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Christof Spieler
METRO Board Member
Green Transit:
tools for planners,
leaders and citizens
WHY DOES
TRANSIT MATTER?
Transit is energy-efficient



                          passenger-miles per gallon


    single occupant car



 bus with 40 passengers



                          0   20   40   60   80   100   120   140   160   180
Transit uses less land
Transit encourages
walking and biking
Transit saves families money




Penny wise, pound foolish, CNT, March 2010
Transit supports
economic vitality
Transit makes lives easier
SO HOW DO WE BUILD
EFFECTIVE TRANSIT?
Effective transit is not about
choosing a technology.
Las Vegas Monorail
23,000 boardings a day
San Francisco “F” line
23,000 boardings a day
Good service

In the right places
Good service means
competitive trip times
5. Time, not speed


          18 min.

30 min.
Travel time, Downtown to TMC


subway
                                                                walk
                                                                wait
light rail                                                      leave garage
                                                                trip
                                                                enter garage
      car                                                       walk



             0      10          20                 30
                                     Travel times from Google
¼ mile walk = 5 min.               ¼ mile walk = 5 min.

     3 mile train ride, top speed 35 mph = 8.5 min        18.5 minutes
¼ mile walk = 5 min.               ¼ mile walk = 5 min.

     3 mile train ride, top speed 35 mph = 8.5 min        18.5 minutes




¼ mile walk = 5 min.             ½ mile walk = 10 min.



     3 mile train ride, top speed 60 mph = 7 min          22 minutes
¼ mile walk = 5 min.               ¼ mile walk = 5 min.

     3 mile train ride, top speed 35 mph = 8.5 min        18.5 minutes




¼ mile walk = 5 min.             ½ mile walk = 10 min.



     3 mile train ride, top speed 60 mph = 7 min          22 minutes


                             ½ mile walk = 10 min.
¼ mile walk = 5 min.

     3 mile train ride, top speed 35 mph = 6 min          21 minutes
Good service means
reliable trip times
Houston: Local bus in mixed traffic
Houston: Park and Ride bus in HOV lane
Houston: Light rail in dedicated lane
Light Rail




Park and Ride Bus                                  on time
                                                   late


        Local Bus



                     0   20   40   60   80   100
Park & Ride: choice transit
             Transit use for Downtown workers by commute distance
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
      0-1     1-5    5-10    10-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-59 60-69 over 70
     miles   miles   miles   miles miles miles miles miles miles miles

                                              Downtown Houston Commute Survey
                                              Report, Central Houston, Inc., August 2009
Good service means
high frequency
Washington Metrorail
Commuter rail networks
(to scale)
Commuter rail networks
(to scale, with train frequency)
Commuter rail networks
(to scale, with ridership)
Portland: frequent service system
Good service means
simple routes
Houston: typical bus network
Toronto: grid network
Westheimer Street, Houston before:
2 Routes, 6 Branches, Different Days of Operation


                                                    37
Westheimer Street, Houston after:
3 Routes, 0 Branches, 7 Days of Operation
Ridership +19.5%

                                            38
Good service means
customer information
Portland: clear destination information
Portland: Next Bus information
Trip planner




               Google Transit
Portland: display at the airport
Good service means
easy transfers
Houston: TMC Transit Center
London: weekly travelcard
Good service

In the right places
Houston: 7.5 miles
Dallas: 72 miles
Length

Houston    7.5 mi


 Dallas    72 mi



                                 Cost

Houston    $320m


 Dallas    $3,800m



                                Ridership

Houston      35,700 / weekday


  Dallas     76,800 / weekday
The right places means
connecting centers
Employment center (Boston Back Bay)




Transit (MBTA heavy rail and commuter rail)
TMC
Texas Medical Center, Houston
14 hospitals with 6,800 beds
9 universities with 71,500 students
93,500 employees
Downtown




Downtown Houston
140,000 employees
11 fortune 500 companies
Most theatre seats in US outside New York
Baseball, Basketball, Soccer
256,000 jobs within
½ mile of 5 rail lines
Energy Corridor
 2% transit use

                                             Downtown
                   Uptown                    37% transit use
                   7% transit use




                                       Medical Center
                                       28% transit use
Westchase
7% transit use
                            Greenway
                            5% transit use
6 new office towers in
Downtown Houston since
light rail construction began
The right places means
multiple uses
¾ of trips are not
 home-to-work




