Just Building the Transit Isn't Enough
Vložit
- čas přidán 20. 01. 2023
- Watch this video ad-free on Nebula: nebula.tv/videos/rmtransit-ju...
Support for public transportation has never been greater, but… support is not enough. In many parts of the world, public transit projects fail to gain significant ridership, or cost so much that they crowd out other important priorities. To solve these problems, we must go deeper.
As always, leave a comment down below if you have ideas for our future videos. Like, subscribe, and hit the bell icon so you won't miss my next video!
=PATREON=
If you'd like to help me make more videos & get exclusive behind the scenes access and early video releases, consider supporting my Patreon! Every dollar goes towards helping my channel grow & reach more people.
Patreon: / rmtransit
=ATTRIBUTION=
Epidemic Sound (Affiliate Link): share.epidemicsound.com/nptgfg
Nexa from Fontfabric.com
Map Data © OpenStreetMap contributors: www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
Some imagery used in this video may be licensed under Creative Commons:
CC BY-SA: creativecommons.org/licenses/...
CC BY: creativecommons.org/licenses/...
GFDL: www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3....
=COMMUNITY DISCORD SERVER=
Discord Server: / discord
(Not officially affiliated with the channel)
=MY SOCIAL MEDIA=
Twitter: / rm_transit
Instagram: / rm_transit
Website: rmtransit.com
Substack: reecemartin.substack.com
=ABOUT ME=
Ever wondered why your city's transit just doesn't seem quite up to snuff? RMTransit is here to answer that, and help you open your eyes to all of the different public transportation systems around the world!
Reece (the RM in RMTransit) is an urbanist and public transport critic residing in Toronto, Canada, with the goal of helping the world become more connected through metros, trams, buses, high-speed trains, and all other transport modes.
I live in a country in Europe and transit has been in development for the last 150 years and will be for the next 100 years. It's not something you simply plan and get done.
Agreed, transit expansion should be ongoing , it's not something that should end when a transit project is complete. The challenge for cities like New York and London is to find a more affordable way to build it.
Exactly, transit is complex and requires organization and expertise to build operate and maintain for the long term. It's just not a consumer good.
I think that the advantage that Europe has is the density of the population in cities as opposed to the US and also that the historic political structure allows new transit to be constructed easier that in the US.
@@paulkoza8652 Do you know why there is a difference in "building density"? The main factor is that there always has been a railway for the past centuries.
@@RMTransit so you're saying it's a skill issue
I think transit is hard everywhere, even in transit oriented cities. Paris and London have difficulties as well. Look at the delays and challenges the Elizabeth line faced. Great vid.
True. The grand Paris express and the Paris Metro in general are struggling at the moment because of political mismanagement, and social unrest. While I love the Paris Metro, if anything goes wrong on a bigger scale, a lot of people suddenly can get bothered
UK public transport overruns are bad enough. Which makes me sad because although we did finally get the Elizabeth line, which is good and I have used, the rest of the country mostly misses out.
Definetly but, the scale of the challenges are legitimately very different.
We need a National transit building agency, so that we can standardize and save by economies of scale
And put a bunch of European and Japanese transit engineers in charge of it
Good idea.
@@agentzapdos4960 or whichever country this is for could learn from those transit engineers in order to not depend on them in the long run
“ThAtS sOcIaLiSm!?!?!?” - Conservatives
@@agentzapdos4960 And we should also put cost/quality above "Buy USA/Canada".
Like in Honk Kong, transit station should also surround by jobs, malls, and apartments.
dont worry, US has huge walmarts
US needs to change their racist zoning laws aka single family housing too
Singapore meanwhile can wait up to 40 yrs after a neighbourhood is populated before building a train station, & by that time the station will have to be underground or built further away as we've run out of land/space for the station
@@flosset6070 even sf and seattle wont do anything
There’s an illogical sense that car drivers feel they have more autonomy in their car than on public transit. Even though driving in cities generally means spending many hours a year sitting in heavy traffic and gridlock. There’s the old Jerry Seinfeld joke that one day traffic will be so bad you’ll start going backwards, and I bet you will find car drivers who still say “it’s still better than taking the subway.” 🤦♂️
I deal with traffic in a small city (Hartford) and every time jt makes me wish that the trains were actually good enough to take. (Even with traffic the car is faster, even with a 2hr delay the car is faster an theoretically you can find an exit and take low roads and make it much faster)
But the worst is when i had to go to a train station for work, and i had to drive because by train i would arrive at 7pm. (I needed to be there at 9am) (The station was the client and therefore destination, i litterally can't think of a better example of how messed up america's trains are than this. Litterally driving to another city's train station because its ridiculously faster than the train.)
The problem in America is that a car driver doesn’t pay the real costs of driving and parking a car. Roads and parking lots aren’t payed by the drivers, they’re payed by companies, shops and government (municipal, state or federal). And I don’t even mean the environmental costs. Driving a car is too cheap for drivers. Tax payers and clients pay the brunt of the costs and they aren’t all car owners. Road taxes, parking fees, toll, and fuel tax needs to pay for the brunt of the money used for construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, tunnels and parking lots. Then the Americans see what car use really costs.
The chances of a homeless skel occupying your cars passenger seat are zero compared to the chances of sitting next to one on the subway. The chances of a woman getting jizz on her backside from a horny perv on the subway are infinitely greater than in her car. The chances of getting pickpocketed on the subway are far greater than in a car. If safety is the root cause for the desire to have autonomy, your arguement is DOA.
@@RealConstructor This is why switching from a tax on gasoline to a tax based on miles driven would be a good idea. The more one drives, the more one pays. Gasoline and EV cars would share the cost.
Of course, the complaints would come thick and fast ...
@@lizcademy4809 I mean, we already saw this when Pete Buttigieg merely floated the idea.
Good video! One of these days you should go into the weeds of the political (not just economic/cost) barriers to buildings transit. In the US that means lawsuits, petty environmental reviews/regulations, outdated safety requirements, double standards in favor of roads, and crazy powerful local governments that let just a few nimbys ruin a project for all.
As a transit activist on the New Jersey side of the Hudson, I find that transit projects, from conception to completion, not to mention operation, typically take 20 years, a whole generation. Along the way, all these gremlins that you mention pop up. You must play the long game, make yourself part of the local political furniture that's not going away. And you have to build credibility so that local media and political class will respect you and call you for a comment or briefing as needed.
And that’s only scratching the surface of the issues. There is so much more political and systemic bullshit that just makes transit projects a joke in this country
I think in large part it's due to the two political parties. Republicans want no transit built at all, for the most part, and Democrats, for the most part, are deeply in bed with the construction and transit operator unions, which results in high construction costs due to high wages and featherbedding, unnecessary jobs on the construction side, and high wages and refusal to consider things like automated trains on the operation side. So either you get nothing or something that costs a ton to build and operate. Or even worse, a Democrat starts a project, spends a bunch of money on it, and then a Republican is elected and cancels it, so you spend a bunch of money but get nothing.
These are some of the things I'm trying to highlight here for sure!
@@johnforestersworstnightmar3756
Well these barriers are on or pretty much on the way out, so much is a good thing.
Indeed just building is not enough. You need to maintain and expand it.
Yes! But also actually run lots of service!
