The Overhead Wire

Monday Night Notes

2009-11-24T00:48:00.000-08:00

Hartford has been brutalized by parking. The loss of tax base to the virus of surface parking is staggering.
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Can you reduce GHGs and still grow?
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Is Paris more accessible than London? Some physicists say yes because the ants told them. Via Price Tags
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Can space be found for affordable housing in New York City?
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An interesting thought, the city as a living machine. How can we bring cities back to a pre-city natural state while still growing? This is an idea that is being explored in many places. A variant on this was discussed last year when discussing plans for the Lloyd district in Portland. It opened up some interesting discussion in the comments.

Station Locations and Employment Centers

2009-11-23T23:22:00.000-08:00

I don't quite get why folks in Bellevue are so set on keeping transit out of the center of the employment district. For some reason many of them irrationally believe that the line will end life as we know it, yet in all respects the line will improve the center's economic standing by providing more access to the jobs for the regional workforce. The solution of one Bellevue council member is to place a station along the freeway and provide a long walkway to the center of the district.

Others argue that Denver has a bus connection, so why should it be that big a deal that the employment center is connected to the train station by a bus? For one thing, Denver's bus mall is dedicated to transit alone and has buses coming so often that you can always see the next one approaching. I seriously doubt that a place which has fought against light rail so hard would put dedicated bus lanes downtown and run such a service. But really what is the point of rapid transit if it doesn't go into the center of activity? The more apt comparison is Bellview station in Denver (funny how the names are the same) right next to the tech center, which we have discussed in previous posts. That should be used as an example of what to avoid when locating a station near a major employment center.

Apparently there is a lot of research that discusses the issue as well. Robert Cervero has looked at this issue in a paper called Office Development, Rail Transit, and Commuting Choices. Ultimately the findings show that the further the station is away from office buildings are, the less likely workers are going to use transit. If the station is near the office, workers are three times more likely to take transit to work.

Also employment density matters as well. The greater the employment density, the more people will take transit. In the Bay Area, the Cervero paper cites statistics that for every 100 workers per acre more, 2.2 increase in commuting by transit. In the Twin Cities, Professor Gary Barnes of the University of Minnesota found that the central city and CBD were greater attractors of transit ridership than suburban offices. So for every increase in 1000 people per square mile in residential density, CBD ridership increased by 2.43%, central city destinations increased by 1.15% and suburban job locations increased by .63%. Ultimately where you are going matters just as much if not more than where you are coming from.

For light rail lines, transit ridership increases the more jobs are within a half mile of the station. Using LEHD data, if you look at recently constructed light rail lines and employment within a half mile of the station, the number of jobs is related to the number of riders that a line gets. Here are a number of recently constructed lines charted against workers.

So with all this evidence why would anyone ever think about running a line outside of an employment district instead of right through it to capture more riders? The goal should be to boost and improve accessibility for workers, who make up 60% of transit ridership, not make it harder for them to use transit.

Previous posts on this subject:

Importance of Employment Centers
When Road Engineers Do LRT

Sunday Night Notes

2009-11-22T14:55:00.000-08:00

Long Beach is looking at streetcars
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Quatar has a $22B deal with Deutsche Bahn to build freight, passenger, and Metro rail lines using Siemens technology.
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Having the last train leave at 6:30 is a ridership killer. Commuter rail lines with limited time tables make no sense to me.
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Major developments along the North Corridor Commuter Rail line in Charlotte. My question, will it actually be Transit Oriented?
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Is the housing bust going to actually halt suburbs? I feel like this will be short lived unless something bigger changes.

Get Riled Up!

