Intermodality

The Chronicle reports that an El Paso state representative, prodded by local rail opponents who can’t find any support within 700 miles of home, has attached an amendment to a bill that would effectively stop METRO’s entire light rail expansion program.

This amendment applies only to Houston, not to Dallas or Austin or San Antonio or El Paso. DART has never held a vote on the route of any of its light rail lines, and it has been able to use eminent domain to build them. And it applies only to transit. We don’t hold votes on freeway expansion, road widenings, or flood control projects. Under this bill, METRO, in order to be able to use eminent domain, would need to hold a referendum on rail or BRT line, describing the specific route of that line. Not other entity in the state is under that requirement. And this is a retroactive requirement — there was no rule in 2003 that METRO’s referendum has to specifically describe routes.

Here’s the criteria in the amendment:

(1)the planned route of the segment as approved in the ballot proposition submitted to the voters is changed by the authority after approval of the ballot proposition by the voters;
or
(2)the ballot proposition submitted to the voters did not specifically describe the route of the segment.

Item (1) does not actually apply to the University Line, since there was no route set for the University Line before the referendum. But it does apply to the North Line (which was shifted from Irvington to Fulton at the request of neighborhood groups) and the Southeast Line (which was shifted from Scott to MLK, again at neighborhood request.)

Item (2) applies to every single one of the lines. METRO’s ballot named lines and described end points; it did not call out every street a line would run on. It was not required to, and METRO had not yet done studies on all of the lines.

So this legislation would stop all property acquisition on all 5 new lines immediately. Essentially, some guy from El Paso wants to invalidate the 2003 vote, and he wants to do it by applying a standard to Houston that does not apply to any other part of the state.

Full text follows:

More in our forums and on off the kuff.

UPDATE: it seems the amendment has been removed. But we need to keep a watch on the legislature — this kind of thing can pop up unexpectedly in the late days of a session.

This subsection applies only to an authority created under Chapter
451, Transportation Code, that operates in an area in which the
principal municipality has a population of 1.9 million or more.
Notwithstanding any other law, an authority to which this
subsection applies may not take private property through the use of
eminent domain if the taking of the property is related to the
construction of a segment of a fixed guideway transit system,
including a light rail or bus rapid transit segment, authorized by
the voters of the authority and:
(1)the planned route of the segment as approved in the
ballot proposition submitted to the voters is changed by the
authority after approval of the ballot proposition by the voters;
or
(2)the ballot proposition submitted to the voters did
not specifically describe the route of the segment.
(g)If a court in which a condemnation proceeding is
initiated under Chapter 21, Property Code, determines that the
condemnation proceeding was initiated in violation of Subsection
(f), the court shall:
(1)determine that the condemnor does not have the
right to condemn;
(2)dismiss the condemnation proceeding; and
(3)order the condemnor to pay all costs of the
condemnation proceeding, including all reasonable attorney’s fees
incurred by the owner.

On June 1, Metro will begin “Quickline” service along Bellaire from the light rail station at TMC Transit Center to just inside Beltway 8.

This is what I call “better bus” and what METRO once called “signature bus“: our local version of Los Angeles’ Metro Rapid: specially branded buses, using regular traffic lanes but stopping less frequently (at branded stops with “next bus” displays) to speed up the trip. The full trip (pdf) from TMC to Ranchester will takes 38 minutes instead of 52 by local bus; TMC to Bellaire will take 21 minutes instead of 34.

Unfortunately, our local version is rush hour only. In the morning, the buses run every 15 minutes from 6:00-9:00; in the afternoon, the first bus leaves the TMC at 3:00 and the last leaves at 6:00. That will leave commuters who have to work until 6:00 with a slow ride.

Faster trip times are good. But offering those times all day would be better. METRO talks of building a “transit habit” in the corridor. But real transit habits are built around using transit not just for commutes but for all the other trips in a day, and that’s made possible by service that’s the same all day every day (which also happens to be what METRO was planning when this service was first proposed in 2003). The last time I rode LA’s Rapid, it was 10:00 pm and the bus was packed.

METRO says this is only the first signature bus corridor; Gessner, Westheimer, TMC to Palm Center, and Northline to Tidwell TC are coming up, though no schedule has been announced. There are surely some more corridors that would make sense as well. The Bellaire service was originally scheduled to start in August 2008.

Leave your signature in our forums.

The deal for the new soccer stadium appears to be coming together. But one fundamental problem remains: the stadium, as planned, will be a significant obstacle to traffic between Downtown and the East End. But there’s a way to fix that.

If you’re headed west on Harrisburg towards Downtown today, the street ends at Bastrop. There, you make a left turn, drive two blocks, and make a right on Capitol, the only westbound street that makes it between Minute Maid Park and the George R. Brown Convention Center. That’s no ideal, but you do get Downtown reasonably quickly.

The soccer stadium, though, messes that up. Both Bastrop and Capitol get torn out to build the stadium. There is no longer a westbound through street between Minute Maid and George R. Brown. So now you make a left on Dowling, a right on Walker, a right on Chartres, and a left on Capitol. You trip just got 4 blocks longer thanks to the soccer stadium.

The soccer stadium also messed up the combined Southeast and East End light rail line, which was supposed to be on Capitol and Rusk. That’s been fixed by moving it to Texas. But that creates a new set of problems. To get from Capitol alongside the stadium back to Capitol and Rusk Downtown, the light rail tracks have to cut diagonally across three blocks. That creates several intersections where light rail crosses a street on the diagonal. That’s always a problem: it’s what makes the Wheeler area problematic today. METRO will be improving Wheeler in 2012, but, thanks to the soccer stadium, they’ll be replicating the problem on Capitol and Rusk.

So we have two problems: the soccer stadium makes it much more difficult for people from the East End to get Downtown, and it reroutes the light rail line in a way that creates a series of awkward intersections.

Fortunately, there’s a way to fix both of those problems. In fact, it results in traffic flow that’s better than what we have today. There are two parts to this idea. The first is to make Texas alongside the stadium a two-way street. Instead of two eastbound traffic lanes and two light rail tracks, Texas gets two eastbound traffic lanes, two westbound traffic lanes, and two light rail tracks. That all fits in the existing right of way. The second part is to use the “squiggle” in the light rail tracks for traffic lanes as well. This does two things: it gives the westbound traffic on Texas a way to go, and it cleans up those messy intersections.

So now, to get from the East End to Downtown, you simply follow Harrisburg, which flows right into Texas, and then you make a left turn onto Capitol. And you will not hit an awkward intersection or have to cross the rail line to do it.

Technically, this is not actually a difficult solution. It does no change the light rail alignment. It reduces traffic impacts. It does not require more right of way on Texas, and the right of way it requires in the “squiggle” is right of way that would need to be purchased anyway. The only significant cost involved is some additional pavement, and that’s not much in the scheme of things. That additional cost, incidentally, should not be a METRO obligation: the problem it solves is created not by the rail line but by the soccer stadium.