                     Nancy McGuckin and Nanda Srinivasan, 2005
Home                    Work
                               Lunch
                        Work
               Dinner
       Store
Home
The right places means
serving density
BART:    104 miles, 370,200 weekday riders




WMATA:   106 miles, 1,023,500 weekday riders
The right places means
stations in the center
richmondrail.org




    Houston: University Line freeway elevated option




    Houston: University Line arterial at grade option




METRO
freeway elevated option
freeway elevated option
arterial at grade option
freeway elevated option




arterial at grade option: 40% more ridership
Houston: planned light rail




                                         Downtown

                              Greenway
            Uptown

                                                    UH


                                             TMC
The right places means
a good pedestrian
environment
Houston: Midtown
San Diego: Commercial Street
Portland: Pioneer Square
Good service

In the right places
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO
MAKE THIS HAPPEN?
Barrier: interagency cooperation
Developer




                                                 Architect
Zoning
commissioner
                                                                       Public
                           Traffic engineer                            services
                                                                       administrator




                                                             Transit
                                  Public works               planner
                                  engineer




                    Ped-bike
                    coordinator
Houston
Christof Spieler
christof.spieler@ridemetro.org

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Spieler 2020

Editor's Notes

  1. http://www.cnt.org/repository/pwpf.pdf
  2. And new technology has other problems, too. You don’t want to be the first to try something out. The Las Vegas monorail was behind schedule, above budget, and it was shut down twice after it opened, once because pieces were falling off and landing on the sidewalk below. It’s working now, and it carries 23,000 trips a day…
  3. ...but then so 1940s streetcars in San Francisco. Spot me one modern invention – air conditioning – and I can build you a quite functional transit system using 1880s technology.
  4. The Main Street line takes 30 minutes to travel 7.5 miles: the trains only go 35mph. That sounds slow, but it’s not top speed that matters. It’s the overall tiemopf the tirp.
  5. Let’s quantify that: a three mile train ride with a quarter mile walk at either end. With a top speed of 35mph – a light rail train running down a city street – that’s a 19 minute trip.
  6. But 35 is slow, right? What happens if we go up to 60? Well, that makes the train part of the trip a bit shorter. But to go faster we had to put our train somewhere else – an abandoned railroad line, a freeway. But it’s unlikely that is going to be in the same place I want to go to. So my five minute walk at the end becomes a 10-minue walk, and the trip actually takes longer than before.
  7. OR we can try to speed things up by having fewer stations. That actually speeds up the train trip more than a higher speed does. But once again I walk more, and the overall trip is longer.
  8. As with any process, it was critical to choose a place to begin. In this case, the place to begin was obvious: the Westheimer Corridor, the corridor with the highest average daily ridership and the most complex route structure. In FY2005, METRO had 2 routes with 6 branches and different days of operation in this corridor. Through a 4-step process over 3 years, METRO converted this corridor from 2 routes with 6 branches and different days to 3 routes with 0 branches operating 7 days.
  9. The goal of this effort was to improve customer service. Did we succeed? One of the best measurements of success in providing improved customer service is ridership. And in this case ridership in the Westheimer Corridor grew by 19.5% between FY2005 and FY2008.
  10. And passenger information needs to be coordinated, too: one website with all the transit info for the whole area.
  11. But transferring is not just about the physical connection. It’s about the fares as well. They do that well in Europe, too, and badly in the Bay Area. Caltrain uses one ticket, Muni uses another, BART uses a third. One trip might involve three different ticket vending machines. But in London one pass works on all train, underground, and bus.
  12. But here’s the kicker: the Houston line is way more effective. It carries 2/3 as many trips for only 1/5 the cost.
  13. New office towers: Hess (AKA Discovery) (2010), MainPlace (2010), 1000 Main (2003), Calpine (2003), 5 Houston Center (2002), Chevron (was Enron) (2002)
  14. A good example: San Francisco vs. Washington. Two systems, started around the same time, built with the same technology, and with the same length of track. But DC’s system carries twice as many riders.
  15. This is a functional light rail line. But would you want to walk here?
  16. This is more like it, right? Every transit project should try to improve the pedestrian environment.
  17. …and it has dozens.
  18. So how do you get this stuff right? You involve the public. Not just to meet legal requirements, but because it will make for better transit.