use decisions should also make the transportation decisions.

I am pleased that this is being approached regionally (as emphasized by TTA Boss David King in the meeting) and I am pleased with the comments I heard in the story--as in it seems they are serious about coming up with a plan and finding the proper local funding this time.

[DanRNC]

I wonder if adding the line to RDU will finally shut some people up. Chapel Hill also needs to be added to the initial phase.

[monsoon]

....

Metro.m, if you mean they should set up a structure that is made of mayors and county commissioners from the region, then that's what is happening here. One of the downfalls of the TTA BOT is that mayors and county commissioners or city councilors were not ALL required to be members of the board--such as Raleigh, and Wake County, the largest city and county in the region. The leaders who make the land use decisions should also make the transportation decisions.....

[sax184]

I wonder if adding the line to RDU will finally shut some people up. Chapel Hill also needs to be added to the initial phase.

[DwnTwnRaleighGuy]

Does anyone here think that at least a few people,(two city of Raleigh council members), are pushing this Blue Ribbon Group for a permanent end to talk of regional rail? After listening to both of these two councilmen speak it just sounds as if they want to include "everyone" in this discussion, merely with the idea that a majority will be against spending what they think will be "billions for a small rail system"? Please don't get me wrong, I totally believe that the only way a good, sound, transportation system,(including rail), can succeed is to involve everyone. I was just trying to understand these two representatives.

[ChiefJoJo]

If we wind up building a train to the airport just to appease exurbanites who will never use it otherwise, the system will be on a path to long-term failure.

[DanRNC]

It seems like they want anything but rail transit. I don't understand the obsession with buses. They sit in traffic on I-40 with rest of the cars, you have to make a zillion transfers to get anywhere of substantive distance, and once you get off 40 you sit in traffic on all the other roads. Bus transit is inefficient and is used primarily as transportation for people that don't have cars. BRT is fine on 40 but what happens when you get off the interstate-you sit in traffic.

The bottom line is that adding traffic lanes on 40 doesn't work (we have already seen that) and adding bus lines doesn't work to reduce the increasing traffic gridlock on the roads.

[DwnTwnRaleighGuy]

It seems like they want anything but rail transit. I don't understand the obsession with buses. They sit in traffic on I-40 with rest of the cars, you have to make a zillion transfers to get anywhere of substantive distance, and once you get off 40 you sit in traffic on all the other roads. Bus transit is inefficient and is used primarily as transportation for people that don't have cars. BRT is fine on 40 but what happens when you get off the interstate-you sit in traffic.

The bottom line is that adding traffic lanes on 40 doesn't work (we have already seen that) and adding bus lines doesn't work to reduce the increasing traffic gridlock on the roads.

[mattm]

On the other hand, the most successful TTA route at the moment is the express Raleigh-Chapel Hill route (SRO sometimes). Apparently some of the outlying towns are clamoring for their own versions of this (Wake Forest et al).

Also, many of the existing riders are not bus-dependant. Myself, I have two different cars to choose from most days, but I still ride the bus.

[ChiefJoJo]

the most successful TTA route at the moment is the express Raleigh-Chapel Hill route

[ncwebguy]

I think the express bus concept should be expanded to get more people thinking about transit.

Riders of the Raleigh-Chapel Hill express bus could easily be converted to rail riders that would have a shorter ride, more frequent service than the current once an hour, *and* service during non-peak hours, which currently does not exist. Other routes run more frequently -- if they ran as often as the express buses, the "local" Durham/Chapel Hill route, and the Raleigh route would be near standing room only as well.

Why not have shuttles that go from downtown Wake Forest, Wendell, and/or Clayton to Moore Square to see what ridership could be? These would tie into CAT and TTA's express and local routes there. The same could be done on the western edge -- shuttles from Pittsboro, Burlington, and/or Hillsborough to feed the DATA system or to the Chapel Hill TTA stop. People there might want to takemass taransit, but until now have not had the option.

Routes that have significant ridership could be upgraded to a "full" bus, like the Brier Creek route.

This would go a long ways to show how bus service would *compliment* rail service, not replace it.

Hopefully Cherokee and TTA will show the public and/or "blue ribbon panel" how their partnership will make sense financially while providing truely smart growth in the future.

[JDC]

This would go a long ways to show how bus service would *compliment* rail service, not replace it.

[ChiefJoJo]

EASTRANS is back in the news. I think they need to realize that EASTRANS is more of a compliment to TTA phase 1 than a stand-alone system. I believe the first priority should be TTA Phase 1, with later phases coming online in future years (see CATS 2030 Corridor System Plan). All the plans we need are right in front of us, we just need to proper land use planning and local funding.

[ncwebguy]

The WRAL story refers to the TTA plan as "failed" even though it never got far enough along to fail.

Also EastTrans has been looked at a long time before the "failure".

Eastrans didn't take off until the federal government said the area-wide TTA rail plan wouldn't work.

[tjoad]

I ran across a very interesting post the other day on SSC and wanted to get to get some feedback here.

It is from Vitaviatic (a Raleigh native) who works for a firm in Denver that works with mass transit planning. He summarizes a plan about relocating Central Prison to make way for massive TOD development, among other things. He wants as much feedback as he can get and encouraged me to paste his plan in this forum, which he said he will visit.

OK, gang. Here's the latest from the Mile High meddlers.

Submitted as of today were my firm's input into the TTA scenario to Cherokee's Denver office (which I sincerely hope will make it comat to the Raleigh headquarters post haste). It is pretty safe to say that Cherokee is Raleigh's ace-in-the-hole, and this whole thing will most likely pivot around them. They are certainly motivated, and I sincerely hope that they will be able to counteract the regressive designs of Progress Energy (under whose stewardship Fayetteville Street reverted to the "Mayberry" car-centric motif -- and at great cost I might add).

But I digress. Here are the main points of our strategy:

We are firmly committed to running Central Prison the hell out of town. It is a Stalinistic eyesore (o mejor dicho, a cancer) on downtown Raleigh, and probably the 400-lbs. gorilla that keeps the wrappers on redevelopment west of Salisbury St. It is a true testament to the potential of downtown Raleigh that even with the Big House as a neighbor, Boylan Heights still commands relatively high land values. Ditto Cameron Village and Glenwood South (which aren't that far away). Imagine what will happen when the cons, the razorwire, and the watchtowers leave the neighborhood. For those who might bemoan the loss of jobs, keep this in mind...Corrections jobs by nature are relatively low-paying. Stable, state jobs for sure, but not well-paid. If CP moves to Butner or Down East somewhere, the employees can benefit from being relocated to an area where they can get more for their dollar, whether it be in housing prices, cost-of-living, or whatever. And especially for the old-timers who may own a home in Raleigh -- there is the option of commuting, or selling their house in a premium housing market and banking the inevitable spread, or again, renting said property for a nice income. What's more, there are ways to incorporate incentives for those employees -- relocation assistance -- into the purchase package for the CP property, which would make the inconvenience a little less inconvenient, if you know what I mean. What's more, those correctional jobs will be replaced by entrepreneurial shopkeepers and professional office jobs, as well as conveniently located retail jobs for NCSU students needing an income.