This is a simple, inexpensive opportunity to take a problem and make it a solution. It would make things better immediately. In the longer term, as the old warehouses of East Downtown and the East End continue to be replaced by townhouses, apartments, and condos, it will be even more important.

Squiggle on over to our forums with your thoughts.

Perhaps the most anticipated words in the world of rail transit are “full funding grant agreement:” the Federal Transit Authority’s promise to pay a share of a transit project. Two of Houston’s new rail lines have now moved tantalizing close to that milestone. As part of the federal budget process, the FTA releases a “Annual Report on Funding Recommendations” (12 MB pdf) that contains its recommendations for federal transit funding for the next fiscal year. These recommendations are incorporated in the president’s budget.

The report notes:

Five projects are likely to be ready for an FFGA or Early Systems Work Agreement in FY 2010. These projects are in Final Design or expected to be approved into Final Design before summer 2009, the environmental process has been completed, and any needed railroad agreements have been negotiated and are at or near completion.

and goes on to recommend $75 million in construction funds each for both the North and Southeast lines. But that’s just the first installment: a FFGA would mean $331.7 million and $333.5, respectively, for the two projects. We don’t have a signed check yet. But this is a good sign that check is coming soon.

The University Line doesn’t show up in the report yet. But the list of projects in here is a useful snapshot of the projects it will be competing with for federal funding. Here are all the projects in the report that are large enough to require cost-effectiveness ratings under the New Starts program, in order of cost, with the University Line inserted:

• Access to the Region’s Core Commuter Rail, Northern New Jersey, $8,699.98 Million, 254,200 riders (final design, FFGA expected FY 2010)
  Three New York City projects lead off the list. Their costs are huge, but so are the benefits. This project will double rail capacity under the Hudson River into Penn Station, allowing more trains on currently overcroweded lines and adding service on other lines which previously didn’t have direct service into Manhattan.
• Long Island Rail Road East Side Access commuter rail, New York, New York, $7,386.00 million, 160,000 riders (FFGA in 2006, under construction, complete 2015)
  This project will give Long Island commuter the choice of direct train service ito Gran Central Station, which is located closer to the Midtown employment core than the current terminal at Penn Station.
• Second Avenue Subway Phase I heavy rail, New York, New York, $4,866.61 million, 200,000 riders ( FFGA in 2007, under construction, complete 2016)
  This project has been in the works longer than any other project on this list: it was approved in 1929, and construction started in the 1960s and again in 1972.
• Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project to Wiehle Avenue heavy rail, Northern Virginia, $3,142.47 million, 85,700 riders (FFGA in 2009, complete in 2014)
  Ignore the “Dulles” here; the airport extension is in the next phase. This phase is about connecting Tyson’s Corner, whose 115,000 jobs makes it the nation’s 12th largest employment center, to the Metrorail system.
• Central Link LRT, Seattle, Washington, $2,436.90, 42,500 riders (opens in July, FFGA in 2003)
  The first step in Seattle’s light rail system. A short extension to the airport will open next year; voters have approved extensions to the north and east. The cost is high due to extensive tunneling in Seattle’s hilly landscape.
• East Corridor commuter rail, Denver, Colorado, $2,043.77, 37,900 riders (preliminary engineering)
  This is one of three Denver projects on the list, all part of the ambitious FasTracks program. It will connect Downtown’s Union Station to the airport with 4 intermediate stops.
• Silver Line Phase III, Boston, Massachusetts, $2,106.54 Million, 84,600 riders (preliminary engineering)
  This was one of the dumbest transit projects in the United States, building a new bus suway parallel to an out-of-service light rail subway. But “was” is the operative word — Massachusetts just decided to cancel the project.
• University Link LRT, Seattle, Washington, $1,947.68 million, 40,200 riders (begins construction 2009, complete in 2016, FFGA 2009)
  Extends the light rail system to the University of Washington (or at least to parking lot next to its stadium.) The high cost is because all 3.15 miles are in subway.
• North Corridor heavy rail, Miami, Florida, $1,504.7 Million, 22,600 riders (preliminary engineering)
  This project is on indefinite hold due to a shortage of local funds.
• Portland-Milwaukie LRT, Portland, Oregon, $1,471.76 Mi, 27,400 riders (preliminary engineering)
  A southwards extension of Portland’s light rail. This will be the 6th segment of Portland’s light rail system.
• Northwest / Southeast LRT, Dallas, Texas, $1,406.22 million, 45,900 riders (under construction, complete in 2011, FFGA in 2006)
  More light rail in abandoned railroad corridors in Dallas; it goes vaguely near some important destinations and has lots of park-and-ride lots.
• Central Subway LRT, San Francisco, California, $1,297.95 Million, 42,200 riders (preliminary engineering)
  One of the dumbest transit projects (though not nearly as dumb as BART to San Jose); if San Francisco weren’t represented by Nancy Pelosi it would have been dead a long time ago. San Francisco needs more light rail badly, but this 1.7 mile new subway segment doesn’t add much to the system, at least until it’s eventually extended.
• Central Corridor LRT, St. Paul-Minneapolis, Minnesota, $914.89 Million, 41,700 Average riders (preliminary engineering)
  Probably the best analogy to the University Line anywhere elase in the country; it connects Downtown St. Paul, the University of Minnesota, and Downtown Minneapolis (with transfers to commuter rail and the existing light rail to the airport.) The entire 11-mile line will be in city streets.
• Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension LRT, Los Angeles, California, $898.81 million, 23,000 riders (FFGA in 2004, opens in June
  This budget is a good indication of how much costs have risen recently; nobody could build 6 miles of light rail including a 1.8-mile tunnel and an elevated section for this little today.
• Gold Line commuter rail, Denver, Colorado, $859.51 Million, 16,800 riders (preliminary engineering)
• Northeast Corridor LRT, Charlotte, North Carolina, $748.96 Million, 10,500 riders (preliminary engineering)
  An extension of the light rail line which opened in 2007, doubling first year ridership estimates. It will serve UNC Charlotte and a suburban employment center.
• West Corridor LRT, Denver, Colorado, $709.83 million, 29,700 riders (FFGA in 2009)Compare cost and ridership to the Denver commuter rail lines.
• Southeast Corridor LRT, Houston, Texas, $680.6 Million, 28,700 riders (preliminary engineering, FFGA expected FY2010)
• North Corridor LRT, Houston, Texas, $677.0 Million, 29,000 riders (preliminary engineering, FFGA expected FY2010)
• South Corridor I-205 / Portland Mall LRT, Portland, Oregon, $575.70 million, 46,500 riders (FFGA in 2007, opens in September)
  Adds 6.5 miles of light rail along a suburban freeway (which already had right of way set aside in the 1970s) and a 1.5 mile second downtown spine.
• New Britain – Hartford Busway, Hartford, Connecticut, $569.31 Million, 15,100 riders (final design)
• Mid-Jordan LRT, Salt Lake City, Utah, $535.37 million, 9,500 riders (FFGA in 2009, complete 2011)
  Salt Lake City is aggressively expanding its light rail system. This is one of three new lines under construction right now; its the only one that’s federally funded; the other lines are being counted as local match, meaning that the feds are putting up 80% rather than 50% of the cost of the project. METRO aims to do the same thing for the University Line.
• University Line, $533 million, 43,000 riders (not yet submitted to FTA)
• Ravenswood Line heavy rail reconstruction, Chicago, Illinois, $529.91, 68,000 riders (FFGA in 2004)
  Rebuilds a deteriorated 1907 elevated line, speeding up trips and allowing longer trains to relieve overcrowding.
• North Shore Connector LRT, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, $435.00 million, 14,300 riders (under construction, complete in 2011, FFGA in 2006)
  Another stupid project: a 1.2 mile subway, $200 million over budget (the cost is lik3ly up to $530 million, compared to $330 initial estimates), that will serve two sports stadiums and next to nothing else. It’s a testament to Pennsylvania’s political power that the feds are not only funding this project but funding 80% of it.
• Central Florida Commuter Rail, Orlando, Florida, $357.22 million, 7,400 riders (final design, FFGA expected FY2010)
  In April, Florida’s legislature failed to pass a freight rail liability bill that was required to make this line possible; the project is likely dead.
• Northstar Corridor Rail commuter rail, Minneapolis-Big Lake, Minnesota, $317.38 million, 5,900 riders (FFGA in 2007, opens 2009)
  Will connect to the existing light rail line at a new Downtown station.
• South Corridor Phase 2 LRT, Sacramento, California, $270.00 Million, 10,000 riders (preliminary engineering, FFGA expected FY2010)A 4-mile suburban extension
• Norfolk LRT, Norfolk, Virginia, $232.10 million, 7,100 riders (FFGA in 2007, under construction, complete in 2010)
  An incredibly cost-effective startup, largely following an abandoned freight rail line that happened to connect Downtown, Eastern Virginia Medical Center, and Norfolk State University.

