The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread

[BnaBreaker]

1 hour ago, nashville_bound said:

 

Opinion 1 - I will probably vote for the referendum.In total I fully believe the mass-transit plan (especially the tunnel) to encounter both cost over-runs and massive delays.  However, I can see the chamber-metrogov't alliance pushing something through eventually.  My logic in supporting the current plan is the taxes as announced have the least impact on me versus a property tax increase or a special tax overlay. I choose to dodge the bullet but take the shiv!

That is a perfectly respectable position!

[dmillsphoto]

4 hours ago, nashville_bound said:

Observation 1 - Voting for taxes does not necessarily increase the quality of education.

Observation 2 - The mayor must be planning one hell of a PR campaign...she seems very confident of the referendum passing. 

Opinion 1 - I will probably vote for the referendum.In total I fully believe the mass-transit plan (especially the tunnel) to encounter both cost over-runs and massive delays.  However, I can see the chamber-metrogov't alliance pushing something through eventually.  My logic in supporting the current plan is the taxes as announced have the least impact on me versus a property tax increase or a special tax overlay. I choose to dodge the bullet but take the shiv!

John, get off of Todd's computer.

[Guest]

"If you’re going through hell, keep going." - Churchill

[donNdonelson2]

On 10/19/2017 at 12:59 PM, smeagolsfree said:

Instead of the tunnel running below 5th, there is an alternative and that would be to close 5th Ave off to auto traffic and do pedestrian and light rail on that street.

This would be similar to what is on 16th Street in Denver. It would not be popular with the businesses at first, but if it worked like 16th, then it would be a boon for business along that stretch.

The only issue is the street is already built out, but any vacant buildings, lots or first floor garages would be a hot commodity.

Here is a photo from Friday afternoon-Denver 16th Street. Buzzing with activity!

[BnaBreaker]

Obviously Europe is bit of a different animal altogether, but it seems like practically every sizeable city in Europe has at least one street like that where everybody comes to gather.  

[markhollin]

I read this on a friend's Facebook page, and I thought it summed things up fairly well: "This infrastructure plan is basically the transit system for a city of 3 million, being built while the city is 2 million, and seems ludicrous to folks who remember the city of 1 million from 30 years years ago."

 

[Neigeville2]

40 minutes ago, markhollin said:

I read this on a friend's Facebook page, and I thought it summed things up fairly well: "This infrastructure plan is basically the transit system for a city of 3 million, being built while the city is 2 million, and seems ludicrous to folks who remember the city of 1 million from 30 years years ago."

 

We're used to having the transit system of a city of 200,000.  Even for a Southern city Nashville's infrastructure is pretty crappy.  In Europe, Japan, or even Canada, this would be considered a rather modest investment.

[Neigeville2]

8 hours ago, donNdonelson2 said:

Here is a photo from Friday afternoon-Denver 16th Street. Buzzing with activity!

 

But not buzzing with trains, which don't run down 16th.  These are just free shuttle buses going up and down the street literally every 2-3 minutes and stopping on every block, something a train is not going to do.   These buses have 3 wide doors and a floor level with the sidewalk and they don't have to collect fares so they are unbelievably easy to use and the boarding time at each stop  is a few seconds.  This is not something we're likely to get in Nashville.

If the green circulators ran this frequently, everyone would use them.  I don't know how they decided unpredictable and frequently detoured service every 15 minutes or so was useful to anybody.  I'd like to see them try free service every 5 minutes peak periods and evenings from roughly around 5th/Broadway to around where the Aertson is, the NE corner of Vanderbilt.  This is less than 1/2 the current length of the blue line circulator route which runs every 15 minutes, so it seems to me  it wouldn't cost much more to operate and I bet a lot of people would use a free ride from Vanderbilt to DT if they didn't have to wait for it.

[PruneTracy]

21 minutes ago, Neigeville2 said:

But not buzzing with trains, which don't run down 16th.  These are just free shuttle buses going up and down the street literally every 2-3 minutes and stopping on every block, something a train is not going to do.

