Hypothetical/Future Transit Projects

[bedstuy]

I don't know if this is quite political, but I think this is interesting. 

Suppose you were a Robert Moses-like tyrant, what shiny new transit projects would you build for your city?  Light rail, subway, BRT, giant 18 lane elevated freeway through the middle of your city, etc.? 

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

I actually really enjoy the current Philadelphia system relative the NY and Boston. Probably something to connect East Stroudsburg and Allentown/Easton/Bethlehem to the Philadelphia system (probably just by making the regional rail go further or by creating a separate line) if we're talking about physical infrastructure since I really do like the northeast of the state. It's a long ride though so I doubt there's enough demand for that. Just personal preference. If they only went to Bethlehem and no further, I suppose I'd be fine with that as well.

You're just as well off expanding westward with a high-speed line, but it takes awhile to get anywhere interesting.

As far as improving the system, MAKE THE NORRISTOWN HIGH SPEED LINE GIVE CHANGE!!!! NO ONE CARRIES $2.75 EXACTLY! Sick of this state ripping all of its residents off. Credit cards getting accepted would be a novel 21st century addition.

Parts of the metro could sure use some updating, but I don't care enough about that to identify specific stations.

Incidentally, 3 years ago I was in a team statistics competition to develop a model for which area of the country would best benefit from high-speed transportation or something. I don't recall our conclusion and we did not make the national semifinals with the little effort we put in (we weren't getting credit or anything, our teacher just picked two teams of five two days before). Anyone have any opinions on national transit project locations?

[pikachu]

There's not any money to actually build these, but:
-Faster high speed rail in the Northeast Corridor
-Building the West Trenton Line between West Trenton and NYC (The Northeast Corridor line is so overcrowded, it's ridiculous. Also, it'd make it easier for BucksCo commuters to New York to have a viable public transportation option.)
-NJ Route 1 BRT also seems like it has some potential, but there hasn't been any updates on it in the last few years and the area has changed radically.
-Proper commuter rail from South Jersey to Philly beyond PATCO and the ineffectual Atlantic City line also seems like it could be a good idea, but there's probably a reason why no one has ever proposed.
-The Second Avenue Subway (Yes, I know it's being built, but I keep it as a hypothetical until it's actually built.)
-Triboro RX or some orbital line for NYC because outer-borough service is pitiful.
-Probably some other outer borough lines for New York, but my knowledge on where those can go is lower than it should be.
-The Mumbai Metro. Like the SAS, it's being built, but it's a hypothetical until it's actually completed beyond line 1.   

[bedstuy]

Here's what I would do for NYC:

I think it's pretty ridiculous that we don't have one seat train connections from our two NYC airports to Manhattan.  If you added train service to our two main airports you would make NYC a more attractive tourist destination, cut taxi trips and shorten trips for a lot of people.

Train from LGA to Manhattan:
LGA
Northern Blvd: Connection to E, M, R trains
LIC: Connection to LIRR, 7 & G trains
Penn Station: Connection to A, C, E, 1, 2, 3, Amtrak, NJ Transit & LIRR



Train from JFK to Manhattan
JFK
Jamaica: Connection to E, J, Z trains and LIRR
LIC: Connection to 7, G and LIRR
Penn Station: Connection to A, C, E, 1, 2, 3, Amtrak, NJ Transit & LIRR



Scrap the JFK Airtrain between JFK and Howard Beach and Jamaica and extend the A & C trains to JFK:

This would create a one seat connection between Brooklyn, Queens and JFK as well as simplify commutes for airport employees.

Add C Train stops at
Van Wyck Blvd
Rockaway Blvd
Add an A train stop for JFK

[© tweed]

huge magnarail network.  when I was getting stoned with my buddy one night in 2009 we talked about how much more awesome the world would be if we spent the Iraq war money on massive high-speed rail projects. 

imagine a Cubs fan going to see Cubs @ St Louis and getting back home by midnight.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

pikachu's mention of Rt 1 reminds me of my brother and I's greatest dream: Full train access on Route 9 from South Amboy to Toms River. Basic access to nearly everything worthwhile in Monmouth County plus getting you to the edge of the beach. As a young person who really hates driving, that makes the suburbs so much more bearable. It's why I like the Main Line so much (though Rt 9 better be cheaper considering there is no city on that route).

For NJ, you get so much access to shopping, restaurants, etc. while the last three stops would be 5 minutes from the beach - if popular enough, there could easily be shuttle service there. The bus route that currently covers a portion of this is absurdly expensive because the reason you pay for it is to go to New York. The worst part is the traffic in the area is just terrible. It used to be about 2 minutes to go a mile and now it's about 4 due to the overpopulation and huge number of drivers. A train would do wonders there.

