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Marco Chitti

@ChittiMarco

26 Aug

One of the various criticism against the REM is the fact that it will take over the Mont-Royal tunnel, the only route that allows through running via the Gare Centrale, notably for ViaRail High Frequency Train.

I think this criticism is not completely fair. I'll tell you why.

A premise: I've criticized the REM project at length on what I think are several shortcomings in the planning and implementation phases, but I don't want to be hostile to the project aprioristically and just relate taken-for-granted opinions.

Let's imagine that Montréal, instead of doing the REM, took the RER GO approach: transform its infrequent commuter rail network in a modern, electrified, frequent S-Bahn. Let's just forget for a second all the issues with CP,CN, the bridges etc.

Read 18 tweets

Marco Chitti

@ChittiMarco

26 Aug

@yfreemark

A couple of consideration about transit spending for operation in Italy, following @yfreemark 's piece about the US

In Italy, public subsidies amounts to € 6.6 bn annually (2017), but mostly comes from the "federal":
Central govt -> € 4.8 bn (72%)
Local govt -> € 1.8 bn (28%)

That covered some 2 bn in vehicle*km of service (incl. bus/tram/metro/train/ferry), for 5.2 billion passengers, for a total costs (subsidy+fares) of € 11 bn divided as 7 bn for urban transit (4€/vehicle*km) and 4 bn for rail (15.5€/train*km), the rest for ferry

note that that data is uncomplete, though. It covers only the regions with "ordinary statute" and not the four regions with autonomous statute and the two autonomous provinces, that encompass a little less than 1/6 of the population

Read 11 tweets

Marco Chitti

@ChittiMarco

2 Aug

1/ This is a short, mostly visual thread about a great piece of urbanism: Turin's multiway boulevards.

🏢🌳🚲🌳🚊🚘🚘🚊🌳🚲🚙🌳🏫

2/ multiway boulevards are one of the most interesting invention of 19th c. city planning, a first attempt to create thoroughfares to facilitate circulation in growing "paleo-technic" metropolis

In Italy, Turin is the city that designed its growth around them more than any other

3/ taking various shapes, width and configurations, most of them have an important feature: planted medians sepatarating through traffic of trams/cars from side local acces lanes intended for local slow traffic, parking.

Read 11 tweets

Marco Chitti

@ChittiMarco

8 Jun

1/ A while ago I promised to write a thread about why zoning is not the only (maybe not even the main) obstacle between us and the 15-minutes city, starting from my grandmother "latteria".

Today I deliver : a thread about commerce, logistic and city planning.

2/ Let's first start with Granma's Latteria, that she opened in 1959. It was a small neighborhood shop, technically a "milk shop", but more of a small grocery + cheese shop + bar in a secondary residential street within a small cluster (tobacco, butcher and vegetable shop)

3/ It was a typical family business, run primarily by nonna Giovanna with occasional help from grandpa during weekends and by my father and my aunt after school, especially for home deliveries by foot or bike

Quite the typical portrait of a neighborhood shop in the postwar years

Read 23 tweets

Marco Chitti

@ChittiMarco

18 May

1/ Québec just announced it is going to pour $10bn and counting in a what is now called the Réseau Express de la Capitale.
- $3.3bn will go toward the tramway project (20km)
- $6-7bn toward a 8km road tunnel (with bus lanes...)
- $600m for bus lanes and other improvements

2/ The tramway project is more or less the same announced a few years ago, albeit with a different Eastern terminus.
Unfortunately, the project lost the rest of the "Réseau Structurant" network it was part of, that comprised BRT, bus lanes too. But budget remained the same...

3/ $3.3bn for 20 km makes it $165m/km, one of the costliest tramways in history.

The average cost for Modern European Tramways Québec one is modeled from is around €30-40m/km
-> $50-70m/km

The short central tunnel section alone does not justify that astronomical budget, IMO

Read 7 tweets

Marco Chitti

@ChittiMarco

7 May

1/ I've always been persuaded that most policymakers have little understanding of the spatial implications of their policies. That because policymaking is mostly dominated by discursive and econometric logics.

An example? Electric cars charging stations.

I will explain why

2/ With the next generation EU and Biden's infrastructure plan taking shape, the economic and environmental opportunities and trade-offs of electrifying cars have been discussed a lot in the public debate. Important resources have been committed to expand charging infrastructure

3/ But beyond energy and economy, there is an impact that has almost not been mentioned: where will this charging station be actually built? They won't exist in theory, out of our Euclidean space. They will need to make their space in a congested urban environment.

Read 8 tweets

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