|
kefkafloyd posted:A Good Link™: the Railroad.net forums. Haha, holy poo poo, it's like every conversation/lecture I've had with my father sorted by subcategory. He's a little spergy so am I  Anyways, nice to see Denver transit getting some good vibes. I'm glad to see the metro area is finally getting serious about public transit, because the area is already starting to look like a baby LA. Currently my only concern is that most of the rail lines just go into the suburbs, which for the most part have notoriously poor bus coverage so either you need a bike or someone to pick you up. The unserved gap between Union Station and Glendale (the chunk southeast of the Union Station hub) is where a large part of the city lives (coincidentally, that is also where all the football players and lawyers live  )
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2016 15:46
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:35 |
|
|
A fun little story about BRT in the Denver metro area I just remembered. One of the selling points of the upgraded/dedicated bus route between Boulder and Denver was that the buses would be driving on the shoulder of the highway. No new lanes needed Of course it was like, 3 weeks before the route was set to open before someone realized that driving on the shoulder in this state is (was) straight up  illegal. Obviously the legislature scrambled for an exemption and the buses run fine now, but it sort of reflects quite a bit on the state of our local public transit system and the people responsible for it.http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_29148597/set-debut-boulder-denver-bus-line-clipped-by
|
|
#
¿
Apr 3, 2016 06:52
|
|
|
donoteat posted:I know in the Trainchat thread there's been a few great in depth posts trashing British Rail equipment which have been extremely popular. Would anyone be interested in an in-depth post series about SEPTA (America's worst greatest transit system)? 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2016 18:53
|
|
|
Curvature of Earth posted:There's an entire organization dedicated to going back to the sort of land-use pattern you described: Strong Towns. Apparently, pre-1950, U.S. towns followed a very European style of land-use. I could cite endless blog posts by them, but the short of it is: On a similar path to this comment, there's a movement in urban planning called Transit-oriented development. The core tenets of which (from my brief readings) are 1.) more public transit 2.) zone for mixed used near transit hubs & 3.) zone for higher density near transit hubs.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2016 05:06
|
|
|
NAT-T Ice posted:Ah, yes, housing designed for baby boomer retirees in the urban paradise that is Dallas, TX is the blueprint for America's future cities. Can't build stairs when your primary market is 60+
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2016 18:56
|
|
|
Combed Thunderclap posted:Oh poo poo I forgot  7 Our little big city has finally joined the illustrious ranks of "Cities with good public transit to the airport"
|
|
#
¿
Apr 23, 2016 00:41
|
|
|
Eskaton posted:How loving often are you guys buying cases of wine? Jesus, what a dumb point to goon about. Local Goon complains about in the
|
|
#
¿
Apr 28, 2016 20:45
|
|
|
Panzeh posted:Cities are dogshit places to live and we oughta find a way to make suburbanism work. 2/10 troll. Why don't you go practice in the dem primary thread.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 29, 2016 15:30
|
|
|
Badger of Basra posted:A planning professor told me a lot of national retail chains still insist on big setbacks with huge parking lots because they want people to know they can park at their stores. Not sure if that's changing or not, but I do know some chains have started doing urban formats that don't fit the traditional big box look. I don't know about other parts of the country, but in the north Denver metro area there are starting to be a lot of really weird, incongruous developments popping up. Like one new development was a bunch of small footprint rowhouses with walking distance commercial zoning, and literally across the street they're building a loving Wal-Mart and attached strip mall. The rowhouse area looks cool and will probably outlast the rest of the area, but it looks a little out of place across the street from standard suburbia. Another collection of retail outlets even further out had a mixture of standard big box lot layout, coupled with narrow strets, parallel parking, downtown emulating traffic layout, but still next to big box stores. The worst part is that there are (purely decorative) parking meters installed as some sort of cargo cult extension of "downtown" 
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2016 05:42
|
|
|
The Maroon Hawk posted:Wait, what? Where is this? Asking as a former North-metro-Denver-liver. Not too far off, it was just barely Westminster. It's the REI near I-25 & 144th
|
|
#
¿
May 10, 2016 15:23
|
|
|
Combed Thunderclap posted:Maybe New Yorkers know more about how plausible this is, but I'm sure those are people who just put down "I live in Buffalo" and "I work in NYC" and bam, they're in the dataset. Yeah, when I was living in Boston I remember reading an article talking about people who commute to jobs in NYC from Portland, Maine. Basically they WFH 2-3 times a week, then fly in for a couple of days for in person meeting/management stuff while sleeping in an AirBnB or some poo poo. It's pretty much only an option for high level management or salespeople though, since all they do is answer emails & go to meetings while setting their own schedules.