[traininthedistance]

Too many to count- though of course it's arguably even more important to stop destructive projects (cough cough Alaskan Way viaduct, though to be blunt about it most auto-oriented projects are disasters not only because of externalities, but even on their own terms- induced demand FTL).  

And also way up on the list is healing the wounds caused by decades of bad planning.  Midcentury neighborhood-destroying urban freeways are the most obvious example of this, but there are subtle patterns of destruction, disinvestment, and subsidizing the exact wrong things just about everywhere you turn.  (Exhibit #1: the utter perversity that is codified parking minimums, which is a rant for another post...) There's a lot of more local small-scale treatments that would do more- not always specifically for transit but for people and the environment, and sometimes that does mean transit- than megaprojects would.  Examples of transit-specific stuff could be (camera-enforced) bus lanes, bike lanes, traffic calming, smart meters (here I nod in the direction of Donald Shoup), etc.  All stuff that doesn't have quite the flashy ribbon-cutting appeal to politicos but is more important if we want to make our urban areas a pleasant, safe, and fair place to live- and provide genuine mobility.

I'm under no illusions that these things will be easy or quick, of course, I don't expect to live to see those wounds fully healed.  But if the goal is to remake your city into something capable of meeting 21st century challenges in the way that Moses (long may he burn in Hell) claimed to do to the 20th Century city, there's a whole boatload of urbanist treatments (many of which can be done in the suburbs too, more than you'd think) that I'd look to before megaprojects.  There's an old German maxim, "organization before electronics before concrete", and I think our planners and politicos would do well to keep it in mind.

...

With that out of the way... of course there are plenty of projects that I'd still love to see.  One-seat rides to the airport, like bedstuy proposes, would be nice but are kind of luxury goods for a luxury audience and thus are pretty far down my list.  JFK is fine as is, it would be good to extend the N/Q out to LaGuardia and actually pick up some neighborhoods on the way, but a proposal to that extent was shot down by NIMBYs about a decade ago, because of course it was.  (Cuomo's Willets Point-LGA AirTrain proposal is, of course, exactly the quality we've come to expect.)

I feel like it goes almost without saying at this point, but the single most important piece of infrastructure funding in America is getting some new rail tunnels under the Hudson to provide more capacity to NJT/Amtrak- the current tunnels are not only maxed out in terms of trains that can run under them, they are over 100 years old and in imminent danger of falling apart.  If even one of the two tracks goes out of commission, then the nation's largest metro area will literally grind to a halt.  The urgency and severity of this cannot be overstated.

Thanks, Christie, by the way, for canceling ARC.  Thanks.  A.  Bunch.

After that (and looking more locally here- yes I realize that the Hudson tubes are local but it really is national priority #1. unlike the rest of this stuff), we should be looking to re-activate rail service on all the abandoned rights-of-way we can get our hands on; pikachu's West Trenton connection is a very good idea, as would be re-extending SEPTA service to places like West Chester (a college town!  there's plenty of latent demand there).  Within NYC, this means stuff like the Triboro RX- which would be a tremendous boon for me personally given that I live right along that line.  Where you don't have tracks already, I hate to say it but most of the time you'll get better bang for your buck with bus rapid transit than you would with a streetcar or heavy rail- the important thing 95% of the time is the grade-separation and signal priority rather than the choice of vehicle, and if you're willing to do the right thing and give real space to transit and pedestrians (the ped environment is woefully neglected, and plays a massive role in the efficacy of transit as well as an area's sense of, well, place), a bus can do the job just fine.

Of course, there are a few cases where you do just need to pay through the nose, and pour that concrete/lay that track.  Obviously the Second Avenue Subway is one of them- the capacity issues of one trunk line running through the densest neighborhood in the USA make it a screamingly obvious example of something that should have been done decades ago.  And true high-speed rail is gonna need new, straighter track as well.  But- at least among the urgent low-hanging stuff- these are the exceptions.  

[TNF]

I've never lived in a city, so I can't really give detailed plans about what I'd do about this or that area. But, I have lived in relatively rural areas, which are so starved for anything resembling mass transit that that's exactly what I would focus on. Back home, I think that I'd like to see some kind of inter-city rail network, bus lines, and more focus on pedestrian-oriented development, as well as car-shares and stuff along those lines to make it easier not to have a car if you don't want one.

