Are streetcars the answer to our transit and environmental needs?

Souce: http://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2011/12/12/33753/are_streetcars_the_answer_to_our_transit_and_environmental_needs



By Steven Dornfeld | Published Mon, Dec 12 2011 9:06 am

Cities could reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent or more by linking streetcars and higher-density land use.
SiemensCities could reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent or more by linking streetcars and higher-density land use.


Patrick Condon wants to turn back the clock to the streetcar era.

Condon, an urban planner and professor at the University of British Columbia, says bringing back the streetcar is the best thing cities can do to reduce their emission of greenhouse gases and become more sustainable.

Speaking last week at the University of Minnesota, Condon said most North American cities developed out of the agricultural grid system, in which the land was divided into one-mile-square parcels. Streetcars could easily be added back into cities that developed on a grid pattern and many suburbs could be retrofitted to include them, he said.

Congdon said he came to be a "train nut" late in life, and does not readily identify the older guys "in bib overalls hovering over their train layouts in the basement."

But he argued that cities could reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent or more by linking streetcars and higher-density land use. Making communities walkable and bikeable also could help.

One major challenge would be getting public buy-in, Condon said. Half of the public "doesn't believe climate change is a problem."

There is, however, a certain amount of nostalgia for streetcars. Many baby boomers and their parents recall the days when it was possible to hop on a trolley and get to just about anywhere in the Twin Cities area.

900 streetcars
Up until the early 1950s, the Twin Cities had 900 streetcars and more than 500 miles of track that extended from Lake Minnetonka to Stillwater. On University Avenue, there were more than 60 cars operating during peak periods.

Annual ridership hit a peak of 238 million in 1920. It began to drop as automobiles became affordable and plummeted after World War II, when GIs returned home, formed families and sought that prized home in the suburbs. (By comparison, transit ridership last year was 91 million.)

The streetcar system came to an unfortunate end in 1954, when the last trolleys were pulled from the streets and replaced with buses financed by General Motors. In the conversion process, the transit system was defrauded by company executives and mobsters, several of whom went to jail.

The last run of the streetcars in Minneapolis on June 19,1954.
Hennepin County LibraryThe last run of the streetcars in Minneapolis on June 19,1954.


The history of the system is recounted in a richly illustrated book, "Twin Cities by Trolley," by John W. Diers and Aaron Isaacs. The Minnesota Streetcar Museum also provides a brief history of the system.

Condon said there are solid environment and economic reasons for bringing back the trolley. A modern low-floor tram [PDF] manufactured by Siemens has the lowest greenhouse gas emissions per passenger mile of all transportation options.

Streetcars also are more affordable, with a capital cost of $20 million to $40 million per mile compared with $60 million to $100 million a mile for light rail transit.

Key density goal
The key, Condon said, is to achieve sufficient density — 10 to 40 residential units per acre — to support the investment. "You could marry transit to land use in a way where you don't have to subsidize it at all," he says. However, he acknowledged that achieving that density goal "is going to be very hard."

In the Twin Cities, the typical urban neighborhood might have a density of seven to 10 units per acre, while the density in developing suburbs is more in the range of two to four units per acre. The Metropolitan Council requires a minimum of three units per acre in areas where communities want regional sewer service.

Both Minneapolis and St. Paul have expressed interest in streetcars, and Minneapolis landed a $900,000 federal grant to explore the idea. The city has embarked on a study of a possible nine-mile line along Nicollet and Central Avenues from 46th Street in south Minneapolis to a transit station just outside of Columbia Heights.

St. Paul failed to win a $200,000 grant to conduct a study of its own, but Joe Campbell, a spokesman for Mayor Chris Coleman, says the city is "pursuing other options" to fund the effort.

Metro Transit, meanwhile, is studying another option — a form of bus rapid transit (BRT) — in 11 urban corridors in the two cities. It is would include such features as distinctive vehicles with traffic signal priority, heated bus shelters, off-vehicle fare collection, real-time travel information, more frequent service and faster trips.

The capital cost for urban BRT would be about $2 million to $5 million per mile, according to Metro Transit planners.

