Barcelona’s Metro Continues Its Expansion at a Relatively Cheap Price
June 29th, 2010 | 
» The latest segment of lines 9 and 10 opened last week. The city should have 30 miles of automatic metros by 2014.
Over the next ten years, New York, Los Angeles, and Barcelona each hope to have new underground rapid transit lines up and running. Gotham will spend $4.5 billion on a 1.7-mile line under Second Avenue. Los Angeles will get a 8.6-mile extension to the Westside for $6 billion. And Barcelona will have built 30 miles of automated subways for €6.5 billion ($7.9 billion according to today’s exchange rate).
Perhaps it’s an unfair comparison: Spain has lower labor costs, and despite Barcelona’s international prestige and high densities, land values there are generally lower than in the two American metropolises. But the disparity in infrastructure creation remains dramatic; countries like Spain and China are able to build far more than American cities can even dream about.
Barcelona’s newest exploit was the opening last week of the first shared segment of the L9 and L10 lines. Both are being constructed as part of a unified program that will increase the metro system’s size by a third, providing a new north-south circumferential corridor west of the city center, access to northern neighborhoods, a connection to the new high-speed rail station at La Sagrera, and direct links to both the airport and the port to the south. The first segment of L9 opened in December 2009 and the first section of L10 in April this year. The southern links will be completed in 2012, with the full program in service in 2014. That’s six years after the project was originally expected to be done.
Though Barcelona’s project doesn’t come close to the scale of Madrid’s metro expansion program — that city increased the size of its network by more than 100 miles between 1995 and 2007 and now has the highest metro route miles per person in the world — Barcelona will have Europe’s longest underground route and the continent’s most extensive automated line in four years.
For €6.5 billion, the city will be getting 52 stations, 20 of which will include transfers; the project is expected to attract 350,000 daily riders. Because of Barcelona’s already very dense metro network, the line has been built below everything else. Tunnel boring machines, which Spain specializes in, were used for the entire underground path (the line includes a few miles above ground on viaducts); this decreased costs by limiting surface cuts and land purchasing. The city also has taken advantage of the line’s building to produce some very interestingstreet reconstructions.
Stations in the center city are so far below ground that the transport authority has designed stops so that commuters move to and from trains by elevator.
This subway project has consumed the majority of the region’s transportation funds, but the city was also interested in investing in surface transit. Specifically, several boulevards were set aside for a bus rapid transit system. Yet the mayor’s biggest priority was supposed to be the reconstruction of the Diagonal Avenue, which cuts across the city roughly east-west. Though both its eastern and western extends are served by trams, its central section has no rapid transit either on it or below. So Mayor Jordi Hereu attempted to invoke public participation in the elaboration of the project, calling a referendum on the program to implant light rail and a more pedestrian-friendly streetscape there.
But the mayor’s effort to involve the people was a failure — the poll attracted only 12% of the electorate, and they voted massively against any of the two changes proposed by the mayor. For now, Diagonal will have to stay as it is.
Thus Spain’s second city will have to content itself on its relatively ambitious subway expansion program. Not too disappointing a result…
Expanding Transit Access to Southeast Queens
» The city’s largest borough currently suffers from a large gap in service, but relatively inexpensive improvements could address those problems well.
Though New Yorkers overall are used to some of the longest commute times in the country, residents of southeast Queens are particularly affected. The inhabitants of this large segment of the borough between JFK Airport and Jamaica, from Brooklyn to the city line, haveaverage travel times to work of more than 50 minutes. That’s each way.
It’s a terrible situation, especially since so many people in the pretty dense neighborhood rely on public transportation to get around — and so many are headed to Midtown and downtown Manhattan, areas with high levels of train and bus service already. Transit planners have a moral obligation to find ways to improve their commutes, even in face of the mounting budget deficit currently pounding New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
| Commute times in Queens | Transit share in Queens |
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Fortunately, there are several cheap investments the city could make that would substantially reduce the trip times of those living in this part of the borough, starting with a change in fare policy. Leveraging existing transit corridors to a fuller extent by constructing more stations in southeast Queens is also a serious and relatively inexpensive option.
New York offers a standard ticket price for its subway and bus services; the same fare is paid for trips consisting of just a few blocks or twenty miles. The same applies for the city’s unlimited passes, which allow rides anywhere in the city on buses and subways for a set price over a period of time.