Building it right in the first place is more important than expanding it. Imagine if BART didn't go to Pleasanton, but had a lot more stops in Oakland, Berkeley and San Fransisco. You can always extend a line, but if you skip stops or put them in poor places, you are bound to be stuck with a weak system for a long time. Ask Dallas, Denver, Seattle ...
Reese, question for you. Because I do agree with you that cities across North America are large enough to have urban rail mass transit systems. Would you be able to do a full format video diving into why projects cost ridiculous amount of money in the US for less service as compared to their European counterparts? This way we can get a full assessment of the reasons why its so expensive-Regulations, NIMBYism, unions, lobbying, etc. All parts coming together with a counter argument and so we can assess things thoroughly. Barcelona and Madrid, heck, Spain has built rail and even High speed rail, on the cheap, and North America could really take some inspiration from how they’ve done things there. The French have built out their network over decades, so perhaps incorporating what goes into making those costs so low would be very important.
On a related note, what kind of transit makes sense for various size metropolises...ten million, three million, one million. America has only a few that have ten to twenty million people. Several 5-7 million. Lots that are only a few million, or just one. Is most transit really just for the handful of megalopolises, or college towns like Boston? (One small central Massachusetts city had 26 colleges and universities last I knew.). And even Boston's system has park and rides. Or is there a way to make it viable smaller scale?
I'd love a video on why transit construction is so much more expensive in the US than elsewhere for similar projects.
The USA reached the debt ceiling because the federal government wasted money on stuff that was unnecessary.
@@gabetalks9275 nope it's not as simple as that, there's plenty of articles on why US Transit is so much more expensive.
@@SKAOG21 Yeah, it is very complicated.
@@rossbleakney3575 greed and graft and grift.....
@@gabetalks9275 part of it is the United States and Canada isnt very experienced with building transit. We build transit cheap and well back during the 1900-1930s but after that we stop building more.
Edit 3 months later what was gabe talks talking about?
One thing to note about Seattle's light rail metro thing is that current service patterns (particularly in the high-usage grade-separated section between International District/Chinatown & Northgate) are a bit deceptive. Current peak service is a train every 8 minutes, but this isn't strictly constrained by the capacity of the system. In part, it's to leave room for upcoming expansions. Once the 2 line opens, service between IDC and Northgate (well, it'll be Lynnwood by that point) will be up to a train every 4 minutes at peak due to the 1 & 2 lines running interlined through that section at an 8 minute frequency each.
Thank you for bringing this up. It something a lot of people don’t realize that link is actually running with pretty major amounts of spare space at the moment in anticipation for east link to open. Once eastlink does open, IDC to Lynwood will have service just as good as many metro systems worldwide, and with upgrades like CBTC north of IDC and/or Portland style single cab units or single units that are twice as long as the current ones, that capacity can continue to grow to fit the regions needs
We’ll see if this actually happens but in Sound Transit’s planning documents it shows the 1 & 2 lines having the capability of running every 6 minutes, so the main trunk through central and north Seattle would see 3 minute frequencies at peak.
I'm fascinated by the town of Plzeň in the Czech Republic. It has a population of a little over 170,000 people, a little over half that of the London borough of Enfield (330,000). Despite that, it has a variety of public transport options, including buses, trolleybuses, trains, and especially trams. Enfield has just buses and trains; the trains only going North-South, while the buses are frequently stuck in Enfield's notorious traffic.
I picked Plzeň specifically because they're proud of their public transport. You can actually see it all in action (and see the city!) on CZcams by looking up "Plzeňská MHD" and "linka" together. It's a really beautiful place.
Enfield, meanwhile, can't even put in cycle lanes properly. Edmonton is excellent, but you can see the budget ran out at Ponders End. And guess what, it goes the exact same route as the trains and main roads. What has happened to public transport in England in the last 10 years...
Here in New York, besides costs, the NIMBYS are the real reason why new rail transit lines can not be built, because if it was not for them always trying to block new transit construction, we would have new subways, elevated track extensions, Light Rail lines (like the trolleys we had in the past) and reactivated rail corridors (like the proposed Interborough Express). NIMBYS were also the reason why a lot of NYC's transit was discontinued and removed in the past.
@@MatthiasWiesmann Yes, NIMBYS are everywhere, but New York's NIMBYS are some of the worst in the United States of America. Of course the cost in New York is the other reason.
Great video and nice footage. Contracting is also a common factor of expensive transit projects, especially in North America, since everyone who designs and builds each little thing has to be paid to a million different companies instead of doing everything in house only to avoid liability. Furthermore, many North Americans are much more familiar with building one more lane than railway infrastructure, so proper training for rail infrastructure may add to the costs as well (yes, these two points were from Alan Fisher's video, I know).
In regards to NIMBYs being present in other places outside of the U.S., I feel they're not considered as much as NA NIMBYs, since people in those regions and their governments are used to public transit and are much more willing to support rail projects at a quicker rate than the terminally car brained North America. To solve this, we should expose North Americans to more public transit so this way they're used to it, as well as encouraging employment in various rail related fields so that NA will be more accepting of such projects and transit expansion. Of course, none of this is possible without raising awareness of the benefits of transit, which is exactly what your channel has been doing, so thank you for your years of service by spreading support for public transit around the world.
I disagree that San Jose is the wrong place to build transit. While a lot of it is suburban, the extensions to downtown and San Jose Diridon have enormous potential, and really improve connectivity around the bay. Your point about it being underground is completely valid, though.
In India, contracts for construction of projects are given via a bidding process as in other countries but we have something that us does not.
Even though most of our construction is done by private companies, we have a public company called RVNL, and even though it is a company under the ministry of railways, it does not recieve a single penny from the government. It operates just like a private company in operations. So why does it exist?
It exists so that it can also bid for those contracts, they have to bid in such a way that they are profitable at the end since they don't recieve any government funding. But since they don't have to print money like private companies they can bid lower, this pushes private companies to also bring down their bid values of they want the contract
RVNL never bids so low that private companies decide not to participate but low enough to bring the bid values on the lower side. And it's not they win all the contracts, most of the time they loose, but then sometimes they win.
The presence of a company that is not in pressure to print money for its shareholders brings everyone's bids down. And then even if rvnl wins, the profit is going to the government so who cares.
Similarly for rolling stock, we have Alstom, titagrah (a local manufacturer) but we also have BEML a government company which effectively does the same thing.
Similarly we have private consultants and auditors but then DMRC and RITES both government undertakings also do consulting and auditing work. All of which to force private companies to bring down their bids.
But then this will never work in a capitalist haven. Will it?
Thank you for this sanity check. It's obvious that cost actually matters and I don't like how some people in the transit/urbanist YT circles say things like "I don't care how much it costs because we already waste so much more money on useless wars" etc. and expect themselves to still be taken seriously.
*cough* Alan Fisher *cough*
A lot of "urbanists" are just hipsters they hate cars because they think it's cool to hate cars. They don't actually care about public infrastructure at all. They will jump on anything they think is "trendy" which is why so many of them want "HSR" and "hyper loops" as the solution to all transit problems.
For example in my state in my country there's a legitimate case for HSR between our largest and second largest cities. As it serves the average commuter between those cities, vastly reduces travel time and costs and would actually free up congestion so that intercity and interstate trucks can move more freight in shorter periods of time.
