Over the Christmas season, my family and I spent two weekends out of town. The first saw a return trip that is normally less than three hours take four hours, the majority of which was filled with a screaming two-month old. For the second trip, we wanted to avoid that outcome so we looked into the options. We settled on Megabus.
They are the Southwest Airlines of buses. They avoid high-cost terminals and are generally a very affordable option. We started our trip at DART's East Transfer Center (ETC). There was a big dust-up between the bus company and the city. They initially wanted to operate out of the parking lot just south of the ETC, but the City of Dallas had other ideas. They finally came to an agreement with DART to operate out of one of their facilities.
From that perspective, I love it. I have always thought the ETC, for many reasons, is heavily underutilized. This gives it a lot more uses. It also turns the ETC from a bus station a couple of blocks away from a rail station into a multi-modal transportation facility.
From DART's perspective, they will make a bit of extra revenue on the lease, but it should also have a slight increase in rail ridership and up the bus ridership by a rounding area. It also gives the ETC a more vibrant use in downtown.
For the rest of the stops we made, Megabus utilized gas station parking lots of the freeways they stopped in. You can definitely see the low-cost approach here. The only downside, as we experienced on the return trip, is when the bus is late, there is no way to know. Our bus was over an hour late and the staff at the Midland Exxon couldn't relay anything.
Overall, the traveling experience was enjoyable, and I'd recommend. As far as the urban impact, this is a positive for downtown. It adds an extra use to an under-performing downtown bus station, and creates more activity in a part of downtown that has none. I really think several small changes like this will have a positive step in downtown Dallas' transition into a bona fide urban area.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Biking in Dallas: The Comedy
For any following the City of Dallas quest to become more bike friendly, the Dallas Morning News ran a Metro Section article Tuesday about a tour elected officials took to see the current bike infrastructure on the ground. It is behind the paywall, but I recommend the read.
I know I have promised a post on the new bike lanes downtown, but a brief synopsis is this: I am underwhelmed. The article gives a good felling of why, even from the beginning with the headline. "Tour-by van- looks at bike lanes" says it all. People who don't ride design a system for riders and then are perplexed when riders don't use the system.
Fundamentally, it comes down to a flaw of the planning profession in general. The jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none certainly apply to many-to most planners. Some consult a book, see what other cities or counties have done and apply it without context. The system designed by bikers in Portland, for example, may not work here. Just because they see results, doesn't mean Dallas will.
From the article:
In a white city van, four City Council members and several staff members rode past Fair Park through Deep Ellum and downtown and into Oak Cliff to view the different ways Dallas has installed bike infrastructure.
...
The city's central connection of bike lanes stretches from Victory Park to near Fair Park and leads from the Katy Trail to the Santa Fe Trail.
But it isn't the easiest path to navigate, council members agreed. Because of the inadequate signs and variations in the types of lanes used, bicyclists are often left to figure out where they're supposed to be - while riding in lanes shared with cars.
...
Council members were also concerned about the narrowness of some lanes downtown, particularly along Jackson and Wood streets. In some places, the bike lane runs into the storm sewer.
...
Those touring the lanes saw lots of striping laid down for bicycles. What they didn't see much of were people on bicycles.
Whether it was because of the time of day, the cold weather, a lack of interest of something else, the lanes weren't attracting many users.
Changing that will be the true test of how well the new lanes work.
I won't go into too much detail of the lanes themselves, as I believe that is worth a post on its own. What I want to address is two-fold.
First, Dallas isn't alone, but I know it the best. They put up a mismatch of infrastructure, some convenient to the biker, some for the street layout, some convenient to the cars. This combination can actually nullify the first one and it no longer is convenient to cycle any amount of distance. Then the cyclist, both hard core and recreational, don't use it and what was built for them sits empty.
A lot of times in planning, the phrase "just get something on the ground" is used as a way to put a policy in place with the rationale that the public will see it and opposition will fade as people see it in use. This is a great example of why I don't like that approach as a one-size-fits-all tactic. In this situation, folks who don't want the lanes are going to point here and say "why build it here if no one uses it there."
The final result ends with no new infrastructure added because the initial ones were implemented poorly and no one uses it. This isn't a good outcome for anyone.
Ultimately, the big stumbling block lies with the city staffers and elected officials who are reluctant to take space now used for cars and allocate them to another mode. Somehow, in order to achieve balance, that has to happen. You can't add any meaningful infrastructure while leaving a seven-lane-wide roadway with a median intact for autos to achieve high speeds. Those high speeds make cycling, walking and transit uncomfortable and therefore inconvenient. As a result, only car-use is convenient and the only mode used on a wide basis. Cities, like Dallas, tread water if their starting point is to leave the auto-only roadways alone.