Here, in exurban rural-ish northeastern Illinois, we already have a commuter rail network that connects pretty much every burb to Chicago and extends partially into Wisconsin. I think that it would be great if we had just a regular light-rail network that hit big destinations in town, too.

Other than those, I don't really have any big ideas for my particular localities. Nationally, I'd like to see every major city connected by high-speed rail, with smaller intrastate rail networks connecting smaller locales and light rail for cities themselves. Something clearly has to be done to reduce carbon pollution, and to that effect I'd say that all means should be considered to encourage sharing transit where possible and minimizing automobile usage. This of course presents a whole host of issues for rural America, which is why its so important to better disperse the population and to really eliminate the distinction between the city and the countryside.

I mean ideally, I'd say that we'd all live in moderate sized cities, with plenty of greenery and with work, leisure, and living located pretty much all in the same districts, so as to prevent the kind of rapacious growth we see now. Planned communities should replaced the unplanned nature of the capitalist city, and communal living must be the ultimate end-goal of any serious attempt to address not only climate change but also the problems associated with the individual household unit.

[checkers]

Brisbane's public transport is generally regarded as pretty dire, so improving that would be my first priority. The big problem (in my experience) is getting across town - while it's possible to get from virtually anywhere to the CBD or Southbank via public transport (though even that can be pretty irritating for those in the outer suburbs who aren't close to commuter rail), it's pretty much impossible to get to a neighbourhood on the other side of town without wasting over an hour waiting for connecting buses, dealing with traffic etc. I think the best way to rectify that would be through a metro or light rail. I'd say that light rail seems a lot more practical than metro given Brisbane's population and density. The inner suburbs of Brisbane were basically built around the tram network (which terminated in the 1960s), so I'd like to see that network be built up again with light rail, along with some extensions going further along the main arteries into the outer suburbs, particularly on the south side.

My other big issue would be undoing much of the disastrous urban planning of the Bjelke-Petersen era. I'd be inclined to tear down the South-East Freeway and revitalise the bank of the Brisbane River that was dominated by the Riverside Expressway. It would also hopefully reunite the shopping strip that was divided by the freeway. The architecture around there is lovely, and with light rail running along Stanley Street I could see that area becoming a real hubs for restaurants, hipster boutiques, craft beer bars etc.

The train route to the Gold Coast isn't so bad and hopefully the proposed light rail there will link up with the suburban train to Brisbane.

I feel like there are so many more transit problems that could be fixed here but these are just some problems that I've noticed, personally. I'm nowhere near as well versed in urban issues as some people here, so these suggestions might create a bunch of insurmountable problems. Given the white shoe brigade history of deals between shady developers and the (usually LNP) governments here - and the dodgy things that many in the community get up to here (burning down heritage listed property in order to build monstrosities, etc) - responsible urban development in Queensland is pretty much a pipe dream.

[bedstuy]

Here's what I would do for Brooklyn specifically:

Bury the elevated rail across Broadway from Kent to Broadway Junction and maybe add a new subway tunnel across the East River.

Extend the 2/5 down Nostrand Avenue to Sheepshead Bay or Brighton Beach.  This would increase ridership so to offset that...

Create a brand new subway line.  Originate either at Kings Plaza or Fort Tilden, go up Utica Avenue and across Broadway to Manhattan/Queens.  This would expand subway service to East Flatbush, Flatlands, Mill Basin, Marine Park, Breezy Point and Neponsit/Bell Harbor.  Maybe you can add a new Sports Stadium out near Floyd Bennett Field or really work on developing the beach recreation facilities at Jacob Riis Park.  This would also connect to the A/C at Fulton St. and the 3/4/5 at Eastern Parkway.  It would thus reduce the weird commutes using the Franklin shuttle and improve transit times for Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, Williamsburg, Bushwick, etc.


A few smaller things:
-Permit parking for most of Brooklyn's neighborhoods.  You shouldn't get to keep your car on the street for free in one of the most congested cities in the country, it's just crazy. 

-Additional BRT and especially try to expand to Red Hook and underserved areas. 

-Create a system of no thru-traffic streets with a 15 MPH speed limit, set off for bikes.  I would try to connect the different neighborhoods with these streets so you could easily ride from, say Crown Heights to Downtown Brooklyn or Williamsburg without the fear of getting run over.  Bike lanes are OK, but often you get people using them as parking or unloading zones.  I think people would be more willing to use bike lanes on busier streets though if they knew they could get to a more protected almost bikes-only street for 50% plus of their trip.