2009-11-19T21:39:00.000-08:00

Want to get riled up? Check out the back and forth at the National Journal between highway lackeys and the good guys. "You're trying to take away our freedom to drive 100 miles to work everyday!" This one from the head of the truckers:

However, many of the proposed solutions encroach upon our freedom of mobility and our right to live where we want. Smart growth land-use strategies are simply ways to encourage living in high-density areas offering mass transit, which counters the preferred lifestyles of most Americans. Instead of changing the transportation systems to modify our behavior, we should improve our transportation systems to match people’s behaviors and preferences.Personal freedom is a defining characteristic of the American way of life...

This gem is from the head of the highway users alliance:

If so, I assume you would reject policies that would limit the choice of new homes that can be zoned and built, force people to pay to park in front of their home, add high tolls to their car trips, require paid parking at suburban shopping centers, divert their taxes, and involve the federal government in local land use planning, right? Afterall, these unfortunate souls do not need to be punished for living how they were forced to live, right?

We are in total agreement in fact -- Americans should be free to live where the want to live, work where they want to work, and shop where they want to shop. And as they choose freely without armtwisting from the federal government, we should provide the transportation system that is finanically, politically, and environmentally sustainable to support that free choice. We could start our plan with the one mode of transportation that could theoretically support itself with a reasonably set gas tax paid by its users.

I just fell of the couch laughing. Man those users sure do pay for the system! We can let people live however they want as long as its with cars! This is amazing yet not surprising. This is what we are fighting against.

Match Points

2009-11-19T01:24:00.000-08:00

Every place in the country wants to spend more money on infrastructure but none of them have it. Los Angeles and Denver want to pay for their transit systems and Governor Goodhair in Texas wants more roads but doesn't want anyone to pay. No new taxes!...? But isn't a toll a tax? All arrows point to the federal government but they aren't budging any time soon. What gives? Always money.

What I also don't get is why Denver isn't asking for a full New Starts contribution for its Fastracks money match. They need as much and even more than they are asking for, 39% and 28% for two corridors. Why can't they ask for 50% of each? Roads get 80%! I don't get it! They need the money to complete the project.

Los Angeles on the other hand is going looking for more. $9 Billion and soon. Mayor V says LA should get money because they are putting up their own, but isn't Denver putting up its own? Isn't Houston putting up its own? It's Salt Lake putting up its own?

“What we’re saying to them is we’re one of the few cities coming in with our own money,” Villaraigosa said in an interview yesterday. “You figure it out.”

Perhaps he has those other cities in mind. Cities are living up to their end of the deal and more. With the feds giving out money, many have struggled to criticize, feeling like they might get the spigot cut off. Well right now there isn't a spigot at all, so its probably time to start railing on the folks in Washington to get moving already. Apparently Peter DeFazio has already started. Get rid of the clowns that are advising Obama or at least shut Summers up and get some infrastructure spending going. LA is putting up their end, Denver is putting up their end. Metro Regions keep getting the shaft, give them a hand and create some jobs already!

E2

2009-11-19T01:22:00.001-08:00

If you missed them, there are some really cool webcasts from PBS on many of the issues the livable communities cares about.

H/T Grush Hour

Open Up Your Eyes

2009-11-18T00:12:00.000-08:00

Tonic is one of my favorite bands of all time. And its kind of funny since this was their first song on the radio and in video. Their second song If You Could Only See was probably on your radio every day in 1997. But this video is interesting to me because of the sprawly nature to it. As I look back at it, I try to think about what was going through my head when I saw it the first time. Probably something along the lines of, that would be awesome to skate through these neighborhoods. There's so much space for you and your friends to goof off. It's certainly something you couldn't do on a city street and this neighborhood looks just like any other suburban neighborhood you could find.

Update: Ughh. You'll have to go to youtube to see it. Universal obviously doesn't think that people sharing their videos is a good thing. When are these people going to learn about the internets?

Head to Head

2009-11-17T23:24:00.000-08:00

Check out this time lapse transit line video. Atlanta was way ahead...

via @ttpolitic

No Traffic

2009-11-17T22:26:00.000-08:00

It's the title to a great album by a band called the stereo. It's also the scream given off by NIMBYs everywhere in their quest for the status quo. Most recently developers of the Sacramento Railyards won versus the traffic tattlers who cried traffic when the rail yard development environmental impact statement didn't say that the traffic and pollution was going to be too scary to build the project.

