Houston just revamped its entire transit system, an upgrade that doubles the number of frequent bus lines but didn’t cost a cent.
Some 2.1. million residents live in the nation’s fourth largest city, and they’re spread over a wide geographic area. (Point of reference: Nearly eight times as many people live on one New York City block compared to Houston.) And since the Texas town is known as a place where cars are a prerequisite, this makes Houston METRO’s feat all the more astonishing.
How did the transit authority do it? By focusing on areas where ridership could be increased and people could be moved most efficiently. Duplicate routes and meandering zig-zags that were originally designed to pick up a few hard-to-reach passengers were dropped.
A small number of residents, designers admit, will have to walk further to reach service, but only 0.5 percent of bus riders will be more than one-quarter of a mile from a stop.
“The core idea of the new network is the high-frequency grid,” says planner Jarrett Walker. Downtown, for instance, this means riders will be able to catch any bus within 15 minutes and transfer somewhere else along the line. While that may require one additional stop than riders are used to, residents will be able to move around town much faster than ever before.
Tag: transit
5 Recent, Big Transit Moves in America That Are Worth Talking About
Over the past year we’ve reported on stories about the global rise of startups like Uber and Lyft to the feasibility of driverless cars in the near future. While cities nationwide continue to innovate new ways of revitalizing transit and technology brings transportation into a new realm of possibility, CityLab’s Eric Jaffe takes a look back at some of the most recent highlights:
Self-driving car takes on the city
Last April, Google’s famed autonomous car progressed from driving on simple highways to the twists and turns of city streets. In late May, the company also unveiled a compact version of its self-driving car with a goal on the horizon of testing it in California. With such progress in one short year, Google is on track to bring those cars to a city near you.
U.S. embraces high-speed rail
Super fast trains made a splash this year after California’s state budget made room to break ground on its longstanding plan for high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco, receiving 25 percent of California’s cap-and-trade revenue each year moving forward. Some reports estimate between $3 and $5 million in funding annually. The state also announced a winning bid and set a groundbreaking date next month on Jan. 5, 2015. That’s a big commitment to moving forward. But elsewhere in the country, high-speed rail projects have gained traction including a Dallas to Houston line and the beginning of construction on the Miami to Orlando route.
Say Aloha to driverless transit
The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation is blazing the trail in the U.S. for the first wide-scale urban transit system that is automated. While driverless transit has popped up in cities throughout the world, Honolulu is the first American city to begin soliciting bids for nine stations, including designs for one at its airport. The concept, as experts point out, enables trains to run closer together and provides many safety advantages.
Bicycles go electric
Municipalities have made major advances on enhancing roads to include safe bike paths, and in Cambridge, Mass., a bike company has made strides on creating a new type of bike that could transform the industry. The Cambridge-based mobility company Superpedestrian developed and began taking pre-orders on its Copenhagen Wheel, which turns existing bikes into electric-power bicycles. As CityLab reports, experts estimate the product has the potential to put the U.S. as one of the world’s top e-bike markets within the next two decades.
New York’s “Vision Zero” safety plan
The Big Apple took a page out of Sweden’s playbook earlier this year when Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Vision Zero, a plan to bring the city’s traffic-related death and injury statistics down to zero. The city has rolled out several regulations as a part of the plan, including reducing speed limits to 25 miles an hour. San Francisco is also pushing a similar strategy.
MORE: New York City Looks to Stockholm for a Traffic Blueprint
Why American Transit Systems Need to Adopt This Donation Platform
No matter where you go, using public transportation often results in a pocketful of transit cards loaded with small amounts of leftover money. There’s simply nothing you can do, except pass along the extra fare to a friend or save for the next time you’re in town.
But a 22-year-old Oxford University graduate has a bright idea for that big problem.
Determined to find a recipient for the extra fare other than transportation authorities, Zander Whitehurst designed Common Pence, a system that allows commuters to tap their cards against a radio-frequency identification (RFID) reader to donate the remaining cash to charity. Though it’s designed for London’s Oyster Card, Whitehurst is hoping to bring the idea elsewhere — an idea that transit companies in the U.S. should latch onto immediately.
In Europe, holding the Oyster Card against the panel automatically transmits 50 pence and commuters can drain the remaining balance completely by continuing to press it against the system. The system also allows users to track the funding online, see the progress and measure their impact, according to the site.
While not all transit cards come equipped with RFID technology, Whitehurst is also aiming to expand the concept to bus passes and contactless credit cards, which are now available for use in London’s transit system. Whitehurst tells Fast Company he’s been talking to London’s transit authority, Transport for London (TfL), regarding the idea.
Whitehurst has also designed a hand-held version of the device for fundraisers to use while trying to raise money on the street. Instead of hassling people with writing down emails, the hand-held panel eases the process.