Stage 1 for TTA development would be, as I said before, the Government Center to Fairgrounds segment, which has far and away the most viability for a demonstrator line. Civic planners, in the mold of Edmund Bacon, seek to exploit an "axis of activity", to exhalt a natural corridor between two high-density activity nodes. Amazingly, as "Quadrilateral" pointed out, there is almost nothing of an exchange between NCSU and downtown Raleigh (and with the unaccomdating Mayberry motif in place on FSM, there won't be either, without a rail corridor). If NCRR and NCDOT maintain and expand the rail corridor under state auspices, using the money that the state was going to allocate to the TTA anyway, and design it off-the-bat for High-Speed Rail specs, we eliminate turf wars, we eliminate duplicate EIS processes, and in keeping TTA as a tenant operator only, we minimize the local outlay to rolling stock and maintenance facilities. Furthermore, if the Stage 1 venture is operated turnkey by a private or public/private enterprise, we avoid the upfront funding for the whole shebang for a trial period, say three years, with TTA having an option to continue it as a turnkey (vehicles, maintenance, and crew provided), or to make the operation proprietary. It's a bit more expensive that way short-term, pay-as-you-go, but it alleviates fears of a "white elephant" by the general public, and allows the agency to expand its credit and bonding ability through a proven operation to carry on to the sucessive stages: Stage 2, Ninth St. to Alston; Stage 3, Triangle Metro Center/Cary to downtown Raleigh; Stage 4, TMC to Alston; Stage 5, North Raleigh. It's much less expensive to build in the suburban settings, thus much more effective to use any future federal funding in that environment (more bang for the buck).

Our outline was for a high-density, multi-use complex to be placed on the CP property (which fronts a very critical segment along the NCRR corridor, folks -- and absolutely non-performing with the prison in place). This complex would entail moderate to high-end office space, retail space (including a crucial supermarket, which would be transit and car-accessable to downtown). Broad strokes: 4 residential towers, 2 each of 37 and 28 stories respectively, with 32 and 23 floors of condos respectively, straddled over a 5-story arcade and plaza. Subterranean parking, retail levels of 400,000 sf, including food court with a target of 43 eateries, which will increase TTA rail's (I've always called the thing TETRA) pull from both NCSU and downtown, and flesh out ridership over an 18-hour window. That, as opposed to merely a cost ineffective 3-hour bookended flow at morning and afternoon rush.

Remember that the CP property footprint is on the scale of Cameron Village. Now I know that Raleighites tend to equate highrises with New York, Communism, and all other things evil, but c'mon! If anyone opposed this over a maximum security prison, they are either a state vendor that doesn't like to drive, or just plain stupid. At an FAR of 1.35, this project doesn't even come close to a New Yorkish 11. It leaves plenty of room for greenspace, water features, and the like. And, just in case Joe Sixpack doesn't like transit, he can still take the family there in the car, arriving by a relatively underused Western Blvd. And due to the treescape of Boylan Heights, it's doubtful the neighbors will even notice the complex.

Downtown can't be all things to everybody. Small, inexpensive, food-court type eateries can't survive downtown because of the floorspace layouts, the rents, and the walk-six-blocks-from-the-parking-deck access for the public. Without an easy, free transportation component (the 16th St. Mall Shuttle), Denver's downtown mall would be dead too. Downtown Raleigh is white-cloth territory almost exclusively for all except major fast-food chains. With a skybridge to the new Convention Center via the Downtown Station, this project will aid (we certainly think) in the Convention Center being able to attract meetings (more $$$, and more tax revenue). Between convention traffic and downtown workers commuting in from Government Center, the food/retail for this project is extremely strong in potential. As an example, the Emeryville Public Market, north of Oakland, feeds heavily off of transit foot traffic from the Emeryville Amtrak Station and the highrise neighborhood surrounding it, with an awesome range in distinctive cuisines. Take a look:

http://www.emerymarket.com/

In our eyes, this is a "perfect storm" setting for all of this to take place. If Dix Hill Park comes to fruition, this will become a neighborhood that, collectively along with Cameron Village, Glenwood South, and high-density buildout around the fringe of Centennial Campus, could rival Buckhead as a showcase area for Southern cities. This is far from being a naive, fru-fru, Utopian bong vision. The numbers are there, folks. The people and the institutions are, too.

As for the help part, here is what I am looking for. We are "wheel guys", not developers. I can common-sense some of these numbers onto paper, but I lack hard construction cost figures. And I don't even care to try to guess in this post-Katrina concrete and steel shortage market. I know someone in this thread can do a better job than I in this department. Cherokee already has this stuff, but we want to get a better idea of the margins so we can sketch out the transit applications. Any takers?

Back to the Bay Area for one of our inspirations for this type of project:

http://www.embarcaderocenter.com/ec/

And not so far from home:

http://www.buckhead.net/lenoxsquare/index.html

Personally, I don't care who gets this done or how. Just that it does get done, and the prison gets gone. And to do that, whatever replaces it has to be big just to recover the costs, and to bring the needed players into the game. If Soleil Center can pop out of the Crabtree Valley creekbed, then by all logic, this should be a slam dunk. As for TETRA -- Baby steps! Baby steps!

On the whole I am not a big fan of tax increment financing (I generally regard that as the "Confiscate for Wal-Mart bonanza"). But if there were ever a good scenario for TIF, this is it. In our humble, almost obscenely conservative estimates, this project would generate $3.2m local share, and $5.8m in state share sales taxes per year, and a lowball figure of $26m in property taxes over 10 years. If a "tax fortress" were to be created around this project, with a large percentage of tax proceeds from it dedicated to retiring the debt of the transit system segment that made it possible to begin with, we think that it could carry the ball for the entire Stage 1 TTA share (again, assuming that NCRR and the state would improve and maintain the rail -- they'll have to for the HSR anyway). This works because most of the civic infrastructure needed for the project is already in place (with upgrades only needed). Raleigh comes by a windfall in this scenario, benefitting from transit with minimal outlay for infrastructure (especially when compared to its beloved North Raleigh tract homes, on a cost per tax value basis). Raleigh also reaps a heavily increased tax base around NCSU and Dix Hill Park, which will be (trust me on this one) a magnet for empty nesters who don't want yard work or cleaning up the trash off the street at 5 in the morning after the local dogs and cats have scavenged through the can, but want the luxury of a large urban park to stroll through in their leisure time. Plus, nobody gets condemned or displaced. (Except for convicts who may have to gaze out over a cornfield for their stay instead of the Raleigh skyline.) Win, win.

I have to say that I haven't been extremely impressed with Raleigh's politicians to date, regarding transit, or any other issue that comes to mind. In fairness to them however, right or wrong, I believe that they were waiting for TTA to move the mountain by themselves -- which was a little naive considering the relatively small size of the agency, and the highly Balkanized nature of Triangle transit in general. But with Mr. King at the helm now, and his background at NCDOT, I think this thing gets rerailed here and now.

But don't just write this blog, guys and gals. Write the politicians too. Without a burr in their saddle, they will always take the safe way out -- doing nothing.

[sax184]

I ran across a very interesting post the other day on SSC and wanted to get to get some feedback here.