There are positives and negatives associated with this system — one thing it certainly does is instill the idea that the whole city is accessible to every citizen, of any class — but it certainly preferences people who live far from their jobs. Yet New York City is structured in a way that makes further densification of the central city core very difficult, even as most jobs continue to be located in Manhattan; people from the outskirts of the city, like it or not, need to be able to get to the center in a reasonably short period of time.
That single-fare policy has not been extended to the MTA’s commuter rail systems, Metro-North and the Long Island Railroad, both of which provide quick access from the outer boroughs to parts of the Manhattan office districts, at a higher price. From Jamaica, at the northwest tip of Queens’ southeast quadrant, a ride to Penn Station on the LIRR takes 19 minutes and costs $7.60 at peak times (or $5.46 during off-peak times); on the E Express Subway (faster than most), the trip requires 34 minutes, for $2.25 (or about $1.50 using an unlimited pass).
For many commuters, there’s a difficult choice to make: pay more than twice as much and get a 45% faster ride, or save money and squeeze into buses and subways. Most choose the latter option because it’s cheaper — which explains the high average commute times for people from Southeast Queens in spite of the large number of transit lines that criss-cross the area.
It also explains the under-use of some of the existing branches of the LIRR in southeast Queens, including the Far Rockaway Branch, which stops at Locust Manor and Laurelton Stations; the Hempstead branch, which includes stations at Queens Village and Hollis; and the West Hempstead branch, with its stop at St. Albans.
Thus an easy fix for this problem would be to make in-city trips on the commuter railroads the same price as those on the subway and buses, and allow commuters to make free transfers between the two. This would instantly reduce typical travel times for people in this section of Queens (and areas of the northern Bronx) and increase the use of the existing commuter rail capacity on the three LIRR corridors mentioned above.
If the city subsidized this fare reduction, the state-financed MTA could continue charging current fares on trips coming from outside of the city without encouraging debate over differences in transit provisions for the city and its suburbs, a discussion already at the heart of many of the agency’s financial problems.
Creating fare equity between the commuter railroads and the subways would produce significant time savings for the residents of southeast Queens. But the introduction of more people onto the LIRR system would require some substantial changes in commuter rail operations in order for the services to remain reliable. For one, in-city stations benefiting from reduced fares would have to have turnstiles installed so that free transfers could be enforced. Or, the MTA could wait for the universal contactless farecard it is already developing, a ticket designed to allow conductors on the commuter trains to make pass inspections using the same system as installed at subway faregates.
The introduction of thousands of new daily riders on LIRR trains would likely cause some capacity problems, since many of the system’s trains are already overcrowded at rush hour. Some of the difficulties would be solved with the opening of East Side Access to Grand Central Terminal in 2016, which will allow a larger number of trains to enter Manhattan. Moreover, with increasing ridership likely to occur anyway, the railroad will have to buy more trains over the next decade; if these vehicles were configured more like rapid transit, with more doors and more standing room (unlike existing LIRR trains, which prioritize comfortable seating), the larger number of riders could be handled easily.
And of course, there’s another easy way to relieve capacity issues at Penn Station: simply run trains through from New Jersey to Long Island, reducing track use in the central segments of the system. It can be done.
Though the MTA would lose revenue by significantly reducing the cost of inner-city commuter rail trips, it would likely also increase transit ridership on trips coming from areas at the edges of the metropolis. Meanwhile, the changes I’ve suggested would require limited investment above and beyond what was already planned — the new contactless farecard is being designed already; new trains are to be ordered within a few years anyway, and a change in their design won’t affect their pricetag.
But there are other, more costly investments that would focus on the commuting problems of this particularly isolated neighborhood. By adding stations to the three branches of the LIRR that pass through the community, a far larger slice of the population would suddenly find itself within half a mile of a rail station. Though adding a stop or two for each line would slightly increase the commute times of people coming from further away, they would significantly reduce the trip times of people in this neighborhood by providing quick, direct access to Midtown Manhattan and connections further down the line to subway routes heading throughout the city.
Building a new station is not exactly a cheap proposition, but taking advantage of an existing rail line, rather than, say, extending a subway (something that’s been proposed for Southeast Queens in the past), is a much less expensive alternative.
And then there’s AirTrain JFK.