This list is incredibly national. Rail transit is no longer an East Coast or West Coast phenomenon; we’re seeing multiple projects in the South, the Midwest, and the Mountain West. And we’re seeing that cities that built one line tend top build more: clearly, the public is behind the idea of quality transit. Manny of the cities on the list have more projects coming: LA, for example, has three projects in planning that will go after federal funds. It’s pretty obvious that a coalition could be built in Congress for increasing federal transit funding.

The local conclusion: all three of the Houston projects stack up well in this list in terms of bang-for-the-buck (the actual funding criteria are more complicated than ridership vs. cost, but this give some idea). The University Line, for example, is predicting as much ridership as funded projects that cost three or four times as much. If METRO and city leadership keep things on track locally, the odds of getting federal funding look good.

Your comments (cost effective or not) go in our forums.

Houston METRO Light Rail from NC3D.com on Vimeo.

The Overhead Wire has uncovered a video of visualizations of the new METRORail lines. The video shows, in order:

• The Third Ward on the University Line.
• Edloe Station (in Greenway Plaza) on the University Line.
• Moody Park Station on the North Line.
• MacGregor Park Station on the Southeast Line.
• Lockwood Station on the East End Line.

The Third Ward footage seems to be out-of-date; it shows the old alignment crossing Dowling on Wheeler, not the new route that switches to Alabama. But other details are correct: the stations shown are the new prototype station design (by Rey De LA Reza architects), minus artwork.

It’s nice to be able to visualize what these lines might look like. But it’s also a reminder that it’s important to get the details right. At Edloe, for example, the trees integrated into the canopy are nice, but there’s no crosswalk at the west end of the station platform, which means a 500-foot detour for some riders. The Moody Park and MacGregor stations do show that crosswalk, and the sidewalks look pretty good, too. But in all the images, the overhead wires are suspended from their own poles in the middle of the street, not from the streetlight poles on either side, as on Main Street. That makes for more poles and a more cluttered streetscape.

So this video is a good way of thinking about these kind of issues. We need more of that. the Metro Solutions website is, frankly, pathetic. Other agencies across the county are posting much more information. Dallas has renderings and maps of stations. Norfolk has a video simulation of every station. Portland has a photo gallery of construction and detailed information on station amenities and traffic signal operation. Seattle posts project schedules. Denver has some nice images (pdf) of station designs and diagrams (pdf) of how stations will be accessed.

The federal planning and environmental process requires METRO to share a lot of information with the public. But when that process is over and an FEIS is finalized, there are still a lot of design decisions to be made. The public needs to be part of those decisions, too.

Visualize your own thoughts in our forums.

Ad banners on the Houston Chronicle website are announcing the opening of the Katy Freeway managed lanes.

We’ve known the physical shape of these lanes for some time now: 2 lanes in each direction, with on/off ramps just outside 610, just inside BW, at Dairy Ashford, and at Highway 6, in addition to direct connector ramps at the Northwest Transit Center and Addick Park & Ride. But those lanes have been acting as pure HOV lanes since the rebuilt freeway opened; now they will be opened to single occupant cars and trucks.

The lanes will now be open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Outside of rush hours, they’re a toll road: every car, regardless of how many people are in it, pays $1.10 to go the full length of the lanes. During rush hour, in the rush hour direction, single occupant cars pay between $2.00 and $4.00 and 2+ carpools are free. Those rates will need to be adjusted if the lanes are too popular, because HCTRA (who operates the lanes) has promised METRO (who gave up the HOV lane to make room for them) that buses will keep moving at full speed. Single occupant vehicles and carpools will be sorted out by a three-lane toll plaza: left lane for carpools, right two lanes for SOVs.

Managed lanes and congestion pricing make sense. They’re a way to optimize the use of expensive transportation infrastructure. And I agree with Tory’s argument that they can be a real benefit for infrequent users. But now we see how well that works in practice. Across the country, people have shown a distaste for tolls when a free option is available. Toll roads like Beltway 8 that don’t duplicate a freeway do well. Toll roads like the Hardy that do tend not to fill up. And Houston’s first managed lanes are in a corridor that just had a lot of free capacity added.

We may also begin to see problem with the lanes themselves. Nearly all the on- and off-ramps are from the regular lanes. If those lanes get congested, getting to the uncongested managed lanes will be hard for both carpools and buses. Some more direct ramps like those at Addicks and NWTC would have helped. And, with the growth in Katy in the last decade, stopping the lanes at SH6 may turn out shortsighted. Will the Katy lanes be the prototype for the future? Or will they be remembered as a good idea badly implemented? Tell us in the forums.

Our latest update of the CTC map takes us into an alternate universe where Houston transit history unfolded differently.

In 1983, METRO (which had been formed 8 years earlier) proposed a $2.1 billion, 18.5 mile heavy rail system, using the same technology as BART, Washington METRO, and Atlanta’s MARTA. That plan was rejected by voters. But in this alternate universe, the plan passed.

That first line ran along Westpark from the West Belt to Kirby, then along the Southwest Freeway to spur 527, elevated through Midtown, in a tunnel under Main Street through Downtown, and then north alongside a railroad line as far as Crosstimbers. It opened in two stages in 1987 and 1988.