The second point is this. How many times have we heard alternative transportation won't work in Dallas because Dallasites just love their cars? I have maintained people don't love their cars, they love convenience and I still haven't seen anything to contradict this. Cars are still the only thing that is convenient across the region. There are small patches scattered here and yon where a car isn't needed, but nothing wholesale to really put a dent in regional vehicle miles traveled. I have talked a bit about why DART comes up short. Walking is too fragmented, even in walkable areas. In the DMN article linked, the biking infrastructure is noted for being to erratic and mismatched. The only thing that is close to be seamless and convenient is the car.
From coast to coast and even internationally, places that have a legitimate choice and offer convenient alternative transportation options, their citizens choose alternatives. In places that don't, folks don't choose it on any meaningful scale.
Dallas can do it, but I just wonder if there will ever be enough people to hop out of the van to ever get it done.
I know I have promised a post on the new bike lanes downtown, but a brief synopsis is this: I am underwhelmed. The article gives a good felling of why, even from the beginning with the headline. "Tour-by van- looks at bike lanes" says it all. People who don't ride design a system for riders and then are perplexed when riders don't use the system.
Fundamentally, it comes down to a flaw of the planning profession in general. The jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none certainly apply to many-to most planners. Some consult a book, see what other cities or counties have done and apply it without context. The system designed by bikers in Portland, for example, may not work here. Just because they see results, doesn't mean Dallas will.
From the article:
In a white city van, four City Council members and several staff members rode past Fair Park through Deep Ellum and downtown and into Oak Cliff to view the different ways Dallas has installed bike infrastructure.
...
The city's central connection of bike lanes stretches from Victory Park to near Fair Park and leads from the Katy Trail to the Santa Fe Trail.
But it isn't the easiest path to navigate, council members agreed. Because of the inadequate signs and variations in the types of lanes used, bicyclists are often left to figure out where they're supposed to be - while riding in lanes shared with cars.
...
Council members were also concerned about the narrowness of some lanes downtown, particularly along Jackson and Wood streets. In some places, the bike lane runs into the storm sewer.
...
Those touring the lanes saw lots of striping laid down for bicycles. What they didn't see much of were people on bicycles.
Whether it was because of the time of day, the cold weather, a lack of interest of something else, the lanes weren't attracting many users.
Changing that will be the true test of how well the new lanes work.
I won't go into too much detail of the lanes themselves, as I believe that is worth a post on its own. What I want to address is two-fold.
First, Dallas isn't alone, but I know it the best. They put up a mismatch of infrastructure, some convenient to the biker, some for the street layout, some convenient to the cars. This combination can actually nullify the first one and it no longer is convenient to cycle any amount of distance. Then the cyclist, both hard core and recreational, don't use it and what was built for them sits empty.
A lot of times in planning, the phrase "just get something on the ground" is used as a way to put a policy in place with the rationale that the public will see it and opposition will fade as people see it in use. This is a great example of why I don't like that approach as a one-size-fits-all tactic. In this situation, folks who don't want the lanes are going to point here and say "why build it here if no one uses it there."
The final result ends with no new infrastructure added because the initial ones were implemented poorly and no one uses it. This isn't a good outcome for anyone.
Ultimately, the big stumbling block lies with the city staffers and elected officials who are reluctant to take space now used for cars and allocate them to another mode. Somehow, in order to achieve balance, that has to happen. You can't add any meaningful infrastructure while leaving a seven-lane-wide roadway with a median intact for autos to achieve high speeds. Those high speeds make cycling, walking and transit uncomfortable and therefore inconvenient. As a result, only car-use is convenient and the only mode used on a wide basis. Cities, like Dallas, tread water if their starting point is to leave the auto-only roadways alone.
The second point is this. How many times have we heard alternative transportation won't work in Dallas because Dallasites just love their cars? I have maintained people don't love their cars, they love convenience and I still haven't seen anything to contradict this. Cars are still the only thing that is convenient across the region. There are small patches scattered here and yon where a car isn't needed, but nothing wholesale to really put a dent in regional vehicle miles traveled. I have talked a bit about why DART comes up short. Walking is too fragmented, even in walkable areas. In the DMN article linked, the biking infrastructure is noted for being to erratic and mismatched. The only thing that is close to be seamless and convenient is the car.
From coast to coast and even internationally, places that have a legitimate choice and offer convenient alternative transportation options, their citizens choose alternatives. In places that don't, folks don't choose it on any meaningful scale.
Dallas can do it, but I just wonder if there will ever be enough people to hop out of the van to ever get it done.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Hidden Costs
I was shopping the other day, and a transportation and land-use question popped into my head.