Since it opened in December 2003, the line has become an important tool for commuters getting to and from JFK Airport; it connects each of the airport’s terminals directly to LIRR and subway services (E, J, and Z trains) at Jamaica, and to A Subway services at Howard Beach. Elevated above the median of the Van Wyck Expressway, its route passes directly adjacent to some of the neighborhoods that suffer from exactly the long commutes that irritate so many people who live in southeast Queens.
Unfortunately, because the AirTrain was built with funds from the federal government’sAviation Trust Fund and airport Passenger Facility Charge revenues, it could not include local stations — the only stops on the line are at airport terminals, passenger facilities, and at the transit drop-offs at Howard Beach and Jamaica. Federal regulations state that those revenue sources can only be used for a project that “must exclusively serve airport traffic.” This results in a number of peculiar situations that ultimately reduce the effectiveness of transit that serves airports in the United States, since through-running and local (non-airport) stops are basically banned by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Theoretically, several new stations could be added to AirTrain along the Van Wyck corridor without reducing existing capacity by creating side-platform stations and building access tracks separate from the express tracks used by JFK-Jamaica trains. This would be a pricey investment, since it would require the creation of a new track connection between Howard Beach and Jamaica trains (to avoid interrupting airport express and inter-terminal service) and it would require the construction of a series of elevated platforms above a freeway and connected to an in-use transit line. Faregates would also have to be installed at JFK terminals to ensure that passengers pay the correct charge, since those riding on the new Howard Beach-Jamaica train would pay standard subway fares, while those heading for the airport would continue to pay the $5 airport fee.
These improvements would provide direct operations from a number of isolated neighborhoods to Jamaica and Howard Beach, from which there would be easy transfers to Midtown and Downtown Manhattan-bound trains.
It would have been more convenient to make these changes when the project was first being built, to say the least. But these changes wouldn’t affect the quality of the original investment and therefore would not pose an affront to FAA regulations.
Sadly, the MTA has done very little to address the excessive commute times of southeast Queens residents, who deserve improved transportation access, and there has been no coordinated planning for better transit service for the neighborhood. Its denizens are likely to see long trip times for decades to come.
» A rail system cannot solve city’s huge problems. Detroit’s half-dead nature has captured the nation’s attention over the past year. Though the whole country continues to suffer from the recession, the emptying of Michigan’s largest city is notable to the degree that its fate seems practically irredeemable: Given its economic, social, and political position, how can the city survive? Municipal leaders and pundits from around the country are convinced that a concerted planning effort and major investments could to free it from its doldrums. The plan that has commanded the most attention recently is a regional transportation project that would begin with a light rail line down Woodward Avenue and then extend into a triangular network of bus rapid transit corridors. These would converge on a new high-speed service with direct trains to Chicago. In a series running tonight, PBS is promoting the decidedly optimistic view that Detroit would be able to capitalize massively on new transit and proceed to rebuild the city around regenerated corridors. Higher-density residential and commercial development would allow the city to reduce per capita spending on essential services like road maintenance and sewers, which require huge expenditures because of the sprawled and vacant condition of much of the city. Detroit would reconstruct itself based on a major piece of infrastructure. But that vision, as promising as it may be to transit promoters, is no panacea; Detroit will continue to suffer from job and residential loss even with a rail line. The project will only fulfill its promise if the city receives far more investment from exterior sources and if it develops a strong vision for its future. Transit and development Much of the discussion about the potential for public transportation to spur Detroit’s renaissance is premised on the idea that well-designed transit can be an effective tool for encouraging development. This is one of the primary reasons why many cities push for light rail or streetcars instead of often-cheaper variants of bus rapid transit. It is assumed that the permanent investment made manifest in the construction of a rail line — the tracks aren’t going anywhere, while bus service could theoretically change routing at any moment — will persuade the private sector to invest in dense new residential and commercial developments around station zones. And indeed, there is plenty of evidence that new rail lines in the United States have been fantastic mediums for growth, in inner cities and in suburban transit zones. But that kind of new construction usually only comes when there is sufficient demand for transit-oriented lifestyles. And there will only be such a market when three provisions are met: land in the urban core and in transit corridors must be already relatively well-developed and with low vacancy rates; there must sufficient neighborhood amenities to which residents can walk (or at least the promise of them arriving); and transit must provide a reasonable