The original expansion plan called for the second line to connect Downtown to Hobby Airport via UH. However, that plan ran into numerous difficulties: the expense of a second Downtown tunnel, the inconvenience of a UH station located in the rail line alongside Spur 5, and a public perception that it was going to the wrong airport. Instead, the METRO board decided to build a technically simple 21.5 mile expansion: extend the Crosstimbers line north as far as Beltway 8, where it would split into two branches, one to Greenspoint and a park-and-ride on I-45, and one to Intercontinental and a park-and-ride on US 59. This line opened in 1995. By this time, the high cost of heavy rail, the lack of suitable corridors for building elevated track, and heavy competition for federal funding was making further expansion difficult.

Looking for less expensive ways to expand its system, METRO submitted a “turnkey demonstration” commuter rail project to the FTA in 1993, running from Missouri City along US90A, then Terminal Subdivision past Bellaire and Uptown, then along Washington to Downtown, north from Downtown, and then out US 249 as far as Tomball. This line offered two easy connections to the heavy rail line, at Newcastle and Quitman, and those connections added enough ridership to make the line worthwhile. It opened in 1996. METRO had also acquired the Hempstead Highway line along 290 and the MKT line along the Katy Freeway in 1992, adding commuter rail service along those two lines (to Katy and Cypress) in 1998 and finally to Galveston in 2004. In 2003, with Tom Delay obtaining federal funds, Fort Bend County entered in a agreement with METRO to extend the Missouri City line as far as Rosenburg, and those trains began operating in 2008.

In 1983, METRO’s HOV system was still modest. Three HOV lanes — Gulf Freeway, Katy Freeway, and North Freeway — were under construction. These opened by 1987, but they would be the last barrier-separated HOVs in Houston, and most of the bus service they carried was replaced by commuter rail, which had more political appeal. From here on , all FTA funding for Houston would got to rail, and TxDOT would build more conventional “inside lane” HOVs only.

Freeway expansion projects would offer one more opportunity for transit expansion. in 1991, TxDOT started the design process for widening the West Loop. The original plans, created together with METRO, called for a branch off the heavy rail system running past Uptown and through Memorial Park as far as Northwest Mall. That plan, though, ran into heavy public opposition and TxDOT was forced to scale it down. The final result included only a modest 1.5 mile rail line, with two stations, both in the freeway median, at Westheimer and San Felipe. That completed the current heavy rail system.

What’s next for Houston transit in our alternate universe? The commuter system seems close to complete, though METRO is in talks with Brazoria County to open another line through Pearland to Alvin, and there’s increasing talk of freight rail improvements to increase capacity and run more frequent commuter rail service. There are no cost-effective expansion possibilities for heavy rail. But there are major transit needs. The Texas Medical Center is still unconnected to the system, as is the Museum District, the University of Houston, and TSU. Uptown doesn’t have a good link to the I-10 and 290 commuter rail lines (though there’s occasional talk of an Uptown streetcar to fix that.) The increasing density in historic neighborhoods inside the Loop, which were bypassed by the heavy rail system, is leading to calls for more transit there. And the Downtown commuter rail station, under I-45 behind the main post office, is not connected to the heavy rail system, leaving riders from Galveston or Cypress to transfer to shuttle buses. METRO planners have come to the conclusion that the next phase of expansion must be light rail or BRT. Houston has no experience with light rail, but it can look to lines that have been operating in Dallas since 1996 and Austin since 2005. The likely routes here: a line from the Downtown commuter rail station along Franklin, Main, and Fannin to the Texas Medical Center and on to Reliant Park, and a line along Elgin to UH and then on to Hobby Airport, finally fulfilling, 30 years late, the plans made in 1983.

Luckily, the CTC forums were created in our alternate universe in 2006, so you can comment there.

Last week, I noted that the Federal Transit Administration was refusing to let METRO use any stimulus money to start work on the North and Southeast lines. That picture seems to have changed: Sheila Jackson Lee is saying that she has convinced the FTA to let METRO use the money. As I noted in my last post, the rail lines are exactly what the stimulus money was intended for: “shovel-ready” projects with environmental clearance in place. So this is the right result; the fact that it took a congressperson to intervene to make it happen shows once again how much harder the federal financing system is for transit than for highways. If these light rail lines were a highway, they’d probably have been completely funded from the stimulus (and if TXDOT were a transportation agency instead of a highway agency, it might have allocated it flexible transportation dollars to light rail instead of the Grand Parkway.)

The stimulus dollars going to the rail lines — $30 million for utility relocation – are only a part of the $90 million that METRO gets from the stimulus. So is the $48 for converting the HOVs to HOTs. The remainder, it appears, will go to buses and railcars which, unlike construction projects, don’t require environmental studies. A preliminary request that METRO submitted to the Houston-Galveston Area council calls for 100 new buses and 29 light rail vehicles for Main St. Corridor. METRO has a fleet of about 1200, and they need to be replaced every 12 years or so. That means they need to buy 100 buses a year just to keep the current fleet in shape, and in the past they weren’t always doing that. 29 light rail vehicles are enough to run 2-car trains every 6 minutes (which would still be standing-room-only at rush hour); combined with the current fleet, they could run 2-car trains every 4 minutes (which is the ultimate capacity limit of the Main Street Line.)

METRO can spend the stimulus money on rail under “letters of no prejudice” issued by the FTA, which let the METRO spend federal funds on portion of a project before that project has gotten full funding approval. The possibility exists that METRO will in fact be able to spend more than $30 million on the stimulus money on rail.

Incidentally, METRO does not get all of Houston’s transit money. Harris County gets $0.9 million for bus service in Baytown and for equipping its paratransit service with smart cards that can work with METRO’s Q-card system. Fort Bend County gets $2.7 million for TREK park-and-ride service, paratransit service, and smart cards. In addition, Galveston, Lake Jackson/Angleton, Texas City, and The Woodlands are counted as separate urban areas; they get $1.6 million, $1.4 million, $1.6 million, and $1.7 million, respectively. Many of these transit agencies depend heavily on federal funds. Harris County, for example, is using largely federal funds to provide transit service to Baytown, which did not choose to join METRO when it was created. Island Transit in Galveston has bene getting nearly half is operating budget and 100% of its capital budget from the feds.

Comment in our forums.

So what’s the difference between highways and transit?

No, it’s not that transit gets subsidies. Highways do, too. In fact, every mode of transportation but pipelines and freight rail does. Federal and state highways are funded by gas tax. But freeways, expressways, and major arterials — the kinds of roads which are federal and state highways — account for less than half of vehicle miles traveled nationwide. The rest of the roadways are paid for out of county and city general funds. The second largest transportation budget in the Houston area comes from Harris County property tax. So if you’re driving on a local road, you’re subsidizing highways, and if you have a home or a business, you’re subsidizing local roads. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s important to realize that no form of passenger transportation pays its own way, even if you leave out private subsidies and indirect costs.