I was at one of the big box stores when I told the cashier that I had my own bags and wouldn't want more plastic bags. She scanned a code that gave a five cent discount per bag. The premise, from the store's perspective, is those who use their own bags are saving the company bags, and therefore aren't charged the amount of the bags.
In turning this around to transportation policy, what happens to transit users who don't use their parking lot? The store either owns the lot and pays for construction, maintenance and taxes, or leases the property from an entity that pays for for construction, maintenance and taxes and that cost is included in the lease. Either way, that cost isn't going to be a sunk cost to the store. That is passed on in the price and is paid for by consumers. That's okay if you actually use that service.
But in the case above, my wife and family took the train there. Yet we still paid for the parking space.
Cars are virtually the only thing that gets a pass. There are so many hidden costs such as this. Some economists have pegged the hidden cost/subsidy of a gallon of gas at 6-10 dollars. City taxes are derived primarily from property and sales taxes, regardless of whether the payee uses or owns a car. Free parking, as I briefly describe above is paid by any customer. Increasingly, the federal gas tax is coming up short on highway funding, so the general fund is being tapped. In fact, as highways become more expensive, regional planning agencies are getting creative in getting the money.
This is also why I am a fan of tolling roads. It shifts the cost from hidden into the open. There has to be a lot of changes at so many levels to shift this. I think the start has to be from ubiquitous city zoning codes with their origins in the 1950's to be abolished in favor of a market-based strategy pioneered by Donald Shoup. I think that alone will solve much of the negatives associated with auto-centric land-use and development.
I was at one of the big box stores when I told the cashier that I had my own bags and wouldn't want more plastic bags. She scanned a code that gave a five cent discount per bag. The premise, from the store's perspective, is those who use their own bags are saving the company bags, and therefore aren't charged the amount of the bags.
In turning this around to transportation policy, what happens to transit users who don't use their parking lot? The store either owns the lot and pays for construction, maintenance and taxes, or leases the property from an entity that pays for for construction, maintenance and taxes and that cost is included in the lease. Either way, that cost isn't going to be a sunk cost to the store. That is passed on in the price and is paid for by consumers. That's okay if you actually use that service.
But in the case above, my wife and family took the train there. Yet we still paid for the parking space.
Cars are virtually the only thing that gets a pass. There are so many hidden costs such as this. Some economists have pegged the hidden cost/subsidy of a gallon of gas at 6-10 dollars. City taxes are derived primarily from property and sales taxes, regardless of whether the payee uses or owns a car. Free parking, as I briefly describe above is paid by any customer. Increasingly, the federal gas tax is coming up short on highway funding, so the general fund is being tapped. In fact, as highways become more expensive, regional planning agencies are getting creative in getting the money.
This is also why I am a fan of tolling roads. It shifts the cost from hidden into the open. There has to be a lot of changes at so many levels to shift this. I think the start has to be from ubiquitous city zoning codes with their origins in the 1950's to be abolished in favor of a market-based strategy pioneered by Donald Shoup. I think that alone will solve much of the negatives associated with auto-centric land-use and development.
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
Why Planning can never be Precise
I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Mine was quite enjoyable.
Prior to the holidays, I was checking e-mail and on the front page was a headline about congestion reduction. When I clicked on it, I initially dismissed the report, but have thought about it since so what happens when I over-think an urban issue? I blog it o' course.
The basis of the article is that if select neighborhoods decided against making car trips, then overall congestion would be reduced dramatically. From the lead:
Canceling some car trips from just a few strategically located neighborhoods could drastically reduce gridlock and traffic jams in cities, a new study suggests.
They go on to list individual cities' neighborhoods and their effects on overall city congestion:
"In the Boston area, we found that canceling 1 percent of trips by select drivers in the Massachusetts municipalities of Everett, Marlborough, Lawrence, Lowell and Waltham would cut all drivers’ additional commuting time caused by traffic congestion by 18 percent," said researcher Marta González, a complex-systems scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "In the San Francisco area, canceling trips by drivers from Dublin, Hayward, San Jose, San Rafael and parts of San Ramon would cut 14 percent from the travel time of other drivers."
The problem with this, as is any hard science when they delve into the soft or social science, is that everything is a mathematical formula, a linear cause and effect. Water boils at a certain temperature, oxygen is composed of two oxygen atoms, the day is 23 hours, 56 minutes long, etc. are all measurable, repeatable things. One person can do it, report it and pass it on to someone who can independently do the same thing.
In social sciences, that is impossible. Human behavior, like nature itself, is chaotic, erratic and unmeasurable. That is where statistics come in. Human behavior can be measured in a bell curve, but it is not precise. Traffic modeling is an example of this measuring of human behavior. There are several different types of mathematical models out there for MPO's to use, but most follow a basic formula, trip generation, trip distribution, mode split and trip assignment.
