|
Hailing from Richmond. Once the home of the first electric streetcar network in the country-- you can still see where the old lines ran, where suspiciously straight and wide roads run out into the early suburbs-- the city is now home to a meh-to-acceptable bus system.  Though activists have been hoping for a renewal of light rail, perhaps restoring the once-iconic streetcars, nothing ever happens here on a governmental level so we're lucky to get Bus Rapid Transit. So far a single line, the Pulse, has been greenlit along the busiest length of the bus system. If it receives high ridership it'll prove to investors that hey, there's a desire for public transit here.For fun and profit, have a look at how the streetcar lines literally just got turned into the bus lines, and the bus lines basically haven't been updated since, despite going on three quarters of a century of development! Whoo. I hate transit politics. Meanwhile, the aforementioned Amtrak system is undergoing expansion, with environmental review underway on an extension of high-speed rail from DC (the endpoint of the Northeast high speed rail corridor) to Richmond (the beginning of the Southeast corridor). This has riled up the country bumpkins, because it would require a bypass of freight traffic around the adorable small railroad town of Ashland, whose center street the railroad bisects. As Ashland is the sole blue spot in bright-red Hanover County, home to noted shithead David Brat (you may know him as the dude who unseated Eric Cantor), this has exacerbated pre-existing town-vs-county rivalries. I don't expect Brat's sound and fury to change anything, though, as this project is the key to expanding high speed rail from Richmond east to Norfolk and south to Raleigh, and thence to the rest of the southeast.
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2016 16:33
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:49 |
|
|
Cicero posted:I think this doesn't get enough play. Google Maps is pretty useful for driving, but it and similar apps are a total game changer for transit, in my opinion. I mean, if you're just taking the same route over and over, for work or something, it's not a huge deal, but for any kind of novel trip it's sooooo much easier. That and various transit systems having their own apps which specialize in calculating the most efficient route, timing train arrivals, finding the nearest station, and other things that make using transit genuinely pleasant. I keep my Embark app at the ready whenever I'm up in DC, even though by now I know the system core pretty well-- you never know when there's a disruption you didn't know about, but which the app has already accounted for.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 1, 2016 20:55
|
|
|
I wanna hear about how Reagan personally hosed SEPTA, that sounds entertaining.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 6, 2016 23:26
|
|
|
I see your water infiltration problems and failing rail infrastructure and raise you the future of urban transit: underground gondolas.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 8, 2016 20:52
|
|
|
Does bikeshare fall under the umbrella of transit politics? Long popular in Europe and Asia, for a long time, US cities shunned the idea of bike-sharing programs, after Portland's Yellow Bike Project foundered in the face of theft and vandalism. However, in recent years the development of GPS, RFID, and app-integration technologies have allowed for much more closely-managed bike fleets. Following from the success of Washington DC's Capital Bikeshare and New York's Citibike (respectively, the second-largest and largest programs in the US), bikesharing programs have emerged into popularity.  Usually the way it works is this: the city distributes stations across a fairly wide area, placing them near areas of high-density residential, business districts, tourist destinations, and generally anywhere else people are likely to want to travel to or from. Here for reference is Capital Bikeshare's station map. Bikes can be checked out from a station, either using a credit card to pay up front or a membership 'key' obtained by paying a monthly or yearly subscription. Typically this pays for a 45-minute or 1-hour trip, long enough to reach just about any other station in the city, since the programs are typically intended more for transit than pleasure. However, you can keep a bike out longer, it just means you get charged an extra $2-5bux per half hour or something along those lines. Bicycles can be returned to any other station, and another bike pulled out for another 45 minutes if that's what you really want. If a station is full (which can be seen from the station map above!) you can swipe your card/key to get 15 free minutes to get you to the nearest empty station. So it's a cool system with lots of cool technology; the proof-of-concept Capital Bikeshare provided helped a bunch of other cities decide to splurge on their own systems, many of which have been successful. Off the top of my head, San Francisco has a pretty good