It is from Vitaviatic (a Raleigh native) who works for a firm in Denver that works with mass transit planning. He summarizes a plan about relocating Central Prison to make way for massive TOD development, among other things. He wants as much feedback as he can get and encouraged me to paste his plan in this forum, which he said he will visit.

[monsoon]

I think any plan that assumes the state legislature is going to vote to move the central prison, which means that another one would have to be built elsewhere, is not going to go very far. I am not saying the prison should not be moved, but if you decide to tie transit plans to all 100 counties weighing in on a new prison elsewhere in the state, you are going to be in for years of delays while they fight that one out. The building of prisons and their funding are directly tied to conversations on what should be done about crime and if you ask every legislator what to do about it, you are going to get a different answer. The only agreement that I think you would get is they are not going to spend a dime on it unless it comes to "my county". I would say "don't go there" on this one.

If you are going to spend political capital in the NC legislature, it ought to be focused on getting approval for a new source of local funding in the Triangle for transit. The $7M or so a year coming from the rental car tax just isn't going to cut it for the kind of system that has been proposed and is needed for RDU.

[ChiefJoJo]

I was really intrigued by his posts so I copied all of them here:

November 7th, 2006, 01:32 AM #132

Vitaviatic

Registered User

Join Date: Feb 2006

Posts: 12

The idea of starting the rail segment in downtown Raleigh was simply this -- that it is far and away the most expensive segment of the proposed corridor (same thing with DT Durham on "Stage 2") to be built. Thus, the theory goes, if you can knock those two segments out of the way at the beginning, and with as little fed funding (hopefully none!) as possible, then you have a money magnet in place for future funding. Suburban segments, just by virtue of land value, are less expensive to build in, and also more flexible in the way of planning the rail itself. USDOT, as a matter of principle, is far more eager to fund for the completion of projects than the beginning of them. Bootstrapping gets you a very long way in the transit realm.

For my own part, if the thing started in RTP, and starbursted outward, that would not bother me a bit. As long as it gets done. Our CP project was simply to get the economics along the right-of-way into high gear, in order to enable the transit.

In response to the comments of whether a CP project would pay for the removal of the prison, would it be worthwhile for the state to do so, and whether it would be a waste (read, tax sump) for Raleigh, the answers are these: yes, yes, and no.

I won't release specifics yet, even though we sent the thing out as a more or less "shareware" sort of enterprise (we are "wheel" people, not developers). I will divulge information once we get feedback from the connected parties. I will however say that the 20-year projected returns were in excess of four times the acquisition price (depending, of course, on what that actually came in at, but we budgeted high). The tax-base in creation for the same period was in the ballpark of one-third the acquisition price, which in itself is rather remarkable.

We were aware that, indeed, the state has made recent modifications to Central Prison. Doesn't matter. A good deal of that was retrofit work, and any future expansion would entail the same kind of work. Retrofit is always more expensive than new work, and for the price that the state could retire CP at, they could get a running start on a "supermax" type facility on a more spacious parcel for a lesser cost per square foot, and with better results. Again, more bang for the buck.

If one thinks that Raleigh would waste money on redeveloping the CP site, I would only remind you of this fact -- that the CP site is already a major waste! It brings in no tax revenue. It is a blight of the worst kind to an otherwise beautiful neighborhood. It is the single largest piece of conjoined real estate in the central city, and yet contributes nothing in the way of economics (except for a handful of mediocre-paying corrections jobs) to the city, much less cultural or aesthetic improvement. In our opinion, the far bigger waste would be to simply let it continue to sit there and deplete DT Raleigh of developmental momentum on its westend.

I'd also like to comment on the idea presented before on the Hillsborough Street trolley concept. The current NCRR right-of-way is almost perfect for a long distance transit system because most of the alignment is either sub- or supergrade from DT Raleigh out to Beryl Rd. (I think). Trolleys are completely different in character and make-up. Trolleys are cute, but due to the operation in street settings (with the same traffic light bugaboos that cars and buses have), the operating dynamics are quite different. Some streetcars, such as New Orleans, and even Tucson, are operated as historical oddities, and attract sentimental ridership, but whether a modern system would do that is doubtful. But fusing a streetcar/trolley into a long-range 10+ mile system is not feasible. The traffic delays alone would kill it, and the grade-crossing accident rate would be a long-term malady.

A trolley motif might actually have worked on the Fayetteville Street Mall (a transportation component was all that was missing there). In fact, we proposed a suspended gondola that would operate above FSM, leaving the mall intact. The pavement tile would have been torn out, a garden setting with rubberized walking surfaces installed, and a galleria-like cover built above, literally functioning as a living outdoor aboretum with plant cover to help with sunshade. The raised gondola and its subsequent platforms would have created a second "storefront" level, much like a suburban mall, but without a doubt more endowed with character. Not only that, but we recommended a cross-placed mall to be made out of Martin Street as well to create an activity axis in the middle. But alas, Progress beat us to the punch with their wonderful ideas, and the rest is history.

The shame is that other projects have resulted in unintended consequences, and many people are skeptical of big ideas (and rightfully so). Whatever is created to create value is an engine for other things. It is all part and parcel of a bigger whole. Whether it is TMC/Davis Park, 9th St., CP, or the North Raleigh corridor, the object is to create the critical mass needed to support transit and the other civic improvements we all want to see. (By the way we had a project up there too, in North Raleigh at Whitaker Mill Rd. between Atlantic and Wake Forest called Seven Continents Emporium that never was accepted by the "movers and shakers". Taking basically dead warehouse space and building a multi-cultural emporium and media center was not in the conventional thinking, even though we censused 120,000 Latinos, 15,000 Chinese, 5,000 Japanese, and similar numbers of Vietnamese, Filipino, Arab, African immigrants, etc. just in the Triangle metro area (and those were Census 2000 numbers). But even with the force of the numbers there, the mindset isn't. The Triangle is a great place, but in order to exhalt the synergies of the melting pot think tank that it has become, the intransigent civic mindset needs to change. Bit by bit, at least.

Embrace the unknown.

Old November 11th, 2006, 08:10 PM #135

Vitaviatic

Registered User

Join Date: Feb 2006

Posts: 12

Thanks for the nice comments on our attempts at building a new mold for TTA's rail project. I urge you, dear readers, not to get discouraged at the rate, or lack, of progress here. As has been noted here before, other markets of similar size had much different financing and funding dynamics going for them. Like Cary NC, I too have lived in quite a few of the smaller transit markets (some of the same ones, in fact) including Salt Lake, Sacramento (which, when it implemented light rail, was about the same size as the present-day Triangle), Las Vegas, and of course, Denver (a bit bigger). Therefore I am privy to some details that may relieve some of the eye-rolling symptoms that you may have over this.

Las Vegas, and its monorail, should be a prime example of not how to do transit. 'Nuff said. Year and a half shutdowns for retooling are not what you need.

Salt Lake was an anomaly. As was mentioned, the 2002 Winter Olympics factored into UTA getting off the ground. Without the system in place, Salt Lake was facing vehicular paralysis with the onset of the Olympics. The I-15 corridor from Provo all the way to Ogden (about 50 miles, with Salt Lake itself in the middle) very much resembled the pre-expansion I-40, but with a major difference -- there was no parallel highway like US 70 or NC 54 to take any of the heat off. Even after I-15, like I-40, has been expanded, that road is still crushed with traffic. The transit project and the Olympics enabled one another in a rare symbiosis that was wrapped in big money. Certainly other factors played in as well, but not to hammer the subject. The Salt Lake and Triangle projects have a very different financial DNA.