What is different, though, is how the federal and state government fund highways and transit. The difference at the state level is obvious: the state does not finance transit. If you’re a city or county looking for state funds, and the best solution for your particular transportation problem is transit, too bad. You get a road. The difference at the federal level is less obvious. But the bottom line is that it’s much easier to get highway funding than it is to get transit funding.

An article in this morning’s Chronicle highlights the differences well. The North and Southeast METRORail lines, which have completed their environmental process, have a contractor selected, are ready to break ground, and are slatred to be done in 3 years, are not “shovel ready.” But the Grand Parkway segment E (as seen in the New York Times), which even its supporters admit has been rushed, which has not completed environmental clearances, and which does not have a contractor selected is “shovel ready.” And oh, yeah, it’s a stupid project with no real transportation benefit. But it will get stimulus money.

So what’s the difference between the Grand Parkway and METRORail? Why are they treated differently? Because they’re funded by two different agencies. The best explanation I’ve heard (and unfortunately I can’t remember the source) is that the Federal Highway Administration thinks it’s in the business of helping states get highways built, while the Federal Transit Administration think it’s in the business of making sure agencies don’t spend too much on transit projects. That difference in attitude permeates everything the two agencies do.

Here’s how federal highway funding works: every state gets a certain amount of money by a national formula. That state then determines how it wants to spend the money and tells FHWA; FHWA sends checks. By federal law, an environmental impact study is required. But FHWA is pretty lax on those; major projects like the widening of 610 are routinely characterized as exempt from the environmental projects, and many of the biggest environmental impacts from highways don’t have to be considered. Everyone knows that the biggest impact of the Grand Parkway will be the paving over of large portions of the Katy Prairie, prime wildlife habitat and a “sponge” for floodwaters, to build new subdivisions. But the environmental study was able to claim that development would have happened anyway, and the FHWA agreed.

The most crucial omission from the federal highway funding process, though, is any kind of cost-effectiveness requirement. The FHWA does not care how much transportation benefit will come from your project, whether the same benefit could have come from building a cheaper project in the same corridor, or whether another project elsewhere has better bang for the buck. If the state thinks it’s a good idea, it gets funded. And with “the state,” I mean a 5-member commission appointed by the governor. In fact, state departments of transportation were explicitly structured in the Progressive Era to avoid political oversight.

And, oh, yeah, the feds pay 80% of highway project costs.

Now consider FTA funding for new projects. Every project has to start with an Alternatives Analysis which has to consider cheaper modes like Bus Rapid Transit. Only after the FTA has approved this document can the project start the environmental process. After the environmental process there’s another process, not required by law but instituted by the FTA, to determine the risk of projects running over schedule or budget. And once you’re done with all that you’re still not guaranteed funding. Instead, you’re up against a lot of other projects, and every project gets rated on the basis of its cost-effectiveness, its benefits, its environmental impacts, and the financial stability of the transit agency. If you don’t score high enough, you get no money. Even if you do, the FTA may arbitrarily decide not to fund you. And meanwhile, you have members of Congress trying to block certain projects (it happened to us, it happened to LA, it even happened to Seattle because of congressmen from Oklahoma and Kentucky.)

So you make it through all that? The feds give you 50% funding.

The federal transportation funding bill is due for reauthorization this year. We now have a president who’s talking about the need for building more sustainable communities, a secretary of transportation who’s working on coordinating transportation planning with land use planning, and a House transportation chairman who’s been outspoken is his support for transit. This bill is a chance to fix the fundamental flaws in the federal funding process. Hopefully, the final result will treat all modes equally. It’s hard to build a good transportation system otherwise.

Despite being financially stable, cost-effective, and very accountable, our forums get no federal funds. So you won’t have to analyze the environmental impact of your comments.

Intermodality isn’t the only place I write. I’ve been on the editorial committee of Cite magazine for 9 years, and we’ve been talking about getting Cite onto the internet for nearly that long. Now, at long last, we have a Cite blog, which can cover architecture and design news much faster than a quarterly magazine can. Following a 26-year tradition of bad puns, it’s called offcite. It’s a group blog, with contributions from the same people who write for Cite: Stephen Fox, Raj Mankad, Ben Koush), and Anna Mod.

So now I have a second blog outlet. But that doesn’t mean Intermodality is going anywhere. Basically, I’ll write about transportation here and urban design there, and sometimes I’ll cross-link when those topics meet (and they obviously do.) Two weeks ago, for example, I covered the METRORail contract here while writing about Houston Pavilions there (and managed to get linked to by Swamplot in two different places within two days, which is pretty neat.)

Transportation is part of Cite’s beat, so it’s offcite as well. Raj attended the opening of the Columbia Tap bike trail and posted his photos, and Shannon Stoney told her story of a life changed by hazardous sidewalks.

So watch this blog. And watch that one, too.

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood visited Houston on Friday. He took the chance to talk up the stimulus bill, signed into law a month ago. Stimulus money has started flowing to transportation projects. While transportation makes up only 6% of the $787 million bill, that $45 billion will make a significant impact: it’s nearly equal to a year of the government’s regular transportation spending.

So what does Houston get?

The bill includes multiple “buckets” of transportation money. The best summary I’ve seen is from Transportation 4 America. Here’s the rundown:

$27.5 billion for the Surface Transportation Program. That’s usually referred to as “Highway funding,” but it’s actually a very flexible pot of money; it can be spent on federal and state highways, bridges on any public road, public transit, bike paths, freight rail, and ports. Which projects get this money is not determined by the feds: the state departments of transportation get 70% and local governments get 30%. In our case, that means TxDOT gets $1.7 billion and the Houston-Galveston Area Council gets $123.7 million.

Not surprisingly, TxDOT sees this as highway money and puts the priority on adding capacity. Its project list includes $500 million in maintenance and $1.7 billion in new projects (pdf), of which there’s only $35 million for non-road projects. Locally, this list includes:

• $181 million for Segment E of the Grand Parkway
• $50 million for new ramps connecting Beltway 8 to the Eastex Freeway
• $11 million to rebuild I-10 past Downtown
• $43 million to rebuild the 610 North Loop from Ella to I-45

The first two projects — 80% of the local TxDOT funds — seem intended to encourage new suburban development rather than to address existing problems.

The HGAC’s funds go to:

• Road widening for FM2004, FM 1098, FM 359, FM 1464, Little York, and Stafford/Staffordshire Road
• Building a new section of Gosling Road
• Intersection improvements on Beltway 8
• New grade separations on FM 2100 and FM 1764
• Preliminary engineering for commuter rail
• Freight transportation analysis for IH69
• Intelligent transportation systems

$750 million for fixed guideway transit modernization. This is an established federal program that is intended to help agencies maintain “fixed guideway” (which usually means rail) projects over 7 years old. This will go largtely to places like New York and Chicago, but our HOVs were built as federally funded fixed guideways, so METRO picks up $2.31 million.