The proposed tunnel route would make a lot more sense if it ran on the surface and stopped every block, rather than only three times underground. I assume the planners intended to focus on the transfer between Music City Central and the proposed SoBro transit hub, but the line is going to function as a collection/distribution route just as much as a pure transfer, if not more so.

There's also something to be said for the surface line in this context. Obviously the proposed tunnel isn't going to be a deep bore hundreds of feet down, as some newer subway lines have been, but even a cut-and-cover tunnel still requires some rider transit time between boarding/alighting and the pedestrian network (i.e., sidewalks on the surface). Same can be said for elevated systems. You're having to pass through turnstiles, use stairs, escalators, or elevators, etc., none of which are getting you any closer to your destination. By contrast, with a line running on the surface you can step off the transit vehicle and potentially be right at the front door of where you're going.

Using Fifth Avenue as a pedestrian/transit mall looks better and better compared to the proposed tunnel. It would be substantially cheaper, more flexible, and more convenient for riders. The street itself has relatively low vehicular traffic and is within optimal walking distance for the CBD. It has plenty of alternate routes and, looking at Google Street View, there are only a few garage entrances that might be cut off if it were closed. Obviously I don't have as much access to all the information as the people who put together this plan but it's surprising that the tunnel would be considered a more viable option than this.

[nashwatcher]

Will the tunnel be able to be added to in the future?

Like let's say they want to put a stop where 21st/West End meet in 25 years, or a stop at KVB and 8th, etc etc

Seems like it could be a good long term solution for moving people around downtown and could be added to incrementally

[Neigeville2]

Quote

The proposed tunnel route would make a lot more sense if it ran on the surface and stopped every block, rather than only three times underground

This is madness.  What commuter wants to ride a slow and leisurely train down 5th stopping every block along the way (10 stops from Central to Lafayette?  Someone riding the Murfreesboro Road train to connect with the Gallatin Rd line, or to catch a bus at Central, would have a maddeningly long and slow tour of DT as part of their commute).  If we insist trains can't move faster than a bus what's the point, let's just keep using cars.

[Neigeville2]

41 minutes ago, nashwatcher said:

Will the tunnel be able to be added to in the future?

Like let's say they want to put a stop where 21st/West End meet in 25 years, or a stop at KVB and 8th, etc etc

Seems like it could be a good long term solution for moving people around downtown and could be added to incrementally

Exactly.  As ambitious as this plan seems to the average Nashvillian  now, I think it's just a starter as higher density develops and people begin to grasp what Nashville's continued growth will entail.  For instance, if it became feasible to build an elevated line out of this tunnel to 5 points and another out to say, the NE corner of Vanderbilt, (never running in the street) it should be driverless like the metro lines in many cities.   With no operators to pay, such a system, at little additional operating cost, can run all night and at frequencies  where people can ride without planning, dispensing with the many disadvantages of light rail and really incentivizing high density development in its path.

From the wikipedia article on the Copenhagen metro (incidentally Copenhagen seems to be about the same size as Nashville-city 600K, metro 2 million- but I'm guessing the two are not otherwise comparable):

Quote

The metro solution was chosen because it combined the highest average speeds, the highest passenger capacity, the lowest visual and noise impact, and the lowest number of accidents. Despite requiring the highest investment, it had the highest net present value.

 

[PruneTracy]

9 minutes ago, Neigeville2 said:

Someone riding the Murfreesboro Road train to connect with the Gallatin Rd line, or to catch a bus at Central, would have a maddeningly long and slow tour of DT as part of their commute

That's the point, though. How many people are making transfers between hub-and-spoke routes versus leaving the system at downtown destinations? Does this number warrant the construction of a billion-dollar tunnel between Music City Central and a proposed second hub in SoBro? Are there better ways to serve this subset of riders, in particular a way to prevent riders traveling from one non-CBD location to another non-CBD location from traveling into the CBD?