Kopper, who filed one of the lawsuits, said despite the court ruling, he believes the city hasn't adequately reviewed potential consequences of the added traffic. "The public and decision makers really do not know how much impact this project is going to have on the traffic before voting for it," he said.

But why should it? This project is going to put 12,000 housing units and 25,000 people right at the terminal of the eventual CAHSR line and on the doorstep of downtown. If anything, this project is going to slash VMT and environmental impacts that would have resulted in those 12,000 units being situated elsewhere in the region. In theory its the perfect example of the trip not taken. I'm worried about the foot traffic.

Transfer Rights

2009-11-15T14:17:00.000-08:00

I don't quite understand why transfers of development rights aren't used more in cities looking to densify areas around transit and preserve open space. It seems like a really easy way to show instantly the benefits they are recieving and make real progress instead of just hoping for it.

A Madison Strain of Crazy

2009-11-14T13:29:00.001-08:00

I'm always a bit surprised (but shouldn't be) when I read an article like this about how extreme conservatives believe that folks interested in smart growth and livable communities are trying to push their lifestyle on everyone else. They raise the specter of the iron curtain and soviet apartment blocks that were designed and built in the same era as Pruitt Igoe and other poorly thought out urban renewal projects that followed the ideas of Le Corbusier in the United States and around the world. I would hope those mistakes would not be repeated, and all urbanists know better.

But everyone who reads here knows the histories and the market distortions of sprawl which has absolutely dominated the market over the last 60 years. If anything, its they who are forcing everyone to live their lifestyle, a sick distortion of the actual desires of at least some Americans such as myself who want to live in an urban walkable environment. By not providing a choice in living, or transportation, the opponents of livable communities are telling us that the actual market doesn't matter and that they know what is best even though they would like us to believe that their way is the choice of the people, even those who don't have a choice.

We know that not all in their circle believe this way and ultimately building cities shouldn't be a partisan issue. The road towards transit and walkability is a sustainable one from a fiscal and environmental standpoint. I think many times we overlook the power of fiscal arguments for the movement at our own peril. The research on sprawl is not good, and people are starting to get it, a bit late, but at least they are starting to see how value is created by cities and urbanism is a fiscally responsible choice.

For those who still believe we're forcing a move towards urbanism, if they continue down the same path, spending money in ways we can't afford to continue, they might find that they have less choice in the future rather than a real choice now.

Use the Land to Pay the Tab?

2009-11-11T02:17:00.001-08:00

The city of Charlotte is contemplating buying a dead mall. The same dead mall is at the end of the proposed streetcar route. It would be interesting if they would decide to view it as an opportunity to be innovative in their financing. If they go Portland style, they could put together a development agreement and sell to a developer who might be able to do something interesting and urbanist with the property, provided there is a market for such a thing. It's also quite possible that this development could pay for part of the streetcar, some affordable housing and other amenities.

Does anyone know why Charlotte would want to buy this property? It's not clear that there is a true goal in mind, which could hinder any thinking, innovative or otherwise.

Do Not Count Here

2009-11-11T02:05:00.000-08:00

A lot of what I do at work depends on the census. I need data to make accurate maps and analyze trends in TOD and employment and other things. My current favorite dataset is the LEHD. Apparently though the folks at the census know that its hard to count. I don't doubt that it is. But I really wish that Michelle Bachman's district would have a big green dot on it. Perhaps one that says don't count at all. That way we would get rid of her and her census idiocy all together. I also hope the rolling averages work out from the ACS. It would be really annoying if they skip the long form in 2010 and then we were stuck with lackluster data until 2020. We already have to suffer 10 year old data. Think about where you were and what you were doing in 2000. Things changed a bit since then?

