Why transit innovators should embrace trains (and buses) too
On a recent trip to the Bay Area I was reminded why I like trains almost as much as Personal Rapid Transit.
After only a 5-10 minute wait I was able to take BART from the Oakland Coliseum/Airport station to Dublin/Pleasanton (site of Hacienda Business Park, Oracle, etc.) in only 24 minutes, including temporary slowdowns for construction. The journey, including stops at three intervening stations, covered about 17 miles -- an average speed of 42 mph. The return trip was similarly fast and trouble-free.
Yes, I know all the pro-PRT arguments -- PRT would have been faster; PRT would have been on-demand and nonstop; PRT would have been more energy efficient. All true, but that's not my point here.
Because innovators advocate for advanced transit technologies, it is easy to forget to include the role of conventional systems in the future urban landscape. It is should therefore be easy to understand why adherents of conventional systems have a freak-out when their favorite modes are omitted from descriptions of cities of tomorrow. Some think that innovators see Light Rail as an enemy.
In fact, the Enemy is Global Warming, and the enemy of my enemy is any form of transportation that is more sustainable than the internal combustion automobile. Anyone calling themselves a transit advocate needs to remember the following: any transportation technology that is not an automobile is the enemy of our enemy, and therefore our friend.
Light Rail is on average more efficient than automobiles, and innovators should welcome the public's enthusiasm for Light Rail (as well as rapid-bus), because it helps in the fight against the Enemy. In addition, there is the qualitative, social-change benefit of getting more people accustomed to not traveling by polluting automobile.
Therefore, I will vote Yes on the November ballot measure to expand Seattle-area light rail, announced yesterday.
To would-be transit innovators: remember what we are trying to do, which is facilitate transition to a society that operates in the most energy and resource-sustainable manner possible.
That word, possible, is loaded. Because the word's nuances contain the truth that human endeavors are never "perfect," but the best that can achieved at any particular snapshot in time. Solutions, also human inventions, cannot be perfect either.
The public charges government transportation decisionmakers and technical staff with finding policy and program solutions based on the best information and technology available at the time the decision is made. So if the public has instructed their government to plan and build a mass transit system, delaying the decision because something better could be almost here is therefore not an option a responsible public servant can consider. The public sector moves forward on that basis, of meeting goals given to them by the public.
If the public decides the recommended investments and expenses are worth making, it is not the place of innovators to gainsay that decision. Those costs are part of an equation that balances jobs and economic activity, as well as the environment -- just as PRT eventually will mean jobs, economic activity, and environmental benefits too. Innovators should support transit, and develop their technologies so they are ready when the next opportunity arises.
If the big goal is reducing automobile driving, use of petroleum, and tailpipe emissions, then one current metric is Reduction of Vehicle Miles Traveled. In the state of Washington, the goal mandated by the Legislature earlier this year is to reduce VMT 50% by 2050, from a baseline of 75 billion annual miles (ESHB 2815). I don't know about you, but even though I want PRT, I don't want to have the burden for reducing VMT falling solely on PRT. Any more than I would not want to rely solely on conventional technologies.
The other metric is transit usage. If a city decides it wants 2 million daily transit rides and the conventional modes can carry 400-500,000 of them, innovators should welcome their ability to handle that portion of demand.
Multimodality is clearly the right approach -- realistically planning innovation to blend with systems that already exist, as well as recognizing the high probability that a city would phase-in PRT over a long period of time, rather than quickly. And for a very practical reason: conventional transit handles a share of overall demand. The fact that it may not be as efficient or as convenient as PRT is immaterial where trains or rapid-bus already operate or are in the process of being constructed. Those investments have been made; the costs are sunk. Their operation needs to be subsidized (and at levels comparable to how the automobile system is subsidized) for the foreseeable future, because transit is a recognized public good ('good' in the economic sense) like schools, public safety and utilities. Therefore, operation that results in a revenue surplus, although welcome, is not the primary goal either.
