Author Archives: Alon Levy

The Different Cities We Inhabit

Posted on 2013/05/20

I do not know many people who live in Boston proper. I know about a hundred who live in the Greater Boston area, but only a small minority lives in the city proper, as is of course true in general. … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal/Admin, Politics and Society, Providence, Urbanism | Leave a comment

Infrastructure and Democracy

Posted on 2013/05/07

Two stories, one recent and one older, have made me think about the undemocratic way the US builds infrastructure. The older story is California HSR’s cost overrun coming from scope creep; the biggest overruns were in the Bay Area, where … Continue reading →

Posted in High-Speed Rail, Incompetence, New York, Politics and Society, Regional Rail, Transportation | 44 Comments

New Hudson Tunnels

Posted on 2013/04/11

Traditionally, proposals for new mainline rail tunnels across the Hudson enter Penn Station’s southern tracks, which are used by New Jersey Transit. This includes the ARC incarnations that connected to Penn Station’s preexisting tracks, Amtrak’s Gateway, and the Institute for … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 30 Comments

The Problem with Anchoring

Posted on 2013/04/04

A major idea due to Jarrett Walker, adopted with gusto by Vancouver’s Translink, is that transit should be anchored at both ends. That is, transit lines should have busy destinations at both ends, and should strive to reorient development such … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, New York, Transportation, Urban Design, Urban Transit, Urbanism, Vancouver | 35 Comments

UN and Rail Operators Propose International Vacuum Train Network

Posted on 2013/04/01

The UN Development Programme, the UIC, the governments of Japan and the EU, and the Japan Railways group have issued a joint release calling for the development of an international network of vacuum tubes in which trains will travel at … Continue reading →

Posted in High-Speed Rail, Transportation | 16 Comments

Linear Compression: How HSR is Like Rapid Transit

Posted on 2013/03/12

A post from last month on Keep Houston Houston notes how high-speed rail transformed Japanese geography to the point that it’s faster to get from Osaka to Nagano via Tokyo than direct despite a doubling of travel distance. The same … Continue reading →

Posted in High-Speed Rail, Transportation, Urban Transit | 14 Comments

SkyTrain and UBC

Posted on 2013/02/18

I live about 3 minutes from an express bus stop, where I can get the express bus and be at UBC within 15 minutes, whereupon I can walk from the diesel bus loop to my classroom in 6 minutes. Since … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal/Admin, Transportation, Urban Transit, Vancouver | 64 Comments

The Magic Triangle: Infrastructure-Timetable-Rolling Stock

Posted on 2013/01/21

In the last month, Amtrak decided not to purchase additional Acela cars, but instead replace the Acela fleet ahead of time, and try to buy trains that aren’t compliant with FRA regulations. More recently, Amtrak and the California HSR Authority … Continue reading →

Posted in Amtrak, FRA, High-Speed Rail, Incompetence, Transportation | 109 Comments

C-Shaped Lines

Posted on 2012/12/19

The ideal rapid transit line looks something like a straight line. It can have deviations, but on a map it will be more or less a line with a definitive direction. Most rapid transit lines are indeed linear, or failing … Continue reading →

Posted in New York, Regional Rail, Transportation, Urban Transit | 36 Comments

Asymmetric Mode Choice

Posted on 2012/11/24

In most models I have seen, ridership and mode choice are assumed to be symmetric: if I take the bus to work, I will also take it back home. Of course those models distinguish home from work: if a bus … Continue reading →

Posted in Personal/Admin, Transportation, Urban Transit | 25 Comments