The Livable Blog

Jarrett Walker has one of the best blogs about transit issues I have ever found. In this post from 2009 he describes the kind of choices cities like Metro Vancouver and Los Angeles face. This post should be required reading for anyone involved in the rapid transit planning processes going on around BC; such as the South of Fraser rapid transit study, Broadway/UBC Corridor and the Victoria - Western Communities line.

The frame of this post is between bus and rail, but if you read further you will see that the issues are more involved with many possible steps from subways through to express buses such as the #99 B-line in Vancouver (Metro Rapid in LA). I personally think the key choice is between predominantly surface transit with dedicated lanes (such as light rail and bus rapid transit) and 100% grade separated systems such as the Skytrain light metro lines; that is where the really big price difference is.

bus-rail debates in a beautiful abstract city, and in los angeles

On a recent post, commenter Pantheon laid out the core idea that explains why I cannot be a full-time rail booster, even though I love riding trains as much as anyone:

The problem can be posed in the abstract in the following way. Let's say we have a city with 20 neighbourhoods, A-T. Our city has a big deficit in transit infrastructure, and limited resources for redressing it. We have X dollars to build infrastructure, which is enough to do one of the following things:

1. High-speed, premium rail serving neighbourhoods A-F.

2. Really good busways (a la Brisbane) serving neighbourhoods A-L.

3. Busway network with ROW on city streets and traffic priortization, a huge improvement over what exists currently, but with some compromises and thus not a 'perfect' system that emulates rail. Nonetheless, serves all neighbourhoods A-T.

I don't know if my assumptions on the financials are perfectly accurate, so feel free to correct them. But as you can see, this is really a political question. What represents the most just approach for the citizens of our city? Is it fair to ask the residents of neighbourhoods G-T to make due without transit so we can build a premium rail network in A-F? And what about the poor residents in neighbourhoods M-T? They don't get any transit unless we go with the cheapest option.

But the main thing to remember is that a paving moratorium would free up billions for transit improvements. Better Transit, Not Freeways! As Walker describes about the US context:

A sudden dramatic expansion in the money available for transit would obviously change many corridor-level debates, shifting many current recommendations in the direction of higher-quality options. On the other hand, even such a renaissance would not eliminate the crucial role of Bus Rapid Transit at least as interim solution, because in such a scenario, corridors that current do not justify any project would rise to the level where at least a Metro Rapid would make sense.
Read the full post at http://www.humantransit.org/2009/11/busrail-debates-in-a-beautiful-abstract-city-and-in-los-angeles.html