Two issues that have been often discussed here and elsewhere are: 1) the inadequacy of the hub-and-spoke model in MTA's system; and 2) the poor siting of Music City Central relative to downtown destinations. A SoBro hub (particularly one that effectively acts as a sub-station to Music City Central) does little to fix the first issue, and a tunnel with three stops does little to fix the second.

[nashwatcher]

I think the tunnel will give us more options to expand the network as we continue to grow. When other counties adopt as well, we definitely want the connector running through downtown to be as quick as possible. If someone is coming from Antioch or Brentwood and wants to get to a spot on Charlotte Ave, we need the connections to be as efficient as possible.

[Pdt2f]

6 hours ago, Neigeville2 said:

We're used to having the transit system of a city of 200,000.  Even for a Southern city Nashville's infrastructure is pretty crappy.  In Europe, Japan, or even Canada, this would be considered a rather modest investment.

They're also willing to accept extortionate levels of taxation that Americans have never been willing to accept. Infrastructure and transit is one of the few reasons for taxation that I'm ok with, but if it's a question of either Nashville's current transit and traffic problems or European levels of taxation I'll take my Chevy and audiobooks, thanks. 

[titanhog]

I know many think the suburban counties aren't onboard...or aren't willing to ante up...but I don't think that's the case.  The counties surrounding Nashville really can't do much until Nashville builds a mass transit infrastructure from the center out.  It will do the suburbs little good to do anything at this point until the end-point is providing good flow within the downtown loop and West End.

It could be years or even a decade before the suburbs need to truly jump on board.  Then...it needs to be a regional conversation that helps connect the hundreds of thousands of workers pouring into Nashville every day as well as helping pay for it.

[Neigeville2]

10 hours ago, PruneTracy said:

That's the point, though. How many people are making transfers between hub-and-spoke routes versus leaving the system at downtown destinations? Does this number warrant the construction of a billion-dollar tunnel between Music City Central and a proposed second hub in SoBro? Are there better ways to serve this subset of riders, in particular a way to prevent riders traveling from one non-CBD location to another non-CBD location from traveling into the CBD?

Two issues that have been often discussed here and elsewhere are: 1) the inadequacy of the hub-and-spoke model in MTA's system; and 2) the poor siting of Music City Central relative to downtown destinations. A SoBro hub (particularly one that effectively acts as a sub-station to Music City Central) does little to fix the first issue, and a tunnel with three stops does little to fix the second.

A genuine rapid (i.e. trains moving very fast above or below grade) transit system on the (at least inner) spokes and a more frequent network of circulator buses and a couple of ring-road bus routes solves both of those problems to the extent they can be and will promote centralized high density development.  We can't build such a system immediately, but if we build a "rapid" transit system that is slower than what we have now, we've wasted money and turned people off of the whole concept of transit (as in Austin apparently), it would be better not to do anything (or maybe add a few "university connector" type buses to the system and say there, we've revolutionized transportation in Nashville.) 

There's certainly no reason to invest in trains and then take no advantage of what trains can do, (move lots of people fast and in comfort and be scaled up easily as demand increases, without paying for more drivers) and there's no reason to spend money buying buses and paying bus drivers when people don't use them.  Trains running in the street stopping every block is a complete boondoggle and I don't think bus "rapid" transit is proven in 1st world countries (works great in Jakarta and Bogota).

People in the US and especially in the South seem completely freaked out by the concept of investing in anything lasting.  The century old subway tunnels in London and New York will still be in use in the next century and are incredible assets to those cities.  We should view the cost in terms of the lifespan of the tunnel, which is potentially the lifespan of the city.

I also see no reason why someone going from Murfreesboro Rd to Gallatin Rd shouldn't go thru the CBD if they can do it in a high capacity vehicle in three quick hops, it doesn't inconvenience them or anyone else, it makes more sense than people driving on the Interstate loop around DT when that isn't their destination (I do this every time I go from my home in Madison to my office in Cool Springs, contributing to a huge mass of traffic that is not my destination.  As for people going from every random outlying point to every other, cars have created a design problem mass transit can't solve.  Let's use public transportation for what it can do.