However, there is a step called calibration. Ever seen a meter strip in the street? That helps calibrate the model. Using the formula, modelers see where the model says trips are coming from and where they are going. They then compare that to real world measurements and repeatedly calibrate the model until it resembles the observed numbers. This model is then forecast out for however long the modeler chooses too extend it, usually 30 years.
The reason calibration is needed is human behavior. New York is different than Dallas for example. The exact same mathematical formula would be highly erroneous.
It, like the study linked above, ignores the human behavior and attempts to quantify it scientifically. I am an alternative transportation advocate. There have been times where I decided to use different modes at different times for the exact same trip. Add in things like Induced Traffic and the flaws become more noticeable.
Individually, there is no way to model behavior. But, using the bell curve, there are ways to measure, but it isn't exact, and that's okay. What isn't okay when folks portray human behavior as a linear function. I don't for a minute, believe that study. Procedurally, it may be sound, the math exact and correct. But it ignores the fact that social sciences aren't neat, compact and unerringly precise. Spouting off precise numbers such as 18 or 14 percent reductions ignores human behavior, and that may cause more problems in a different way.
Prior to the holidays, I was checking e-mail and on the front page was a headline about congestion reduction. When I clicked on it, I initially dismissed the report, but have thought about it since so what happens when I over-think an urban issue? I blog it o' course.
The basis of the article is that if select neighborhoods decided against making car trips, then overall congestion would be reduced dramatically. From the lead:
Canceling some car trips from just a few strategically located neighborhoods could drastically reduce gridlock and traffic jams in cities, a new study suggests.
They go on to list individual cities' neighborhoods and their effects on overall city congestion:
"In the Boston area, we found that canceling 1 percent of trips by select drivers in the Massachusetts municipalities of Everett, Marlborough, Lawrence, Lowell and Waltham would cut all drivers’ additional commuting time caused by traffic congestion by 18 percent," said researcher Marta González, a complex-systems scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "In the San Francisco area, canceling trips by drivers from Dublin, Hayward, San Jose, San Rafael and parts of San Ramon would cut 14 percent from the travel time of other drivers."
The problem with this, as is any hard science when they delve into the soft or social science, is that everything is a mathematical formula, a linear cause and effect. Water boils at a certain temperature, oxygen is composed of two oxygen atoms, the day is 23 hours, 56 minutes long, etc. are all measurable, repeatable things. One person can do it, report it and pass it on to someone who can independently do the same thing.
In social sciences, that is impossible. Human behavior, like nature itself, is chaotic, erratic and unmeasurable. That is where statistics come in. Human behavior can be measured in a bell curve, but it is not precise. Traffic modeling is an example of this measuring of human behavior. There are several different types of mathematical models out there for MPO's to use, but most follow a basic formula, trip generation, trip distribution, mode split and trip assignment.
However, there is a step called calibration. Ever seen a meter strip in the street? That helps calibrate the model. Using the formula, modelers see where the model says trips are coming from and where they are going. They then compare that to real world measurements and repeatedly calibrate the model until it resembles the observed numbers. This model is then forecast out for however long the modeler chooses too extend it, usually 30 years.
The reason calibration is needed is human behavior. New York is different than Dallas for example. The exact same mathematical formula would be highly erroneous.
It, like the study linked above, ignores the human behavior and attempts to quantify it scientifically. I am an alternative transportation advocate. There have been times where I decided to use different modes at different times for the exact same trip. Add in things like Induced Traffic and the flaws become more noticeable.
Individually, there is no way to model behavior. But, using the bell curve, there are ways to measure, but it isn't exact, and that's okay. What isn't okay when folks portray human behavior as a linear function. I don't for a minute, believe that study. Procedurally, it may be sound, the math exact and correct. But it ignores the fact that social sciences aren't neat, compact and unerringly precise. Spouting off precise numbers such as 18 or 14 percent reductions ignores human behavior, and that may cause more problems in a different way.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
DART Expands Again
Sticking with the DART theme, an article ran in the Dallas Morning News the day after the transit agency debuted a new station on the Blue Line and two on the Orange Line last week. I would have liked to put this up earlier, but honestly, the motivation is low for me on this particular news item. I just feel like a broken record and would just like to have a positive review for once.
In some ways, this new service is more of the same. Another commuter terminus to bring workers from the outlying areas into the central core. All are going to be commuter station with huge amount of parking spaces (Belt Line - 597, Rowlett - 750, North Lake - 194). I have hope that Rowlett can leverage something around their downtown and the rail stop, but that parking amount will be a huge buffer to cohesive development. If they can, I and other practicing urbanites may use this station sparingly as there are many other destinations that are bigger, better and/or closer to the true urban spaces in the region. Otherwise, there are three more stations added to a commuter system that are true to the rest of the commuter-based system. Bring in workers from the suburbs to the central core, and change the way captive riders use the system.
