tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58624440087402503722008-08-28T02:54:09.592-04:00Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comBlogger91125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-9183937450035027682008-08-23T02:09:00.000-04:002008-08-23T02:09:01.954-04:00

In many discussions of the death of downtowns, the focus is on residents. Having fled to the car-oriented suburbs, the residents found driving and parking difficult in old downtowns built for pedestrians and streetcars, so they drove to the malls, and the downtown businesses either moved to the malls or died. This is only partly true, and it ignores the cities' original reasons for existing.

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-31352169387924021802008-08-15T23:08:00.001-04:002008-08-15T23:09:35.547-04:00

In the comments to my last post on Queens Boulevard trolleys, Alon Levy offered a compelling argument that it would be impractical to connect the Flushing Line to the 60th or 63rd Street tunnels (or both) and thus free up the Steinway Tunnel for the purpose it was originally built for: trolleys. He may very well be right. We can still put trolleys on Queens Boulevard, though, and still run them

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-52780080546015226952008-08-13T00:28:00.004-04:002008-08-13T01:13:10.690-04:00

Last time I checked, we weren't quite living in a fascist theocracy. But many public transit schedules seem to be written by theocrats. What's up with all the shitty Sunday service? Let's forget other parts of the country. There are many cities and counties around the NY region, even ones that have quite decent bus service five days a week, that have skeletal service on Sundays, or simply no

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-4254366557872459572008-08-10T00:10:00.002-04:002008-08-10T00:16:12.275-04:00

In response to my last post about profit-making bus routes in Brisbane and New Jersey, Pantagraph Trolleypole wrote: Part of the problem I see with privatization, is that the company is not really accountable to the people and can slash service and raise fares to the point where it's dead. I completely agree, and I don't think that basic service should ever be dependent on the profit motive. I

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-25055197424159969052008-08-09T15:24:00.004-04:002008-08-09T15:40:52.566-04:00

This morning I went to "Summer Streets," where New York City banned cars from a long stretch of Park Avenue and other streets. It was a lot of fun. After I got home, I realized how annoyed I was by the headline and focus of Sewell Chan's City Room post, Will Car-Free ‘Summer Streets’ Work?. Of course this is a large sum of money spent on police and planning, and a potential disruption for

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-64055037425558300512008-08-08T23:40:00.001-04:002008-08-08T23:42:35.436-04:00

Many transit activists are frustrated: what we've dreamed of for years is happening, but it's being stymied by short-sighted politicians. People are abandoning their cars for transit, but the government agencies that run the transit systems are - in many cases - not receiving the capital funding to expand so that they can handle these passengers. The Market Street trolley in San Francisco is

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-75349957666745360512008-08-07T01:24:00.002-04:002008-08-07T01:39:44.031-04:00

Last week I used Alon Levy's comment to segue into my proposal for bringing trolleys back to Queens Boulevard - and then through the Steinway Tunnel, calming traffic and allowing the #7 train to run "B division" cars that can hold hundreds more passengers per train. Alon didn't like my idea. I respect that; he's been a faithful reader and a reliable source of transit information and wisdom.

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-28731767901696489442008-07-29T01:26:00.001-04:002008-07-29T01:34:15.024-04:00

I'll admit it: my last post was a setup. Thanks - and apologies - go to faithful reader Alon Levy, who proved the perfect foil for my strategy. When I proposed running 9.75 foot wide B Division cars on the Flushing Line, he wrote, "Widening the Steinway Tunnels for this to be feasible is even harder than converting the Contract 1-2 IRT to Division B specs." He's absolutely right. As was

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-80535338536279402542008-07-27T21:38:00.002-04:002008-08-07T01:38:51.675-04:00

A number of people have complained to me about crowding on the #7 train at rush hour, and they say it's only getting worse. The MTA has recently added more trains, but they say they're already running as many Well, here's a possible solution that's been floating around for years: widen the trains. The elevated structures that now support the #7 in Long Island City, Woodside and out to Corona,

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-40280463259938929742008-07-14T00:37:00.000-04:002008-07-14T00:40:18.964-04:00

Banking operates on trust; many of them used to have the word in their names. When you deposit money in a bank, you expect it to be there if you need it. If a banker ever told you, "Gee, you know, I've actually come to like this money a lot, and I really need it to buy gym equipment," you'd take them to court. Apparently trust doesn't go for much in the world of railbanking. This process was

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-88538815053330750652008-06-17T23:32:00.002-04:002008-06-17T23:51:38.282-04:00

Zipcar would have done wonders for my life during the time I spent in a small Western city where the buses stopped running at 8PM and there were lots of things worth seeing out beyond where the buses went. In New York it just seems bizarre, but then again it's bizarre that anyone would want to drive anywhere here, let alone actually own a car. Be that as it may, if there's anywhere you might

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-27483585355254763092008-06-17T01:48:00.001-04:002008-06-17T01:50:20.609-04:00

Following Ben Kabak's lead, I have added the Stewart Airport Rail Link to my Spreadsheet o'Boondoggles. In this, I agree with Jeff Zupan, who was paraphrased by the Sun as saying that "the real benefit of Stewart International Airport would be if it relieved the city airports of upstate residents who would no longer have to commute into the city to fly." None of the rail proposals would serve

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-21092647642695936772008-06-14T00:55:00.000-04:002008-06-14T00:55:33.138-04:00