[Neigeville2]

9 hours ago, Pdt2f said:

They're also willing to accept extortionate levels of taxation that Americans have never been willing to accept. Infrastructure and transit is one of the few reasons for taxation that I'm ok with, but if it's a question of either Nashville's current transit and traffic problems or European levels of taxation I'll take my Chevy and audiobooks, thanks. 

Not to get off topic, just thought I'd mention when you compare the 2008 US tax rate of 27.3% of GDP vs OECD at 36.2% and factor in how much more we pay individually for healthcare and higher education, I'm not even sure we're paying less, plus they get trains and better infrastructure overall.  Sorry for the digression.

[PruneTracy]

7 hours ago, Neigeville2 said:

There's certainly no reason to invest in trains and then take no advantage of what trains can do, (move lots of people fast and in comfort and be scaled up easily as demand increases, without paying for more drivers) and there's no reason to spend money buying buses and paying bus drivers when people don't use them.  Trains running in the street stopping every block is a complete boondoggle and I don't think bus "rapid" transit is proven in 1st world countries (works great in Jakarta and Bogota).

The question is whether we should be paying for trains at all. That's $3 billion of this plan for 26 corridor-miles of track, or roughly $115 million per corridor-mile (which puts it above the average LRT startup as a per-mile cost). By contrast, the projected cost of the Amp was $25 million per corridor-mile. The "rapid bus" (BRT-lite) system in Let's Move Nashville are projected to cost $9 million per corridor-mile.

The first-world/third-world comparison is precisely the problem. There is no functional difference between BRT and LRT. Both run in dedicated ROW with the same number of stops per mile and same average travel speeds. The only difference is that one runs on asphalt on rubber wheels and costs on average a fifth as much as the one with steel wheels on rails. So why pay five times as much for the same service? Because some potential riders, emphasis on potential, can't be seen riding a bus?

We had this same issue with the alternatives analysis for the Amp. The PR firm would send along the results of one survey showing that users along the corridor favored light rail over bus rapid transit, but when they asked people how often they would use one or the other, the numbers would be virtually the same. What was the disconnect? They liked the optics of the trams/streetcars running down West End Avenue, but in the end they wanted other people to use it, not them.

So again, why should the city spend $3 billion on a high-capacity transit system that provides identical service to a $650 million system? To try to attract additional ridership from people who don't want to slum it up on the bus but aren't guaranteed to actually use light rail anyway once it's built? I would posit that if there are people out there who simply have to have trains in order to maybe think about using transit, then maybe they should pay for trains themselves instead of expecting Metro taxpayers to pick up the tab for their hang-ups about maintaining a first-world image. At the risk of getting too political I'd argue the only difference between us and the Jakartas and Bogotas of the world is our ability to float enough debt to maintain the trappings of our civilization. For now, anyway.

7 hours ago, Neigeville2 said:

People in the US and especially in the South seem completely freaked out by the concept of investing in anything lasting.  The century old subway tunnels in London and New York will still be in use in the next century and are incredible assets to those cities.  We should view the cost in terms of the lifespan of the tunnel, which is potentially the lifespan of the city.

New York's MTA spends something like $1.5 billion per year on its subway tunnels and rail lines, and they allegedly have a maintenance backlog ten times that. Transport for London's overall operating cost for the Underground is £2.2 billion, not sure how much of that goes to maintenance on fixed assets. Point is, you aren't done spending money once the ribbon gets cut. The day the tunnel in downtown Nashville opens, it represents an increase in MTA's maintenance budget that must be spent each year just to keep it open. Same goes for rails embedded in streets. It's prudent to ask how confident we are that we can maintain those levels of spending indefinitely and how much benefit we are going to derive from it.