$6.9 Billion for transit capital projects like buses, maintenance facilities, transit centers, and rail. This get distributed across the United States based on an existing funding formula. The Houston-Galveston region gets $90.9 million; METRO can expect to pick up most if not all of that. This will help METRO build its new light rail lines, either through METRO spending it on rail or through METRO spending it on other projects that would have been locally funded to free up more money for light rail.

$750 million for the New Starts program, which is used to build new rail lines. This is the program METRO is looking to get funding for the North, Southeast, and University lines from. The stimulus money itself likely won’t go to METRO, since those lines do not have Full Funding Grant Agreements in place, but it will go to projects that would otherwise have competed with METRO’s projects, so METRO’s prospects for funding do improve.

$1.3 billion for Amtrak. This will go to security improvements, fixing bridges and power supply on the Northeast Corridor (where, unlike in the rest of the country, Amtrak owns its own tracks), putting 68 damaged rail cars back in service, and repairing numerous stations, shops, and warehouses. Amtrak’s been underfunded for years, so this funding will deal with deferred maintenance, not add new service. Houston, with only 6 amtrak trains a week, won’t see much benefit, though there may be more seats available on those (usually full) trains.

$8 billion for high speed rail, defined here as intercity passenger trains running over 90 mph. Currently, Amtrak runs at least that fast between Boston and Washington, between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, on portions of the routes between New York and Albany, Chicago and Detroit, St. Louis and Kansas City, and Los Angeles and San Diego, and on some rural stretches in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. This money will go to states that have high speed rail projects ready to go. That includes California (where environmental approval and state bonds are in place for a $33 billion 220 mph route between Los Angeles and San Francisco), Midwest corridors centered on Chicago, Seattle-Portland, and New York-Albany. Texas won’t be on the list; while we have a proposal, we have only limited state government support and no alignment or financing studies, and neither Houston-Dallas nor Houston-Austin/San Antonio are on the federal list of designated high speed rail corridors.

$1.5 billion for “Supplemental Discretionary Grants” for “projects with national, metropolitan, or regional significance.” These are awarded by the feds, and we don;t know who gets them yet.

There are also some other transportation items that don’t fall under the Department of Transportation:

• $4.6 billion for Army Corps of Engineers projects, including inland waterways.
• $240 million for Coast Guard facilities
• $300 million for buying electric vehicles for federal government fleets
• $2 billion for electric car systems
• $400 for electric vehicle R&D
• $300 million for buying fuel-efficient cars for state and local governments
• $300 million for reducing diesel fuel emissions
• $1.1 billion for airport security
• $150 for transit security

Some of that money will likely come our way as well.

One of the more interesting parts of the stimulus bill is recovery.gov, where President Obama promises “accountability” and “transparency,” including details of every project that gets stimulus money. The implementation regulations include a requirement that all agencies receiving funding create an internet feed of all reports to the feds. Hopefully, that will be a model for all of government.

Ideas? Suggestions? Corrections? Go to our forums.

(pdf file)

METRO’s 2012 map is settling down. This update to CTC’s transit map shows only a few changes since my last update in April 2008:

• The University Line got realigned in the Third Ward. This is unfortunate; Texas Southern University now has no stop alongside campus. There is a station called “TSU,” but it’s three blocks from campus, on the opposite side of a public housing project. Rice, UH, St. Thomas, and UH Downtown all get excellent connections to the 2012 system, but TSU is getting left out because METRO couldn’t figure out how to work with a neighborhood to get a Wheeler/Ennis route figured out. That’s an unfortunate situation for a university that’s trying to raise its profile.
• Some stations changes. There’s additional stations in Uptown and the East End, but one fewer in Greenway.
• The East End Line now goes to the Theatre District, not the Intermodal Center. This is based on METRO’s newest diagramatic map. It makes a lot of sense. The Intermodal Center was never an important destination anyway; there’s a lot more demand to go to the west side of Downtown. Running both the East End and Southeast lines there creates a frequent east-wets circulator service across Downtown. And keeping East End trains off of Main Street allows Main Street trains to run more frequently. The transfer still isn’t ideal, though.
• The Uptown line is still shown as through-routed with the University Line but not the Main Street Line. We now have confirmation (pdf) that the track configuration where Uptown meets University will allow through running:

  

• I’ve removed commuter rail. With the new HGAC proposal, it seemed confusing to show the METRO proposal, but the HGAC proposal is indefinite enough that I can’t clearly map it. I still think commuter rail will happen (whether it;s a good idea or not) but at this point I’d suspect at will be post-2012.

The other changes are graphical:

• I’ve changed how I show two light rail lines sharing track, to clean things up.
• I’ve used dashed vs. solid lines to show which METROExpress lines have off-peak service and which don’t, and I’ve used thick vs. thin lines to show which sections are in HOV lanes and which are in regular traffic. I’ ve also added the TMC service. I am still not showing METRO park-and-ride service that does not use HOV lanes, which is why the East Freeway and the West Loop service isn’t here.
• I’m not showing Signature Bus. But that might change. Right now, I don’t have enough information on stops to show it properly.
• I’ve changed line colors to match the new METRO schematic map (small size here.) That affects only the Uptown Line; whether by coincidence or not, METRO seems to have chosen the same colors I did for East End, Southeast, and University.

Comments? Visit the forums.

(TUSSAM)

The METRO blog offers more details on the new light rail cars:

“This is a 100 %, low-floor model. And this is the first time it will be in the United States,” said Jitendra S. Tomar, vice president of marketing and business development at CAF USA Inc. “Other cars, you have 70 percent low floor. This one is all one level. You have better mobility from one end to the other.”

A few noteworthy points:

• The seats can flip up. That means the train can handle more people in crowded conditions. It also means more room for bikes, strollers, or wheelchairs. Bikes racks are “being looked into.”
• The blog notes: “Several of you asked if METRO’s Siemens train can be hooked up to a CAF USA train. Yes, but only to use one to tow the other. However, the two cannot be hooked up together to run service.” It also notes: “METRO plans to keep its 18 Siemens trains and may eventually use them on a commuter rail line.” It would not be difficult to mix the current trains and the new ones on the same line even if they aren’t compatible. You run a 2-car CAF train, followed by a two-car Siemens train, followed by a 2-car CAF train. The “commuter rail line” is likely a reference to METRO’s proposal to extend light rail from Fannin South along South Main to BW8. The 66mph capability of the Siemens cars would be important there, and the trains could still run through onto the Main Street Line into Downtown. The Seville cars that the new cars are based on can do only 44 mph, which is fine for urban service but not for a long run out to Missouri City.
• The length of the cars: 102 feet compared to 96 feet on the Siemens cars. A Downtown block is 240 feet sidewalk to sidewalk, so a 205 foot train will fit on the existing (and new) stations with room to spare. Longer cars means room for more people, and that’s going to matter a lot on Main Street. METRO planners tell me they expect standing-room-only during rush hours even running 2-car trains every 4 minutes (compared to a mix of 1- and 2- car trains every 6 minutes today.)
• The cars will be assembled at CAF’s plant Elmira, NY, whihc has been building railcars (first under ABB ownership) since 1986. (The Siemens cars came from Siemens’ plant in Sacramento, CA.)
• The comments range from the useful to the misinformed (construction costs have gone up at lot, not dropped, since 2003) to the weird: “In my dreams of the new rail lines, I dreamed having the same cars on all the lines. Now, my dream is runied…”

I dreamed of seeing discussion in the forums.