But we have one of these "Urbanist" groups who instead want our largest city's suburban network to switch to HSR, despite the fact that we would have to completely scrap and rebuild the entire network to accomodate it as well as replacing 1700 trains.
They accuse anyone who dares question their "It's The Future" project as either being brainwashed or part of a conspiracy by the "car industry" and completely derail any conversation about HSR in our state.
A country that is relearning how to do transit is NZ, where they've reestablished suburban rail in Auckland in the last two decades and are now making major investments to make the city more transit-friendly. Great example of a place that started small to see how they're doing and then scaled up (and continue to do so)
I'm not convinced that all the transit decisions we're making today are good ones, but I am very pleased with how rapidly our rail service has recovered. Moving the 'main' station a couple km into the inner CBD and bringing in some modern electric vehicles has made such a MASSIVE difference in ridership even with no changes to the rest of the network, which in turn has paved the way for investing in the City Rail Link.
@@Nalehw Someone's not a fan of the bus links? :D Or which transit decisions would you consider bad ones? I'd say not everything they're doing is the best that *could* be done with the same amount of money, but all in all it's a pretty solid effort. It's also about time they transfer that know-how to other cities, esp Christchurch. It's the South Island's biggest city and all they've got are unreliable busses.
@@konstantin_d.m I feel the light rail plans have gone, well, off the rails. We started with a reasonable, achievable plan which could have been built by now, but instead of building it we got distracted with bigger and more fanciful counter proposals, so now the government is committing to an ultra expensive cross-city tunnelling project for what's not even a high capacity mode. We could have built *several* decent routes for this kind of money, rather than a single gold plated route. I think this is similar to some of the examples in the video of building something more expensive and less effective.
There are a few other sources of frustration lately, like the lengthy rail shut downs this year (unavoidable, but surely we could find a better approach than just closing lines for 3-6 months?) and the collapse of the bus staffing.
There are good things going on too, though. I think the Eastern Busway / A2B projects show promise - at least judging by how successful the Northern Busway was. And as I said, City Rail Link will be a gamechanger: improves travel times a lot for the Western line, removes the scheduling bottleneck outside Britomart, and adds new stations in very central locations.
And arguably one of the biggest rail improvements - though less glamorous - is the plan to add the 3rd set of rails on the Southern line near the freight rail yard, to help separate freight and passenger traffic.
@@Nalehw ah yes, the alr, constant source of controversy. Some don't think its big enough, others think its too big and the third ones dont wanna see any light rail at all... I think *if* theyre doing that kind of a big investment, it should be in expanding the heavy rail theyve got already. A great airport link - which wouldn't be solely accessible thru the city centre - would be the construction of a rail connection leaving the NIMT between Puhinui and Wiri (right at the overpass of SH 20; nth of Wiri depot), with connections from BOTH north and south. In the long-term, they could electrify the line all the way to Hamilton (which is planned already anyway I think), and run a regular, reliable, and fast service to make flights between akl and hamilton obsolete; another added bonus.
I'm not the biggest fan of the busways tbh. I don't think they improve the quality of the bus rides all that much, but I actually havent used them so far, so maybe my opinion will change once ive checked them out. Electrification of the bus network (meaning, slowly introducing trolleybusses) could be more useful. But at the same time, that's a project that could be combined very well with the busways. With battery technology, trolleybusses would only have to use catenary for (less than) half their journey. Putting up the overhead wires primarily on the busway routes and leaving the centre city catenary-free seems like a very good compromise to me.
City Rail Link, the 3rd rail in the south and also the electrification to Pukekohe(!) are all excellent and thought-through transit projects tho. It just goes to show that once you've got a great service established, you should expand on it instead of trying to add new modes of transit (light rail comes to mind!). And its certainly not like the metro couldn't use any more work or expansion once CRL is done.
@@konstantin_d.m One stealth downside of coming off near Wiri is that it adds a new fork to the Southern line without adding any new capacity. So half (or a third, or whatever) of Southern line trains would have to divert to the airport, worsening service for everyone who lives further south. The number of people from the south who want to go to the airport is small enough that I think A2B has them covered. That's why I always preferred to make the airport rail link via Onehunga - doesn't add any new forks, and DOES bring service to Mangere and the airport industrial zone, making it useful for more people overall.
This segues into the reason the plan became light rail. It lets us connect more than just the airport. It brings mass transit to Dominion Road (busiest bus route in the country) and Mangere (a seriously under-served area). Squeezing heavy rail through there would be too expensive.
Exceeeeeept... now we're making it expensive anyway by tunnelling most of it, so we might as well upgrade to heavy rail anyway...
Having public transit is probably one of the hardest things people do- technically, politically, socially, economically- all figure in. I guess that’s why we like it and there’s nothing like it! Cheers, thanks Reese!
Nimbyism is overwhelmingly powerful in the US. The professional classes will do ANYTHING to stop what they don't want in their areas.
The people designing transit don’t use it. That’s a big problem right there.
Very true. Same issue with bike lanes. It's painfully obvious to anyone using most "bike lanes" that the people who designed them never actually used them.
Guy, they won’t even live in the areas where it is because they aren’t fools.
Yeah I see what you’re saying. These overpaid politicians don’t know or care about us.
It's definitely often the case!
@@jgon9
They're limousine liberals.
North America : we built this new metro line with a train every 10 minutes, get used to it
France : we have trains every 3 minutes and it's still not enough, time to automate the line I guess
As Wikipedia says, [Citation Needed] that building a heavy rail subway in Seattle would have cost less than the light rail system they actually built. That's a very bold claim, contrary to every other cost comparison anywhere. And we are talking real world here too; factors that made the light rail cost a lot would, for the most part, apply to subway construction as well.
I feel like the phrase “build it and they will come” in terms of transit projects is incredibly delusional. Transit alone is not sustainable if you don’t have adequate connections or dense developments that warrant a transit link (this is why Denver’s system falls flat). The US should be prioritizing heavy rail electrification instead of petty money-pit transit expansions in areas that don’t need expansions; improving what we already have should take precedent
Los Angeles is a classic example of this. Billions of dollars spent building the wrong transit, mode share has essentially been unchanged.
What specifically was "wrong"? The only existing Los Angeles line that is fairly questionable is the Green Line, which as built basically goes from nowhere to nowhere, stopping short of the Norwalk Metrolink station and LAX. However, it was mostly built to get a freeway built, and the second problem is being fixed with the K Line and LAX people mover projects.
@@Geotpf idk! There are a lot of questionable decisions which have been made! Lots of grade crossings, not great service, poor mode optimization and network design - it goes on and on!
Just my 2 cents as a resident who wants transit to work here:
* grade crossings: The expo line works reasonably well on the grade separated parts, but once it gets to the part with street crossings it has no signal priority and just gets slow. This is a recurring theme. Not just using light rail technology, but having tons of at grade crossings. Pretty much every light rail line has this issue.
* lack of TOD: there is literally a red line station that has a gas station across the street! This is one of las 1.5 subways!
* frequency: speaking of subways, the red and purple line 15 min frequencies are abysmal. These subways cost tons of money to build, but only get 4 tph at most (goes down to 3 off peak).