“Face to face, people try to get you to send an email just to donate £3, and it’s such a hassle for most people,” he says. “The other free-hanging panels can exist almost anywhere in the urban environment. I’m trying to encourage local charities to be displayed on the panels so people can give back and invest in their own communities.”
The idea is to one day help charities simplify fundraising and help commuters do something with leftover fare cards by being able to use a smartphone app, credit card or fare card at one of any of Common Pence’s panels throughout the world.
“It’s trying to innovate donation to the point where we’re not using physical spare change,” he says.
Our guess is that this is an idea that the Salvation Army would love.
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The Twin Cities Find the Key to a Happy Commute
Waiting at transit stops is hardly enjoyable. Between navigating crowds, dirty platforms and schedule delays, public transportation can be a lot for commuters to endure. But part of that difficulty may be just be perception.
A study from 1993 found that waiting just one minute felt more like 4.4 minutes of traveling — which means if it takes you 20 minutes to get home, it’s likely you’ll feel you should have been there after five minutes of waiting.
While more transit agencies are alleviating the problem by updating stops with real-time schedules, it turns out that the setup of a stop might make the wait a little more bearable.
According to an unpublished working paper from researchers at University of Minnesota, a stop’s amenities — such as benches, shelters or visible schedules — may play more of a role than we think. The study found that riders at a stop with no shelter perceived a five minute wait to feel more like six minutes, whereas commuters at other types of “premium” stops (such as those with shelters or full stations) perceived a five minute wait to be closer to three minutes.
Researchers surveyed 822 bus and train riders in three types of categories: no shelter (a curbside stand), a basic bus shelter (including a bench and weather protection) and premium stations (completely or partially enclosed).
“That’s actually a very good thing, because this amenity shortens people’s estimation of waiting time,” says Professor Yingling Fan, a transport scholar leading the project.
The study also finds that posted schedules are more effective at low-frequency stops while high-traffic stops could benefit from displaying wait times between arrivals.
While the study reaffirms there is a psychological component to good transit planning, the findings are limited based on short waiting times. Shelters seem to make less of a difference after 10 minutes of waiting, however, few participants actually waited for longer than that period of time. Posted schedules caused people to overestimate how long they had been standing at a stop, but after 10 minutes, people at stops with schedules began to underestimate the amount of time they had been waiting. For example, 10 minutes would seem more like eight-and-a-half minutes.
As City Lab points out, human tendency to round up numbers in fives and 10s makes it more difficult to distinguish the difference between eight minutes versus 10 minutes. The study also neglects to probe why covered or enclosed shelters are perceived faster than curbside stops.
But ultimately, the takeaway is that a basic bus shelter (which can cost around $6,000 in the Twin Cities), may be a cheap solution to improving commutes.
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New Buses and Trains Could Put 53,000 Americans to Work
Government contracts have long been awarded to the lowest bidder. But as more American cities invest in updating transit systems and rebuilding infrastructure, local municipalities are allowing a new factor to influence who wins a bid — jobs.
Across this country, U.S. transit agencies are increasingly looking at the long-term economic impacts on city projects rather than simply selecting bids based on the lowest price. Since July alone, three major transit purchases by Amtrak, the Chicago Transit Authority and the Maryland Transit Administration have awarded contracts to companies that include employment incentives.
“Jobs shouldn’t be an afterthought when you’re spending billions of public dollars,” says Jorge Ramirez, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor and a member of the coalition Jobs to Move America.
The coalition, comprised of more than 40 groups, estimates that public transportations agencies could boost 53,000 new American jobs with decent wages through forthcoming transit projects in cities including Houston, New York, Las Vegas, Cleveland, Seattle and Baltimore.
Ramirez, who helped secure a $2 billion project that will see 800 new rail cars added to Chicago’s transit system, is a part of the “Build Chicago” partnership launched with the Chicago Transit Authority. The city announced the partnership in July as part of an effort to ensure that bidders for the new rail fleet project include an outline of the number and type of new jobs they intend on creating alongside the new cars.
“Smarter transit purchasing is happening at the local and regional level,” says Jacquelyne Grimshaw, Vice Chair of the Chicago Transit Authority Board and Vice President of the Center for Neighborhood Technology. “As cities transform our approach to transit contracting, we can address this jobs crisis and put our public dollars to their best use.”
Elsewhere, Amtrak outlined a similar request in its bidding process for 28 new high-speed rail cars and the Maryland Transit Administration also included plans to boost job creation in the $400 million purchase of Washington D.C.’s Metro Purple Line. Maryland residents in two counties are developing a plan to create affordable housing and economic growth around the expansion of that line. The Purple Line Compact plan is aimed at keeping people in the neighborhood rather than pricing out lower-income families.