The Chronicle figures they didn’t quite finish their first story on the METRO light rail contract, so here’s part two:

Metro’s newly-approved $1.46 billion contract to build four new light rail lines does not include a couple of things: $830 million and the controversial University line.

Both of these things were annnounced by METRO on Wednesday and were mentioned in the Chronicle’s story on Thursday. They’ve also been known for months. The North and Southeast Lines have completed the federal environmental process but have not yet gotten a Full Funding Grant Agreement from the feds. Every indication is that that will happen this year. The Chronicle doesn’t mention this, but METRO is actually finishing up one remaining piece of FTA paperwork: a risk analysis backing up the project cost estimates. The University Line, meanwhile, has not finished the environmental process; its Final Environmental Impact Statement is being reviewed by the FTA before going to the public. It may be frustration that these things have not happened yet, but it’s not a surprise. The federal process takes time.

Also, a word about the word “controversial”: It’s lazy journalism. If I already know about the University Line, I know that there’s been some very public debate, some politicians taking sides, and a lawsuit. If I don’t know, I don’t learn anything from the word “controversial.” Every project ever is controversial. No matter what it is, someone (like Barry Klein, who’s admirably consistent in these things) opposes it, and someone is in favor of it. There is not a single additional word in this article about why the line is controversial. So that word is useless. It’s just an attempt to make a story sound more interesting without actually doing the work of explaining.

Visit our controversial forums with your controversial thoughts on this controversial post.

(http://flickr.com/photos/torchondo/489927544/, via Wikipedia)

Today, the METRO board approved a design-build-operate contract for 4 of the 5 new light rail lines. At the same time, the board gave its chosen contractor, a group lead by Parsons, notice to proceed on the first part of that contract: the East End Line, 29 light rail vehicles, and preparatory work on other lines. Later notices to proceed will cover the rest of the work on the North, Southeast, and Uptown lines; those will wait for federal funding agreements on the North and Southeast lines, which METRO expects in the third quarter of this year. If that federal funding does not materialize, METRO has the right to not proceed. The University Line will be the subject of a separate contract.

A few items of note:

• This is a design-build-operate contract. That’s a relatively new way of doing business. On the Main Street Line, METRO hired an engineering firm to completely design every part of the line, then got bids from construction companies to build it, then hired the staff to run it. These new lines have only been schematically designed; the contract signed today covers completing the design, constructing the lines, and operating them for 5 years. That is intended to eliminate finger pointing — the builder can’t blame problems on the designer, for example — and to lead to a more efficient design that takes the construction process into account.
• The cost for these four lines (20 miles) is $1.46 billion. That’s $113 million less than was projected last August, but it’s also a reflection of how much construction costs have gone up in the last 5 years: the Main Street Line cost $45 million a mile; these lines will cost $73. Incidentally, the cost does not include the intermodal terminal; that project has been shelved (for now, at least).
• The contract includes a light rail only overpass on Harrisburg, not the road+rail underpass the neighborhood wants. But I wouldn’t consider that a done deal.
• The new light rail vehicles (103 of them) won’t be the same as the 18 we have already. The current ones, made by Siemens, have 4 doors on each side and are 70% low floor — the seats at both ends are two steps up from the rest. The new ones will be 100% low floor, with 6 doors on each side. That will handles crowds at stations better, and it also leaves more room for bikes and strollers (though there’s no mention of bike racks on board). These will be the first 100% low floor light rail vehicles operating in the United States. The cars will be made by CAF, a Spanish company. They’ve built LRVs for Pittsburgh and Sacramento (where they seem to be performing well; the METRO cars, though, will apparently be based on vehicles now running in Seville (above). Those cars are a good fit: they’re just slightly longer than the current cars, but still short enough to fit a 2-car train in a Downtown blocks; they’re exactly the same width and the floor is the same height as the existing cars. The first 19 cars will be for the Main Street Line, to relieve congestion; the existing trains will remain in service.
• The company that will operate the new lines is Veolia Transportation, a French company formerly known as Connex. They operate transit on 5 continents, including light rail in France, Ireland, Spain, and Norway and buses in Atlanta, Denver, Las Vegas, and Sacramento. METRO will set service levels and fares and handle marketing, just as it does now for those METRO bus routes operated by First Transit. My understanding is that the new contract will include operation of the Main Street Line as well as the new lines.
• METRO said that it maintains a good credit rating (thanks to its sales tax revenues) and that it does not anticipate problems with financing.

This is a major step forward. But, as I said at the meeting, light rail is about the details. Urban light rail is all about the details. And those details are now in the hands of METRO and Parsons. There’s a lot to watch over the next few years.

Comments?

(more: METRO blog, Chronicle)

Metro flyer at Main Street Square Station. The trains seems as full as ever, regardless of what Joe Biden said.\n

View Larger Map

Ian notes in the forums that METRO is finally on Google Transit. In fact, METRO features that prominently on their web site.

I looked through the list of problems with METRO’s trip planner that I posted in July of 2007, and the new Google implementation fixes nearly all of them. Riding transit in Houston just got a whole lot better. (And a note to Trek, Woodlands Express, and Island Transit: get your data up, too!)

So, thanks to Ian, I learned something in the forums this morning that I didn’t know before. What do you have to add?

It’s easy to think of the stimulus bill as some abstract thing: the total dollars amount involved is so big that it’s hard to visualize, and the funding pots it’s going into are abstract enough that we don;t know what they really mean, either.

But, as the Chronicle reports, we’re taling about real projects in real places that real people will use:

Houston Metro is due to receive as much as $180 million over the next 12 months from a huge economic stimulus bill to help jump-start construction of two light rail lines, a House committee chairman said Wednesday.

The long-delayed rail lines on the city’s north and southeast sides are a “very high-rated project,” said Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., who heads the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The project, he said, is ready to go and has cleared all but one step of a federal review.

However, it’s not clear that money will materialize: the Senate is considering ammendments that would reduce transit funding in the bill.

Kit Bond (R-Missouri), who has previously discouraged Congressional attempts to address climate change on the ground that doing so would be bad for business, will propose an amendment that would redirect the $5.5 billion of competitive grants (which are currently available to both highways and transit, at the discretion of Ray LaHood) so that those funds would apply only to highways and bridges; Barbara Boxer plans to endorse this amendment. Kit Bond may also propose another amendment that would redirect $2 billion high-speed rail allocation to — you guessed it — highways.

which means:

By redirecting the $5.5 billion to the highway program, it becomes nearly impossible to secure funding for new transit projects (New Starts program) or modernizing old rail systems.

(more coverage here.)

So what happens in Washington will definitely have an effect here.

Forums…

[update: see also Houston Tomorrow.]