Sacramento, meanwhile had the advantage of scoring the Siemens manufacturing facility, thus making Siemens a big benefactor of Sacto's project. In meantime, the state of California was building out two other major projects as well at around the same time, including the San Diego Trolley and the Metro Blue Line in LA. So Sacto had a little help getting into the saddle as well. But what's instructive here is that CalTrans and the state of California as a whole, like North Carolina, has been very pro-rail, with substantial investments in rail, as a percentage, compared to other states.

As for political obstruction, you guys should have been around for the beotching and screaming when RTD got off the table. The first segment was very short, built from a depressed area north of downtown (interestingly enough, called Five Points), through downtown, and to a freeway interchange just south of downtown at I-25 & Broadway -- a run of just over 5 miles. The screaming was deafening. "Nobody will pay $1.25 just to ride that thing from Broadway to Downtown!" "It doesn't go anywhere!" On and on and on. You hear the same arguments now over there. What the critics didn't consider was that the $1.25 fare (one-way) was far better than the $15 a day it cost (then -- now it's in the $25 range) to park downtown. People drove to I-25 & Broadway to catch the LRT into downtown. In fact the opposite was true.

It was too popular. Parking shortages at the two Park & Rides were chronic, and there were many more passengers getting off buses to make the train connection than there was even standing room for (let alone seats!). The screaming continued, but with a different complaint. The 17-mile extension into Littleton was fast-tracked based on the success of that little stump of an opening segment, and to this day, standing-room only is commonplace 9 hours a day on the RTD system. In fact, we already see major capacity problems when the new Southeast Line opens on the 17th of November. Now the problem becomes how to fit all of those hyperfull LRTs onto a very crowded downtown loop.

Now let's take a look, boys and girls, at the little engine that could.

Albuquerque and the state of New Mexico (yet another former residence of mine -- yeah, I get around) take the cake for moxie in my book. With mainly state support, and overcoming the fact that they will have to operate over a privately-owned freight corridor (the BNSF) except for a small branch line close to Santa Fe, the state will open its RailRunner segment from Belen to Albuquerque soon, and the segment from Sandoval to Downtown ABQ is already open. A rail link further north is planned to Santa Fe (into which we are trying inject our input too), but alignment problems with the current ROW, and the grades along the I-25 corridor to Santa Fe make that segment a bit dicier.

Take a look for yourselves:

http://www.nmrailrunner.com/

That New Mexico market is about half the size of the Triangle in population, and with considerably less in the way of what we call multi-directional dynamics (or, if you will, two-way flow). And considering that the state of North Carolina OWNS THE RAIL CORRIDOR along which not only TTA but its subsidized Amtrak trains and the future HSRC will run, I would classify it as absolutely pathetic if TTA could not, in fact, get done. But we think it can -- the trick is to put the right pieces together so that it becomes not a financial sump, but an actual economic engine in its own right, thus making it not only feasible, but highly desirable. This is where we think that TTA to date has failed. In our opinion this involves mainly exploiting the real estate dynamics of its current and future properties. (RTD has done extremely well in this regard in Denver, so it always puzzled us why John Claflin, coming from RTD, did not make a major effort to do the same. For us it was Job 1.)

The RailRunner people will tell you flat out. That project wasn't justified for what is there now. It was constructed as a pro-active tool to avoid having the sprawl continue northward and southward along the I-25 spine. Creating density and easily accessible submarkets was the objective. Since plenty of buildable land still exists around many of the present and future RailRunner stations, we think they hit the nail on the head. ABQ, for its own part, is also planning a streetcar/LRT system for its Central Avenue (part of the fabled Route 66) corridor.

There has been a mention of light rail scattered throughout the blog here. For what TTA has in mind, i.e. a regional system, we wouldn't recommend that. One could argure that the higher construction costs (by virtue of the catenaries, TPS and relay stations, etc.) would be offset by lower costs for propulsion. Maybe so. But, the extra land required for those TPS stations and other support facilities is not insubstatial (or cheap). What would probably be even more daunting is the fact that with light rail equipment you get locked into a market of one to two suppliers (Siemens being the dominant one), and a parts dilemma of having to resupply with highly specialized OEM parts, perhaps paying $200+ for an oak 1x6 (yes, that's a piece of wood) from the manufacturer for fears of liability stemming from use of a "non-standard part" (which has in fact happened here). At least with DMU the specialization is not quite as strict -- diesel parts are more or less commonplace anywhere, and the traction motors are relatively low-maintenance items. What I especially don't like about LRT systems is that most of them run in the street, or at grade-level, with tons of street crossings, with invariably common car v. train accidents. Your liability goes up, your performance down.

No news as of yet. People tend to be hard to track down this time of the year. But we'll keep you posted gang.

Ciao!

November 27th, 2006, 10:05 PM #140

Vitaviatic

Registered User

Join Date: Feb 2006

Posts: 12

In no way to say that it can't be done (and I hate nothing more than playing party-pooper), but getting trains to RDU is problematic at best, and you can bet on expensive. It is a worthy long-term goal to be sure, but personally it could become a fatal distraction. Better to focus on starting and completing the original (and already studied) project, and get something -- anything -- going on the relatively uncomplicated NCRR corridor.

The reasons why are several. Take a look at RDU's layout:

http://www.naco.faa.gov/d-tpp/0612/00516AD.PDF

The first thing that jumps out at any transit planner would be the fact that the terminal complex is completed sealed off by high-speed taxiways. Now you have two choices: go under them, or go over them.

For the latter, there are very few examples of even static objects spanning active taxiways. The only one that I can even think of is the pedestrian bridge from the main terminal to Concourse A here at Denver. But again, that is a static object, and built over a slow-speed, rarely traversed apron area. It is almost unthinkable that the FAA would approve of any motionary object that could even conceivably fall on a jet and kill hundreds, regardless of the minute risk involved. A light rail system would be relatively heavy (and incredibly expensive) for a suspended guideway, and with monorail's track record, especially in Las Vegas, neither is terribly attractive for that mission.

As for going under -- two words...Expensive. Time-consuming. Now you involve a minimum of four federal agencies in the planning process, with agonizing and specific studies required for each. Mr. (John) Brantley's recent public complaint was angled toward more money for the airport authority, which is fine, and perfectly logical for any politically oriented manager to engage in. But unless the RDU Airport Authority can pitch in the substantial sums required just to study the thing, let alone burrow another hole underneath Taxiway Echo besides the two portals that are already there, then I would drop the idea entirely. Perhaps RDU can do without that particular taxiway altogether, but I doubt it since it would reduce the efficacy of the airfield flow. Plus, that taxiway's elimination will come out of RDU's bottom line.