commute to and from workplaces and destinations of metropolitan reach. These conditions can be met by some sections of a transit line and not others. Detroit, even after years of decline, has been able to maintain about 200,000 jobs in the downtown area, thanks to the presence of several large institutions like General Motors, Compuware, and Wayne State University and Medical Center. People living along the Woodward Avenue light rail line would have good access to a large jobs market within easy reach of transit. They would also have direct service to several of downtown’s entertainment districts. But would there be a strong enough incentive for the construction of new multi-family residences and office buildings along the transit line for the project to have been worth the initial investment in terms of spin-off development? Developers typically have little profit motive in constructing medium-to-high density apartment complexes for people who are not members of the upper-middle or upper classes unless government or non-profit entities provide subsidies to house people of lesser means. That means there must be adequate wealth in the market to make dense urban neighborhoods possible. But Detroit’s population, which is one of the poorest of any municipality in the country (50% of the city’s children live in poverty), hardly fits the mold developers hope to attract. Nor does the city have much money to spend on subsidizing affordable housing. Evidence from many American cities that have built light rail suggest that while the transit mode can focus activity around stations in areas where there is a market, it is less productive in generating development in poor neighborhoods as a direct consequence of the lack of developer interest. In cities where demand for more urban living is less strong in general relative to the overall market, there will inevitably be less construction produced, and whole sections of disinterested neighborhoods will remain in their decrepit state, with or without rail transit. Similarly, there is so much vacant land in Detroit (note the photograph above, just three blocks from the downtown core and one block from a proposed Woodward Avenue light rail station) that even people who do want to live in the urban center won’t have much of a motivation to inhabit high-density buildings. An estimated 40 of the city’s 139 square miles are empty — that’s more land than the entire city of Miami. This means land prices are incredibly cheap and it is often less expensive to build transit-unfriendly single family homes from scratch than to buy an apartment in a multi-story building, which is usually more expensive to build per unit than a suburban house because of the former’s more sturdy construction. Even if there is a market for dense living, most investment will occur in the city’s downtown, which has dozens of vacant high-rises waiting for renovations, not further out along Woodward Avenue. High-density construction only makes sense to developers when land prices are high: there’s a reason one rarely sees an office tower in the middle of a corn field. Detroit also suffers from a tremendous dearth of even the most basic neighborhood amenities. In 2003, the city of 900,000 inhabitants had only five grocery stores (none of which was owned by a major chain) with more than 20,000 square feet — the standard size of a modern supermarket. Based on its population, it could support 40, but no one’s building. How can people be expected to live a walking lifestyle when they have a difficult time buying food? Who, exactly, will choose or be able to afford to live in the thousands of new apartments adjacent to light rail stations? Detroit fits only two of the three conditions absolutely necessary for developers to be attracted to constructing new buildings on a large scale. Prerequisites for spending on rapid transit The construction of dense urban developments and the creation of successful transit lines go hand-in-hand: one doesn’t work without the other. But some Detroit planners argue that the primary motivation in creating improved public transportation is to improve the mobility of the city’s car-less citizens, who make up one-third of the population. Quite ironic for the so-called Motor City. This logic, in fact, is just as meaningful as a development-oriented one, because it serves the purpose of improving social equity. If people can’t get around very easily, their poverty will only be entrenched. Yet if the primary goal of a transportation system is to serve the needs of the poor in a city like Detroit, light rail isn’t necessarily the right answer. There are some major advantages to trains, namely that they can operate in their own rights-of-way and that they can provide large transport capacity. Cities that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in new transit should focus on their most dense, congested corridors. It is undoubtedly true that Woodward Avenue is the region’s premier street, so it should be first in line in receiving light rail. It is also true that the 3.4-mile corridor from Hart Plaza to New Center proposed for the initial investment by private group M1-Rail is reasonably dense, though as shown in the image above, many lots just off the corridor are completely deserted. The proposed city-funded extension from New Center to Eight Mile, however, is entirely suburban in nature, with single-family homes and auto-oriented retail making up most of the landscape. It’s hard to see how this line would attract significant enough patronage to warrant a rail investment. Meanwhile, if good transit is also reasonably fast compared to cars, the relative lack of traffic on Woodward and parallel highways even at rush hour suggests that buses operating in much cheaper segregated lanes could be just as quick as light rail. Congestion