* insufficient feeder bus routes: I live too far from the nearest rail line to reasonably walk, but including the poor 20 min headways it could take upwards of 35 min just for me to get to the station by bus (compared to a 45 min walk).
That’s just off the top of my head, but basically there are very few (if any) trips in the entire county where taking transit is competitive with driving even in heavy traffic. So that’s why people aren’t getting out of their cars.
@@ficus3929 Grade crossings are due to the high cost of grade separating things.
As for signal priority on street running segments, that's due to older environmental laws. If you give the train 100% signal priority, you will cause lots of cars to wait for the train to pass. While they are waiting, they are idling. Idling cars (not counting hybrids and electric cars) pollute. So, to limit pollution, they limit signal priority for the train.
That is all true, but it doesn’t change the fact that billions have been spent on inadequate transit.
This is a great video and made me realize how lucky I am to be able to live in Arlington, VA because we do actually have a massive and frequent transit system (DC Metro) and that WMATA has expertise in building big projects.
Absolutely nailed it. These are the talking points we need to concern ourselves with as transit enthusiasts and advocates, because these are what the skeptics and doubters will counter with.
Like any other cause, transit advocacy is a battle of hearts and minds. To actually change anything, we should be confronting those who aren't on the side of transit already, rather than coalescing in our own circles and just creating a pro-transit echo chamber. Yes, people who don't think like us are going to push back and ask questions, but if the case for transit is actually there, then the facts will bear out, and people will be convinced. Not everyone, but you don't need everyone to push a project through and sustain support for it - just a majority.
one of the other reasons politicians dont always like big transit projects is that even if they can get the build started they dont get finished within an election cycle so its hard to campaign on it when they run again. Its part of the short term thinking problem we have when it comes to infrastructure in general.
True. Heck it's one of the reasons BRT is being promoted so heavily nowadays in Denmark where I'm from. Politicians are fawning over BRT, especially as a replacement for light rail proposals (which it really shouldn't be)
Politicians generally shouldn't be too in the weeds on specific projects in my opinion (optimally) you just cannot create a great network or even transit organization on the timescale of election cycles.
Just saw a poll from Newsday, where many residents of Nassau County in Long Island complained about very limited public transportation, too much traffic congestion, not enough housing, and too much growth and development. I bring this up because this is the county that is both one of the most NIMBY parts of New York state, and the one that benefited the most from Robert Moses' pro-car development. Very contradictory, especially the part where they think there is too little housing but too much growth and development......
in NYS, the pols are corrupt, the mob is involved, and payoffs are rampant. just look at the (Ha HA) second avenue subway, the MTA east side access project, the "new" Penn Station. All way over budget, all late. Should we discuss the #7 extension, where to meet goals, stations planned were eliminated. Paint me as a realist, but no transit ever gets built to serve the people, its done to pad the pockets of the politicians.
When there is poor transit, new developments and population growth bring many new cars with them. Because those new people have no other way to get around. These cars then choke and overrun the city.
The residents then blame the new developments alone for the problem. But if there was transit and fewer cars then the new developments would not be as disruptive.
You can blame the poor transit in Nassau county on one place. Hempstead. Were Hempstead a decent place, the rest of the county would warm to the idea of LRT very fast, but because nobody likes the residents of Hempstead, nobody wants their tax dollars going to them. Call it what you want, racism, classism, etc, but until the problem is solved it will never happen.
Often reality doesn't make much sense! But with the development decisions we make this sort of outcome isn't all that surprising.
In a lot of countries public transport has a bad image and thats a big issue! Its seen as dirty, unreliable, for the poor etc etc. thats not good!
Great video as always and one that desperately needed to be made. Transit doesn't exist in a vacuum and in order to be successful there is more than just building it and calling it done and you touch all of them in a very clear and succint manner. I honestly believe that given our current cost problems in the U.S., working on making what we already have better is a much easier task than building new. I live in the SF Bay Area and Bart is great, but could be so much better with some much easier to implement things like automating the trains and having platform doors. Also just allow unlimited density near the stations to encourage even more ridership due to it being convenient and more importantly making it FREQUENT.
BART is great? What BART have you been riding? It has to be one of the worst transit systems in the world. It's uncomfortable, super gross and dirty, not very frequent, painfully loud, rickety, and often slow on the inner parts of the system.
The thing about cost variable that annoys me is expensive highway projects have far more backers than even a moderate expensive public transit ones
Hell yeah, policy video! I'm glad you put out one of these every once in a while; it's nice to be grounded to the practical realities we have to acknowledge when it comes to developing transit.
Fantastic video! Here in Massachusetts, there’s been a proposed project known as East-West rail which would connect Boston with Pittsfield with frequent daily intercity Amtrak service. While Amtrak already operates on the corridor, the state has managed to make a simple project as bureaucratic as possible. There’s heavy political support, however, it’s been nothing but ambiguous promises for service delivery and countless commission meetings for a project that seeks to merely increase train frequency on a exsisting corridor.
walter white pfp big W
It's a problem with government projects; the incentive is to make it as costly and bureaucratic as possible, as that's someone's meal ticket. More cost, more bureaucracy, more meals. Commercial projects try to keep costs down, as otherwise the price will be too high for consumers, or a competitor will undercut. But if it's on the taxpayer tab, just say some platitudes about its social benefits, and hire ten more of your friends. If the project gets nixed, just move to the next one, and inflate its costs to build your empire.
I don't think London is good example here. They may not be building much right noe, but they in a span of roughly a year finished 3 midsize and one huge projects (Bank reconstruction, Northen line to Battersea, Goblin to Barking Riverside, and, obviously, Crossrail)
Liked the realistic tone of the video. The focus in Us should be on piecemeal improvement, not jumping to the frontier.
I really do think learning to walk before learning to run is important here
@@RMTransit The flip side is that a transit system that doesn't get you conveniently from anywhere to anywhere, is a system that means that you still need a car. And once that automotive cost is sunk, and once in a car because it's needed for one destination that day, then in a car the whole day, and by habit every day. It's probably why Denver's system is so heavily park and ride, and then lightly used. Boston's system probably works because, within a core area, it can get you anywhere to anywhere. I had friends who knew how to use it to do this, and some didn't have cars at all, by choice.
I thought you were going to talk about the importance integrations between modes, peripheral infrastructure (such as bike and pedestrian infrastructure) and-most importantly-infill development. Arguably the reason Seattle has been such a success compared to Los Angeles. LA "just built transit" while Seattle had more bike-lanes, better sidewalks, added bus lines, and added density to many neighborhoods. As a result-arguably-Seattle has gotten a lot more riders even though the system is not as good as LA‘s
LA now is also getting some of that in areas like west Adams, but yea at the beginning we did have some problems, some stops on the blue, or A line which is the busiest line, are just in industrial areas, like del amo, and slauson stations.
Los Angeles is certainly spending money on bike lanes, walking infrastructure, and bus lanes too. As for the A Line, it goes from high density downtown Los Angeles to high density downtown Long Beach on a mostly previously existing rail right of way, and in the middle was a lot of low density. Of course some stations in the middle would therefore be in relatively low density areas.
Seattle's success was due to three factors: increased urbanization, more bus service, finally completing the key mass transit section they should have started with. They are still way behind Vancouver in all respects (especially integration between modes) and will like remain so forever.
