A change of place

As the fourth year has now passed (so fast), I have to say that I've been putting off the writing of this post because I am not sure how to proceed afterwards: As an academic, I always have to worry about funding. In fact, I haven't had a research grant for the past year, and so I finished my doctorate using the funds from a teaching fellowship instead. The new grant application that was supposed to fund the next stage of my research, for a few more years, did not receive approval. However, instead, I was offered a great opportunity to continue my research career at a different university. Unfortunately, that will not be in Boston, but rather in Cambridge -- the original one, over in the United Kingdom. I am sad that I will miss all of the wonderful people and great things happening in Boston for the next few years, outside of the occasional visit home. But on the other hand, it's also an exciting chance to travel, live in a different country, and (oh, by the way) advance my career.

I think there will be a lot of interesting things to see and write about in Cambridge. It's a traditional city that is many centuries older than Boston, with lovely small streets, and good train connections to London. They have their own lively set of transportation and housing issues to observe, in a different cultural context. I'll have to spend some time learning the language, of course. And possibly visiting Boston, UK for the heck of it, not to mention the rest of Europe.

But this blog is supposed to be about Boston, MA. And also, I'm not entirely sure how much time I'll have available to write. I guess I'll just have to see how things play out. I'm not going to turn off or delete the blog, but depending upon how I feel, content might be slow to come out.

Is Houston more progressive than Boston in transportation?

Okay, gotcha: not really, it's still very much a land of sprawl and crazy-large highways. But I read this article last month and then had a chance to see some of it for myself.

In fact, Houston's core neighborhoods grew around a 90-mile streetcar system, and the city has a higher WalkScore than Austin. "Houston is amazingly more progressive and more concerned about things like quality of life, walkable neighborhoods, and bike infrastructure than people realize," says Susan Rogers, a professor of architecture at the University of Houston.

After visiting, I have to concur, although they do seem to have a long way to go yet. I had to drive myself more in those two days than I did in the last two years combined (or more). I want to talk about one technical area in which Houston is doing significantly better than Boston: at-grade transit.

METRORail at Fannin South station

METRO's light rail line is just over ten years old so it does not have the venerability of Boston's Green Line. It does, however, have a lot of details implemented correctly, and it shows. I was able to ride it one evening, to get dinner downtown, and I made some observations along the way.

METRORail opened as a 7.5 mile line in 2003 and has just been extended another 5.3 miles in December for a total of 12.8 miles. It is almost entirely at-grade, although there are a few places where it ducks under or flies over other roads and infrastructure. Here's the main points that it does really well:

• Signal priority or outright preemption at every single intersection it crosses. As the train approaches, lights flash, traffic signals change, and a sign lights up telling drivers to get out of the way of the train. In some cases, they use railroad crossing arms, in other cases, just ordinary traffic signals.
• Proof of Payment ticketing with modern, touchless fare card technology. I got a "Day Pass" and boarding was as simple as waving my card at a box on the platform, then hopping onboard using any door I wanted. Dwell times were consistently low, approximately 20 seconds per stop before we started moving again. Accessibility is great.
• Decent station spacing. Actually, average spacing is about 1/2 mile, which is a bit far, but there is some significant variability in that. The denser areas have shorter station gaps. At least one infill station is planned, Central Station, to assist with the upcoming expansion projects.
• A transit mall downtown, where private vehicular traffic was limited or excluded. The train had clearly been prioritized over the automobile in terms of space.
• Automatic cap on fare paid per day: with the "Day Pass" I pay $1.25 for the first trip, $1.25 for the second trip, $0.50 for the third trip, and nothing for all remaining trips of the day. The MBTA's Day Pass is $11.00, almost thoroughly useless, unless you are sure that you are taking more than 5 trips that day.
• Houston did not feel the "need" to put an awful fence down the middle of the entire right-of-way, which is a big difference from the way Boston's transportation agencies treat us ordinary folks on foot.

The result is that Houston's METRORail has a one way trip time of 50 minutes meaning that it manages a respectable and reliable average speed of 15 mph without the help of expensive grade separation. By comparison, according to the published schedule, or Blue Book:

• Boston's Green Line "B" plods along at about 8-9 mph on average, unreliably.
• The "C" branch goes 8-11 mph depending on time of day.
• The "D" branch, almost fully grade separated, manages to average 15-18 mph.
• The "E" branch does 9-12 mph, on the schedule.
• The SL5 "bus rapid transit" goes 8-10 mph as scheduled, and is slower in reality.
• The heavy rail portions of the MBTA average 19.4 mph in general, and
• The NYC subway system averages 17.4 mph overall.

Through sheer operational competence, Houston has managed to create a surface transit line, crossing many intersections at-grade, that is time and reliability-competitive with expensive grade-separated subways. Very impressive. This is an accomplishment of which the city should be very proud.

And it doesn't end there. Apparently, the original line was constructed for about $325 million in 2003 (including purchase of trains). That's about $50 million / mile in today's dollars. It has achieved approximately 36,000 rides per day, making it the 2nd busiest per-mile in the country. And at $9,000/daily boarding, it's a bargain in human terms.

So while Houston will never match Boston as a city in my view (although I wish them the best), I think we could really stand to learn quite a bit from METRO. Houston is supposedly the home of highway-centric thinking, and yet, they have a gem of a light rail line that could be held up as a model for the entire country. It's good transit in a red state, done cost effectively and operationally efficiently. METRO went up against what must have been an extremely strong motorist lobby... and won. Meanwhile, here in Boston, where we are supposedly so public transit friendly, we can't even get our city to support signal priority, all door boarding, or even respect a bus lane. What is wrong with us? Why are our public officials so cowardly? What are they afraid of? It cannot possibly be worse than the Texas Dept of Transportation.