Urban Retailers Call For More Transit, Less Parking

Source: http://www.globest.com/news/12_238/newyork/retail/-316347.html

By Jacqueline Hlavenka

NEW YORK CITY-As retailers continue to weave suburban concepts into the urban fabric, more brands—and big-boxes—are going vertical. But as the pendulum swings in favor of transit-oriented development, the nation’s top retailers agreed that the need for mass transportation is beginning to outweigh the need for traditional parking design, according to speakers during day two of the International Council of Shopping Centers’ 2011 New York National Conference & Deal Making event. The convention closed out at the Sheraton New York and Hilton New York Hotels on Tuesday afternoon, where total attendance exceeded 6,000 each day.
During the general session, much of the discussion revolved around the challenges retailers face, running the gamut from site selection, obtaining local approvals, expansion concerns and store formats. The panelists also addressed the paradigm shift of retailers like wholesale clubs and supermarkets—two concepts borne out of the suburbs—that are finding equal strength in cities, especially near subway and bus lines.
“If we could be close to mass transit, it could be absolutely critical,” said Patrick Smith, vice president of real estate at BJ’s Wholesale Club, an operator of 192 clubs and 107 gas stations across 15 states. Smith explained that despite the bulk-quality of BJs merchandise, more city customers are taking the train to its stores. “More people are using mass transit and some people walk,” he said, noting that its parking garage at Bronx Terminal Market is vastly underutilized. “For a BJ’s customer, you may think that is absolutely ridiculous. We never expected people to use mass transit to shop at a wholesale club.”
The same goes for Michael J. Shanahan, vice president of real estate at Burlington Coat Factory, who said mass transit is “absolutely a requirement” when selecting an urban location. “When we opened at Rego Park I this last September, we are right off the subway stop,” he said, explaining that while the store opening started off slow, momentum began to build as foot traffic increased by the E, M and R trains. “We got the word on the street to get people up to the third floor.”
And while mass transit is reducing the need for the amount of parking, Daniel Shallit, director of real estate for the Northeast Region at the Sports Authority, said parking cannot be totally eliminated from the retail model. “Looking at the Philadelphias of the world or the Bostons or other large urban markets, we still need it,” he said, noting that parking changes would affect store sizes. “The logic is, if you buy a treadmill at a Sports Authority, you can’t take that on a bus or a train. You need a car or you need some way to access a car to get that product home.”
Using New York City as an example, Shallit said its Manhattan locations sell less hard goods (like weights and fitness equipment) and more soft goods (like clothing and shoes) due its ease of transport on a bus or train. “But we still want to be close to mass transit because it builds awareness,” he said. “The more people that see us by commuting know that we are there and that’s really, really important to us.”
Supermarkets are also facing similar issues. Dennis P. Bachman, senior real estate representative for Wakefern Food Corp., said a large food shop could be difficult to do on a typical train or bus. “Cabs have certainly become a much more important factor,” he said. “Typically in a city store, especially if you have a lot of customers who would use mass transit, you would tend to have higher customer counts, greater shopping frequency and a lower average order size, so the per trip spend would be less, which adds some additional complications to the business. Learning to handle those additional customers, staffing levels and things like that, parking is still an important criteria.”
But some food retailers are paring back on parking altogether. G. Lamont Blackstone, principal of Mount Vernon, NY-based GL Blackstone & Associates, LLC, worked on the development and leasing of Harlem’s largest Pathmark store. After battling over the normal requirement of parking spaces versus the constraints of the development plot, Blackstone put in 2.3 cars per 1,000 people, lower than the industry standard of five per 1,000. “We are blessed that we live in a democracy, but sometimes there are inherent tensions between the vetting and the public input requirements, particularly as it relates to land use decisions of urban democracies versus the execution of requirements for urban developers and urban retailers,” he said. “That’s why it is critically important for developers from day one right out the gate that they put the best face forward on their projects in order to minimize the potential issues that will come down the pike.”
And due the large expense parking garages can bring, Larry Rose, principal, RK Realty Advisors, explained that urban retailers must understand their demographics before making an investment. Where parking at Bronx Terminal Market averages at 20% utilization, more shoppers are filling up spaces at Sky View Center in Flushing, Queens, where more residents own a vehicle. “Even though the site is at the end of the 7 line, half the people are driving and are beyond where mass transit is,” he said.
Peter Ripka, partner at Ripco Real Estate, a retail firm serving New York City, Long Island, New Jersey, Westchester County and Lower Connecticut, explained that all forms of transportation play into what makes a site successful or not. Using its Target-anchored Sayville-Patchogue shopping center as an example Ripka said the property is centrally located on a major Long Island thoroughfare, Sunrise Highway. “People can easily come from long distances to those shopping centers, and mass transportation does the same thing in the urban environment,” he said. “People are able to come from a large area, and therefore, parking is not as necessary.”
While public transportation has become the “lifeline” for projects to happen, urban consumers should have choices, said panel moderator Ken Narva, co-founder and managing partner of White Plains, NY-based Street Works. “If you provide 30 teaser parking spaces at grade, that can make a store successful,” he said. "It is the same thing that on-street parking plays, which is the quality of the space, the sense of convenience and the sense of activity.”
But overall, Narva said the future of CRE investment is urban. “We live in an experience culture, and downtown is an experience where people interact with each other, and that experience is very important and is not going away,” he said. “As electronic retailing continues to grow, consumers still need to get out and interface with each other.”