is the best way to encourage people of all income groups to jump onto transit, but Detroit has so many freeways in its urban core that the day when traffic becomes a problem may never come. If the city’s goal if to relieve the commuting pain of car-less citizens, it could save a lot of money by spending on a larger number of bus corridors instead of one rail line — if capital funds could be transferred to operations, since most bus spending is in the latter category. If it did so, Detroit would have better access for a larger percentage of the city’s spread-out citizenry. This would be the most direct approach to achieving more equitable transportation for the city’s most impoverished. Growth is necessary, not optional — but it’s only possible with a game plan Nevertheless, the city’s leaders seem intent on investing in the light rail line, and you can’t blame them, since it will provide a signature symbol of the city’s efforts to resurrect itself. The project, however, will not be successful in attracting large number of patrons nor in spurring significant amounts of spin-off development unless the city stems the mass exodus that has been a fact of life for Motown since the 1950s. The rail line, it should be emphasized, will not be the magic bullet that makes that possible. Indeed, there are only two realistic ways to ensure satisfactory use of the transit line and spark affiliated surrounding development: Either there must be population and job growth city-wide, including in the transit zones, or there must be population and job growth in the transit zones, to the detriment of other areas of the city. Because of Detroit’s history, the lackluster state of the automobile industry, and little evidence of a significant nationwide interest in moving to Michigan, the former seems unlikely to pan out. So the city must endeavor to encourage movement of citizens and businesses into the transit zone. If the city goes about following the status quo, it will build a little-used light rail line surrounded by a lot of vacant land, and foster only minor development. Artist collectives and urban farming will spring up, but these will be but minor counterpoints to a continued narrative of citywide decline. It’s hard to see how a transit system in this situation will provide the stimulus to reverse the city’s course. On the other hand, Detroit could pursue a radical change of direction in which it closes off sections of the city to housing and compels to move into newly built housing along transit corridors and in the downtown core — basically, artificially altering the city limits to the exclusion of most of the city’s residents. This approach, which would require making it illegal to build or even live in many areas of the metropolis, would increase land prices substantially near transit stations. It would only be possible, however, with enormous subsidies from the state and federal governments to pay for the construction of tens of thousands of affordable housing units. People would have to be implored to stay in the city despite being kicked from their homes. Because of the cost of such a strategy and the political infeasibility of shuttering whole neighborhoods, such focused growth seems unlikely to occur. But without a well-planned reconfiguration of the city’s built form, Detroit may have difficulty surviving. Hope persists Though Detroit is unlikely to advance a complete rethinking of the city’s workings, the cancer that plagues it is not yet irreversible. The municipality’s best hope is in employment growth: if it is able to attract thousands of new jobs downtown and along the light rail line, it could create a dense urban center strong enough to justify the investment in light rail and big enough to attract a growing residential population. These new jobs, of course, will only be made possible with huge government aid; the private sector is not exactly banging down the door of city hall, with companies continuing to eliminate jobs nationwide. However unlikely any help from Lansing or Washington may be, Detroit’s future may well rest on it. A light rail line would then be little more than icing on the cake, a complement to government-sponsored job growth if things go well, or a last gasp if the city’s fate expires. Image above: Intersection of John R and Alfred Streets, one block from Woodward Avenue, three blocks from downtown core, from Google Maps Streetview » Of the dozens of rapid transit projects under construction and planned for the French capital, few are aimed directly at the center city. The civil unrest that spread across many of France’s impoverished banlieues in October and November 2005 made clear the degree to which spatial separation between classes had resulted in unequal distribution of resources and consequent feelings of disenfranchisement by members of the country’s most needy. Nowhere is this inequality more evident than in the sprawling Paris region, whose 11.7 million inhabitants form one of Europe’s two largest metropolitan areas.