As unsexy as it sounds, articulated circular bus service around the airport loop, connecting to a Morrisville station (again, another obstacle) would really be the most effective way to connect the platform with the RDU terminals. Since the buses are not dependent on signal progression, they can be the most effective option concerning on-time demand service from the platform to the air terminal. Remember that you will have trains coming from multiple directions delivering air passengers, so you need as many constantly moving seats in the loop as you can get to be truly effective. Also remember that trains have to be spaced with signals, which requires inherent delays of a couple of minutes for staging, loading, and unloading time each, especially where baggage is involved. Add a sequence of several of those signalling delays each hour, and you've got hours of wasted time added up at the end of the service day. On a limited-access corridor such as Terminal Drive, speed reductions by way of traffic signals are not an issue for a bus. If one bus breaks down, another one can pick up the passengers and run around it. Not so with trains. Imagine a brake problem with a train full of passengers trying to make flights. Not only does that trainload of train passengers get screwed, but so does everyone on trains behind them. A redundant, two-track countercircular system such as that at San Francisco Int'l, is almost impossible with the current RDU layout.

While I'm at it, you wanna talk Mayberry, talk to Morrisville. With ostensibly the most to gain from rail service than any other entity, Mo'ville has refused a station from the very beginning of the TTA project. This seems to me to be self-defeating in light of the fact that Cary will soon fully encapsulate Mo'ville, eliminating future expansion of its city limits. If you can't grow out, you have to grow up, or face a statis in your tax base. You can only fit so many McMansions in a small city like that. Or town. (If they still, like Cary, insist on being called such.) Sooner or later the operating costs will catch up to the restrictive tax base, and like many American suburbs, will find itself in fiscal strangulation. A rail station will enable the kind of high-density projects that Mo'ville needs to start planning now, in order to avert this kind of chaotic future.

Something that is rarely brought up is that many of the more dynamic cities are products of sealed boundaries, e.g. San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Denver, and to lesser extents Miami, and Atlanta. Those cities have been effectively growth restricted for many years, and thus have been forced to renovate their core areas in order to simply stay afloat, let alone thrive. Closer to home, take a look at Virginia cities, which have been locked in since the early 20th century. Downtown Roanoke puts Raleigh and Durham to shame, especially considering that it has so much less to work with both culturally and economically. Richmond and Norfolk, even with their economic malaise from the "white flight" of thirty and forty years ago have done substantially better.

Raleigh, in the last fifty years or so, has focused nearly all of its capital toward annexing and maintaining suburban areas while downtown suffered. It is the vaunted "doughnut effect". Core city spending is a fairly recent phenomenon in Raleigh, and only after locals began to get the sense that its downtown was a laughingstock from out-of-towners. The level of downtown investment is still, IMHO, marginal. When I hear city council people "express concern" that "the city is perhaps focusing too much on downtown" I have to laugh. To me it simply seems like a little deserved payback. And more is needed. Downtown Raleigh needs a rail link to distinguish itself from the rest of the city, and by making itself truly available to the masses -- not just the ones who work there or can afford the $15 or so it takes to park there. It can support rail, but only with continual upgrades at the city's core. Crabtree Valley could support one too, but would have to add about another 1 million square feet of office space to do so. Above all, it is a mindset. People here who live in the city of Denver (and to a somewhat lesser extent its suburbs) feel connected to our downtown. We watch pro sports games there, go clubbing there, to theaters, and make any bleeping excuse to throw a party or parade there. My own mother, who is a Raleigh-born native, and until recently life-long resident, tells me emphatically that she hates downtown Raleigh, and is scared to death of the place. And I know she isn't alone in that vein of thinking. The future of downtown Raleigh is in transplants, like many of yourselves, who haven't been indoctrinated into this type of thinking. Some of it is racism, some of it classism, but it exists in a significant part of the native population, many of whom still refer to buses as "welfare wagons", and regard the city center as something evil.

Somebody thump Mo'ville on the head please, and tell them they need a station if they are to have any chance at long-term prosperity. As for RDU, they will have to undertake McCarran-like (Las Vegas) tunneling projects to get a proprietary mass-transit anything. I don't think anything that is being budgeted on a shoestring such as TTA can withstand that kind of mission escalation and cost. Morrisville and RDU have a unified interest in TTA, whether they know it or not.

I just proofread this, and now feel obligated to apologize for the rant. I get off on a tangent sometimes, I know. Unfortunately, as for our project submission it was, incredibly, lost in the mail. We are trying to reclaim it through our tracking numbers in order to resubmit it, but for now we're stuck save for paltry e-mails. If one of the readers happens by the Cameron Village post office, could you please drop by and explain to them where Oberlin Road is. Then point to outside the door.

Ciao!

December 2nd, 2006, 11:30 PM #143

Vitaviatic

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Join Date: Feb 2006

Posts: 12

No rant today, friends. I promise.

Having reviewed the WRAL post, I can't say that I can gleen much from it. For one, Wake County, by itself, cannot commandeer the funds allocated to TTA. Any modification to TTA's funding strategy would require state approval, of course. So, in the absence of another regionwide transportation authority, TTA would be the default oversight agency, unless of course either the state took over the whole thing (fat chance), or a separate autonomous agency specializing in just commuter rail were to be created (which seems silly when such an agency would have to essentially replicate what TTA has already done).

What I would be pretty confident in stating what the state would do, in its own self-interest, is to plan, engineer, and construct (or better said, upgrade) the NCRR rail corridor for reasonable lengths of trackage over fixed periods, to high-speed rail specifications, but accomodating the commuter operation. Although a bit more expensive than progressive upgrades, there are substantial advantages to that process: 1) the planning is comprehensive, the benefit of which cannot be overestimated, and 2) two distinct projects can be funded through one budgetary process, which discounts the overhead for both, and by having a dual mission, I guarantee will be weighted more favorably than a TTA solo project for federal funding. That addresses the trackage problem, which is far and away the most capital intensive part of the thing. The rolling stock and station construction are far lesser burdens to address.

What really confounds us is that this project is not that hard to implement, especially in light of two Amtrak trains already operating on the same corridor! By and large, all that would be needed would be for the TTA to contract out to Amtrak a third train, possibly a fourth running countersync to the third (call them, for the sake of absurdity, The Tarheel and The Wolfpack -- notice how I happily snub Duke for their predictably elitist stiffarming of the rail into Duke/VA, which is actually served by a public street). Unlike the The Carolinian and The Piedmont, these two new locally-supported trains would be shortlooped between Raleigh and Durham, using the very same stations that the state-supported Amtrak trains do now. Consider four GE P-42 Genesis locomotives added to the state fleet for the project at about $24 million ($6 million apiece), and about twelve double-decked Bombardier coaches for around $36 million (at $3 million apiece, and that's high). Same tracks as now, same stations as now. Durham, Cary, and Raleigh all have serviceable stations. A simple platform could be erected at RTP until long-term upgrades are made. Good God, they could even use the old Seaboard station in lieu of the Government Center Station short-term if it's still there (and it looks like it is). Again, simple platforms would suffice for Fairgrounds and other outlying stations until major funding began. The only major expense station that would be needed at the outset would be NCSU, which would require substantial restructuring of the ROW there, utilities relocation, and probably a raised platform, with a "shoo-fly" vector in order to achieve the required physical separation from the freight side.

That's it.