I’ve seen a lot of commuter rail (and I mean a lot: 15 of 18 systems in the United States), so it’s not that easy to impress me. But I rode New Mexico’s Rail Runner for the first time last week, and I was blown away. I’d go as far as to call it the best recent commuter rail startup in the United States.

Why?

Start with the most important criterium: it goes where people want to go. It connects Santa Fe and Albuquerque, the two most important cities in New Mexico; half the state’s population lives in that corridor. The Albuquerque station is Downtown, right on Central Avenue, next to offices, lofts, and restaurants.

Santa Fe has two stations: one is next to the major government office complex (the station is closer to the front door of one office building than most of the parking lot is) and the other is Downtown, a third of a mile from the State Capitol and half a mile from the Plaza.

To connect the two cities, New Mexico actually built more than 15 miles of brand new railroad line, much of it in the median of I-25. That’s a notable departure from the typical philosophy of “we’ll run the trains where the tracks happen to be already,” and the crowded trains out of Santa Fe (I had trouble finding a seat on the 4:10 southbound) testify to its success.

Growth restrictions in Santa Fe have made it a very expensive place to live, and Indian reservations restrict growth to the south. But, thanks to the state government, Santa Fe is a major employment center. That means a lot of people are commuting into Santa Fe from Albuquerque and its northern suburbs, and the Rail Runner serves that travel market well. Trip time from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, 60 miles, is an hour and a half, and the intent is to reduce that to 1:15. By 2025, freeway travel times are expected to be at 2 hours. And commuter rail is a productive trip, too: the trains have comfortable seats, tables to work on, and electric outlets for laptops, and wifi is on the way.

The Rail Runner is well connected, too. Of course, there are park-and-ride stations, but 9 of 10 stations have local transit connections, too. The Downtown Albuquerque station is at the main bus transit center, with connections to the “Rapid Ride” bus on Central Ave. (which connects to the major hospital and the university) and the proposed streetcar line. Amtrak and Greyhound operate out of the same facility. There’s a nonstop airport connection bus, too, that meets the trains. Schedules for connecting bus routes are available on the Rail Runner website, and Rail Runner tickets are good for free rides on Albuquerque and Santa Fe local buses. A new regional transit district plans to increase feeder bus service. And, yes, there’s room for bikes on every train.

The schedules aren’t as frequent as some other systems — this is not the densely populated Northeast, after all — but they’re pretty comprehensive. The first northbound leaves Albuquerque at 4:23 AM; the last train of the night leaves Santa Fe at 9:30. There are trains in both directions all day, and there is midday service. Current schedules are limited by long sections of single track, but the new alignment was designed to add a second track, and they are making the most of the track they have: the southbound train met a northbound at a siding without stopping, which is only possible if both trains are on time.

But the best part of the Road Runner is the customer service. The crews are some of the nicest I’ve met: they were smiling as they collected tickets, and once, when a passenger wasn’t paying attention and realized too late we’d reached his station, they actually stopped the train for him after we’d started moving again and re-opened the doors. Every station has complete information posted on schedules, fares, and connecting transit. The web site is complete. Tickets are sold on board with cash or credit cards, or you can pre-purchase them on the Web and print them out. A lot of the regular riders I saw were wearing their passes on Rail Runner-issued lanyards so the crew was able to check their tickets at a glance. Everything looks classy: the web site, the stations, highway signs pointing to the stations, the information kiosks, the newspaper racks, the cloth seats, the schedules, and the trains all have the distinctive rail runner logo and colors. In fact, when the doors close, the sound is not the usual buzz but a distinctive “beep-beep.” Everything seems to say, “we’re proud of what we do.”

The line is also very neighbor-friendly. A lot of the crossings were retrofitted as quiet zones. And the last few miles into Santa Fe, built along an existing rail right-of-way, include a hike-and-bike trail (still under construction, but already well used) running alongside.

Two years ago, I noted 8 habits of highly successful commuter rail lines. The Rail Runner manages them all:

1. The ideal commuter rail line improves on current transit options.
2. The ideal commuter rail line makes use of unused rail capacity in a corridor where highway capacity is scarce.
3. The ideal commuter rail line serves more than commuters.
4. The ideal commuter rail line has a city at each end.
5. The ideal commuter rail line offers good connections to multiple employment centers.
6. The ideal commuter rail line serves long trips.
7. The ideal commuter rail line connects to local transit.
8. The ideal commuter rail line has stations you can walk (or bike) to.

Rail Runner is a remarkable achievement for a small state. Albuquerque is the 60th largest metro area in the country, on par with Dayton, OH and Omaha, NE. Santa Fe is the 282nd, smaller than Muscles Shoals, AL. The whole state has only 1.9 million people, fewer than live in Houston city limits. In that context, 4,000 riders a day is pretty good (It beats Shore Line East into New Haven and Altamont Railway Express into San Jose, CA, for example.)

Morever, the whole thing was implemented in only five years: in August of 2003, Governor Bill Richardson asked the department of transportation and the local council of governments to study commuter rail and the legislature to fund it. The first trains ran to the southern suburbs of Albuquerque in July 2006, and the line to Santa Fe opened in December of 2008. A small team did all of this, with minimal bureaucracy, and they based what they did on a lot of data: for example, fares were decided on not based on an arbitrary fare box return ratio but on phone surveys of what people were willing to pay. There’s a great report (84.3 MB Microsoft Word) available from NMDOT on the Railrunner website with a lot of background.

A lot of parts of the Rail Runner story aren’t easy to repeat. The existing railroad line which makes up most of the route carried relatively little freight traffic but had been maintained to 79mph standards for Amtrak service; Burlington Northern Santa Fe was willing to sell it as well as the rest of the line all the way to the Colorado border to the state, nearly 269 miles of mainline track in good condition with room for double track for $75 million. That’s a great deal. But the standards of service, and the quality of the experience, are worth emulating. And so is the political leadership that make it happen.

Scoot on down to our patented forums (by Acme) with your comments.

Friday was a beautiful place to be in Memorial Park. But the mayor was there for a different reason: the start of construction on a new bridge, funded by the Memorial Park Conservancy, that will be open later this year. It will link the north and south sides of Memorial Drive just east of the railroad tracks.

The new bridge will be a major safety improvement: the intersection of Memorial and the park loop is difficult for pedestrians and bicyclists to negotiate and the traffic moves fast. It should also reduce congestion, both pedestrian and vehicular. The parking lot on the south side of Memorial is little used, and the new bridge will allow runners to park there and cross over to the the hugely popular park loop trail. It might also encourage some of the people walking and running on that trail to cross over to the much less congested trails on the south side.

And to top it all off, the bridge will add to the beauty of the park. The design came out of a 2007 Rice Design Alliance charette, where ___ teams (anyone could enter) spent a weekend day conceiving and presenting designs for the bridge. The winning design was a “living bridge” by a team from Clark Condon Associates. Clark Condon was hired to do the final design, and it closely resembles the competition design: a curved path whose sides and edges are covered in vegetation.

The bridge should be open by the end of the year. Comments?