[Frodo]

-Build a Blue Line bypass tunnel through Georgetown to downtown DC
-Extend the Blue Line south to Woodbridge
-Extend the Orange Line initially to Centreville, and then to Manassas along the Centreville Road
-Extend the Yellow Line through the Hybla Valley to Fort Belvoir along the Jefferson Davis Highway (Route 1)
-Extend the Silver Line to Leesburg
-Extend the Green Line north to Laurel, and south to Clinton
-build a new metrorail Purple Line connecting from L'Enfant Plaza and Pentagon stations through South Arlington and Bailey's Crossroads along Columbia Pike to Annandale, eventually extending to Fairfax along Little River Turnpike.  As part of this project, underground the metrorail connection between L'Enfant Plaza and Pentagon stations via a tunnel -the existing bridge could be used as a future streetcar connection.
-build a MARC rail line serving southern Maryland from L'Enfant and Union stations in DC to the initial termination point in LaPlata in Charles County, before eventually extending it to Leonardtown in St. Mary's County.
-Overhaul Union Station in DC

[Citizen Hats]

If I were Transit-Moses, 

• NEC Next Generation.  Acela, limited though it is, has demonstrated that improved and increased HSR in the NEC, with lighter, non-FRA dinosaur equipment would haemorhage profits
• Generally Speed up CHSR. I have no doubt that it too will provide enormous above-the-rails profits that will pay back the state and be a germ of more services elsewhere
• Generally, other HSR projects linking major metro areas. I'm not the type to say that we should build some giant national network. That's not what HSR is for on the scale of the US
• Improvements to regional and commuter rail - grade separations, speed enhancements, capacity upgrades, electrification, separate rights-of-way and other enhancements where warranted to ensure that rail is freeway-competitive

On a more local scale

• Automated metro and light-metro systems. Expensive to build, cheap to operate, providing the possibility of frequent, reliable service that can spur re-urbanization.
• No more Light-rail.  So many light-rail projects have cost nearly as much to build as metro systems, despite higher operating costs and worse service levels.  Perhaps if we didn't live in a country with absurd construction costs this would be different, but as things are, either you can justify grade separation or you can have a vastly cheaper, nearly as fast express-bus.  No new cargo-cult-urbanism trams either

.

• Express buses - maybe some day you too can have rapid transit, but for now, here's a bus that doesn't stop at every block and maybe even has it's own lane

To make it work, I would toll the interstates and freeways, introduce congestion charges, and raise gas taxes. This is not to charge drivers to fund transit, but rather to make transit work by reducing subsidies to drivers so that more people opt for the more efficient, and ultimately less-subsidy-dependent options.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

An expansion of commuter rail would be nice. Right now all we have is a line that goes along the South edge of Norfolk, from the downtown to the east edge of the city.  What I'd find most personally useful is extending the it northward at the west end, connecting Ghent, ODU and the Naval Base. Unfortunately its hard to figure out how to do that without disturbing a lot given the current configuration of infrastructure and neighborhoods. Perhaps more feasible logistically, if not financially, would be connecting the line to Virginia Beach along 264 all the way out to the Oceanfront. Would be nice also to see something across to Downtown Portsmouth and out to Churchland/Western Branch, and a line connecting South Hampton Roads to Hampton, Newport News and ultimately Williamsburg. 

barring that, it would be nice just to get the bus system so it doesn't take 4 times as long to get anywhere as it does to drive. I'm not sure exactly how to do that.  maybe more frequent shuttles between various nodes.

[Citizen Hats]

Actually, realizing that this is a locally directed question, and I live in Vancouver

• 125 mph rail to Seattle and Portland. I don't think the Northwest Corridor quite has the population or geography to support higher speeds under present economic conditions. This would necessitate substantial upgrades to the present right of way, more sidings, double and triple tracking, replacing the bridges at New Westminster and Portland, and cutoffs and curve reductions, along with other upgrades. While it bothers the nationalists, trains over the rockies to Calgary and Edmonton will simply never be a useful form of transportation for more than a few people who can't fly.  The Rockies are too vast and too steep to span with a rail project that is not absurdly expensive and get's people places fast as fast as a car
• More skytrain.  Vancouver possesses the longest system of automated metro in the world, and it's been an absolutely enormous success.  The trains usually contain no on-board personnel andit's fine  

. Automation means that the cost of sending one train of 8 cars every five minutes is more or less the same as sending a train of 4 cars every 2.5 minutes, or even a train of two cars every 75 seconds - but that 75 second train is a whole lot more convenient to uses than the five minute train, and the cost of more service hours is much cheaper. Specifically:

• Broadway extension - the Millennium Line needs to extend to the University of British Colubmia. Current plans to extend it to Arbutus will do. This connects the system together and provides access to the second largest employment center in the province.
• Surrey LRT needs to be upgraded to Skytrain. LRT doesn't really fit.   The Expo Line should be extended to Langley City to complete the regional backbone, and the spur lines to Guildford and Newton can be run either as express Bus for the time being, or Translink should be given the right to redevelop the station areas to defer the cost of the line
• Hastings - 41st Circle Line - A partially underground line should be built from the West End to Waterfront Station, which is the key intermodal hub downtown, along Hastings St to Willingdon in Burnaby, where it should turn south to Metrotown.  Thence, it should run West along 41st Avenue, turning North at Dunbar connecting to 4th Avenue, which it can then connect to the West End. This loop would provide system redundancy, connect dense communities and employment hubs, and the specific traffic generators of the West End, Waterfront Station, Commercial Drive, the PNE, Brentwood, BCIT, Metrotown, and South Vancouver.
• Main-Fraser and Commercial-Victoria Lines, to provide connecting skytrain service to the dense, transit oriented communities of East Vancouver
• Extend the West Coast Express commuter train to Abbottsford over the bridge at Mission.  This would likely require a new bridge, but would provide one-seat commuter train service to the Fraser Valley to Downtown Vancouver.
• A new West Coast Express line to Langley, to provide an express, peak premium commuter service that runs faster than the Skytrain and reduces peak-load on the Expo Line. This train could run Waterfront - Burrard Inlet Line - Commercial-Broadway Station (skytrain hub) - Braid - New Westminster - Scott Road - Newton - Cloverdale - Langley along the Interurban route, if that can be made to work as a fast routing. There are doubts that it can.
• The SFU Gondola- replace the articulated diesel buses that huff and puff their way up the mountain that Simon Fraser University was built upon with a more reliable gondola service connected to Hastings and the Millenium line skytrain that can climb the mountain when it snows. Then considerably cut back on the road service to SFU
• Some sort of north shore rapid transit, preferably automated light metro, connecting, say Dunderave and Lynnmour via Lonsday Quay passenger ferry, with lines to Upper Lonsdale and Lynn Valley. If it were feasible, I would run the line over the Lion's Gate Bridge to connect to Downtown
• Bring passenger transportation service back to the ex-BC Rail, with rail service to Whistler and points north. Potentially a commuter train to Squamish, which should flesh out in the coming years as a full-fledged suburb. With proper transportation it could be made a much less horrible one, if the Howe-Sound rail corridor can be made workable. The Southern terminus would have to be moved to Lonsdale, involving some expensive digging, but necessary if the service is to be usable to transit-users
• Commuter rail service to White Rock, near the border, maybe. Don't know if that's economical ever

[DC Al Fine]

• No more Light-rail.  So many light-rail projects have cost nearly as much to build as metro systems, despite higher operating costs and worse service levels.  Perhaps if we didn't live in a country with absurd construction costs this would be different, but as things are, either you can justify grade separation or you can have a vastly cheaper, nearly as fast express-bus.  No new cargo-cult-urbanism trams either

.

• Express buses - maybe some day you too can have rapid transit, but for now, here's a bus that doesn't stop at every block and maybe even has it's own lane

This seems to be an Achilles heel of otherwise reasonable urban planners.

"A simple, low cost system that would mesh with our existing infrastructure? F[inks] that. Let's spend billions on some trains."

[Citizen Hats]

• No more Light-rail.  So many light-rail projects have cost nearly as much to build as metro systems, despite higher operating costs and worse service levels.  Perhaps if we didn't live in a country with absurd construction costs this would be different, but as things are, either you can justify grade separation or you can have a vastly cheaper, nearly as fast express-bus.  No new cargo-cult-urbanism trams either

.

• Express buses - maybe some day you too can have rapid transit, but for now, here's a bus that doesn't stop at every block and maybe even has it's own lane

This seems to be an Achilles heel of otherwise reasonable urban planners.

"A simple, low cost system that would mesh with our existing infrastructure? F[inks] that. Let's spend billions on some trains."

I'll admit the rail bias is real. People like trains. I don't know if the rail bias will hold up if everyone builds a bunch of trains and then someone stops maintaining some of them, but it nonetheless is an observed fact of the contemporary public.  But, if we're building trains which don't significantly increase the mobility of the population served, absent a carbon price that makes steel-wheeled operation that much more economical, I simply can't see how more of these are a good investment.  If you *really* need the capacity that only rail can provide, I bet a lot more people would pay to go faster too

  [/list]