Why something simple cannot get done here is a simple study in mission inflation. Everyone wants their own this and that, and with the very tight rail corridor in both Raleigh and Durham, that ain't gonna work! Bottom line, if the cities of Raleigh, Cary, and Durham, and the RTP pitched jointly in for the rolling stock, and possibly Wake and Durham counties, an EIS wouldn't even be needed, as it would merely be expansion of existing service instead of construction of a whole new alignment. (Just think of the millions of dollars that were paid just to Parsons, Brinckerhoff, Quade, & Douglas for shoddy, tragicomically flawed ridership estimates, that were a requirement for the massive federal funding that TTA requested.) For probably less than was paid to Parsons, TTA could have had trains running by now under Amtrak contract. Not killer service mind you, but enough for a start, and certainly enough to prove the market. If my amortizations are correct, this would come out to around $7.7 million per year for the rolling stock (8 years, @ 6%), plus contracted crew and maintenance service fees.

We have pounded on the fact that if an agency has a service up and running, it is far, far easier to acquire federal funding for improvements. The strategy to date has been somewhat like a teenager demanding a Boxster for his sixteenth birthday. Maybe not the most expensive car out there, but certainly way more than most of the other kids could ever hope for.

Two rush hour trains in each direction, with spartan service at non-peak hours, keeping crew requirements down, may just have to be the modest start needed here. Once the trains are running, marketing surveys can be taken to determine future service levels. Pay as you go, build as you go is the only way that we can see this working at all.

We have a turnkey scenario that we have submitted utilizing the same DMUs that were selected for the TTA operation. That is certainly in the realm of possibility as well, given the appropriate financing structures. But the basic third and fourth Amtrak trains are a more than adequate "starter kit" (training wheels included) for any agency, including TTA, to implement. Initial trackage requirements are minimal (again, mainly at NCSU), crewing subbed out to Amtrak, and with the two built-in spare locomotives in the set of four, the power can be shuttled back to Salisbury for routine maintenance without substantially increasing machinist staff. As soon as practically possible, the maintenance work could be shifted to a local Triangle facility, but again without the intial startup expense, and with no drop-dead timetables. Sidings can be added or expanded one at a time in order to piecemeal together the highly desired double-tracking (or better yet, multiple main track) that TTA was demanding from the outset.

The old adage about appreciating what you've got, and working with what you have is a lesson to be learned here from New Mexico, and its up and running RailRunner.

December 6th, 2006, 04:16 PM #147

Vitaviatic

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Join Date: Feb 2006

Posts: 12

Forgive me folks. I made a bit of a blunder.

My ammortization figures were indeed, not correct. (I forgot to dump the memory in my calculator first - which isn't the first time that's happened.)

For $60,000,000 in rolling stock, over 8 years, at 6%, we would actually come up with something like $9.5 million per year, or $790,000 per month. This would outrun the farebox revenues by a bit more than a normal transit operation, but keep in mind we're aiming for a "starter kit" in order to prove the market. Once more trains came online (thus more schedules and seat inventory) the numbers would balance out to a more representative norm.

I like the baseball analogy provided by Transplant. Four base hits still get the run in, and are much easier to come by. Indeed Raleigh could go this on its own, or a Raleigh/Cary/Wake consortium, but remember that our problem here is multiple intended uses for the one corridor already in place (i.e., commuter, high-speed rail, and continued freight utility). New construction for rail is outrageously expensive. (Even though new rail may be presented as a good investment over the long term - I, for one, am a big fan of the Metro Red Line in Los Angeles, even with the supposedly "exhorbitant" costs.) Any commuter use of this corridor would necessarily have to done under the auspices of NCRR and NCDOT for coordination purposes, whether it through TTA, the city of Raleigh, or anybody.

Lots of people would like to see rail to Crabtree Valley, and up to RDU, then to RTP and Durham. Several huge problems present themselves in that scenario.

First of all, topography. There are only two ways into Crabtree Valley by any flat, non-watershed, non-built area. The first is via the Beltline. The right-of-way for I-440 is completely built out folks. There is no room left for roadway, let alone a rail corridor unless it is built in an elevated scheme, and maddeningly expensive for that reason, without tearing down homes in a venerable, "old money" neighborhood. Any project even proposing either of these would be politically torched to the ground, I guarantee you. The second way in is to take up the median along Glenwood Avenue, which would meet a similar fate. Now we are talking even bigger amounts of "old money". Fact in point, it would indeed destroy the "carriagehouse" character of the neighborhood, and, as we have seen demonstrated in the case of Duke, even ostensibly liberal bastions of wealth will "defend their territory" from an onslaught of outside demographics -- meaning "poor people" who ride transit. It's not fair, and not even sensible -- but that's the way the world works, folks. Not to mention that a Beltline entry would involve a helluva dogleg to either the airport or Durham, adding run time, and would completely bypass the residential and office markets of one of the most affluent cities in America - Cary.

The second problem is land-use patterns. Within the confines of the city of Raleigh, north of Glenwood South, you have too light a density to support any kind of rail service (except for perhaps a New Orleans St. Charles-style streetcar, but then you have the problem of who would use it -- people with Beamers, Mercedes-Benzes, and Range Rovers tend to want to drive them everywhere). Crabtree is a good source of passengers, but then the problem becomes how do we get them where they need to go? Most of those workers either live in the Lake Boone or North Hills areas. Some perhaps in Pleasant Valley, but high-density apartment, condo, and multi-unit housing areas in those parts are too few and far between to make a difference. The norm out there is Brookhaven or Oak Park (still not transit territory). Beyond Pleasant Valley, you run into set institutional land-uses that preclude that kind of development. Industrial and commercial (the "auto-malls"), Umstead Park (which covers almost a fourth of the land-mass frontage along US70 between Raleigh and Durham), and RDU itself. Then RTP, and its "campus" layout. The irony is that some of the features that make the Triangle what it is tend to negate the possibility of mass transit along what many consider to be the original "Main Street" of the Triangle.

The future of the US70 corridor is pretty much set in stone I'm afraid, at least for the next thirty-year redevelopment cycle.

That is why I have pitched all along to build the rail system in an area in which the fate is not yet determined. Much of the NCRR corridor is either high-density institutional with great fonts of traffic (think cash-strapped college students at Shaw, Peace, NCSU, St. Mary's, and Meredith), or older industrial parcels awaiting redevelopment due to inflated land values. (And don't forget event traffic at RBC, Carter-Finley, Dorton, or the State Fair itself!) New projects in these areas can, and I think will, build to densities to accomdate rail. That's the main reason we came up with the Central Prison project, to show the potential for that. Sure, you could skyscraper all of Glenwood beyond Crabtree, but that land is not discounted yet enough to do so, except for some areas around Crabtree itself (thus, you get a Soleil Center). But since this area is traditionally suburban in nature, you'll have a helluva fight on your hands. Whereas, west Raleigh has been urban in character since the turn of the 20th century. It makes a huge difference in perception.

I don't consider myself a straight-line thinker, and I certainly entertain options and other strategies as much as I can. Unfortunately however, due to circumstances many options tend to get weeded out either from sociological factors (density, urban character, and unfortunately, factors of class), simple economics, or other variables, such as the malicious and predatory nature of nearly omnipotent commercial railroad managements (the debacle of Amtrak using freight corridors being the prime example of this). By far the easiest scenario in which to bring transit to the Triangle is to exploit what truly is a godsend, the state-owned North Carolina Railroad, and the corridor along which North Carolina's major cities developed and eventually prospered.