7 hours ago, Neigeville2 said:

I also see no reason why someone going from Murfreesboro Rd to Gallatin Rd shouldn't go thru the CBD if they can do it in a high capacity vehicle in three quick hops, it doesn't inconvenience them or anyone else, it makes more sense than people driving on the Interstate loop around DT when that isn't their destination (I do this every time I go from my home in Madison to my office in Cool Springs, contributing to a huge mass of traffic that is not my destination.  As for people going from every random outlying point to every other, cars have created a design problem mass transit can't solve.  Let's use public transportation for what it can do.

It inconveniences the people paying the money to build, maintain, and operate the tunnel. Commuting through downtown by car doesn't make sense either, like transit, it's a testament to the need for bypassing options around the CBD. Again, the question is whether there is another option that passes the cost/benefit test.

[grilled_cheese]

And yet we still dumb money into roads for low population areas but no one questions those maintenance costs. 

[PruneTracy]

32 minutes ago, grilled_cheese said:

And yet we still dumb money into roads for low population areas but no one questions those maintenance costs. 

I totally question it, and have before on this thread:

It really doesn't matter what the mode of transportation is, the name of the game is sustainability. We can't afford to build and maintain heavy infrastructure unless we know we're going to extract the full benefit from it. As someone who makes money off planning, designing, and building infrastructure, that's painful to say, but you can't change math.

[Neigeville2]

2 hours ago, PruneTracy said:

 

It inconveniences the people paying the money to build, maintain, and operate the tunnel. Commuting through downtown by car doesn't make sense either, like transit, it's a testament to the need for bypassing options around the CBD. Again, the question is whether there is another option that passes the cost/benefit test.

Despite many words, your point is less clear to me than ever, I'm genuinely puzzled 1) if you think any public transit system will pass the cost/benefit test and

2) what system could possibly compensate for land use policies that have created an arrangement of places to live and places to work that spreads them at random across vast distances.   

3) Is public transit an urban amenity like parks and sidewalks, benefiting businesses, the riders and everybody else, or a antiquated welfare program for a few unfortunates who haven't yet graduated to cars and which could perhaps be replaced by some kind of voucher?  Given the number of times  we're paying a bus driver's salary and insurance, not mention $100s of thousands for the vehicle, to chauffeur one or two people around, I wonder if the latter option might be workable. 

BRT works in Jakarta because it confines the mobs of buses formerly jamming the streets to their own lanes, freeing up automobile traffic, and they can run as many buses as they want because they can pay the drivers next to nothing.  It already was a high volume system, it just handled that volume inefficiently for both cars and buses and BRT brought order.   None of that is true here.  What lies behind this proposal is envisioning a system that can change land use patterns at least in the core and along inner lengths of arterials, and over years draw larger numbers of people into the public transit system, something the local business community and developers seem to have bought into. and will help advance.  By its nature this land use pattern and its transit system are centralized and not dispersed.

Like parks, public art, etc. it costs money and could be derided as mere optics.  Our economy has continued to grow and while I realize most of that money needs to go for luxury penthouses and chef-driven menus, the question is can we use some of it to make a better city, or do we have to model ourselves on the 3rd world, which I think becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Do we envision a new landscape altered by a new transit system, like the highway designers of the mid-20th century did, or just continue to live with off their vision and look for a few cheap tweaks?

</speech>. 

I think I know your answer to that last question so consider it rhetorical, but I'm curious as to questions numbered 1, 2 & 3 above.

[PruneTracy]

58 minutes ago, Neigeville2 said:

I think I know your answer to that last question so consider it rhetorical, but I'm curious as to questions numbered 1, 2 & 3 above.

I'm trying to avoid working on Sunday which is why I'm writing like I get paid by the word.

It's important to note that I am not anti-transit. Indeed I often get paid to tell clients that are transit agencies (including Nashville MTA) where and how to direct their resources, and also to tout to their customers and the general public the benefits of a new line or system. Obviously there are benefits, including those that warrant public subsidy of the system.