one, and Minneapolis too? I don't know much about those other systems though, I've mostly used CB. Even my own city of Richmond is getting one! Which does worry me because the city has lots of hills and DC and New York both really don't, and tourists tend to be kind of afraid of hills. But I figure if SF can figure it out, so can we. Bikeshare is typically proposed as a way of dealing with last-mile inefficiencies (getting people to and from light rail or BRT stations, for instance), alleviating traffic, making bicycles available to those without the space or means to own their own, and making people healthier! Whether or not it does all these things is a matter of debate but it's pretty cool anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2016 20:07
|
|
|
To tie this back into the original example, as part of its comp plan, DC (which despite being home to Congress is mostly run by transit planner wet-dream UN-slobbering socialists apparently) massively expanded its bike infrastructure, including a huge network of buffered bike lanes along major avenues and regular bike lanes along secondary arteries. It's really a thing of beauty and is a huge part of Capital Bikeshare's success. Part of the reason they were able to do this is because despite its dependence on congress for a budget (until recently) DC is a unitary system, both state and city. Regular cities are forced to grapple with what their state will fund, and most transit funding is based on lane-miles, or the number of automobile lanes multiplied by the distance they travel. This tended to mean that if a city turned a lane into anything else, including parking or (gasp) a bike lane, they lost out on some funding, so it rarely happened. Some states have changed this, however, allowing for a certain distance of transit or bike lanes to receive unaltered highway funding. Hilariously enough Virginia did this for just Richmond last year in the run up to the world bicycling championships, and as a trial run. They're looking at making it permanent and statewide next year, which would be a huge boon for livability in the commonwealth's cities, including the hugely populated NOVA suburbs. It'll partially come down to whether the UN conspirators win a crushing blow for transit communism, or whether the heroic Red Dawn resistance strikes back for automobiles, suburbs, and the American Way.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2016 20:48
|
|
|
PT6A posted:On the subject of bikeshares, I still haven't seen a good solution to the fact that there's no infrastructure to provide helmet rentals (which would be gross anyway). Maybe I'm taking the indoctrination of my childhood too seriously, but that seems like an irresponsible thing. Yes, most Bikeshare programs grapple with this issue. Outside of some sort of huge helmet vending machine I don't really see a solution though. Capital Bikeshare hands out helmets with their logo and colors on them like candy, in any way they can figure out how. I got one from a staff member, as soon as he found out I was a cyclist who didn't have one he basically threw it at me. 
|
|
#
¿
Apr 13, 2016 23:36
|
|
|
Operating between three state-level entities and six (soon to be seven) localities definitely doesn't help Metro, since each of them wants to pay as little as possible, and any funding equation is extraordinarily fudgeable given how many factors contribute to "how much benefit does X County get from Metro." I mean, I still love the metro because it's still the best public transit system within two hours drive, but it's very much an exasperated, why is the toddler painting the walls with his poop kind of love.
|
|
#
¿
May 7, 2016 20:40
|
|
|
Neon Belly posted:This is probably a huge part of the problem. Too much ambiguity in funding makes it really hard to plan. 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  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?
|
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2016 18:20
|
|
|
Debate & Discussion: voted facho › Transit Politics: The Little Engines That Couldnt Get Federal Funding DoT grants to help urbanism, sustainability, walkability, all that fun stuff are completely dead for the time being. It's unfortunate, because I know my city's weak-rear end new BRT line is relying on some federal grants; I sincerely hope that stuff is all allocated and can't be revoked by the new administration. New projects will have to rely on state and local funding at best. maybe we can convince Republicans that transit systems are actually militarily useful?
|
|
#
¿
Nov 11, 2016 04:25
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 12:49 |
|
|
boner confessor posted:yeah i said that in my post All I know is that on my local level there were a bunch of federal grants involved. Virginia was supposed to be a model for transit and rail, since it's a) close to DC b) had a number of projects ready to go and c) had a cooperative state government. And all those projects are at risk now.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 12, 2016 00:25
|
|