The Market Must be Right

2009-11-10T00:13:00.000-08:00

There's an article from London Ontario with the ever awesome Troy Russ of Glatting Jackson discussing what light rail can and can't do. One of the things it can't do is change the market around its stations. While there is a lot of hope out there that just building a light rail line will solve most if not all the worlds problems, hope alone won't make it so.

"The biggest misconception about transit is it's the reason development happens," said Russ, a planner in an American company, Glatting Jackson, who has designed rail lines in Charlotte, Pittsburgh and Orlando and stations in Denver.

Much development we've seen with recent light rail lines has been from the ability to expand the sphere of a market like downtown, but not change it. The line also has the power to shape an existing market. This is what the Portland Streetcar did when it pushed most of the development in downtown for the last decade along its corridor. I also believe that the streetcar allowed the market in Portland to feed on itself creating a synergy that wasn't possible without it or regulations that shaped growth around it.

So I would urge caution when pumping up that local light rail project or streetcar as the answer to a lack of development pressure. Alone without other regulatory help that swings the pendulum away from today's road paradigm, the tracks will lay dormant. But if you can figure out where the market is going to be next and lay down the rules, it's likely that shaping the development will be as easy as aligning poles on a magnet.

Setting the Table for a Buffet

2009-11-08T23:30:00.001-08:00

Perhaps a knowledgeable and keen businessman such as Warren Buffet is the key to restoring the railroads to prominence in this country. It would be interesting to see if such a large buy in BNSF is going to give others a small push to start thinking about passenger rail as a buy situation as well. One of the things that I think he will benefit from are the billions of dollars that will go into rail lines between cities for high speed rail. Because the government is pushing harder for HSR than anything else, and so far it's a popular program, he knows that if he plays correctly within the confines of the current government parameters, the sky is the limit. Who knows, perhaps he'll be on track to follow in Vanderbilt's footsteps.

Spinning the Dials

2009-11-08T23:10:00.000-08:00

The state is stepping forward to do scenario plans for the State of California. It will be interesting to see what the wizards over at Calthorpe associates can put together. They've done similar work for Salt Lake City, Austin, and Portland. But I don't think anyone has seen it done at this level before.

But even if a formal state plan doesn't emerge, Vision California could affect state policy. The impetus to reduce carbon emissions is one example: State agencies eventually could draw on the studies to require local governments to allow additional high-density development near bus and train stops. "Once we build the base cases, we have a tool where we can spin the dials," Calthorpe said. "Let's just get the information together. That's a giant step forward in itself."

Ultimately the scenarios will show how much the path we are going down now will cost. My guess is that it will be shocking but educational to know how much we just toss away.

Sunday Night Notes

2009-11-08T22:48:00.000-08:00

I wish there were more time in the day. I have some land value and transportation reading to catch up on.
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Senators driving buses? Electric ones?
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If the Corridor Cities high ridership route is so circuitous, then why does the model say it will get more riders? When do we get to blow up the new starts process? And when do we get to stop wasting money on sprawling development that creates these situations?
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It's quite an intense process to secure rights of way especially in Dallas on the way to the airport.
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Richard Layman posted this about innovators. I thought it was worth the read.

Setting Up Fiscal Sustainability

2009-11-07T13:46:00.001-08:00

I was interested to see former Texas State Rep Mike Krusee talking about the subsidization of roads and others at the CNU Transportation Networks conference talking about his conversion from evil, especially after we know he screwed Austin back in 2000 and 2004 essentially getting them into the mess they are in now in a somewhat roundabout way.

What was especially interesting was to hear him mention that he was the one that wanted to look at how much roads cost and thus authorized the study to index how much roads cost in Texas. What did they find? No road pays for itself. None. Curiously, that study or any mention of it exists no where on the TxDOT site. The only memory of it existing is on the blogs that picked it up after it showed up again in a newsletter. We covered this back in 2007 and notice that the pages that once kept this information front and center at TxDOT are gone.