December 14th, 2006, 10:50 PM #151

Vitaviatic

Registered User

Join Date: Feb 2006

Posts: 12

First off, I really enjoy the dialog here. It's always good to get constructive feedback from every angle.

A little research and I find that the Seaboard Station has already been transformed into a retail complex. So much for that one. But, that doesn't preclude a median platform with an overhead breezeway straddling the tracks to actually feed potential customers into that venue.

I am sure Mr. King is way out in front of us on this one. This is the one guy that could actually mesh the interagency intracacies together into workable form. In my own opinion, this was quite a deft move by the TTA Board to bring him on. Not to beat the topic to death, but it is all about streamlining design, construction, and operations to serve all of the future operators on the NCRR line. If all horses are pulling in the same direction, this gets done.

To be sure, nobody is very gung-ho about a third, fourth (or even fifth) Amtrak train plying the rails to serve as a "commuter" rail service. I understand that. But, as a stop-gap measure, it is by far the cheapest option. Not that I am insisting that a relatively wealthy metropolitan area like the Triangle necessarily needs to go cheap. But if actually proving that a transit market exists there for the least amount of effort and cash is the desired goal, it would certainly work. It is just the first foot in the saddle. It will be classified as a commuter rail service provided it meets a minimum schedule criteria, and as such will get the Triangle credit toward future transit funding. It can't be stressed enough here that, if you have a functional system in place, even if it's a Pullman car with a steam engine (running a regular schedule) it gets you several rungs higher up the ladder. Right now, with just an EIS and a final design submission in place with no funding, you've barely got one foot on the ladder.

By the way, it doesn't have to be called Amtrak, or run with Amtrak livery or colors. It can be called whatever you want it to be. LA's Metrolink contracts with Amtrak for crewing and Bombardier for maintenance. Albuquerque's RailRunner operation and Stockton's Altamont Commuter Express contract out to Herzog. It doesn't mean that it has to be part of the shoddy Amtrak intercity operation, with late arrivals often measured in days. Not at all. In fact, I could see very easily a tipover point being reached whereby North Carolina's various subsidized train operations become large enough to support self-generated crewing and maintenance. Famous Amos started out of a pushcart. This can too if necessary. In any case, it's better than nothing, although we'd certainly rather see the next better option -- a turnkey service.

The thing now is to quiet the noise. Detractors are screaming "see, we told ya so!", and doing their level best to shovel all of the money out of the program. Fortunately, your civic leaders are not so short-sighted. Yet. However, if nothing gets done reasonably soon, it's doubtful that they can hold off the rabblerousers for long.

Again, the bootstrapping idea of "Amtrak type" trains does not require any serious modification of the existing right-of-way. Thus, service can initiate with minimal expense, proving there is actually a transit market out there. (And, with downtowns Raleigh and Durham going the way they are, and with national press coverage that you just can't buy, I do not doubt its eventual success.) Meanwhile, the heavy lifting of resolving the intricate design issues of this extremely high-demand corridor, and packaging the financing for it, can take place while this workaday money magnet rolls on. Keep in mind also that if HSR goes through, and gets any kind of continued funding, the state would have the option to prioritize this particular corridor, and you then can kill two buffalo with one nickel.

For my part, I do like the Wake Forest/Six Forks to North Hills, then to Crabtree idea. It seems to serve everybody. The things you need to keep in mind though, are: 1) what your functional points are, and 2) your headways. The first could only be determined by extensive market surveys (which are notoriously unreliable over a period of years, especially in a dynamic real estate market like Raleigh -- who'da thought downtown and Glenwood South would be sprouting mid-rises and a high-rise here and there, back even 6 years ago, to the degree they are now). If the most popular destination ended up being North Hills, everything's peachy. If the dominant market ended up being Crabtree to downtown, now you have a problem. Why?

If your train averaged 30 mph over the entire line (which is actually quite high), and you cover, say, 12 miles over this route, it's not that big of a geometric deflection when compared to the speed. However, depending on how many stations you located along the line, it becomes a big deal. Let's assume a minimal 10 stations from Crabtree to downtown Raleigh (Crabtree itself, North Hills, Wake Forest/Six Forks, Wake Forest/Whitaker Mill, Capital and Wade maybe, Mordecai, Government Center, and the Downtown ITC -- ok, 8 then).

Here then, is the math:

(Assume a 30 mph speed limit average)

8 stations over 12 miles = about 1.71 miles between stations

at about 2 minutes per mile this equals around 3.42 minutes runtime between stations

x - x - x - x - x - x - x - x

7 dashes equals seven track segments x 3.42 minutes each = 24 min.

Station dwell time equals 1 minute average x 6 intermediate stations = 6 min.

(Make this 2 minutes each intermediate station if the tracks run at grade and have to mesh with street signalling = 14 min.)

For this we come up with a headway range between 30 and 38 minutes. Versus a 5-mile, 15-minute (tops) drive down Glenwood. And if you remove stations from the intermediate points, you diminish the efficacy of the service, especially if it's intended as a locally-oriented service (which I think is what you were trying to come by).

For the record, I would still use this service if I worked downtown, just to avoid the parking ransom. However, if it were just for a concert downtown once in while, or even from a downtown condo to shop at Crabtree, it's a tough sell. If a hardcore downtowner could be convinced to shuck the car and stay on transit, it's actually a good deal. Lose a $300 car payment and that again for full coverage insurance while under finance, and spring for a $65 monthly transit pass -- it's a steal! And this alignment would get you most anywhere urbanized you need to go in Raleigh. But let's face it -- how many people anywhere in the Triangle could afford to be totally without a car? Not many, I think. It's too scary a proposition for most people, so they are stuck with car payments and insurance anyway even if they take transit. And if the downtown employer continues to provide parking stipends it becomes a no-brainer. You're gonna drive. (Not to mention that if you can afford to live in a downtown condo, you're most likely not struggling with car payments.)

*There actually is a service out of Boston called ZipCar, and another based out of DC that are car-sharing services -- you rent them by the hour or by the day, but they essentially stay in circulation throughout the city making them readily accessible. This would offset a bit of the squeamishness about being "deserted without a car". Check it out:

http://www.zipcar.com/

With the NCRR railroad, we stay linear, thus maintaining the expedience of the service. When compared with I-40 traffic between Raleigh and Durham, transit (if designed properly) will win hands down 7 hours out of the day. Plus, most of the grade separation issues have already been delt with by the NCRR. Minor grade crossings remain at Beryl, Powell, and other parts of west Raleigh, Cary, and Mo'ville. However, it's clear sailing again once into the RTP and beyond into Durham. Minimal station dwell and crossing delays here, and lesser improvement costs.

My bet is still on the old horse.

December 14th, 2006, 11:47 PM #152

Vitaviatic

Registered User

Join Date: Feb 2006

Posts: 12

What can I say? I have energetic fingers today.

As a case study in regards to my Glenwood Avenue alignment assessment, let's take a quick look at LA's Red Line.