As more transit agencies incorporate stipulations about how contractors plan to hire, pay and create career paths for potential manufacturing jobs, the bidding process will shift to become less about price and more about value.
“Good jobs manufacturing buses and trains are a commonsense way to improve the economy and share prosperity more widely,” says George Wentworth, a senior staff attorney for the National Employment Law Project.
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The App That’s Beautifying the Daily Commute
New York City subways are notoriously known for their clutter of ads pushing anything from weight loss miracles to online college courses. And since New Yorkers spend an excess of time underground traveling across the city’s seven boroughs, a new app is setting out to make that experience a little more pleasant.
NO AD is an augmented reality app designed to replace the abundance of mindless ads masking the city’s subway stations and trains with art.
“I think that overconsumption of advertising is detrimental to your mental health,” says street artist Jordan Seiler, who created the app. “Public space happens to be the only media space I can’t opt out of. I would advocate for the complete banning of advertising as a social health issue, the same way that we want to clean up toxic waste.”
Seiler enlisted 50 artists to contribute to the app, which works by opening the app and pointing the camera at the horizontal vinyl ads scattered across platforms at the city’s 468 stations.
NO AD uses feature tracking software to target which ads to filter out, excluding public health messages from the list. The campaign ran in NYC throughout the month of September and hopes to continue with other contributors from local galleries and museums. The app can be downloaded for free at app store or on Google Play.
As more people embrace the wearable market thanks to head displays like Google Glass, Seiler contends products like NO AD will become important in navigating the city’s ad-laden landscape.
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How Our Nation’s Capital is Improving Life for Commuters
On the heels of Apple’s unveiling of the new iPhone 6 and iWatch, Washington D.C.’s transit system Metro announced a new pilot program in line with the next wave of technology.
Metro’s new program will let riders pay transit fares with a smartphone, contactless credit and debit cards and other types of near field communication (NFC) devices like the iWatch. Starting in January, 10 Metrorail stations, six bus routes and two parking facilities will be outfitted with the new technology, but Metro officials plan to begin installing the new fare readers in October, according to the Washington City Paper.
“The main goal of this whole program is to eventually eliminate the need for people to convert their U.S. currency into Metro money,” says Metro spokesman Dan Stessel.
Officials contend the initiative is to make public transportation easier for both D.C. riders as well as tourists.
The nation’s capital is not the first city in the world to march toward contactless payment for public transit network. London’s bus system has already removed cash from its fare system, and the underground Tube is rolling out a new contactless payment program September 16.
But are days numbered for Metro’s old fare gates, vending machines and SmarTrip card program? Not anytime in the “foreseeable future,” according to city officials. If the pilot is met with success, Metro plans to install new fare readers across the entire transit system in 2017.
The city will begin recruiting around 2,000 participants for the pilot project this fall, encouraging residents who commute between the stations or along the bus routes included in the program to sign up. More details of the recruitment process are expected to be announced next month, according to Stessel.
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With Parking Spaces Sitting Vacant, Atlanta Has a Bold Plan to Merge Communities With Transit
Everyone who lives near a city knows all too well how much location – specifically, proximity to the commuter rail — matters. The shorter the drive is to the station, the better. And the ability to walk there trumps just about everything.
Such convenience is about to come to thousands in Atlanta. That city’s metro system MARTA has started making real estate deals to build housing to unused transit parking lots. MARTA plans to turn the space at the King Memorial, Edgewood, and Edgewood/Chandler Park stations into combination residential and retail developments.
“People have been looking at these parking lots for decades wondering why they were just sitting there,” Amanda Rhein, senior director of transit-oriented development at MARTA, told City Lab.
Now, that is finally changing — and it’s not only helping commuters, but also the railroad itself. Without state funding, MARTA’s bottom line is very easily impacted by the ups and downs of the economy. So, when Keith Parker took over the agency in 2012, he decided that a bold project like this is what was required to keep it competitive. The development will not only produce revenue from all the train riders, but also with each unit sold, will raise money for the transit system that it can use for improvements.
And so far, Parker’s decision is looking like a good one. MARTA has successfully leased land to developers for mixed-use buildings that are focused on the adjacent transit opportunities, including a project on a four-acre unused parking lot that features 13,000 square feet of retails space and 386 housing units.
The boon does not only belong to the railroads, though; it is the entire community’s as these projects could decrease traffic on the roads. And on top of that, there is more to the new spaces then one might think. Beyond all the great new housing and shops, each development will also feature a public park as well as have at least 20 percent of the units dedicated to affordable housing.
While construction has yet to start, there’s already hope for more in the future since this model is good for both the city of Atlanta, its citizens and the transit system itself.