It seems like information like this would be extremely powerful in pointing out everywhere around the country that essentially our way of funding expansion of roads now is broken. And even though he's not one of my favorite people for many reasons, Krusee made a basic point that I think is important even if we probably don't agree on the outcomes. We have enough money in the system. We just need to start allocating it correctly.

Over the past 50 years, Krusee argued, the federal government was using tax money that came by and large from cities to subsidize roads to areas without access otherwise. "City dwellers have subsidized the land purchases and the development costs out in the suburbs," said Krusee. What's more, the gas tax, which city dwellers pay when driving on city roads, but which goes to freeways largely outside of urban cores, is "a huge transfer of wealth from the cities to the suburbs to build these rings."

This admission is important, and it points the way towards sustainability for the whole urban economic system. Once we realize that we can't keep expanding roads(or sewer, electrical systems which have similar costs to the roads in terms of return according to Scott Bernstein) further and further out, and that the goals of the interstate system have been co-opted by suburban development forces for fiscally and environmentally unsustainable practices, the more of an effect we'll have on changing every citizens fortunes, not just those who build sprawl.

This also brings me to a point that Scott Bernstein made at the conference, that in these hard economic times, we need to really focus on how these investments will create value and wealth for people and cities in hard economic times over the long run. As my college professor Shane Davies always said, if you want to make change, you "hit people in the pocketbook".

Stories Like This

2009-11-04T00:10:00.000-08:00

When I see headlines like this, It makes me a bit upset.

"Woman Raped Along Uptown Light Rail Line"

Not just because someone was violated against their will, but also because the insertion of along Uptown Light Rail Line vilifies the line itself for something it really had nothing to do with. If you read closer into the story, the woman was not riding the light rail line and was assaulted downtown walking on a sidewalk. Could have been any sidewalk and she could have been leaving any bar. But the headline screams "transit is dangerous". These kind of associations happen all the time and will continue to happen. I just wish they didn't.

Monday Night Notes

2009-11-03T00:04:00.000-08:00

Chris Leinberger tells us that "value capture" is the term of the next year. Though I wish he would dig a bit deeper.
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Izmir imports trams from China.
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Is McCrory for transit or against it? He likes the train when he's in Tampa, but doesn't want to spend money for the streetcars or an extension of light rail. Kay Hagen understands.

Hagan rode to her new Charlotte office – a symbolic short hop – on the Lynx light rail line, a reminder that earlier this year, she secured $24 million for the Charlotte Area Transit System

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Edmonton will levy a fee on suburban developers to pay for new transit.

Job Centers Should Be Center

2009-11-01T19:14:00.001-08:00

As Becks notes, I think its important to start thinking 20 years ago about transbay capacity. Unfortunately we haven't had a real conversation in the region about it. A second tube (I believe with four tracks for commuter rail and BART) is certainly needed to reinforce San Francisco and Oakland as the central job centers of the region. But why waste $10B on a new tube as Rafael from CAHSR blog says in the comments when you could be creating more jobs in the regions other centers.

Instead of demanding the construction of a second BART tube for $10 billion, perhaps we should be asking why everybody and their grandmother absolutely, positively has to work in downtown San Francisco to begin with.

I'm pretty sure San Francisco's CBD only has a certain small share of the region's overall jobs, perhaps 10-15% at most. I'm guessing here but for the most part this is the case in most of the country. But the reality is that since the jobs are clustered so tightly, they demand usage of alternative transport. They also are places of agglomeration and its not an issue of the execs getting a corner office but where face to face meetings and deals happen at lunch. (This is a whole other topic but I don't believe E-working is every going to replace working in an office with other people) There is a reason why the first BART system was built, because leaders of the area wanted to be the Banking Center of the West Coast and needed that critical mass of density and prestige to achieve it.