This isn't a shocking position to loyal readers who have followed this blog for a while, which is partly why the motivation for publishing this piece is low. But there are some quotes I want to pull from the article that really illustrate what I have been alluding to previously, which is the DART system has been increasing making the system harder to use by focusing on reducing redundancy and increasing transfers.
From the article:
At the opposite end of the platform, Gary Dudek was testing out the new rail line on his day off.
The airport employee's previous DART commute to work took at least 2 1/2 hours each way, he said: a bus, then another bus to one of DFW's remote lots, then a shuttle, then another shuttle.
Even worse, he said, the buses often stopped running before the end of his night shift, forcing him to walk part of the way back.
"Hopefully I don't have to walk nine miles home anymore," he said.
Let's play a quiz game. Is Gary Dudek a choice rider, one who has the option to use another mode of transport, like a car, to get to work, or is he a captive rider, one who has little or no other options to get to work?
Five hour daily commute, a fairly good chance of missing the last bus and multiple transfers. Nothing explicitly says one way or the other, but my intuition tells me he isn't doing that for fun. He's doing that because he has little choice.
Seriously though, as I mentioned in the last post, this is exactly the type of system DART is building. By cutting bus service, routing everything through a rail station and increasing the time between runs, DART is creating a user-unfriendly system.
I do understand, however, that DFW is a sprawling airport and the previous rail link was a true commuter rail with even longer headways than I am complaining about now. I also get that DART is facing a funding shortage.That said, somehow they were able to run the new 500 bus through the airport, with the bus meeting every Orange Line train at Belt Line Station. If they could do it now, they could have done it before the new rail line. A semi-express that began at the North Irving Transfer Station and ran to the airport and on to Centreport Station would have connected it. Obviously, they were able to find the funding for it now, but I wonder if they did it by cutting the inner city bus service, the one that will be used at a greater rate.
This to me is DART's greatest shortcoming in planning. It is almost as if they view the bus as a second option, rather than using it for what it is best tailored for. In a true transit system, each component is chosen because it is best for its service. There is no one size fits all approach. The places that have tried a hybrid commuter-urban system have seem underwhelming results. DART is no different. The troubling thing is that they either haven't noticed or don't seem to care. I know there is some political pressure on the agency, particularly in connecting to the airport. But there has to be some balance between that and serving the riders and right now there isn't. I see only a system that is being designed to get commuters in and then out.
The last quote I bring forth:
"I don't want to complain," said Alex Flores, a waiter at Mattito's Tex Mex. "I'm only going to ride it another week. Then my car gets fixed and I don't have to ride a train anymore."
Alright, captive or choice rider?
Were I in his shoes, I think I would make the same choice. It just isn't convenient. This sentiment is exactly why DART will continue to be one of the least ridden rail systems on a per mile basis in the country. They are currently 21st out of 34 operating systems, which also contain services like Kenosha's 2-mile streetcar, Little Rocks 2.5-mile streetcar and Tampa's 2.3-mile streetcar. Discounting these tourist oriented streetcar systems, Dallas ranks 21st out of 31 light rail systems in passengers per mile.
DART brags about being the largest light rail system in North America. Overall, that's good enough for the seventh most ridden light rail system in the U.S., per the American Public Transportation Association. For example, Boston, with the most ridden light rail system, has three times the riders on 1/3 the tracks miles. Using a peer Sun Belt city, Houston has 1/2 the rail ridership on 1/10th the rail miles. I doubt the addition of the three new stations will add that much to the ridership numbers, but it will add to the miles, further dragging down the per mile boardings.
In fact, DART's highest per mile boardings occured when the starter system was finished and it primarily served the urban area, albeit not perfectly. But since then, the system has been built further and further out, and even when they expanded in the urban area, the Green Line did so sub-optimally. If the City of Dallas gets its way, the second downtown rail line will be more of the same.
Let me leave you with a thought. Read though this again, particularly Gary Dudek and Alex Flores contributions. As a society, do we really love our cars? Or do we, as I continue to contend, love what is convenient?
In some ways, this new service is more of the same. Another commuter terminus to bring workers from the outlying areas into the central core. All are going to be commuter station with huge amount of parking spaces (Belt Line - 597, Rowlett - 750, North Lake - 194). I have hope that Rowlett can leverage something around their downtown and the rail stop, but that parking amount will be a huge buffer to cohesive development. If they can, I and other practicing urbanites may use this station sparingly as there are many other destinations that are bigger, better and/or closer to the true urban spaces in the region. Otherwise, there are three more stations added to a commuter system that are true to the rest of the commuter-based system. Bring in workers from the suburbs to the central core, and change the way captive riders use the system.
