Tag: Transit Report Card

Last week I attended a conference in Seoul. After long days of, uh, conferring, I wandered the subways and streets of one of the largest Asian megacities.

For a great walking city, Seoul is a curiously bad walking city. Things are close together, and the side streets are narrow enough to be dominated by pedestrians (see above). But when there’s an arterial, you get something like this: Continue reading “Transit Report Card: Seoul”

Last week I spent a few days in the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, Mexico City. While walking its colonial streets and riding its expansive Metro, I was reminded of something I wrote shortly after ULink opened:

Done well, transit is is a public utility that improves life for the many but excites the passions of the few (sorry, fellow nerds). Good transit readjusts our baseline expectations onward and upward […] Transit’s highest compliment is when the magical becomes ordinary. Far better to be necessity than novelty.

Ordinary magic is indeed a good way to describe how it felt to move around Mexico City. On the one hand, the city has everything going against it. The compact colonial core is choked by endless sprawl on the periphery, with 8 million city residents surrounded by 16 million more in the suburban State of Mexico.  The city’s anti-urban boulevards – such as the 14-lane Paseo de la Reforma – rival in their hostile sterility the worst of the Champs Élysées. Cars also drive fast and with little regard for Vision Zero type sensibilities.

But in the context of the chaos on the surface, the Metro is a priceless gift to Chilangos, 140 miles of fully grade separated transit, with 195 stations on 12 lines. It is the 2nd largest Metro in the Western Hemisphere, behind only NYC. But though 2nd largest, it is the most densely ridden. Despite having only 60% as many track miles as NYC, the Mexico City Metro has 90% of NYC’s  ridership, nearly 5 million riders per day. I found it to be an effortless, cheap, fast, and reliable way to see the city, and I can’t imagine my trip without it. Here’s my report card. Continue reading “Transit Report Card: Mexico City”

I’ve just returned from a weeklong vacation in Glacier National Park, and though I didn’t intend to think much about transit while there, I was more than pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of the park’s bike, bus, and rail options. Glacier draws 2.3m visitors per year despite its remoteness – the nearest large cities (Calgary and Spokane) being 175 miles away – a feat that makes its carfree options all the more impressive. For reference, despite being a full hour closer to its nearest major city, Glacier draws nearly twice as many people as Mt Rainier.

Unlike Rainier or Olympic, which are primarily wilderness parks with few roads or services, Glacier stands out for a more European Alps feel: staffed backcountry chalets, multiple ferry services, 3 intercity rail stations, and a major road (Going to the Sun) bisecting the park from west to east. In the spirit of our Transit Report Card series, here are a few of my anecdotal observations.

Segments ridden

• Horizon Air outbound to Kalispell, Amtrak inbound to Seattle
• National Park Shuttle between Apgar Transit Center, Lake MacDonald Lodge, Avalanche Creek, The Loop, Logan Pass, and Siyeh Bend
• Cycling from West Glacier all the way to Logan Pass via Going to the Sun Road

Fare Structure: A+

Continue reading “Transit Report Card: Glacier National Park”

It’s high time for a resurrection of this blog’s classic Transit Report Card series, in which STB writers wildly generalize another city’s transit system based on limited experiences.

I’m here to report from two separate car-free trips to Washington, D.C., home to the (in)famous Metrorail system. Over the course of two cumulative weeks in October and June, I managed to ride the entire 117-mile system, on a car of each of the seven fleet series, the near-infamous streetcar, a few Metrobus and DC Circulator routes, and Capital Bikeshare for good measure; unfortunately, I didn’t have quite enough time to fit any commuter rail service into my trip. The second trip also coincided with the first month of “SafeTrack“, a massive maintenance and repair program that is systematically shutting down and reducing service on a new segment every 2 weeks, give or take, until March (or longer).

Enjoy this ride-by review of the other Washington’s transit system, complete with a gallery at the end.