“We’re going to make the stations themselves and the surrounding areas more pleasant and more easily accessible, and we’ll be providing amenities to our riders and to the surrounding community. So I think people will realize that and give MARTA a chance,” says Rhein.
DON’T MISS: Here’s How High-Speed Rail Is Inching Closer to Becoming a Reality In California
Cities or Suburbs: Which Area is Seeing a Population Boom?
Close your eyes and picture idyllic tree-lined streets in a cheery suburban neighborhood. If you open your eyes, however, you might still see that image — only there might be a lot of “for sale” signs posted in front yards or dark houses due to vacancy.
That’s because cities are now seeing a population influx. According to census analysis by William Frey of the Brookings Institution, this could be the decade of big-city growth.
Analyzing data from 2010-2013, Frey was able to figure out that cities themselves — not just their metropolitan areas — grew at a measurably faster rate than suburbs, with “primary cities” (those with a population over 1 million) growing 1.13 percent from 2011 to 2012. At the same time, suburban areas grew at only .95 percent.
While the difference (and growth rate itself) may seem minimal, it reflects more significant changes that are happening in a select number of cities such as New Orleans; Washington, D.C.; San Jose, California; Austin, Texas; Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina; Denver; and Seattle. All those cities have even faster growth rates even faster than the national average!
Although there are a variety of reasons that people may be migrating back to cities, one that we’ve mentioned before is the rise of the innovation district – urban areas that are easily accessible and combine a variety of organizations and people advancing ideas and promoting ingenuity. These areas attract not only jobs, but because of their cosmopolitan and integrated feel, residents too.
Another specific driver of growth could be the new transportation initiative in Minneapolis-St. Paul, another booming city, according to City Lab.
So, does this mean the demise of white picket fences and two-car garages? Hardly. As the study points out, the suburbs are continuing to grow, albeit at a slower pace. But with growth, comes innovation — giving cities the upper hand.
Could Denver’s Light Rail System be The Future of Public Transit?
As more urban planners across the country brace for a future where cities are densely populated, local officials are turning their attention to investing in enhancing public transit. And even historically car-centric cities like Denver are getting on board.
The Western hub has spent the last decade planning an ambitious blueprint for a major regional light rail system. Denver’s FasTracks program first was defeated in a 1997 referendum only to return in 2004, when voters got behind the $4.7 billion project to add 121 miles of commuter and light-rail tracks, 18 miles of bus rapid transit lanes, 57 new rapid transit stations and 21,000 park-and-ride spots, according to the Atlantic CityLab.
Now a decade later, the Regional Transportation District (RTD), metro Denver’s rail provider, boasts the makings of one of the nation’s greatest public transit systems. Although a work in progress, last year FasTracks introduced the West Rail Line, which runs through some of Denver’s lowest income communities to its terminus in Jefferson County. The program is aiming to expand the East Rail Line to the airport and the Gold Line out west to Arvada by 2016, both powered by overheard catenary wires. Local officials are also targeting 2016 to add a bus-rapid transit system to the university community of Boulder.
Nine of the 10 FasTracks lines are projected to be completed by 2018, connecting 3 million spread across 2,340 square miles, and will include 18 miles of bus rapid transit and 95 stations.
“You’ll wheel your suitcase out of Denver International Airport, ride the train to Union Station, and hop a Car2Go — or even a B-Cycle if you’re traveling light — to your house or hotel. All using one card,” said Phil Washington, RTD’s general manager.
While the city remains a car-heavy town — only about 6 percent use bus or light rail — daily light-rail boardings shot up 15 percent between 2012 and 2013. Though cars are still a mainstay, more residents are embracing the potential.
“From the start, we made it clear we weren’t competing with the car,” Washington said. “And we explained, to the average Joe, that for only four cents on most ten dollar purchases, he’d be getting a whole lot of new transportation.”
Melinda Pollack, a founding member behind local nonprofit Mile High Connects has become a system supporter. Her group coordinates efforts to bring affordable development near transit, and hopes to build 2,000 units of affordable housing near the forthcoming stations in the next 10 years.
“When all the lines open, it’s really going to change connectivity for people,” she said. “We’re trying to make sure that low-income people don’t get pushed away from the stations.”
Indeed, FasTracks investment has seen an addition of 7 million square feet of new office space, 5.5 million square feet of new retail and 27,000 new residential units, The downtown area has increased its residential population 142 percent to 17,500 people since 2000.
“The system is developing and merging,” said University of Denver transportation scholar Andrew Goetz. “ The connectivity we’re going to see as a result is going to be quite impressive.”
Could Denver outpace the transit-praised cities of Portland or Washington, D.C.? By building an expansive system that not only serves urban areas but reaches the sprawling outlying communities where commuters work, Denver officials are not only betting on yes, they’re aiming to reshape American public transit system.
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