Category Archives: Urban Transit

The Problem with Anchoring

Posted on 2013/04/04 by

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

Linear Compression: How HSR is Like Rapid Transit

Posted on 2013/03/12 by

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 by

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

C-Shaped Lines

Posted on 2012/12/19 by

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 by

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

Construction Costs and Perceptions

Posted on 2012/10/28 by

While looking for South Korean cost data for a major update of my construction costs posts, I stumbled upon a newspaper article excoriating Seoul’s extravagant construction, comparing it unfavorably with the US. Per Joong-Ang, the US neglect of infrastructure is … Continue reading →

Posted in Construction Costs, Regional Rail, Transportation, Urban Transit | 25 Comments

Branching

Posted on 2012/10/24 by

S-Bahns and similar systems have two defining features. One has been hashed to death on this blog: they reuse legacy rail lines, allowing urban rapid transit to extend arbitrarily deep into suburbia. The other, common also to many other transit … Continue reading →

Posted in New York, Regional Rail, Transportation, Urban Transit | 43 Comments

Transit and Place

Posted on 2012/10/18 by

There is a large class of transit supporters who think that every right-of-way that can be used for transit should be preserved for this purpose, even if it is not very useful. A few overzealous railfans on the message boards … Continue reading →

Posted in Development, New York, Transportation, Urban Transit, Urbanism | 53 Comments

Relative Costs of Transit Construction

Posted on 2012/09/25 by

The relative costs of different technologies of transit are not fixed. Although there are some rules of thumb for the ratio of tunneling cost to above-ground transit cost, the actual ratio depends on the city and project, and this would … Continue reading →

Posted in Construction Costs, Good/Interesting Studies, Studies, Transportation, Urban Transit, Vancouver | 9 Comments

Nobody Likes Riding North American Commuter Rail

Posted on 2012/09/14 by

In New York, two neighborhoods at the edge of the city have both subway and commuter rail service: Wakefield and Far Rockaway. Wakefield has 392 inbound weekday Metro-North boardings, and 4,955 weekday subway boardings. Far Rockaway has 158 riders (an … Continue reading →

Posted in Incompetence, New York, Regional Rail, Transportation, Urban Transit, Vancouver | 170 Comments