* For years, commercial activity has been growing in the massive La Défense business district west of the city, only encouraging the wealth of that side of Île-de-France. The lower class is heavily concentrated in the northeast suburbs, whose formerly industrial cities are replete with high-rise social housing complexes constructed in the post-war period. Though no French town suffers from the abandonment common in some postindustrial American cities, there are clear differences in public services provided by the government. In many ways, this is most obvious in terms of transportation: The town where the riots began, Clichy-sous-Bois, is hours away from the city center via public transportation despite only being some fifteen kilometers from the city’s borders. While virtually all inhabitants of Paris itself have access to subway stations within a half-kilometer or less, many suburban cities have limited bus and rail service — even though a huge percentage of the population lacks automobile access. National and local governments have made a big deal of their interest in reducing those inequities. Conservative President Nicholas Sarkozy made a big step in March 2009 in announcing a 130 km automated transit project that would form a double loop through the suburbs. This Réseau Primaire du Grand Paris will cost some €20 billion to complete and serve as the major spine for regional development over the next few decades, much as has the RER regional express network mostly built in the 1960s and 70s. Unlike the Paris-centric RER, however, this Grand Paris system would be designed to avoid the center-city and focus investment in frequently overlooked suburban zones. Mr. Sarkozy has committed planning dollars for the project, but he has been less forthcomin in defining where he will find the funds to sponsor the project’s construction, whose cost may make it the most expensive single rapid transit project in the world. He has also clashed repeatedly with many local officials, who are worried that the government’s right to use eminent domain in station-area zones will simply produce bourgeois enclaves around them and do little for the existing adjacent communities. The Île-de-France region, under the control of Socialists, who along with their Communist allies control six of the region’s eight départements (similar to counties) including Paris, has been more proactive in both proposing solutions and funding them. As a result, the region now has under construction seven tramways, three metro extensions, two reserved busways, and a tram-train project — all but one of which will be in the suburbs. By 2014, once most of the projects are completed, the region will have more than 100 km of tramways operating almost entirely in dedicated rights-of-way, up from around 40 km today. Metro extensions will ring out from the city, and 25 km of bus rapid transit will reach some of the least-serviced areas. The campaign to ramp up construction on the tramway lines now coincides with the regional elections planned for March this year, in which the Socialists hope to maintain control of 20 of 22 regions they won in 2004. The popularity of these trams, which operate much like American light rail lines, make them a clear electoral selling point. Tramways have major benefits: the ability to handle routes in very high demand as a result of their long vehicle lengths, up to 143 feet. The T1 and T3 lines already carry over 100,000 daily riders, almost as much as some metro lines, which are usually far more expensive to build. This makes tramways ideal for routes between suburbs or dense neighborhoods, which don’t have the high peak demand required for lines running towards business districts. Their implementation in some of the poorest sections of the region, such as in and around St. Denis just north of Paris, will reduce commuting times and encourage safer, more walkable communities. In addition, regional officials plan metro extensions on eight lines that will radiate from the city into the surrounding towns, as well as three more busways. With the exception of the Grand Paris network, the largest rapid transit program likely to be built over the next few years is the extension of the RER E from St. Lazare train station to the La Défense district. The project will include the construction of an 8 km tunnel through some of the region’s most populated (and most valuable) areas, a huge new interchange station, and the furthering of regional rail service west to the town of Mantes. It will cost up to €3 billion. The new RER E tunnel will parallel the RER A tunnel that opened in 1977, now completely overcharged and rated as the western world’s most-used transit line, with over one million daily passengers. The region’s decision to fund the RER E’s construction will drastically reduce commute times between destinations east and west of the city and the project by itself will probably attract as many passengers as the entire tramway network, which will carry an impressive 800,000 daily riders by 2014 according to regional officials. Île-de-France’s commitment to reinforcing suburban service over building new inner-city lines is a direct reflection of Paris’ unique situation: the city has virtually all the public transportation it will ever need, even as the dense surrounding suburbs are mostly deprived of the same. But American cities like Washington, San Francisco, and Boston, each of which have dense suburbs, could learn a thing or two from the French approach. By distributing public transportation capital funds at the regional level, many disparate areas can benefit from new rapid transit lines. Similarly, by encouraging the development of separated-lane rail and bus projects throughout the suburbs, rather than simply in the core, the idea of living car-free can be extended beyond what are typically considered the pedestrian-friendly zones at the heart of the central city. The typically arbitrarily defined boundaries between the central city and its surroundings shouldn’t determine whether efficient transit connections are made between dense neighborhoods — and that’s ultimately what Île-de-France regional officials are making clear in their decision-making about how to distribute funds. * Greater London is either somewhat larger or somewhat smaller depending on the calculation used. Few places in the world are as reliant on their commuter rail systems as Sydney; the Australian metropolis’ CityRailattracts more than one million daily passengers. The almost 1,300 miles of track the system includes provide for the transportation needs of most of the rail transit users in the city, though a light rail line