Segments ridden

• All six Metrorail lines, all segments during normal service patterns
• Metrobus: X2 (Downtown to Minnesota Ave), T18 (Rhode Island to Mount Rainier), 2A (East Falls Church to Ballston-MU)
• Other Systems: DC Streetcar, Metroway, DC Calculator, Fairfax Connector routes 90 and 983, Capital Bikeshare

Scope: B+

The Metrorail system is the 2nd busiest rapid transit system in the country, and one of the oldest in the post-war class that nearly included Seattle. Since 1976, the network has expanded into 6 lines that sprawl across the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia, with stop spacing and park-and-rides in garages that make it a suitable commuter rail system. It covers most of the region’s major destinations, some of which developed around the system, and was a part of just about every trip I needed/wanted to make. A handful of popular places like Georgetown are excluded from Metrorail, but are not completely inaccessible if you know to use Metrobus and could be on the cards for a future expansion.

Continue reading “Transit Report Card: Washington, D.C.”

While visiting Denver in June, I thought I’d resurrect the old ‘report card’ series here on STB.

Denver may not seem to have much in common with Seattle. Sea level, water-bound, temperate, and hilly Seattle is a stark contrast to the Mile High, dusty, rain-shadowed, and flat landscape of Denver. But we are both relatively young pioneer cities, Denver is our nearest peer city in population, and both cities are progressive islands in a sea of moderate/libertarian suburbs. And yeah, we both have legal pot. So perhaps some comparisons can be useful.

As a transit advocate, it’s an exciting and informative time to visit Denver, which is in the midst of a once-in-a-century transformation. Light rail lines opened in 1994, 2000, 2002, 2006, and 2013, (and one was suspended in 2009), and six more light and heavy rail lines are slated to open in the next few years. The ongoing Fastracks project is the most ambitious transit expansion in the U.S., and the most intense period of construction is currently underway. When originally conceived, the project promised 119 miles of rail in every direction, all to open in 2016; and the original price tag, just under $5B, was 14 times cheaper per-mile than our University Link. Even when rising costs (~$7B now) and the recession pushed back portions of the project for years, many projects (The Gold Line, the I-225 Line, a small segment of the Northwest Line, and the East Line to Denver Airport) are still on track for 2016, and a shortened version of the North Line will open in 2018. Daily ridership on the 6 lines is 87,000 on its current 48-mile system.
Continue reading “Transit Report Card: Denver”

Maui is a small island and it’s bus system is likewise small. A service of County of Maui, it is operated by Roberts Hawaii.  There are basically two separate networks, a peak only commuter network and an all day network.

Of the thirteen all day routes, ten are hourly, two are every ninety minutes, and one is hourly in the morning and half hourly from 2:30 to 6:30pm.  The buses are new, clean, and have bike racks.  Fares are $2, cash only.  However since you only drop the bills into a clear plastic box and there are no transfers or change, boarding is quick.  All day passes are $4, monthly passes  are $45 and both are purchased from the driver.

You can’t really use the all-day to get around entire island as each route is only a few miles long and transfers are not timed.  For example one trip that ended up being less than thirty minutes by car would have taken three and half hours by bus and would have required one forty minute transfer wait and a one hour transfer wait.  Both the origin and destination were on the same road and less than twenty miles apart.

The commuter system covers almost the same area but combines all the short routes into four longer distance routes, radiating out from from the North/Central part of the island, mostly through the Wailuku/Kahului area.  Stops are reduced by about half.  Three routes have only one run each peak period, with one having four round trips.

As I only rode two all-day routes and none of the commuter routes I have to give Maui an Incomplete.  We were able to get by just fine without a car, but it required picking a hotel near our friends and close to services, walking most places, and relying on friends for the trip where we needed to go further than a few miles from our place.

by CHAD NEWTON

Overall Grade: C-

I had the great opportunity to visit Iceland for a few days last week. I found a nation blessed with natural wonders, an evocative history and interesting food. The capital city of Reykjavik has a compact core with world-class shopping, cuisine and nightlife. But the city’s all-bus transit system, Straeto, (there are no trains on the entire island) could use some improvement.

Straeto operates as if they visited U.S. Sun Belt cities to learn best practices:

• Confusing mess of zigzagging, partially redundant lines? Check.
• 30 minutes or greater headways outside of peak hours? Check.
• Off-street transit centers? Check.
• Opaque and contradictory public information? Check
• General public unaware or uninterested in how to use transit? Check.
• Faster to walk 30 minutes in town instead of using transit? Check.

On the plus side, the rolling stock is nice. Fold-up bench seating on one side provides lots of open floor area for wheelchairs or strollers, as is typical for Europe.

More after the jump. Continue reading “Transit Report Card: Reykjavik”