This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Take care driving tonight and tomorrow. Several Puget Sound highways are closed, and Amtrak/Sounder trains are cancelled for at least the next 48 hours. The TV stations have good coverage here and here.
Amtrak Funding
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Neal Pierce, writing in the Seattle Times, tells me something I didn’t know:
But state initiatives are also vital. Wisconsin Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi heads the “States for Passenger Rail Coalition” of 30 state transportation departments appealing for an 80/20 federal-state funding split to put some real steam behind rail expansion.
Fourteen states, notes Busalacchi, already provide operating support for Amtrak corridor services — routes responsible for virtually all of Amtrak’s recent ridership gains. Cascadia service (Oregon-Washington) had 674,000 passengers last year. The “Hiawatha Service” in the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor, he boasts, has boosted ridership 48 percent, to 588,000, in the past five years, with 90 percent on-time performance.
And there have been other breakthroughs. Pennsylvania, in a 50-50 cost split with Amtrak, electrified and rehabilitated the Philadelphia-Harrisburg corridor so well it now offers 110-mile-per-hour service.
110 mph! That’s pretty speedy. You can read more about the upgrades on the Keystone Corridor Wikipedia page, or this page from the Federal Railroad Administration.
LA Subway Eliminates the Honor System
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Subway riders will now have to go through a turnstyle like in most cities:
Under a proudly distinct honor system intended to buck East Coast practices and reduce operating costs, riders buy their tickets, get on the train and present them to a sheriff’s deputy or civilian inspector — if any happen to ask.
What’s interesting to me is the fact that 95% of people do pay. So it would seem silly that the turnstyles are being put in — at a cost of $30M and $1M/yr to operate — mainly to catch the last 5%. However, the agency argues that the system is growing, and they want flexibility in ticketing:
The gates could also improve security and be used for smart cards, passes with computer chips in them that would make it more practical to charge distance-based fares and give riders more options to pay beforehand.
Previously:
The Honor System
Free Riders
Congestion Pricing
This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
According to a study in London, congestion pricing works for cars, but it also benefits public transit. As the roads clear up, bus service becomes more reliable, which makes it more desirable, which makes the roads clearer, etc., etc…
Good stuff. Major caveat, of course, is that London is a large city with both an extensive subway system and sky-high gas prices, neither of which apply in Seattle. So we can’t expect the tipping point to be the same. Still, it’s more encouraging data.
(Via)