Transit innovators need to see every Light Rail line as the core of the greater transit network, and identify opportunities for PRT within that network. Every rail station is an opportunity for a PRT feeder; every rail corridor is an opportunity for a companion PRT web. When light rail expands north from downtown Seattle, PRT will be the fast, zero-emission answer to the question, "How will you get to the train?"
Areas still not served by the rail system (due to cost or densities) are opportunities for medium-sized PRT webs providing local service and connecting to the overall metropolitan network. These can be the start of an eventual metropolitan PRT superweb. In fact, since we know Light Rail requires levels of investment not suitable for all areas, future opportunities for PRT are virtually guaranteed.
BART is an example of what I'm talking about. Last weekend, given my particular travel needs and those of the several dozen people using the same train at the time, conventional rail was good enough, fast enough, convenient enough. But BART also contains an opportunity for PRT: BART does not actually stop at the Oakland airport. I had to take a shuttle bus ("AirBART"), that meandered around the airport district with an expensive driver, carrying only a handful of riders. Situations like this are opportunities for PRT.
Now look ten years into Seattle's future. If I am able to leave my north end house, walk down the street to a PRT station, arrive 5 minutes later at the Northgate Light Rail station, then enjoy a train ride to downtown or the airport, in my book that's a pretty good urban transit system. To oppose such a reality because it is not pure-PRT, pure-maglev, or pure-anything else (pure Light Rail, even) is to oppose progress for the sake of perfection. It makes the perfect the enemy of the good.
Very soon we can expect innovators will have less need to worry about making the leap from plan to implementation. PRT is going to become seen as more viable when the early adopters like Heathrow, Masdar, Uppsala and Daventry find success. It is likely that in as few as 7-10 years, cities trying to decide what kind of transit they want to build will see PRT as a proven, viable option, relevant to many different kinds of applications. Federal CO2 reduction targets, more likely with the advent of a Democratic administration in 2009, could propel jurisdictions toward the low-energy PRT option.
Contentious, tedious debates about whose transit mode (or even proprietary design) is superior will hopefully become a thing of the past. The correct answer is that, in the fight against global warming, all the modes are superior.
Archived Comment by Jack Morgan on July 25, 2008 at 12:49pm
ReplyDeleteI love BART. I take it all the time. Light rail has been my friend for a while now, I like to think that anything that avoids using a car is help. One person in one car seems pretty stupid to me, and I think that even diesel hungry ferries are better than taking a car across the bridge. PRT seems cool, but really, more people would use light rail if it went more places. Right now they're talking about finally extending BART. I think it's a great idea when San Jose is one of the most traffic-heavy areas I've ever seen. I'd love it if BART went all the way to Santa Cruz and connected all of our bigger cities around here. Right now I feel like it's a East Bay/West Bay thing. But in ten years, South Bay residents will be able to take part in the glory that it BART!
Comment by Mr_Grant on July 25, 2008 at 1:21pm
ReplyDeleteYes, anything that gets people to break the automobile habit is good.
One of my points though is that we need more transit, and I don't think we should be saying 'we have Transit Type A, therefore we don't need Type B.' One reason that light rail doesn't go more places is that it is so expensive. Another is that it isn't always economical, and not all communities can or want to adopt the optimal land use types. So other technologies, some familiar, others new, need to be considered for their cost, service, and environmental footprints.
As I wrote, all the transit modes are better than the car. So we should use all of them.
Archived Comment by James Anderson Merritt on July 25, 2008 at 5:52pm
ReplyDeletePeople like cars, in large part, because they provide personal space and minimize the need to "switch modes." This is a big reason that I like PRT, and also a big reason I have a problem with the "enemy of my enemy" reasoning, which can lead people away from the progress of a minimal transit mode switching situation and back toward a more primitive situation (regardless of the level of technology used by the multi-mode transit system). I have another problem with "enemy of my enemy" thinking because most of the other alternatives to PRT are very expensive. When you say that you are going to vote for light rail construction/expansion because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," you are basically saying that you are going to endorse taking much more money out of people's pockets than necessary for PRT, just because LRT is "your friend." No. There is only so much money to go around. Some will get and some won't, and if the very expensive projects crowd out the potentially worthier but more frugal projects, then we all lose.