@@rossbleakney3575 Agreed. and I actually think (and hope) LA is finally taking similar route as Seattle here. I have much hope in their new mayor actually. Perhaps in a decade LA will have caught up with Seattle and we’ll both be just lacking relative to Vancouver, BC ;)
I'm not sure I agree that Seattle's system is not as good as LA's. Most of Seattle's system is underground or elevated. Aside from one stretch along MLK (where it still has ROW), it's mostly grade-separated. While LA's 2 heavy rail lines (red and purple) are better, the light rail lines (which make up the majority of the system) are not up to the level of Seattle's system. There are more street-running sections, sections where the train waits at lights, etc. Seattle's system really feels more like a metro system than light rail in terms of reliability and speed, as well as station locations. I don't get that from LA's system aside from the two heavy rail lines.
San Diego recently extended their Blue Line trolley, and several of the stops, though new and well-built, lead to nowhere. Three are in the middle of a massive sprawl of parking, and one is near a freeway offramp, with no access to the street its named after, and a block away from a bus that runs every 30 or 60 minutes. It's like someone slapped a 2020 trolley line in areas that haven't seen development or transit in like 30 years.
About NIMBYS existing everywhere well it's partly true. But depending on your area you might have more. In France not a lot of people will oppose the building of new subway stops. Anouncing a new stop already increases the prices in the nearby area. And building it increase the prices further. But it's also due to a general appreciation of the subway
That happened in Seattle with the light rail. Every time they built a new station rents around it skyrocketed. Since the system was built mostly without park-and-rides it meant that you had to be pretty wealthy to even be close enough to use the train.
Have you ever been to New Orleans and ridden their vintage trolleys? What would you do with the system?
I think that was kept as some kind of tourist attraction using old traction and even streetcars in Toronto, while very well used, have been preserved for nostalgic reasons as they are a part our heritage- which does not mean good efficient transit. Trams in Europe are designed with their own right of ways wherever possible making them more efficient than our streetcars - this is the direction North American streetcars, like New Orleans, should head
@@japanesetrainandtravel6168New Orleans’ bus system has been gutted since Katrina and most of the new investment goes to the trolleys.
I've been but I didn't ride. I generally think the idea of transit as a museum piece (only as a museum piece) is crazy!
As growing up in a city with great transit systems, I feel MINDBOGGLED when I look at certain systems and feel that they clearly miss out on certain things. For NYC, it's the lack of crosstown trains from UWS to UES. For Chicago, it's the lack of a loop line to connect the radial lines. For Toronto, that line where they have two sides that go parallel north but don't meet at the top (sorry not super familiar with Toronto). And for London, the lack of AC and mobile service in the deep level lines. Making the transit is still great, but you do need to look at the efficiency, logic, and convenience to truly be successful and I think the cities where I lived excelled at those in their metro systems. Hoping transit receives the care it deserves in the future🙏.
I hate how low rise suburbs get underground metro, especially when its used to buy votes, like the PQ did in Laval. A low density city like that needs only a Metro connection to Montreal, and the rest should be REM style, like is currently being built in the West Island of Montreal
No Laval needs a Charlotte or San Diego style LRT.
Density around Montmorency has increased exponentially since the metro station was added there.
But you're probably right, it didn't need to be an underground Metro station. It could have been an elevated line like the REM.
A brand new line from Laval through Ahuntsic, Park Ex and Mile End into downtown would actually have been very useful
Underground wouldn't be a problem if we could build for reasonable costs!
And the CAQ did in Chambly and East End Montreal.
"Overemphasis on density driving demand rather than service" describes San Diego. SDSU is building a $4B TOD satellite campus at an impressive 150 units per acre only 8 min by LRT from SDSU main campus. Yet San Diego will not increase 15 min peak LRT frequencies before making transit free for all.
I hear that the current issue is a bottle neck at the old town junction and the trunk line as a whole, as well as limited yard space, but fixing these bottlenecks should absolutely be top priority, the mid-coast segment of the blue line and the green line are positioned for great success if they could improve the frequencies.
@@adianchowdhury9016 MTS says their yard has room for 30 more LRVs--that'd be enough to double frequencies on the Mid Coast Trolley.
The fact that the Green Line and Blue Line share the trunk is why serving the airport with a people mover rather than a trolley branch makes more sense.
Old Town Junction isn't getting upgrades soon, but MTS says this year they'll study possible improvements to the Orange/Green Line junction.
Yep, just having rail does not mean a mega tod makes sense, especially if infrequent rail. You need have great service to justify super intense development.
@@RMTransit College campuses have inherently high transit use, and the LRT is fully-grade separated between SDSU's two campuses, making it a fast inter-campus shuttle. But ridership would be even higher if frequencies were at least doubled.
Another great video Reece! Where operation and maximum frequency is concerned, it seems - and think you’ve touched on this in past - that more trains and more frequency means we need to hire more drivers, thus increasing operating costs - so perhaps transit needs to follow the lead of REM and the Ontario Line and aim towards full automation where possible.
Absolutely! Spend the savings on more buses.
great video! good point about the relationship between denver's buses and rail. having good service is absolutely more important than just builiding good but poorly used infrastructure. related to this, in alot of places (especially in the US) even the most basic bus service is severely overlooked and therefore not invested in! just leads to less attention to transit as a whole, truly vicious cycle
As someone who lives in Denver, I’m so happy you brought us up as an example. Our network is actually very good compared to other North American cities of similar size, and there are quite a few stations that are becoming very TOD oriented, but our ridership sucks mainly because the best frequency you’ll find is 15 minutes and the fares are ridiculous.
Unfortunately, we’re more focused on spending billions of dollars building a train to Boulder than improving what we already have.
If you ask me, that last sentence comes off as lamenting over the perennial issue of capital being more sexy than operations.
Naturally, that complaint is likely to come up everywhere.
Completely agree except that Denver TOD still seems to be very suburban oriented. Basically every station is a park and ride except from Alameda station to 38th and Blake (and some of those still have large surface parking lots). Still, I agree that Denver has a lot of potential with it's built infrastructure if it could 1. Increase it's frequency and 2. Implement a useful and frequent bus network to feed the rail ROWs (considering most of the rail ROWs are not within walking distance for many). So that's to say that Denver has actually managed to overcome significant engineering challenges in delivering FastTracks in the last two decades, but it still has a long way to go on operation. Cultivating a matured RTD and proper TOD, Denver would surpass peer cities like Seattle, Austin. For how far we have come, it does seem like a matter of funding and political will to increase service and build more housing and less parking lots. Sure there are some challenges left like acquiring more space from the Burnham Rail Yard area to open up that bottleneck for interlining, but the current infra can handle more than it does. Essential to service improvement will be a mayor and governor that supports RTD (Polis previously has refused to give RTD any new funding).
Another Denver area resident here and I 100% agree. The network on paper is good (even if the C and F lines are still on the maps....f) but the service frequency sucks. I live within walking distance of the G line. Given the 30 minute frequency and the painfully slow schedule, if I miss the train going into work, I drive. If I miss the train to run an errand, I drive. If I miss the train to do anything, I drive. It's a pretty nice railroad they built, it'd be nice if they ran a train on it every now and then
It's too bad RTD sold a tax to Boulder and Longmont on a train they couldn't actually achieve. So when an agency collects money for something and fails to deliver, do you force them to deliver or do you just let them keep selling the public on false dreams until there's so little public support they can't even get budget increases to keep up driver pay?