This isn't a shocking position to loyal readers who have followed this blog for a while, which is partly why the motivation for publishing this piece is low. But there are some quotes I want to pull from the article that really illustrate what I have been alluding to previously, which is the DART system has been increasing making the system harder to use by focusing on reducing redundancy and increasing transfers.
From the article:
At the opposite end of the platform, Gary Dudek was testing out the new rail line on his day off.
The airport employee's previous DART commute to work took at least 2 1/2 hours each way, he said: a bus, then another bus to one of DFW's remote lots, then a shuttle, then another shuttle.
Even worse, he said, the buses often stopped running before the end of his night shift, forcing him to walk part of the way back.
"Hopefully I don't have to walk nine miles home anymore," he said.
Let's play a quiz game. Is Gary Dudek a choice rider, one who has the option to use another mode of transport, like a car, to get to work, or is he a captive rider, one who has little or no other options to get to work?
Five hour daily commute, a fairly good chance of missing the last bus and multiple transfers. Nothing explicitly says one way or the other, but my intuition tells me he isn't doing that for fun. He's doing that because he has little choice.
Seriously though, as I mentioned in the last post, this is exactly the type of system DART is building. By cutting bus service, routing everything through a rail station and increasing the time between runs, DART is creating a user-unfriendly system.
I do understand, however, that DFW is a sprawling airport and the previous rail link was a true commuter rail with even longer headways than I am complaining about now. I also get that DART is facing a funding shortage.That said, somehow they were able to run the new 500 bus through the airport, with the bus meeting every Orange Line train at Belt Line Station. If they could do it now, they could have done it before the new rail line. A semi-express that began at the North Irving Transfer Station and ran to the airport and on to Centreport Station would have connected it. Obviously, they were able to find the funding for it now, but I wonder if they did it by cutting the inner city bus service, the one that will be used at a greater rate.
This to me is DART's greatest shortcoming in planning. It is almost as if they view the bus as a second option, rather than using it for what it is best tailored for. In a true transit system, each component is chosen because it is best for its service. There is no one size fits all approach. The places that have tried a hybrid commuter-urban system have seem underwhelming results. DART is no different. The troubling thing is that they either haven't noticed or don't seem to care. I know there is some political pressure on the agency, particularly in connecting to the airport. But there has to be some balance between that and serving the riders and right now there isn't. I see only a system that is being designed to get commuters in and then out.
The last quote I bring forth:
"I don't want to complain," said Alex Flores, a waiter at Mattito's Tex Mex. "I'm only going to ride it another week. Then my car gets fixed and I don't have to ride a train anymore."
Alright, captive or choice rider?
Were I in his shoes, I think I would make the same choice. It just isn't convenient. This sentiment is exactly why DART will continue to be one of the least ridden rail systems on a per mile basis in the country. They are currently 21st out of 34 operating systems, which also contain services like Kenosha's 2-mile streetcar, Little Rocks 2.5-mile streetcar and Tampa's 2.3-mile streetcar. Discounting these tourist oriented streetcar systems, Dallas ranks 21st out of 31 light rail systems in passengers per mile.
DART brags about being the largest light rail system in North America. Overall, that's good enough for the seventh most ridden light rail system in the U.S., per the American Public Transportation Association. For example, Boston, with the most ridden light rail system, has three times the riders on 1/3 the tracks miles. Using a peer Sun Belt city, Houston has 1/2 the rail ridership on 1/10th the rail miles. I doubt the addition of the three new stations will add that much to the ridership numbers, but it will add to the miles, further dragging down the per mile boardings.
In fact, DART's highest per mile boardings occured when the starter system was finished and it primarily served the urban area, albeit not perfectly. But since then, the system has been built further and further out, and even when they expanded in the urban area, the Green Line did so sub-optimally. If the City of Dallas gets its way, the second downtown rail line will be more of the same.
Let me leave you with a thought. Read though this again, particularly Gary Dudek and Alex Flores contributions. As a society, do we really love our cars? Or do we, as I continue to contend, love what is convenient?
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
DART's December Service Change
Sorry to disappoint those who were looking forward to the topics I previewed in the last post, but I overlooked one, and this has me steaming.
In this post at the beginning of the year, I mentioned the bus changes DART wanted to implement. I was struck by the fact that they are making the bus service a highly ineffective and inefficient system, especially when the rail system is a commuter-designed system rather than the urban one that serves and carries more riders.
Well, I flipped through the latest service change pamphlet they produce before every change and it appears that every one of the planners recommendations made it to the finish line. Bottomline: Bus cuts are funding the rail system. DART is cutting service from the workhorse that carries the bulk of their riders in favor of a less ridden alternative.