Another issue here is that of sprawl. There is this belief that the highways and housing policies were what caused the sprawl with the thought that more people could just drive into the central city. But in reality its even more nuanced than that. We've been building these roads out but when we do that we create these job centers and edge cities on the periphery that increase the outward migration pattern. People keep moving out and towards the exact point at which they can have a thirty minute commute or less from their job center. For jobs such as finance or research or science that are transit oriented, this means less people taking transit and more people deciding to drive their cars. I'm fairly confident that less Chevron employees take transit to work these days. It also means less urban office parks with parking lots that increase reliance on SOVs even more. We see this with Pleasanton and the continued movement of people out to Stockton.

If we're truely going to be transit oriented and sustainable in this region, we can't put a cap on the jobs in the center cities and continue to push jobs out to the periphery. If you don't spend that $10B on a second tube and push for more development (residential and employment) in BART's current reach in the inner East and West bay and even more money on an actual urban rapid transit network to connect to the existing bus network, I would argue that you're going to be spending much much more money to try and get people to and from their exurban and suburban job centers let alone the difference in city services (water sewer police fire) that must be supplied to all of these new suburbs and growth.

At Rail~Volution

2009-10-29T21:57:00.001-07:00

Posting is going to be slow over the weekend as I am at Rail~Volution. Got some good sessions lined up including one with Ryan Avent, Aaron Renn (The Urbanophile) and Adam Gaffin (Universal Hub). You can follow along on twitter with the hash tag #RV09.

Tuesday Night Notes

2009-10-28T01:19:00.000-07:00

It's just not like when we grew up. I remember riding my bike to school.

"The biggest problem presented in the report is the fact that cities are being planned especially for cars and for adults,"

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Redevelopers have tighter funding these days.
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Learning to live without a car. Moving from the burbs to the bright lights.

I used to make a big grocery shopping trip just about every Saturday, driving several miles to a store and throwing half a dozen shopping bags into the trunk. Now I can walk to a supermarket three blocks away

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Suburbanization and climate change. They are linked.
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Apple will spend some cash to revitalize a Chicago Subway Station.
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I couldn't agree with Ryan more on this point.

There is a terrible chicken-and-egg problem to transportation planning, in which planners express regret that there is so little transit demand and so much traffic before building new roads. They have to accommodate the demand they've got! But you can't have transit demand if you don't have transit, and if you don't recognize that, then you're doomed to keep building roads forever. No one in the mind of the planners has yet invented a substitute for the automobile.

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The electric transit revolution is upon the British. Trolleybuses return.

Who Said That?

2009-10-28T01:09:00.001-07:00

The leader of which country made the following statements?

He said one great problem facing cities was historic under-investment in public transport, which meant services were under heavy strain or, on city fringes, non-existent. Better planning was needed to ensure communities were not separated from jobs and services. "Isolated communities breed social exclusion and entrenched disadvantage," Mr **** said. 'Increasing density in cities is part of the solution to urban growth, alongside greenfield development." He said the development had to happen with regard to climate change, with carbon emissions reduced through better design and greater consideration of water use.

Why Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The willingness to punish for past and possible future transgressions was not unnoticed either.

Kevin Rudd wants to seize greater control of urban planning by denying infrastructure funding to states and councils that won't agree to improve public transport and ban haphazard housing development.

If only didn't spend more money on cars than transit here in the United States and had rules with teeth. But in the current system everyone has to get theirs whether they deserve it or not.

Monday Night Notes

2009-10-26T22:24:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a picnic on the grass on a major bridge?
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Officials in India are calling for high rises. I'm surprised they didn't go up before.
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Businesses in the UK are starting to use carshare companies instead of keeping their own fleets.
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Integrating BRT with a Metro should be a no brainer.
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I can see why folks in East LA wanted a subway. Its a dense area and it would have been nice. But whining about it and getting upset right before it opens seems a bit lame to me.
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Lots of regulation of safety on commuter rail are causing a strain.