It's not a winning situation, and it's hard to disagree that money could be better spent, but that's only possible if RTD officials are willing to openly admit their failure and propose realistic solutions to make it right.
@@octorokpie At the Colorado Transportation Symposium I sat in on a session with some folks from RTD and they basically admitted failure. We were told the future of RTD is the Bus and the folks in Boulder have the BRT which is really good and they should be happy with that
I would love to see a video on whether or not light rail systems could ever be converted to heavy rail or if this has ever been done before. Great content!
It depends on what you define by "heavy rail" but when you mean rapid transit systems, many were developed out of trams, a form of light rail.
Some light rail lines get seperated from the streets bit by bit, until when they're fully separated, they're basically a metro line in disguise
It’s happening on the old Carlingford line in Sydney as part of the new multi line parramatta light rail that is being built and planned
We could only wish for ten minute intervals in Dallas.
One of the greatest videos on this channel. It's often seen in transit-oriented people, that they would argue that transit is the greatest option to everyone even if this is a single bus per 30 min or less. We need to design a good product first, not just build anything. As in examples in the video, maintenance costs can simply suppress the development of cheaper but successful options for decades.
can you address remote works impact on transit ridership? in nyc we’re only hitting like 70% ridership levels from 2019. it’s a big funding issue
I mean I think the solution here is service, I think more ridership will be recovered if service is better, and NY has loads of room to improve.
You kinda wonder what would have happened if Eisenhower had been a big train fan and given the kind of neighborhood-bulldozing carte blanche that freeways got to trains. Except that for the price of the interstate system, we could have put a subway network under every city in America and probably connected most of them without having to destroy hardly any neighborhoods at all.
Love the nuance. Thank you
Similar to how electrification of main line railways in Britain is much more expensive per mile, than it is is mainland Europe.
Germany has a constant electrification program, they do a little bit at a time, say 200 single track kilometers per year. Whereas unwillingness to commit by politicians means we have boom and bust periods of electrication, from 0 to 500+ km a year.
In Germany because they have engineers constantly implementing electrification, they are skilled at it and can continously improve then process. Here, long periods of inelectrification mean the industry's skills fade. In Germany it costs £450k per single track kilometer, here the Great Western electrification program came to £2.5m per STK...
Not only the Green Line extension, but the Big Dig before it, Boston is notorious for bad management of large municipal projects.
3:54 reminds me of the YUS extension up to Vaughan. There’s not much actual need to have it tunnelled but it was done and was extremely pricey
Look at the additional costs Doug Ford foisted on the people of Ontario, forcing the extension to the Crosstown underground when there is clearly enough space to build it surface, it's just because he doesn't like streetcars.
Since WWII, US policy has been biased in favor of building more roads over transit, and the public money has followed.
It’s not a coincidence that the most robust transit networks in the US and Canada were in cities that grew before the private automobile was widely used.
But, focusing only on the upfront cost of establishing transit lines while overlooking the long-term effects of an over reliance on driving, will eventually catch up in these areas that refuse to invest in public transit, as people either choose to move to areas where they have another mobility option or experience a diminished quality of life due to people who shouldn’t be driving, being forced to drive anyway because they have to.
Post World War II planning philosophy was always very simple. Use automobiles to get the white side of the cities, while using mass transit to keep the blacks inside the cities. This policy has been followed from day one.
It seems to me that projects like London's Overground network would be a perfect fit for many places in North America. If you have lots of freight lines and a few not very good passenger rail services, some relatively low-budget upgrades to the tracks, signalling, and stations; electrification of the lines; and a much more frequent service; would make a huge difference.
Nice video. Regarding 2:13, actually, I think the 10 minute wait in Seattle is satisfactory. Not good, but not bad either. The bus to and from my neighborhood and Downtown comes every 30 minutes, and that increases to every 1 hour at night. My bus to and from the University District also regularly comes every 30 minutes. 10 minutes would be awesome in that regard. Whenever I take the light rail, I never have to think "what am I going to do for the next 30-60 minutes?" once I arrive at the station. And as others have noted, once the other lines open, frequency will increase.
Also, having lived around Seoul for 10 years and used its amazing metro system... well, there are a few lines which aren't so amazing. The Gyeongchun Line out to Namyangju, where I lived for a time, and on to Chuncheon, had infrequent schedules too during non-peak hours. There are a few 30 minute waits between trains at night.
So my criteria: 5 minutes good! 10 minutes satisfactory. 60 minutes BAD!!!
@RMTransit -- I think a big problem in the US is that cities tend to jump from crap bus service directly to light rail or streetcar lines. Probably the thinking is "if we build it, they will come" and "if we have rail service wE cAn Be A rEaL cItY!" -- but that's the wrong way to go about it. First you start with bus service. Then you make the bus service really good so that lots of people use it. Then when ridership is such that for most of the day the buses are running every 10 min or better and are mostly full, you turn those routes into articulated BRT and gain more passengers. At the same time, you also need to make sure that your city has great pedestrian infrastructure and protected biking paths that go everywhere, because this provides 24/7 mobility when the buses aren't running. Transportation is a lot of interconnected things: bus, bike, walk... all of which have to be excellent, including small things like making sure every business has bike parking and that your community has at least one bike shop. And bigger things, like making sure that the zoning codes and policies are changed to support development around transit stations and along transit corridors.
Only when all this is in place... then you say "Now that we have a convenient, reliable, extensive transit network that is often at capacity, along with many other ways for people to get around without a car, adding a rail line in the busiest corridor is justified." And then you proceed to do the rail as economically as possible. Say, rail 1.0 -- then incrementally upgrade the rail system in the following decades, as it gets more use/demand, and there's funding available (revenue + grants) and justification to upgrade it to rail 2.0.
Going straight from "bad bus network, and no way to walk or bike safely" to "rail 2.0" is foolish, and a waste of tax money. Transit systems just don't work this way, especially in the 21st century in the US where everything is geared towards private car ownership. It sucks, but that's reality. And oh yeah, streetcars are always a bad idea -- why spend hundreds of millions of dollars on something that averages 7 mph? At that point it makes much more sense to spend that money on protected or off-street multi-use pathways, and give people the option to get where they're going faster, at the exact time they want to go, at any time of the day, for free.
(And yes, commuter rail is a slightly different analysis -- but you still shouldn't build rail going into a city that has bad transit, because what are people going to do when they get off the train but their workplace is 2 miles away from the station, and the bus that goes there is another 30 min ride? And there's no protected bikeway either.)
I hope the Montreal REM starts a new trend of transit style to build in North America and reduce the trend of the at-grade LRT with underground sections.
The biggest problem I find with transit is the last-mile problem. My town of 30k people is blessed with a fast rail connection to London via Thameslink, but the station is a good 3km from my house. Not a problem for my twice a week commute where I hop on my bicycle and cover the front door to platform journey (including locking up) in just over 10 minutes, only slightly slower than driving and completely free. It's miserable in wet weather, tough pedalling in windy weather, and sketchy in icy weather but I've managed fine so far.