I'm trying to contain myself, but I am just disgusted. DART has a local reputation among the population for user unfriendliness and these cuts do nothing to dispel that notion. Two close-in, urban neighborhoods are no longer connected by one route. To get to a point on Oak Lawn from downtown Dallas will require a transfer to another route or a long walk. Sadly, most of the urban core is now functioning this way.
DART has designed an urban transit system that requires multiple transfers. Transfers kill ridership. They have increased headways. Longer wait times kill ridership. Adding to the appalling news, more and more urban routes require a transfer to the commuter-designed rail system, which then almost always requires another transfer. It is not inconceivable that an urban resident will need to ride 3-5 routes to get where they are going within five miles of their start. DART generally does a good job of minimizing transfer times, but it is near impossible for every route to connect seamlessly with every other route. And even when they do work, and the time is less than five minutes, after a few transfers, the wait time still adds up. If it takes 30-60 minutes by streetcar/rail/bus/bus, or 10 by car, which will be the preferred choice? Add the fact that most trips have a return and the time wasted is amplified.
Results aside, I think the thing that gets me the most is the feeling that the public meetings were a sham. Planners came in with one goal and only one goal, likely dictated from above, and that was to save money. There was nothing else that mattered. At several meetings, groups and groups of riders protested a select few service changes. In the end, every one of them were cut. They did the public meetings in correspondence with federal law, but when your goal is to cut expenses, what happens at these meetings are inconsequential. They are only supposed to take the comments into account, not act upon them.
I get frustrated because to many of the general public, planners are insulated from them. And this is why. In the end, it feels all the time given up for these meetings to make their voice heard was pointless. It feels like a dog and pony show, only to comply with the law, not be heard.
I have always believed that planning is best done from the bottom up. Part of my frustration with this is that this was the exact opposite. And THAT'S why the taste in my mouth is bitter. I firmly believe there was a solution that was reachable where both sides would have agreed, even if they didn't endorse, to a solution. This reeks of my way and only my way.I despise insulated decisions.
Lastly, this is where right-wingers and libertarians share frustrations with the public sector (though no one on the DART Board is elected). Because less than a quarter of DART's revenue is generated by fares, even if they see a huge ridership loss, the budget won't be affected by anything more than a blip.
Here, however, I won't fault DART. Because we choose to fund their operations with a sales tax, which is the most economically cyclical way of all funding, when times get tough, regardless of demand, service has to be cut. Due to the circumstances, these cuts are anti-urban and anti-urban-development. However, given that constraint, there was a better way to cut costs than to ax routes and lower ridership.
For me, Houston would be a better model. Because their rail line and expansions are more cohesive with the urban environment, they would feel less shock from route cuts and transfers into the rail system. The rail system is actually an urban one, and therefore many of the transfers work because the rail line will get them to the rider's final destination or will be the starting point.
Within the next year, a story will appear in the paper that will discuss the further eroding of DART's ridership. In it, DART officials will point to the down economy (fewer jobs mean fewer riders), lower sales tax collections and suburban job growth as reasons. Now on will mention they keep cutting routes and those that remain have fewer buses running on those routes.
Unless more of an effort is put forth, I fear Dallas will always be known as a car city, and it will have little to do with the resident's true transportation preferences.
In this post at the beginning of the year, I mentioned the bus changes DART wanted to implement. I was struck by the fact that they are making the bus service a highly ineffective and inefficient system, especially when the rail system is a commuter-designed system rather than the urban one that serves and carries more riders.
Well, I flipped through the latest service change pamphlet they produce before every change and it appears that every one of the planners recommendations made it to the finish line. Bottomline: Bus cuts are funding the rail system. DART is cutting service from the workhorse that carries the bulk of their riders in favor of a less ridden alternative.
I'm trying to contain myself, but I am just disgusted. DART has a local reputation among the population for user unfriendliness and these cuts do nothing to dispel that notion. Two close-in, urban neighborhoods are no longer connected by one route. To get to a point on Oak Lawn from downtown Dallas will require a transfer to another route or a long walk. Sadly, most of the urban core is now functioning this way.
DART has designed an urban transit system that requires multiple transfers. Transfers kill ridership. They have increased headways. Longer wait times kill ridership. Adding to the appalling news, more and more urban routes require a transfer to the commuter-designed rail system, which then almost always requires another transfer. It is not inconceivable that an urban resident will need to ride 3-5 routes to get where they are going within five miles of their start. DART generally does a good job of minimizing transfer times, but it is near impossible for every route to connect seamlessly with every other route. And even when they do work, and the time is less than five minutes, after a few transfers, the wait time still adds up. If it takes 30-60 minutes by streetcar/rail/bus/bus, or 10 by car, which will be the preferred choice? Add the fact that most trips have a return and the time wasted is amplified.