that opened in 1997 and which now has 4.5 miles of service provides some connections to the Inner West parts of the city. A monorail loop links the light rail to Market Street, midway up the CBD peninsula. A traditional metro system has long been considered for the city, not only to relieve congestion on the CityRail network downtown but also to expand access to neighborhoods that currently lack reliable transit access. In 2008, the New South Wales government moved ahead with what became a A$5.3 billion CBD metro project that would extend from Rozelle, west of downtown, under the bay, through the business district, and finally to Central Station, where it would meet CityRail and light rail services. The project was supposed to begin construction this year, with a completion date of 2015. But strong opposition to the project from neighborhood groups and political forces have delayed the program significantly. Now the government has stopped property acquisitionsand will make a final decision about whether to move ahead with the project by the end of February. If the CBD Metro goes down, it will be a significant political loss for the Labor Party government of New South Wales and the defeat of one of the biggest transit programs in Sydney’s history. But there are other transit investment strategies that may yield better results. Part of the problem with the CBD Metro plan was that it simply wasn’t ambitious enough: its short initial line would attract far too few people in itself to justify a massive investment in a fully-grade separated (and underground) rapid transit system. If it were incorporated in a funded city-wide plan with links south, north, and west, the investment might be justified, since it would undoubtedly attract hundreds of thousands of commuters. Yet, the argument made by the provincial government, that the CBD Metro is a starting line and that other corridors, beginning with a West Metro, will follow, isn’t good enough, because there is no assurance of future funding or specific decisions about what routes lines would follow. Experience with the development of recent American subways proved that rapid transit systems work best when they’re conceived as part of a broader network. One only has to compare the highly frequented Washington Metro with Los Angeles’s significantly less-used Wilshire and North Hollywood subways, which terminate in a single line downtown. As rapid transit systems add lines, ridership increases even on existing corridors, since the number of potential destinations for people along each line expands exponentially. To make matters worse, as initially conceived, the CBD Metro would require a large number of bus transfers at Rozelle and could cause serious congestion at Central Station where it would meet CityRail trains. It would also duplicate some light rail services, which woulddamage that system’s ability to operate effectively. The Metro’s proponents say that CityRail’s operations downtown are overloaded and that the Metro would provide a convenient alternative, but the commuter rail authority suggests thatadditional capacity is not necessary. CityRail already offers Metro-like capacity and frequencies in the inner city; building another underground trunk line through the half-mile wide CBD may simply be too extravagant for Sydney’s needs. Even when CityRail capacity does reach its limit, it seems clear that the best option would be to build another tunnel for CityRail, not for a brand new Metro service. This would reduce congestion on the commuter rail and open up more CBD destinations for suburban riders using existing lines, something that would not be possible with the Metro service, which would use different, non-compatible technology. There’s something to be said for working as much as possible with the system one already has rather than investing in an alternative that has no network connections and no ability to reinforce the existing offerings. Some opponents of the CBD Metro have argued for the construction of the 11-station West Metro instead, arguing that a line between Central Station and Westmead, some 15 miles west, would do more to satisfy the transportation needs of areas far from existing rail lines. But this would make the situation at Central worse still, since commuters hoping to get to downtown workplaces would have to switch to CityRail to reach stations along its City Circle. Abandoning the Metro and its extensions entirely might be a reasonable option. An extension of the light rail network directly into the CBD and to Rozelle along surface routes would allow many of Inner West neighborhoods a transfer-free connection to most of the office core — now the government is planning to study such an extension. Much cheaper light rail extensions to the south and west could be built to fill in the gaps between CityRail lines. A few choice extensions of the commuter rail could encourage suburban commuters to use transit. Indeed, finding ways to reinforce the existing networks of light rail and CityRail commuter lines could produce more benefits for Sydney’s inhabitants than the Metro project, whose high cost and limited scope will result in few riders for decades. With increased service in the CBD and new connections to underserved neighborhoods, on the other hand, existing offerings will become more attractive. Image above: Sydney CBD Metro Alignment, from Sydney MetroDetroit Stakes its Hopes for Renaissance on Transit, but it has Bigger Hurdles Ahead
Paris Officials Push Huge Suburban Transit Investment to Increase Metropolitan Mobility
Sydney Metro Project Wavers as Light Rail Expansion Gains Supporters
» The creation of a single line would produce an underused system for decades to come; extensions of the existing network may be a better option.
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