Where it gets tricky is if I want to take my toddler on the train to London. In good weather, and if I have lots of time, I can take her in the pushchair and reach the station in 30 mins at a brisk walking pace. But if it's particularly cold or wet, I have little choice than to take the car and pay the pretty expensive parking charge. There is a bus stop right near my house but the bus is so infrequent and irregular that walking is usually quicker unless you time it just right. The only other options if I didn't have the car is a taxi (absurdly expensive given the short distance) or hope that a friend/neighbour can give a lift.
How does one solve this "first/final leg of the journey" problem without a car where walking/cycling isn't an option?
Great as always
Love your videos
You could make an video on how Dallas built a lot of light rail going where no one wants to go.
lack of good TOD activation
Land use, land use, land use! I’m baffled by all these cities with huge light rail systems, yet the cities that spent the money have done nothing to change the land use around stations. Just empty “park and rides” now.
Building hospitals is important as well, but what good is a hospital if the ambulances are stuck in traffic? Subways and high speed are actually the last things you really need (Switzerland has barely any yet hardly anyone complains the lack). Most developments don't need to be made inside the packed city cores but around it so the traffic demand flowing into the city gets lowered, that's what fills up those 6 lane highways and those lines can be built on surface level rather low cost, no bridges and no excavations required. High speed rail is also very often not profitable at all especially compared to air travel so why bother with them when there are lower hanging fuits?
People communiting from banlieues and small towns around cities are more likely to adopt new transit solutions if it picks them up at a convienient place and drop them at some hub around the city where they can change over to a bus, subway or light rail for a few stops to get to work, making them wait less in traffic and get some time to sleep before work, which removes them from the street. Everyone wins.
Once you're there, you can then add subways and high speed rail where ever that makes sense because of ridership.
As a Denverite, I would take the train to school almost everyday, so I have a soft spot for the system. But it’s mostly inconvenient. Bus lines should synch up and connect more to trains out in the suburbs and, once you arrive at Union Station, it’s really difficult to get anywhere else without getting on a bus.
I think the infrastructure is almost there, but it needs to be more grade separated and they need to automate it. The one line that NEEDS to get built is the B Line extension out to Longmont. That would save a lot of lives - Highway 36 and i25 are hellish traffic death traps.
Idk… I could go on about this state’s need for better transit because we have the bones for it but lack the will and know-how. Denver proper needs its own metro system up and down 16th/Broadway and up and down Colfax to make Union Station make sense.
7:20: Vienna be like, hold my beer!
When you mentioned building new transit in London and New York is expensive even with high ridership, I wanted to add Hong Kong to the list. After the extension of the East rail line across the habour last year, there may not be major projects in rail for the next decade, apart from extending lines for a station or two. Building new rail lines in Hong Kong is just too expensive and take too long that people and the government lose the will to do it.
When it comes to costs, you might want to have a word with Gareth Dennis about whether the amount of capital expenditure really matters.
Great video! Totally agree : if you build a transit system that costs quite a lot of money, why don't let it run more often so that it gets used properly!
Also about Paris, I'd argue that there's a lot getting built because there has been way to little transit developed in the last decades (especially around, not in Paris itself) and the Olympic games also certainly pushed politics to invest in public infrastructure.
It's worth nothing that Seattle's light rail which runs every 10 minutes is still on par with Washington D.C. red line, which runs every 10 minutes, and better than the Washington D.C. Blue, Orange, and Silver lines, which run every 15 minutes. Also, the northern half of Seattle's light rail is planned to get a big frequency upgrade in a few years, once the new Bellevue line combines with the existing line, to produce a train every 5 minutes over a large chunk of the city where the two lines overlap. 5-minute train frequency, all day long, 7 days per week will put Seattle's train frequency on par with many New York City subway lines.
You raise many good points that are not considered when evaluating the construction of new transit systems. I could add to this list. I would first argue that instead of building new transit, we need to fix what already exists, especially in NY, DC, and SF. These systems are in bad need of repair and revitalization. Only then should consideration be given to construction or expansion of new systems.
France has a transit tax (versement transport) that can only be used to fund public transit, such as high-speed rail, regional rail, subways, and buses. It certainly had a huge positive impact there.
"every 10 minutes is bad"
Looks at local cities, the best we seem to have is a bus every 15-20 minutes...
I live in Budapest and I am very happy with our transit options. In the city we have 4 subway lines, an extensive number of tram lines, trolley buses and regular buses. In addition our regional rail service is also frequent. Budapest is a great example of a not too large city with clean, safe and efficient transit. I live in the urban core of the city and would not have a need for a car.
At least in my country (France), I notice that it is getting harder and harder to build surface rapid transit. Even cut-and-cover has become rare because it is unpopular. As a result everything is built using deep bored tunnels and all projects are very expensive.
I wonder if such projects would be less expensive if the tunnels were bored, but the stations were cut and cover (bringing the tracks near the surface for stations), and short platforms for frequent small automated trains. Crossrail in London UK spent staggering sums on stations...but only a small fraction of its total cost on boring. Building large underground caverns is expensive, but small and near surface should be substantially less so. More demand later? Build another line, further increasing convenience. Crossrail suggests that boring isn't the cost, massive stations are.
@@bearcubdaycare That's what we do. Stations are cut-and-cover and tunnels are built using TBMs. But it's still very expensive and it makes poor connections because platforms are very deep.
Of course there are places where deep bored tunnels cannot be avoided. But I feel like we don't consider alternatives anymore. For example in Toulouse line C will follow a large motorway for several kilometers and for some reason viaduct was canceled in favor of bored tunnels.
Singapore has a unique case where, if Downtown Line stage 2 had been built a few years later, it wouldn't have had to be tunnelled underground, but instead built at grade along the narrow strip of land formerly occupied by railways that extended from neighbouring Malaysia into our downtown (which was cut back in 2011, freeing up the land, but Downtown Line construction had already begun 2 years earlier)
We really need 24/7 service and increased frequency here in Calgary. The lack of these two factors make Transit a frustrating option.
i lived in seattle 25 years ago and was pleasantly surprised by the free electric buses downtown
I think there's is also a fundamental lack of engineering and cultural ability to prioritize non-car transportation.
And what I mean is that transit projects often end up compromised and inflated by car supremacy. A local example is Kitchener's ION light rail which has downtown stations...i.e., the busiest stations on the network which were planned and built without proper pedestrian access.
I question how it is possible that a competent engineer could make such an obvious error and how politicians who claim to want to support this project could allow that to continue. I hope it is incompetence (that's easier to fix) but I think sometimes it's also malice--people who don't support a transit vision who are being forced to build one compromise it intentionally in order to make it less successful.
Ultimately, until we are willing to challenge our car supremacist culture we won't be building effective transit. Fortunately, I don't think this costs a lot. Building a whole new rail line is expensive. Fixing mistakes like broken pedestrian access is much cheaper most of the time. The harder part is having engineers and politicians be willing to have honest discussions about how this keeps happening.
In Chicago we could really use a cross town rail line. One that goes north to south without going into the city center. But I don’t know if CTA could build it even if they wanted to. A 3 stop extension on the red line has taken decades to get done. And that SHOULD be simple. A cross town line would be many miles long, and have to disrupt major parts of the city.
