Downtown trains in Denver

[christof]

Today in Intermodality, ridership numbers from Denver show once again that people don't like transfering to circulators:

Trains aren’t vacuum cleaners. You don’t just put them next to a freeway and hope they suck people out of their cars. People will ride transit if it gets them where they want to go conveniently. If we want to maximize the number of people who will take transit (which should be the goal) we need to find places where transit will serve as many people as possible as conveniently as possible. That means serving density, particularly employment density, directly.

Comments? Anyone feel like offering comparisons to, say, proposed commuter rail lines in other Texas cities?

[m1ek]

I was all set to send you my way, and it turns out you were way ahead of me.

We're stuck with bus circulators for UT, the Capitol, and essentially all of downtown where people work - the initial downtown station is well outside the magic quarter-mile circle from essentially all office buildings (a few hotels are within range as well as is the Convention Center).

[christof]

We're stuck with bus circulators for UT, the Capitol, and essentially all of downtown where people work - the initial downtown station is well outside the magic quarter-mile circle from essentially all office buildings.

And it should be noted that Denver's downtown transit mall offers much better service than what Cap Metro is porposing in Austin -- the Denver buses have reserved lanes and special wide low floor vehicles, and they operate in a wonderful pedestrian environment -- look at this photo from Denver Infill:

[WindmillChasr]

True they don't like transferring, which is why they built that line to serve the sports stadiums of the city. Coors Field, The Basketball Arena, and Mile High Stadium. According to folks at RTD i talked with, there are serious spikes in ridership on those days, obviously. However the ancillary benefit will be all the development in LODO and Union Station which will bring 3 commuter lines, two light rail lines, a line to ski resorts and Amtrak all under one station when completed in 2012. I think the future numbers will change on that station.

[christof]

However the ancillary benefit will be all the development in LODO and Union Station which will bring 3 commuter lines, two light rail lines, a line to ski resorts and Amtrak all under one station when completed in 2012. I think the future numbers will change on that station.

Obviously there are people who want to ride to Union Station, just not as many as want to ride to the center of Downtown. I don't think that will change unless the Denver skyline chnages dramatically.

In any case, Denver's doing it right with the current lines: they're giving people a choice. If they had built only the line to Union Station, though, they would clearly be inconveniencing the majority of their passengers.

[m1ek]

True they don't like transferring, which is why they built that line to serve the sports stadiums of the city. Coors Field, The Basketball Arena, and Mile High Stadium. According to folks at RTD i talked with, there are serious spikes in ridership on those days, obviously. However the ancillary benefit will be all the development in LODO and Union Station which will bring 3 commuter lines, two light rail lines, a line to ski resorts and Amtrak all under one station when completed in 2012. I think the future numbers will change on that station.

The theory that we can get tremendous amounts of TOD on the "work end" of a commute has yet to be proven anywhere, it seems to me. All successful TOD has been on the "residential end" of the trip. Why would an office developer want to lay out that kind of money when the existing commuter population to that location is largely the transit-dependent?

Austin's obviously banking on this phenomena too - with claims that TOD will increase ridership dramatically over the next 10 years (of course, there isn't really any land near the train station 'downtown' that can be redeveloped - and office towers would be opposed by neighbors anywhere else, so now they've retrenched to a supposed "second downtown" up north, which, surprise, the commuter rail line doesn't penetrate, again requiring Yet Another Circulator to access).

[christof]

The theory that we can get tremendous amounts of TOD on the "work end" of a commute has yet to be proven anywhere, it seems to me. All successful TOD has been on the "residential end" of the trip. Why would an office developer want to lay out that kind of money when the existing commuter population to that location is largely the transit-dependent?

Let's be clear here: there's a LOT of TOD in CBDs. The San Francisco skyline would be a lot smaller were it not for BART. Houston would be minus a few office towers were it not for the HOV lane system. Transit has helped shift the "center of gravity" of CBDs -- San Francisco's financial district has shifted both south and east around the BART stations. Transit has also helped create suburban employment centers in places like Concord and Silver Spring.

The problem is that we're progressively narrowing the definition of TOD to means only large scale mixed use projects directly adjacent to rail stations that are specifically marketed as transit-oriented. There's a whole lot of development that is based on the availability of transit that doesn't "look" like TOD. Virtually all of Manhattan, for example.

None of this means, of course, that if you put a station somewhere near downtown, downtown will grow to meet it. It is always easier to amplify existing development patterns than to create new ones.

[m1ek]

The theory that we can get tremendous amounts of TOD on the "work end" of a commute has yet to be proven anywhere, it seems to me. All successful TOD has been on the "residential end" of the trip. Why would an office developer want to lay out that kind of money when the existing commuter population to that location is largely the transit-dependent?

Let's be clear here: there's a LOT of TOD in CBDs.

Yes, of course; I meant more along the lines of what you said about downtown growing to meet the rail station. Anyways, it's not possible for Austin's line since a large chunk of the surrounding blocks are taken up by the Convention Center and a brand-new hotel.

[christof]

The theory that we can get tremendous amounts of TOD on the "work end" of a commute has yet to be proven anywhere, it seems to me. All successful TOD has been on the "residential end" of the trip. Why would an office developer want to lay out that kind of money when the existing commuter population to that location is largely the transit-dependent?

Let's be clear here: there's a LOT of TOD in CBDs.

Yes, of course; I meant more along the lines of what you said about downtown growing to meet the rail station. Anyways, it's not possible for Austin's line since a large chunk of the surrounding blocks are taken up by the Convention Center and a brand-new hotel.

I just wanted to make nobody else was confused on that point.

I completely agree with regards to Austin. A downtown will grow around transit only if that transit is perceived as a good way to get downtown. That will happen if the transit already stops near a bunch of workplaces, so people ride, and employers see their employees riding, and employers look for offices that are convenient to transit. If you start off with nobody riding, you'll have a hard time overcoming the perception that the transit system is useless.