I love BART and I love PRT. But I am also a taxpayer, and MY enemy is any person or group that extracts huge wads of cash from my wallet, essentially by force, and then wastes the money with various inefficiencies, follies, and boondoggles, saying all the time that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization."
Incidentally, my son, on vacation from studies at Berkeley, had occasion to travel back to campus last week. He decided to do it by train: first CalTrain to the nearest BART station, and then via BART the rest of the way to Downtown Berkeley. He came home with a tale of woe that involved reduced weekend service, inconvenient, irritating mode-switches that led to missed transfer-connections, and a trip that took two or three times longer than it would have by car. This was NORMAL, off-peak operation for the systems in question. One reason that more trains don't run, and more often, on the weekends is because it is not deemed cost-effective to do so: the systems are too expensive to run conveniently for the smaller weekend ridership. This leads to bad transit experiences, such as my son's, and further drives potential transit passengers to private automobiles. PRT, on the other hand, would be available with direct origin-to-destination service at the rider's convenience, 24/7.
I think it may make some sense to have long-haul (intercity and inter-regional) rail, for which local PRT systems could act as "feeders." (On the other hand, there might someday be something like Unimodal's SkyTran PRT, running at 100 mph or better, which could serve inter-city and inter-regional needs/) But light rail is a direct competitor to PRT for riders, funding, and mindshare. If you do LRT first, it will likely suck all the available resources into itself, leaving none for PRT, BRT, or other approaches to transit. And if LRT is ultimately seen as a failure in a particular place, after having been given so many resources, people will be far less willing to entertain the idea of PRT, much less fund it.
Comment by Mr_Grant on July 26, 2008 at 10:58am
ReplyDeleteHi James!
Your comments actually reflect a number of the attitudes circulated by innovators that, while technically accurate, are nonetheless problematic for the political cause of moving transportation technology forward.
1. "you are basically saying that you are going to endorse taking much more money out of people's pockets than necessary for PRT, just because LRT is "your friend." No. There is only so much money to go around... If you do LRT first, it will likely suck all the available resources into itself, leaving none for PRT, BRT, or other approaches to transit."
This is similar to claims that Social Security is 'broken' which ignore the reality that the program is supposed to be intergenerational, and have reserves which go up and down. 20-40 year bonding capacity changes over time for all the known reasons, it is only finite when county treasurers make snapshot-in-time calculations. Plus, if it comes to pass that PRT can indeed pay for itself, the zero-sum argument is moot. It could be built with revenue bonds, and operated as a private or public utility.
2. "MY enemy is any person or group that extracts huge wads of cash from my wallet, essentially by force, and then wastes the money with various inefficiencies, follies, and boondoggles, saying all the time that "taxes are the price we pay for civilization."
This is a rather inflammatory attack on those who support construction of traditional transit. Who are those supporters? Usually a majority of voters who, the last time I checked my wallet, are me, you, our neighbors, etc. And the e-vil groups? A tiny minority may be technology enthusiasts, and some may be powerful lobbyists, but IMO the most important is what I call the traditional pro-environment/pro-transit coalition. I am convinced that innovators who have spent years insisting on perfection over the good have helped turn-off this coalition and ordinary voters who take their cues from it, thereby making innovation all the more difficult.
3. This was NORMAL, off-peak operation for the systems in question. That this doesn't happen at peak times shows it is not inherent in the technology, but a product of the funding model. It would be great if this country wasn't blowing $12B a month in Iraq.
4. And if LRT is ultimately seen as a failure in a particular place, after having been given so many resources, people will be far less willing to entertain the idea of PRT, much less fund it. And yet the average person by and large continues to support light rail construction, because we need better mass transit, and this support has built critical mass since the mid-70s 'LRT renaissance' started. This will continue until innovators are successful in creating (economically and technically) successful PRT systems, i.e. are able to offer a viable product people can vote for. This is underway in Europe, so I think the day is almost here.