Factually, the LA and Hollywood parts of the Red Line have some of the highest population densities in the country. I lived within three blocks of the Wilshire/Vermont Station in Koreatown and it was absolutely choked with people. Farther out on Wilshire you have strands of highrises in West LA and Beverly Hills that rival New York. If you're talking the tube segments through the Hollywood Hills, those are certainly low-density, but once it returns to surface in both Hollywood and North Hollywood (San Fernando Valley) again it is surrounded by the teeming masses. MacArthur Park is also high-density, and pretty much everything back toward downtown LA. The throw-away stations (still in relatively dense neighborhoods) are Wilshire/Normandie and Wilshire/Western west of the wye. But they weren't supposed to be. Which is where our story begins.

http://www.mta.net/riding_metro/imap...ctive_map.html

The LA Red Line was supposed to run all the way to the coast along Wilshire Blvd. through West LA, Beverly Hills, Westwood, UCLA, and into Santa Monica. For traffic, it would have been a world-class subway. However, as soon as the tunnel-boring hit the Beverly Hills city limits (yes, friends - it is a real city) everything stopped. And never went any further.

It seems that the burghers of Beverly Hills didn't want working class people riding a (gasp!) subway through their mansion-filled neighborhoods. In a show of bald-faced elitism, and most would say racism, Beverly Hills forbade Metro to enter their town, and killed by atrophy any extension of the Red Line along Wilshire. True, if the project had any flexibility it could have skirted Beverly Hills and cut underneath along Olympic, Pico, or another artery, although in doing so, would have missed much of their rider market in the highrise districts of West LA. But so much energy was expending fighting this alignment that Metro threw in the towel and headed for Pasadena (where they faced similar, but not nearly as agitant, resistance there for the Gold Line).

For sure, no one will ever confuse Glenwood Avenue for Wilshire Boulevard. Wilshire is commercialized beyond reason, and other than glitz, offers nothing in the way of aesthetic value. Glenwood is refined and serene by comparison, and would be guarded much more vehemently than the world's busiest street. The cases are different, but the underlying socioeconomic messages are the same. Even in a liberal bastion like Beverly Hills, which in the same breath will arduously defend the underprivileged from governmental and free-market abuse, will emote a scorched-earth defense of multi-million dollar mansions that could even be perceived as losing value because of a public-transit project.

MTA in Los Angeles is a venerable political juggernaut. TTA is a fledgling transit agency. To even conceive of the mere suggestion of rooting out the dogwoods on Glenwood Avenue for transit of any sort would be sheer political suicide. And here, in delayed form, is your example.

One other lesson from the LA experience, this one a time study. The original transit enterprise in LA was the Blue Line from downtown LA to Long Beach. For most of the alignment past the Convention Center and Staples Center, this line runs at grade. There are grade crossings at nearly every major thoroughfare all the way to Long Beach. During morning and afternoon rush it takes well over an hour to ride between LA and LB. That, and by virtue of the neighborhoods it runs through, it has an overwhelmingly working class and poor ridership. There is nothing wrong with hard-working and poor people mind you (their money is just as good as everybody else's), but whatever chance Metro had of claiming any of the professional, student, or mercantile market for Blue Line ridership was doomed the day that they decided to run grade with this route.

No one who can afford to run a car will put up with the run times of the Blue Line, even if their paths follow the exact same route. The ridership numbers are great (they are SRO during rush hours), but due to its unpopularity among shakers and movers because of its inefficiency, it has been relegated to more or less an afterthought in the big scheme of things in the here and now.

And once it's done, it's done. So do it right the first time!

[architect77]

Does anyone know why an elevated rail (mono-rail-ish) is so expensive that often it's cost prohibitive? It seems that an elevated rail with concrete supports every 40 or 50 ft. could easily avoid obstacles, minimize site preparation, avoid utilities and be far, far less expensive than tunneling underground. I read that Los Angeles is building a subway line through west LA under wilshire blvd. That seems like an incredible undertaking, not to mention their dealing with pockets of methane during tunneling.

Huge high voltage transmission lines criss-cross the landscape and with their enormous scale seem like they would be far more expensive than an elevated rail that's only 20ft or so above the ground. also, can monorail-type trains move fast? For some reason I'm thinking their speed is limited.

MY THOUGHTS ON RAIL IN THE TRIANGLE:

I think the eastern wake's idea to throw some trains onto the existing tracks to downtown is a good start since it's affordable and downtown is going to become more of a destination.

I think one simple new line should be built STARTING at downtown/ncstate and ENDING at rtp that passes a huge park-and-ride lot somewhere near I-440/40/US-1. If you provide commuters simple and easy access to the train, it could become regarded as a luxury to use mass transit.

The Triangle's low density is not an issue because the park-and-ride lot is at one end and rtp's corporate shuttles are at the other.

Also high speed is crucial and there should be very few stops between the park-and-ride and rtp. People will never take a train if it takes 40 or 50 minutes to get from Raleigh to Durham. But a 15-20 minute ride sounds very attractive.

If this one segment became successful, then other lines from Durham or Chapel could be added hopefully with rtp remaining as the hub for the system.

[monsoon]

I've actually wondered this myself. It should be noted there are a number of elevated systems in the USA including a good bit of Miami's MetroRail track along with elevated stations. There was a firm in Charleston, SC that had come up with a design to build a monobeam transit system and they even went as far as building a demo system in the late 1990s. The purpose of the monobeam was to minimize the cost of building an elevated transit system so that you could take advantage of highway ROW. Unfortunately they were looking for the Feds to fund a full sized system and that funding pretty much dried up in 2001. The name of the company was called Futrex and there is a topic here on UrbanPlanet about them if you do a search.

[dmccall]

I think it is because these guideways are essentially bridges of reinforced concrete. Each of these spans (between the piers) has to hold two passing trains and 400-600 people (imagine each train fully loaded). That's a lot of weight. I love the idea of an elevated guideway with a quiet train or monorail (you do know that monorails really run on air-inflated tires like an RV) finding its way through established areas of town.

That weight issue is what Skytran is trying to address by limiting each car to two people. That way the spans only have to carry up to 1000 x 2 pounds each.

Regardless, it would be great to see a working model of either Skytran's or Futrex's concepts. It's scary that not even Disney could figure out how to justify extending the Monorail over to Animal Kingdom.

[suburban george3]

Don't forget Springfield's experience with Mono-rail. The Simpsons sure got a ride on that episode!!

The Simpsons. You know. The FOX cartoon show??? You do know what I'm talking about, right???

[urbanaturalist]

I remember that Simpsons episode where the family had to abandon the house basically when the sleek new train system found their area/neighborhood to be part of the best route. Thats the thing about elevated vs underground trains...........................................

Underground....though, usually the more expensive even with the best and most efficient technology tends to PRESERVE existing neighborhoods at least until a STOP is put into place, which at least usually develops densely first around the "STOP".

and

Elevated trains, which tend to be less expensive than underground trains, but more expensive than grade level trains.

In my opinion, the Old North State needs to tax itself a little more to help pay and show public support for mass transit. When I was growing up there I only twice took a train through the state. And one of those rides was an amusement park ride. So "North" Carolina needs to adopt its northern neighbors transportation precedents and adopt a more thorough and comprehensive rail transportation plan to help provide for all these new residents.