California High-Speed Rail Authority Latest News

California High-Speed Rail

The Official Site of California's Proposed
High-Speed Train System

By linking all major cities in California with a state-of-the-art new transportation choice, high-speed trains will move people and products across our state like never before.
What's new?
What's New?

March 31, 2009
View the letter from California’s Congressional delegation to US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood outlining suggested criteria for projects seeking funding from the $8 billion in federal stimulus package that has been allocated to high-speed train and other rail projects around the country.

March 31, 2009
The April 2, 2009 CHSRA Board Meeting is cancelled. See this cancellation notice.

March 17, 2009
View the San Jose to Merced Notice of Intent and the Merced to Bakersfield Notice of Intent, both just published in the Federal Register. These and other important documents are available in the library.

March 9, 2009
Download and view the Statewide Project Overview PowerPoint 2009 Presentation. (116 MB ZIP file - includes simulations) To download this presentation as a pdf click here. The pdf includes animations that play when clicked.

Job Sprawls works agaist the poor.

KXXV-TV News Channel 25 - Central Texas News and Weather for Waco, Temple, Killeen | Can the stimulus curb job migration to suburbs?

Special from CSMonitor.com
Can the stimulus curb job migration to suburbs?
Job sprawl is particularly disadvantageous for workers forced to spend a sizable share of their wages on commuting expenses and child care. (©Barry Abisch)


By Ron Scherer

New York -- It's called "job sprawl," the not-so-distant cousin of "urban sprawl."

It's easy to find jobs moving to the suburbs in places like metropolitan Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Dallas, and Chicago. Most weekday mornings, suburban thoroughfares are jammed with commuters trekking to their jobs - in their own communities. Employers, eager to establish leafy campuses in the suburbs in a bid to reduce commute times, are only adding to the local congestion. The trend, moreover, is probably immune to the ups and downs of the economy, concludes a study released Monday by the Brookings Institution.

Yes, even a deep recession may not affect where jobs of the future are located - although the study's author says states and cities should use some of the federal stimulus money now flowing their way to reverse part of the job outflow.

Jobs leaving the cities include professions such as finance and insurance, which have long been centralized in city centers. As jobs move farther out, low-income workers increasingly lose out because many lack transportation to get to those jobs and cannot afford housing near them.

"There are a lot of implications for today," says Elizabeth Kneebone, author of the report, "Job Sprawl Revisited: The Changing Geography of Metropolitan Employment." "The current environment is a good opportunity to try to reverse some of these trends because we have billions in the stimulus package, and how we spend the money will have an impact on these regions."

State and local governments have the best opportunity to use the money to reshape their communities, says Ms. Kneebone. They will be getting money for new roads, mass transit projects, and housing.

"Instead of treating transportation decisions and housing as separate policy areas, leaders can start to link up these agendas because they really are related," says Kneebone, a senior research analyst at Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program, which provides research and policy ideas to metropolitan areas.

For example, she says, when jobs are added to the outskirts of a city, regional leaders need to ask if there is workforce housing nearby. "If there is not, is there transportation to connect workers to these jobs? And if they are commuting from distant parts of the region, what does that mean if they have public transportation options, for traffic, emissions, and the general carbon footprint of the metropolitan area?" she asks.

Job sprawl has been particularly disadvantageous for lower-income workers, she says. Many live in cities, distant from where the jobs are migrating. As a result, they spend a sizable share of their wages on commuting expenses and child care.