|
|
#
¿
May 25, 2016 22:35
|
|
|
Huttan posted:RTD is only allowed to operate where voters approve it. Since it is a "special tax district", this means voting for higher sales taxes. Castle Rock voted themselves out of the RTD district and keep voting to stay out. No light rail can go from Denver to Colorado Springs until that outlet mall in Castle Rock is part of the tax district and they want to keep their sales tax lower for the outlet mall. I just want to say that no light rail should be going to Colorado Springs (or Castle Rock for that matter), that should definately be a heavy rail commuter line. But more importantly most of the communities in the south Denver area hate taxes and public transit, so I think that for the most part they should be ignored. Maybe they'll change their tune in thirty years when they see what a commuter rail interconnection and strong public transit does for the communities in the north. Anyway, speaking of Denver transit chat, a couple of weeks ago I used public transit to get door to DIA and it was a very pleasant experience. It's nice that Union Station is a terminal for many bus routes and the A line, which makes the ride way less stressful.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 28, 2016 15:46
|
|
|
Quorum posted:This is almost certainly the root of it all, though there's bound to be other factors-- you're right that WMATA appears to be uniquely incompetent and it's hard to say exactly why; shakeups in management have appeared to make little headway in that regard. It's hard to say how to solve the dedicated funding problem, though. I suppose you could amend the WMATA Compact, which gives the agency its borrowing and operating authority, to give it tax-levying powers or something, but it's an interstate compact and requires authority from all involved state-level bodies and Congress and loving Basing this theory off of my somewhat brief experience working for a state government, it probably boils down to a lack of direction or clear hierarchy. I mean you're talking about an organizational body that is in a hyper-political spot that basically has to appease 2 state governments, the federal district, and the U.S. congress. So you have managers that are paralyzed from making decisions for fear of pissing off anyone higher on the chain from them (or god forbid the external shareholders) and as a result, the rank and file have no direction and no clear vision to follow, so they'll just do as little as they can get away with while still holding their jobs.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2016 19:30
|
|
at that ever happening. Plus then I'm pretty sure constitutionally it'd need to be an elected board and I honestly have no idea how the WMATA board is chosen. Appointed by governors I think?
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:35 |
|
|
mobby_6kl posted:Do they give out parking spaces individually? Our office is in a business park on the outskirts of the city rather than downtown but the way it's done is there are maybe like 20 spaces per 50 people, all on first-come first serve basis, but it's usually at most 80% full. The assumption is that most people would be using public transport most of the time but if anyone needs to drive, it's not a problem either. They also give (or used to) like twenty bucks or so per month to contribute to the transit pass or gas. It depends on both the organization and the location of said organization. My internship in university was an office complex on the periphery of a university in another town. There were parking passes to hang from the rear view to keep uni kids from parking there and just walking onto campus, but the lot itself was big enough that it boiled down to first come first serve and the lot itself was never really full. My first job out of college was a private org in central Boston. There they had a monthly commuter subsidy, which amounted to basically either a fully paid transit pass, a cheap commuter rail pass, or essentially a half cost monthly parking garage payment for a short walk to the office, or a cheaper lot with a longer walk to the office. If you were really close to the VP that managed that office, you actually got a parking spot in the building itself for free (which everyone agreed was total bullshit.) My current gig is in downtown Denver for the government. The office complex itself has a dedicated parking garage, but there are more employees in the office then there are spaces in the garage. So at this point you either get put on the waiting list for the wait list at the garage (plus a monthly payment) or you pay $10 a month for a full transit pass. My mom and dad, when they worked in the suburbs of Denver, never had to worry about parking spaces or even parking permits.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 7, 2016 03:14
|
|