Staten Island has a rail line, but it used to have three. In addition, the Bayonne Bridge was built to handle light rail, a capacity that has never been used. There's fairly broad support for reactivating passenger service on the North Shore and West Shore Lines. So far, so good. What bugs me is that they keep talking about "light rail." It's in the PlaNYC 2030 documentation, and in a Staten

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-7561073757779779922008-06-11T13:08:00.001-04:002008-06-11T13:10:37.063-04:00

In discussing the TriboroRX proposal, I have serious concerns about the capacity of the right-of-way to handle this amount of service. Right now the Bay Ridge Branch and the New York Connecting Railroad are single-track freight lines in many places. Of course the proposal is to increase it to two tracks and possibly four where there's room. In fact the Bay Ridge Branch and the NYCR were

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-88821316709424270982008-06-08T23:40:00.003-04:002008-06-08T23:57:03.974-04:00

Mass Transit Magazine has an interview with San Francisco Muni Executive Director Nat Ford (which I found via the Orphan Road). The most interesting thing about the article is that Muni oversees the public parking facilities in San Francisco, including not only on-street spaces and garages but parking enforcement as well. Ford discovered that the atrocious (70%) on-time performance rates for

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-79472231690550657302008-06-07T00:30:00.000-04:002008-06-07T00:32:30.333-04:00

The map above is a detail of map of the 1929 proposal for the Independent Subway Second System. I'm posting it to show you the Winfield Spur. This planned line would have diverged from the Queens Boulevard Line just east of the Roosevelt Avenue station in Jackson Heights, serving Winfield (once its own town within Queens County, now a suburb of Woodside), Maspeth and Ridgewood before merging

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-81397963852020082702008-06-04T22:34:00.003-04:002008-06-04T22:46:51.356-04:00

Remember the Thames River? No, not the one in London, the one in New London. The one where Amtrak will be replacing a bridge and thus suspending all service between New Haven and Boston for four days. Not quite all service: there will be at least one train a day over the Inland Route via Springfield, and Shore Line East will be extending their trains to New London (but apparently have no plans

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-56302827310564706552008-06-02T19:53:00.005-04:002008-06-02T20:26:57.008-04:00

The Tri-State Transportation Campaign reports that the Port Authority is planning to add another bus lane to the Lincoln Tunnel and its approach road. The current counter-flow XBL was instituted in the early 1970s and carries more than 62,000 passengers in over 1700 buses from 6:15-10AM every day, saving those passengers 15-20 minutes over drivers in general-purpose lanes. Sadly, there is no

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-10425718733166294842008-06-01T23:41:00.000-04:002008-06-01T23:43:31.538-04:00

In a recent post, I discussed the Regional Plan Association's TriboroRX proposal, and Michael Frumin's research on potential usage. I mentioned that it was not necessarily the best solution to run a single train along the entire route, that it might be better to chop the right-of-way up and use it to extend other lines. In particular, I highlighted the 1969 proposal to re-route the L train to

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-24331936235734314242008-05-30T22:52:00.003-04:002008-05-30T22:55:32.781-04:00

Ben Schiendelman's Seattle Transit Blog post, based on a Register-Guard story, observes that Eugene's transit agency is cutting BRT to the bone and raising fares.

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-42689433536808782222008-05-30T00:53:00.002-04:002008-05-30T00:56:00.639-04:00

Once upon a time, there was a Grasshopper who lived in a field. He saw an Ant passing by with a large nut on his bicycle rack. "Yo, Ant. Where you off to?" "I'm bringing this nut to our winter storage area." "Dude, how can you live in that colony with all the tunnels! An insect has to be outside, breathe, get in touch with nature!" "I get time to go out and experience nature. But our

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-69578653463114895532008-05-27T23:02:00.002-04:002008-05-27T23:07:33.914-04:00

As I've written before, the Tappan Zee Bridge is approaching the end of its intended lifespan, and the New York State Department of Transportation has been behaving badly in regards to the proper response. Apparently unilaterally, they decided that all the alternatives under serious consideration will involve increasing the number of car lanes on the bridge from seven to ten - adding one "

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-90860881842987069372008-05-27T14:45:00.003-04:002008-05-27T14:50:04.585-04:00

A faithful reader writes in with this suggestion about the Tappan Zee renovation/reconstruction project: Dear Cap’n, As you may be aware, the choice for a transit mode for the new Tappan Zee Bridge was to be made this month. I attended a public meeting for this at the beginning of the month and the representative in attendance from NYSDOT made this clear to those of us who were there to expect

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-68214910911311182522008-05-26T00:12:00.001-04:002008-05-26T00:14:22.997-04:00

There are many subway and commuter rail lines that cross from one borough to another, but some crossings are particularly underserved. One that's often mentioned is between Brooklyn and Queens. There are in fact five subway lines that connect Brooklyn and Queens directly: the A/C Fulton Street Subway/Liberty Avenue El, the G Crosstown Subway, the M Myrtle/Ridgewood El, and the J/Z Fulton Street

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5862444008740250372.post-71403380033021283242008-05-24T23:30:00.000-04:002008-05-24T23:32:33.842-04:00

So you want to build a bus rapid transit line. In an earlier post, I discussed the various characteristics that have been used to define BRT (or else features of BRT), and concluded that the one most likely to make the difference between "rapid" and "not rapid" is physical separation. But where do you put the physically separated right-of-way? The answers to this question are roughly the same

Cap'n Transithttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17057887736728828646noreply@blogger.com