"Even though we see more poor [people] moving to the suburbs, more recent data show that mismatch is persisting even at the suburban level," says Kneebone. "We're adding service jobs in higher-income suburbs that don't necessarily have affordable housing or public transportation."

In recent years, as gasoline prices rose sharply, some companies and workers considered alternatives such as commuter vans. But few jobs actually shifted back to the urban core.

"If we had seen gasoline prices persist at higher levels, we might have seen a shift in behavior. But because it's come back down, I'm not sure if that's enough," she says.

Changing the job-sprawl trend will be difficult. In the study, Kneebone looked at metropolitan data between 1998 and 2006 - a period that experienced a boom, a bust, and then a slow recovery.

"Throughout all these changing economic circumstances, these trends of jobs moving out of the urban core persisted," says Kneebone. "Though we are facing job losses right now, what that might mean is it could slow these trends in some regions, but the current recession on its own is not likely to reverse the trends."

Of 98 metropolitan areas Kneebone studied, 95 saw some kind of job shift away from the urban core, though the number of jobs increased in all metropolitan areas. Within the study, only 21 percent of employees worked within three miles of downtown, while 45 percent worked more than 10 miles from the city center.

More than half of the major metro areas (53 percent) experienced rapid job sprawl. For some metro areas, such as Atlanta and Washington, this shift in jobs to the suburbs came while the entire region grew. Within the 1998-2006 time frame, the largest increases in jobs outside of the central business district were in Phoenix; Memphis, Tenn.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Orlando, Fla., and Austin, Texas.

The top five metro areas in terms of job sprawl (that is, share of jobs located at least 10 miles from the city center) were Detroit (77.4 percent), Chicago (68.7 percent), Dallas (66.9 percent), Los Angeles (65.6 percent), and Philadelphia (63.7 percent).

By way of contrast, the most job-centralized metropolitan areas (share of jobs located three miles or closer to the city center) were Virginia Beach-Norfolk (36.4 percent), New York (34.8 percent), Salt Lake City (32.3 percent), Las Vegas (29.9 percent), and Boston (28 percent).

Different ideas on where the second extention of the Gold Line might go: Phase 2.

Narrowing In On Paths To Extend Gold Line Rails : Eastern Group Publications

Narrowing In On Paths To Extend Gold Line Rails

San Gabriel Valley communities have another opportunity to weigh in on phase two of the Gold Line Extension project.

By Elizabeth Hsing-Huei Chou, EGP Staff Writer

Lying just beyond the new Gold Line extension opening this summer in East Los Angeles after decades of planning and building are several more communities just beginning to come to a consensus on what they want in another rail extension.

Metro’s community relations manager Dave Monks says the biggest challenge at this stage is getting people to picture what it will be like in 20 to 30 years if the second phase of the Gold Line extension were to go through their neighborhoods.
Starting this summer, the Gold Line will extend all the way to the Atlantic Station in East Los Angeles. Metro is talking to communities about extending the Gold Line further. (Photo courtesy of Metro)

Starting this summer, the Gold Line will extend all the way to the Atlantic Station in East Los Angeles. Metro is talking to communities about extending the Gold Line further. (Photo courtesy of Metro)

Depending on the final route chosen, this extension could connect Whittier or the area just south of El Monte to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. Cities along the way, like Montebello, Monterey Park and Commerce will be affected by one or all of the routes.

Destinations along the routes under consideration include the Whittier Narrows Recreation Area, Rio Hondo Community College, the Presbyterian Intercommunity Hospital in Whittier, and several local and regional shopping districts.

Metro staff is encouraging people to look ahead as they try to zero in on a few routes before beginning the environmental impact studies. They have already pruned 17 routes down to just four based on feedback from cities, communities, and stakeholders. Now they’re back to talk to the community about pruning away some more.

Metro has scheduled a tour of city council briefings and community open houses about the four remaining route options, which they hope will result in a further weeding out of more ‘alternatives,” or route options. In this “refining and reducing” stage, Metro is seeking feedback from the community to add to their decision on which routes will be worthy of going onto the environmental impact study stage.

They don’t know how many routes they will be taking out, but when they’re done, “there will be less than four [alternatives left],” Monks says.

Factors that the Metro team will reconcile into the most ideal remaining routes include the building costs, ridership levels, stakeholder city’s economic development and land-use plans, travel times, reliability, acceptance from the community, environmental impacts, sustainability, safety and security, and financial capability.