The Red Line extension will be 5.6 miles. A 5.6 mile automated light metro line on a central portion of Western or Kedzie would be long enough to make several high quality connections to CTA’s radial lines. That first phase would go a long way towards stitching together the rail system of Chicago.
The greatness of a city must be primarily measured by the robustness of its public transportation system.
Great video - as someone who has lived around Boston for most of my life though I’d like to bring up a point about the green line and MBTA in general.
After being saddled with the debt of the Big Dig and being underfunded for over 15 years (thanks Governor Baker) anything MBTA related does not end up particularly well. That means lots of work on the green line extension, exploding orange line, and the commuter rail having lower frequency than what anyone wants.
Hoping that Maura Healy follows through and lets transit thrive in MA in the coming years, who is interested in turning the commuter rail into a regional rail project.
This is a great video, though I'd wish you'd go much more into detail about why building transit, and construction costs in general in the US and Canada are more expensive than the rest of the world.
Everything boils down to city planning. Build shops, malls, banks, office buildings around the metro stations. make walking a pleasant experience, nobody likes to walk next to blocks and blocks of parking garages.
Mk but saying the option is between a subway and three schools is disingenuous framing. One could say for example, that we could build a subway instead of widening a highway, or building a submarine, or cutting taxes.
But that's true? All of these things cost money, extremely expensive transit projects are some of the most expensive things a government can pursue - thats a real impact!
Thought provoking video as always. The key to avoiding the pitfalls that you mention is to get the land use planning for your city sorted out first and locked in. Then you plan transit around that plan. This will inevitably be an iterative process so that physical and cost realities on where transit will adjust the land use plan. Then and only then, do you start planning the roll out of projects. Whilst the construction is the most viable part of the project, the planning process can take decades (it's not just a North America thing) but needs to be done properly. Cost overruns on construction are small compared to the mistakes made in a rushed planning process. Ideally you would be building project A whilst you are planning projects B, C & D. If you don't do that, you will inevitably encounter the problems you mention. The other important thing is to have the balls to stop a project if assumptions change or you have got them wrong. Better to pull out when you have spent $500 million rather than keep going and spend $5 billion on a dud.
I don't know! I honestly think transportation needs to come first, it requires more high level planning than land use!
@@RMTransit The “build it and they will come” argument is one of the reasons we end up with dud projects. In an era where housing supply and affordability is the most critical medium to long term issue, land use planning trumps transit. It is easier to make transit fit optimal land use than the other way around.
I definitely don’t agree, land use depends far less on central planning. We also struggle far less building housing with the right conditions than transit.
Transit should go hand in hand with improving land use around stations.
Nobody will use transit if the stations are surrounded by parking lots
OTOH, without parking lots the only people who can use the transit are people rich enough to afford the rents near the stations.
@@MrBirdnose that's a big assumption. Not all transit stations are in rich neighbourhoods. They usually span an entire city with stops in neighbourhoods with different income levels.
Homes with immediate access to the stations might be valuable compared with others in each particular neighbourhood. But it doesn't mean they're only for rich people.
In suburban areas, for commuter rail, a large or at least medium sized parking lot is needed. For light and heavy rail in denser areas, not so much.
I don't agree! While parking lots are a pretty horrible land use next to higher order transit buses are a thing! They can move a lot of people!
@@kb_100 If it's not a high rent neighborhood before they put the station in, it will be afterwards.
Wow, in my city, Richmond va, the best you will get is every 15 minutes on our BRT
The biggest importance that I can think now of is to make the infrastructure standardized and make all trains comply, so that trains from different lines can share tracks, stations and depots.
In Beijing, the public transport is nice but huge wasted investment because different trains has different outline and voltages so they cannot share tracks and have to be operated as multiple individual systems.
Those trains almost share nothing other than their 1435mm gauge. DC and AC of different voltages were used with both third rail and overhead lines making interoperability a total impossibility. They require multiple different rail yards and service garages to cater each system of trains which is a huge expense.
To make things even worse, this makes lines sharing a part of common path impossible. If two lines wants to share a common part, its either building separate tracks for both, or make two interchange stations and let the one line carry all passengers. Two lines sharing a common portion in Beijing is now a very rare sight and frequent interchange is now the part of experience.
Reece, I agree with you in that elevateds are fine, maybe even great! Especially the modern ones that are cheap but sleek and effective. (So not New York, sadly.)
New York's still have their charm
@@RMTransit True
"Every ten minutes is bad." * stares in MBTA *
I salute RMTransit and the Not Just Bikes and Wendover Productions CZcams men for having highlighted poor transit service in much of Canada and the contiguous US.
Just want to say that calling the BART San Jose extension a “suburban” extension is completely wrong. The areas that this alignment plans to serve are some of the most urban in the whole Bay Area (including both downtown San Jose itself and the future gateway entrance of high speed rail into the Bay at Diridon station, which also has TOD plans that will make it comparably dense to San Jose’s current city center). The decision of a single bore deep tunnel with high speed elevators is a ridiculous and absurdly expensive proposal, but suggesting that the second major city in the Bay Area should get the same level of consideration as some suburbs of less than 100k or even 50k population with an elevated line when it is well and truly urban is equally ridiculous
Also BART already HAS been elevated or even at-grade through the suburban parts of northern San Jose (and for pretty much all of the entire East Bay alignment south of Oakland as well). They’ve basically gone as far south as they can with where an elevated alignment makes sense, and now the only way to make that final and vital connection to the city center and rail station in San Jose is to take it underground. And while yes, San Jose itself is an extremely sprawly and suburban city, the planned BART extension hits probably the only two or three places in that whole part of the bay that could actually generate thousands and thousands of new daily riders for BART once completed and that has the potential for significantly more in the future as new development and high speed rail both come to that area in San Jose, which by the way is a city of over 1 million people and literally bigger (though admittedly not denser) than San Francisco itself
I agree that an extension to San Jose is important, but I still wonder why they feel they need to have the extension so deep underground.
Just because it's denser than many places in the Bay area doesn't make the route not suburban.
You're suggesting that elevated is ridiculous but numerous places around the world with far more density and transit ridership than SJ don't only do shallow tunnels but, also build above ground - from London to Vancouver to Paris, Sydney and Toronto!
My friend is a car potato but is a regular viewer of RM so he has things to talk about with me.
North American cities have building codes that have let cities grow to places where public transport can't be efficient.
The trick is to build public transport first.
In some cases for sure! But a lot of our suburbs could support better transit!
Look to BERLIN City. Its an interesting city of public transport, because public transport exists a long time with all the technical and political changes. The city had a lot of changes. Royal empire, WW2 with total destruction, City under control of the US, GB, France and Soviet Union, later the Berlin wall with capitalist and comunist part of the city, reunification. All types of transport allready existed in Berlin, inclusive a maglev train. Now they reinstall the tram-network in the west-part of the city. You can analyse this and make a video about? Public transport is a cultural issue.
Can you do a video about the BRT system of Grand Rapids MI,
"Every ten minutes is bad." Post-pandemic, the CTA's frequency has been about every ten minutes. It's atrocious.
I would add the word "Infrastructure" in the title
2:35 every 10 minutes is bad
Crys in Chicago being thankful for an L train every 25 minutes