San Juan

Been away for a little while, I was travelling and stayed for a few days in Old San Juan, which looks like this.

A very beautiful old city which dates back three or four centuries, perhaps even to the early 16th century. It is located on a small island connected by only two bridges to the larger island of Puerto Rico. It is a historically protected site, which is a good thing because the rest of San Juan looks more like this:

Estación Hato Rey

San Juan has extremely high density of cars, and it shows

The adjacent highway was even more of a parking lot than this

Tourism is obviously the biggest industry in Old San Juan, as it is a major cruise ship destination. Between that, the Governor's mansion, and the historical protections, there is a slightly artificial feel to it which can hardly be avoided. But despite that, there are still many local residents and businesses here. And it's a fun place. I think it is well worth a stop if you are in the area.

Problems in Pittsburgh

A street in Shadyside

In a departure from my normal topic, today I am going to write about Pittsburgh, where I have just visited after a very long hiatus. I still have friends left from the time I lived there, and remember many good places to go (plenty of great dive bars, and "Happy Hour" is legal!). The city has approximately half the population of Boston, but a similar kind of "neighborhood" feel to it. There are plenty of good walking streets, and a sizable collection of parks named for the rich robber baron benefactors who still seem to hover over the city.

There are also considerable patches of empty or disinvested space. Part of this is due to geography, with the three rivers and many steep hills, it has always posed a challenge. But everyone knows Pittsburgh as the former prototypical "steel town" which collapsed, people and money fleeing outward to the sprawling suburbs and beyond. That combined with "urban renewal", bringing in civic arenas and massive elevated highways that cut off neighborhoods and blighted large areas, sent the city into a downward spiral from which it is still climbing out. It has largely reinvented itself as a financial and scientific center, with many banking headquarters as well as world class universities.

Central Northside

However, there's still a long way to go. Just take a stroll around Downtown in the early evening and you will notice a disturbing trend: shops are closing up, and the only people you see are eager to leave, waiting by the numerous bus stops. The Fort Pitt bridge and tunnel are jammed to a standstill with commuters heading home, as the immense downtown parking garages empty out. In a few hours, the city is silent and mostly empty. I had hoped this had changed in the years since I left, I know there are efforts to try and diversify uses, but it seems not to be so.

An even more disturbing crisis is brewing, one that will be familiar to Bostonians: the Port Authority (PAT) which runs the public transportation system, is facing a $64 million deficit and is proposing a plan that incorporates incredibly drastic service cuts as well as fare hikes. It eliminates nearly half of all routes, cuts service on the others, raises Zone 1 fares to $2.50, Zone 2 to $3.75, and hurts paratransit as well. As one of my friends put it, this plan will likely lead to economic devastation in Pittsburgh, as the roads and parking lots become even more clogged with additional commuters.

First Avenue Station, facing the portal

Historically, Pittsburgh has had a relatively good bus system. It is based on the very extensive trolley network that employed nearly 700 streetcars, and it was largely abandoned in the 1960s, with the exception of a few South Hills routes. The modern subway system under the streets of Downtown was mostly constructed in the 1980s, though it did re-use a couple of old tunnel sections and a railroad bridge. Curiously, it is also named the "T" and uses a very similar logo to Boston. The South Hills light rail trains access several downtown stations using this subway, and all travel within the downtown area is free of charge due to the fare collection system used by PAT. Essentially, all buses and trains collect fare on boarding when headed inbound, and on alighting when headed outbound, at least during peak. I always found the rule to be somewhat confusing, especially when taking a "crosstown" bus, but it does keep things moving in the most congested areas.

Unfortunately, the light rail system does not extend eastward to the heavily populated neighborhoods of Oakland, Shadyside and Squirrel Hill, although that was proposed nearly twenty years ago. As a result, ridership on the trains only constitutes about 11% of total weekday ridership, the rest being carried by buses. Pittsburgh pioneered the use of dedicated busways in the United States, with roads running south, east and west, and they have been very successful for providing access to the outlying neighborhoods and suburbs. The inner portions of the city don't enjoy such amenities, other than a contra-flow bus lane on Fifth Avenue in Oakland. There are, however, several trunk roads which each carry a number of routes, that provides very decent effective headways for many trips.

Detached single family homes, across from a major "T" station

On March 25th, the Port Authority opened the North Shore Connector for the "T" subway. I made sure to check it out while I was visiting. It connects the subway to a new Gateway Center station downtown, and then burrows in two single-track tubes under the Allegheny river to two new stations on the North Shore. A curious thing I noticed about the new tunnels is that they have a continuous platform throughout their length, probably to enhance rescue operations. The two new stations are near the baseball stadium (PNC Park) and the football stadium (Heinz Field), as well as the science museum and the casino.

The cost of the North Shore Connector was $523.4 million for a 1.2 mile (1.9 km) line, clocking in at approximately $270 million/km. Which is actually pretty cheap when compared to other United States projects, and that includes the money which went into the overly elaborate headhouse for the Gateway Center station. The extension has been accused by Senator McCain of being a boondoggle, but that was likely a partisan (or spiteful) opinion, since it was funded partially through ARRA. However, even Governor Rendell had reservations about it, calling the Connector a mistake. There are some disturbing aspects of the project, since the two North Shore stations are swaddled in parking lots and elevated highways. However, if there is further extension into Manchester, then I think it will turn out to have been a great bargain after all.

The first thing you see upon exiting the North Side T station

It's unfortunate that the Federal government decided to play games with transportation funding in Pennsylvania, especially when they forbade the tolling of I-80. It would be especially shameful if this led to the self-destruction of PAT and the consequent economic devastation to the city of Pittsburgh. I hope, for the city's sake, that it does not come to that.