The city of Monterey Park is lobbying for the route that follows the 60 Freeway and has even included high-density housing into their long-term city plans. “Monterey Park has been very proactive in letting us know their future plans,” Monks says.

Montebello, which will be affected by all of the route alternatives, also seems to be backing the 60 Freeway route, which is seen as a benefit to the city’s regional shopping mall, the Montebello Town Center.

The 60 Freeway route appears to have a lot of support, but of the four routes, the Washington Blvd route will have the highest ridership, with about 15,900 daily boardings, according to Metro projections. Monks points out it is also the most expensive to build at $1.849 billion. The Beverly Blvd. route is the cheapest to build at $1.143 billion.

Travel time and the way people want to use the line are other factors to consider. The 60 Freeway and the Washington Blvd routes, 15.6 minutes and 16.9 minutes respectively, both include aerial rail, making travel at higher speeds more possible. The Beverly and Beverly/Whittier routes have substantial “at-grade” portions that travel through neighborhoods and city centers on surface streets which requires slower speeds. Both routes take about 23 minutes or more to travel.

Routes with aerial rails are better for residents who prefer parking their cars and riding rail, while at-grade rails appeal to residents who want to be able to walk to transit lines in their neighborhoods or shopping areas, Monks says.

Even though Metro is calling Phase 2 of the extension a study rather than a project, the second phase is listed as a project on the long menu of projects to be funded by Measure R, passed by Los Angeles County residents in last November’s elections that increases sales tax by 0.5 percent. The “Eastside Transit Corridor Phase 2” extension of the Gold Line was allocated $1.271 as a result of Measure R.

The increased likelihood for the project has put that much more weight onto the upcoming stages of the phase 2 project. “It’s on the radar. The public voted for it. They want to see it,” Monks says.
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Posted by admin; Filed Under: City of Commerce, County of Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, Featured News, Montebello, Monterey Park; Tagged: April 9 2009 Issue
April 9, 2009

'Job sprawl,' that is, jobs moving away from downtowns undertimes an assumption of transit systems: jobs are in downtowns.

'Job sprawl' a problem in Orange: study - recordonline.com - The Times Herald Record

Job sprawl' a problem in Orange: study
Undermines mass transit

By Chris Mckenna
Times Herald-Record
Posted: April 12, 2009 - 2:00 AM

You've heard of suburban sprawl, the pernicious development pattern that eats up too much land, overextends water and sewer lines and makes Americans slaves to their cars.

Now a Washington think tank is taking aim at an associated phenomenon it dubs "job sprawl," and it has found the scattering of jobs throughout Orange and Dutchess counties to be an egregious example.

A new report by the Brookings Institution indicates that 67 percent of the 161,217 private-sector jobs in those counties that are within 35 miles of Poughkeepise are more than 10 miles from that city's downtown — the hallmark of sprawl for this national study.

That percentage ranked the two counties as the most decentralized "small employment center" — one with fewer than 500,000 jobs — among all areas included in the study, which analyzed the 100 places in the U.S. with the highest job totals.

It also placed the region in the same sprawl league as Dallas and Los Angeles.

Why worry? For starters, the migration of jobs from city centers demands the costly extension of water and sewer lines and shrinks the cities' tax base, the report's authors argue.

It also increases commuting time, undermines mass transit and further isolates poor city dwellers, who are left with fewer employment options.

No need to explain this to Jonathan Drapkin, president and CEO of Pattern for Progress, a Newburgh-based nonprofit that promotes smart growth and economic development.

"Our cities are amongst the oldest in the Brookings report, so we may be like the canary in the mine — the first harbinger of a trend," Drapkin said.

He expects the local job climate to worsen, but he regards the recession as a catalyst rather than an impediment to new approaches such as transit-oriented development.

One flaw in the Brookings study is that Poughkeepsie is its only focal point, leaving the only slightly smaller cities of Newburgh and Middletown consigned to the "sprawl" section of the employment map.

That means jobs located squarely in those downtowns are counted in the total that made the region tops in sprawl.

But few would regard those cities as booming employment hubs or dispute the overall picture of a region with scattered employers.

One glimmer of good news: however decentralized the local job picture, the pace at which jobs have left Poughkeepsie was relatively modest between 1998 and 2006, the time period analyzed in the study.

cmckenna@th-record.com