Results aside, I think the thing that gets me the most is the feeling that the public meetings were a sham. Planners came in with one goal and only one goal, likely dictated from above, and that was to save money. There was nothing else that mattered. At several meetings, groups and groups of riders protested a select few service changes. In the end, every one of them were cut. They did the public meetings in correspondence with federal law, but when your goal is to cut expenses, what happens at these meetings are inconsequential. They are only supposed to take the comments into account, not act upon them.
I get frustrated because to many of the general public, planners are insulated from them. And this is why. In the end, it feels all the time given up for these meetings to make their voice heard was pointless. It feels like a dog and pony show, only to comply with the law, not be heard.
I have always believed that planning is best done from the bottom up. Part of my frustration with this is that this was the exact opposite. And THAT'S why the taste in my mouth is bitter. I firmly believe there was a solution that was reachable where both sides would have agreed, even if they didn't endorse, to a solution. This reeks of my way and only my way.I despise insulated decisions.
Lastly, this is where right-wingers and libertarians share frustrations with the public sector (though no one on the DART Board is elected). Because less than a quarter of DART's revenue is generated by fares, even if they see a huge ridership loss, the budget won't be affected by anything more than a blip.
Here, however, I won't fault DART. Because we choose to fund their operations with a sales tax, which is the most economically cyclical way of all funding, when times get tough, regardless of demand, service has to be cut. Due to the circumstances, these cuts are anti-urban and anti-urban-development. However, given that constraint, there was a better way to cut costs than to ax routes and lower ridership.
For me, Houston would be a better model. Because their rail line and expansions are more cohesive with the urban environment, they would feel less shock from route cuts and transfers into the rail system. The rail system is actually an urban one, and therefore many of the transfers work because the rail line will get them to the rider's final destination or will be the starting point.
Within the next year, a story will appear in the paper that will discuss the further eroding of DART's ridership. In it, DART officials will point to the down economy (fewer jobs mean fewer riders), lower sales tax collections and suburban job growth as reasons. Now on will mention they keep cutting routes and those that remain have fewer buses running on those routes.
Unless more of an effort is put forth, I fear Dallas will always be known as a car city, and it will have little to do with the resident's true transportation preferences.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Leave of Absence
Loyal readers may have noticed a lack of activity the last month plus. Two big things that I won't go into too much detail over have limited my desire to post.
The first part is professional frustration. I don't want to go into it too much, as I don't know who reads, but have experienced several close calls that weren't meant to be. As such, I experienced a bit of burn a burn out. I needed to be away from planning and planning principles for a bit.
The second was the birth of my second son in the middle of October. Thomas Wayne is a happy and healthy almost three-week old. While it hasn't been as hard as it was with the first, it is still a trying time.
Anyway, I have lots of good topics planned for the coming posts. I have let the dust settle on Belo Gardens and am ready to offer my critique on the City Center park. Dallas has unveiled a few bike-centered infrastructural improvements and is debating an ordinance for drivers concerning bikes. Klyde Warren Park opened about a week ago. While I waited for Belo to mature a bit, I will offer a different perspective. Plaza of the Americas has decided to remove their ice rink downtown in favor of indoor green space. I have some thoughts on that.
I am not certain I will post about it, but the national election could have been implications for planning in general and Dallas specifically. I am tossing around the idea and haven't decided. But I am susceptible to peer pressure.
Also any relatively breaking news will be discussed.
So for those who have checked here periodically and were disappointed, I am back.
The first part is professional frustration. I don't want to go into it too much, as I don't know who reads, but have experienced several close calls that weren't meant to be. As such, I experienced a bit of burn a burn out. I needed to be away from planning and planning principles for a bit.
The second was the birth of my second son in the middle of October. Thomas Wayne is a happy and healthy almost three-week old. While it hasn't been as hard as it was with the first, it is still a trying time.
Anyway, I have lots of good topics planned for the coming posts. I have let the dust settle on Belo Gardens and am ready to offer my critique on the City Center park. Dallas has unveiled a few bike-centered infrastructural improvements and is debating an ordinance for drivers concerning bikes. Klyde Warren Park opened about a week ago. While I waited for Belo to mature a bit, I will offer a different perspective. Plaza of the Americas has decided to remove their ice rink downtown in favor of indoor green space. I have some thoughts on that.
I am not certain I will post about it, but the national election could have been implications for planning in general and Dallas specifically. I am tossing around the idea and haven't decided. But I am susceptible to peer pressure.
Also any relatively breaking news will be discussed.
So for those who have checked here periodically and were disappointed, I am back.
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