Transit question for debate: is this one station or two? TriMet says it’s two — “Gateway/NE 99th Transit Center” and “Gateway North.” And that makes some sense — there’s one set of platforms right next to each other and another platform a distance away.

In January 2004, Houston opened its first light rail line. At 40,000 weekday riders on 7.5 miles within 3 years of opening, Houston beat every other US light rail system except Boston and San Francisco (which has a 100 year head start) in riders per mile. Some lessons: CONNECT CENTERS. The Red Line runs through the heart of Houston’s two busiest centers — Downtown and the Texas Medical Center. It goes where the people are, and attracted even more activity. Through Downtown, Midtown, the Museum District, and TMC it’s surrounded by new buildings.

Houston neighborhoods have been dealing with trains blocking crossings for decades. Happily, elected officials are paying attention. But many of the solutions I’ve seen don’t get at the real problem. So here’s a primer on Houston freight rail. Houston is one of the biggest freight rail centers in the country. Because of our huge petrochemical plants, port, and big population, a lot of freight goes to or from here. That means most trains in Houston aren’t just passing through — they’re serving Houston.

A few thoughts on electric buses, and why conversion to electric is not as simple as it seems. It makes sense that elected officials, advocates, and agency leadership and agency leadership are pushing for electric buses — in addition to the climate benefits, they’re quieter and don’t have any exhaust fumes.

A southbound SEPTA Regional Rail train curves from the original 1890s alignment into Reading Terminal and onto the 1980s alignment into the Center City tunnel. The old viaduct is now overgrown alongside the ramp leading into the tunnel.

A few views along the Denver & Rio Grande Western Tennessee Pass Line, mothballed 1997 by Union Pacific because after multiple mergers they had 4 lines across the Continental Divide, and sending transcontinental freight though the middle of the Rockies didn’t really make sense. Malta, where the branch to Leadville (right) split off from the main line at 9593 ft. Elevation.

The southeast corner of Downtown Fort Worth. I-30 and the former Texas & Pacific (now UP) run left to right. I-35W, the former ATSF (now BNSF), the former SP (now UP), and the former MKT (now UP) cross them. This the Texas & Pacific station, with its 1931 tower, now end of the line for Trinity Railway Express commuter trains (you can see one departing) to Dallas and TEXRail trains to DFW airport. The commuter rail tracks are alongside, but not connected to, the freight tracks.

Transit Twitter poll: is the South Shore Line “the last (US) interurban?” Option 1: the South Shore was built as an interurban and it still carries both passengers and freight on more or less its original route. That’s unique.

A westbound South Shore Line train passes through Michigan City, IN, on its way from Chicago (about 60 miles west) to South Bend (about 30 miles east.) Say “South Shore” and someone will say “Last Interurban!” Interurbans were rail lines that used streetcar technology — short electric trains with self-propelled cars, not locomotives — to connect cities. The US built 15,000 miles of interurban track from about 1900-1920.

Natchez Trace Parkway Arches, south of Nashville, 582 ft precast concrete segmental arch bridge, 1994. At the time it was a revelation — a lot of US cities and highway departments looked at this (and some of the new cable stayed bridges opening around the same time) and thought “Oh wow — bridges can look beautiful!”

Norfolk Southern freight heads south near Burnside, KY on the“Rat Hole,” a section of the line from Cincinnati to Chattanooga. This railroad, first built 1869-1880, was extensively rebuilt in 1959-1963, reducing curves, flattening grades, and replacing tunnels with huge rock cuts like this one — it’s a rare example of large scale post-WWII engineering on the US freight rail system.

As we talk transportation, urbanism, cities, and racism, Transit agencies, and the transit industry, should not assume we are the good guys, or, as @Jay_Pitter put it, “bringers of solution.” I’m not singling out transit here. It has not been nearly as destructive an implement of racism as the construction of the US freeway system, and today transit agencies tend to be much more thoughtful about their impacts on people of color than highway agencies.

Two lessons for transit agencies in the past several days:
(1) Make a plan to never strand riders
(2) Think about an agency’s relationship with the police First: It is never OK to stop service in the middle of a day with minimal or no advance notice. Transit agencies have a responsibility to try to get people who rely on transit home. (Canceling service w/ advance notice can be OK if employers, schools, services shut down, too.)

The new @METROHouston Bus Rapid Transit line (the Silver Line, AKA Uptown BRT) is almost complete. It has 100% dedicated lanes, off board fare collection, level boarding, and service every 10 min all day and 15 min the evening, through a major employment center. Here's a tour. This project is a north-south link in the frequent bus grid, connecting 16 local bus routes to the jobs, shopping, and restaurants in Uptown.

Since it's come up in my replies, a quick rail vs. BRT thread. To start with: anyone who says rail is always better than BRT, or anyone who says BRT is always better than rail, is wrong. The best way to start is by picking the right corridor for transit, then considering mode. That's a question of construction cost, operating cost, level of ridership, and existing infrastructure.

An autonomous vehicle thought exercise... let's start with something really familiar. Imagine a cash strapped city with crumbling infrastructure. Google (or whoever) approaches the city with an offer: your traffic will flow better if your traffic signals can talk to cars. We know you can't afford to do that, but we can. We're happy to modernize your entire signal system, and operate it for you.

I understand the logic behind “get the federal government out of transit” but simply ending federal transit funding — without any other changes — would make US transit worse.

https://twitter.com/sp_redelectric/status/1096640207074426880

Yes, there have been some bad projects built from New Starts/Small Starts/Core Capacity funding, but there have been many good ones as well — Seattle, the Twin Cities, Chicago modernization, etc.

Here’s what the Green New Deal says about transit. So what could the federal government do to make this happen? The feds don’t run trains or buses, and they don’t plan transit. The best transit thinking in the US is happening locally. But there’s a lot that Congress could do… The first, obvious thing: fund more transit. There are a lot of good transit projects waiting in line for federal funding.

I talked busways on Saturday. Let’s talk about the “T,” Pittsburg’s light rail. It’s a bit of an oddity. In the 1910s, long before scooters and TNCs, interurbans — electric rail lines between cities — were a disruptive transportation technology. The T is one of the few survivors. Pittsburgh had multiple interurbans; what is now the T extended south to Washington, Donora, and Charleroi, serving a series of small towns. They were connected to a large urban streetcar network to run into downtown. Before cars, this was the way to get around this rural area.

Another one of the things the Germans do well in transit: commuter rail (or actually regional rail.) The Munich S-Bahn carries 800,000 passengers a day (that’s LIRR and New Jersey Transit combined) in a metro area of 2.6 million (roughly the same as Pittsburgh, a tenth of NYC). Munich did five different things to create this system: a downtown tunnel (at the left here, going beneath the stub-end Hauptbahnhof), upgrade infrastructure, increased frequency, transit connections, and unified fares.

I said earlier that the Stuttgart Stadtbahn deserved its own thread. It’s one of a generation of German light rail systems (others include Frankfurt, Cologne & the Ruhr) started in the 1960s and 1970s by upgrading streetcar lines. Those systems ultimately inspired US light rail. In the city center, Stadbahns use subway tunnels. These replaced the surface streetcar tracks that had been the backbone of the local transit systems; generally the goal was to eliminate all surface tracks from Downtown.