So while the answer to 1) is yes, the real question is whether this particular plan for Nashville is the most economical use of our funds. I don't believe it is. BRT could be substituted for the light rail and provide exactly the same service at a fraction of the cost. As you noted, a greater utilization of cross-town routes (which MTA has resisted since the opening of Music City Central) would obviate much of the worry about transferring between downtown transit hubs (and by extension the tunnel). Those two items alone are three-quarters of the cost of this plan and the only functional difference between it and BRT plus cross-town routes is that a rider would transfer downtown instead of, say, along Briley Parkway somewhere.

And again there is not a functional difference between BRT and light rail. Both run in dedicated lanes with built-up stations that include pre-paid fares. The light rail in Nashville's plan is the on-street variety, like trams or streetcars, that will need operators to run the throttle and open the doors until the robots take over.

For 2) we have to ask a hard question about what it is we want. Throwing money at transit in hopes of luring residents to urban areas is a half-measure, and a speculative one at that. No one built freeways or automobiles with the explicit goal of moving people out to the suburbs; on the other hand the number of apartments and condos going up in the CBD while projects like the Amp get canned suggests the decision is not wholly dependent on transit.

In any case, if we are going to spend billions on transit with this goal in mind then we should be prepared to defend that investment on the development front. That means urban growth boundaries, restrictive zoning and master plans, telling builders to pound sand when they try to do their own thing. Outlined here:

That's the hard question. Is this what we want? Are we willing to turn away residents and employers in pursuit of it? Are we confident this resolve will last through generations of residents and various economic cycles? I'm not saying the answer is yes or no but we can't have our cake and eat it too.

The roundabout answer to 3) is that we can't insulate ourselves from the real costs of a service. Public transit (and public roads, for that matter) is more like a utility, like water or electricity. It serves the public good, everyone needs it, but it also has very high startup and operating costs that can be tied to discrete uses of the system. The best way to handle it is the best way to handle other utilities: link capital to utilization. The actual cost to users is a separate matter. Maybe the housing agency passes out transit vouchers to residents of public housing or other low-income groups, maybe the planners get developers to offer vouchers or discounts in a certain district, maybe employers get transit passes as an incentive, or buy them on their own. There's a million ways to handle that but the point is to make the transit agency cover its costs through fares, to make the cost of a ride the cost of providing that ride. That's the only way we can be sure that transit agencies are going to act to maximize the utility of their service, instead of according to their current incentives, which in my experience is a combination of a) what the political climate allows and b) how much money they can get from the federal government.

[AronG]

15 hours ago, PruneTracy said:

[snip]

The best way to handle it is the best way to handle other utilities: link capital to utilization. The actual cost to users is a separate matter. Maybe the housing agency passes out transit vouchers to residents of public housing or other low-income groups, maybe the planners get developers to offer vouchers or discounts in a certain district, maybe employers get transit passes as an incentive, or buy them on their own. There's a million ways to handle that but the point is to make the transit agency cover its costs through fares, to make the cost of a ride the cost of providing that ride. That's the only way we can be sure that transit agencies are going to act to maximize the utility of their service, instead of according to their current incentives, which in my experience is a combination of a) what the political climate allows and b) how much money they can get from the federal government.

A.) Deciding what to spend on based on current traffic (i.e. 'link capital to utilization') works great when you have a good system and all you want to do is expand it. That's the opposite of the situation Nashville is in. There's no mystery where that mindset leads; you can call it the Atlanta strategy. Fortunately we're not obligated to continue adding lanes and parking lots just because that's what we did in the past. This is like saying we shouldn't build a bridge because barely anyone is swimming across the river. We can build something new and enable new development patterns.

B.) No-one anywhere fully funds their transit system through ticket sales. Transit is an investment that cities around the world make because it improves their quality of life.

[MidTenn1]

Just a random thought....what about a Chicago 'L' type route down 5th Avenue between James Robertson Blvd and Lafayette. I think it would be less costly and more 'cooler' and attractive to potential users as it rolled over Broadway past the Arena and Convention Center.

 

Edited October 23, 2017 by PHofKS