At 4:30 am, alarms on my cellphone and tablet start beeping, just enough out of sync to prompt me to get up and turn them off. By 5:00 am, I riding as a passenger along an unusually sedate New Jersey Turnpike, making friendly conversation with my driver and survey partner to make sure he stays … [Read more...]
BART, Josefowitz, and Mass Transit in the Bay
Last week, Nick Josefowitz unseated a multi-decade incumbent for a spot on the BART board of directors. Normally I don’t pay too much attention to elections, but Mr. Josefowitz might actually have some good ideas.For everyone outside the Bay Area, the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) system is a … [Read more...]
How Hong Kong Pulls Off Transit Oriented Development
Integrating rail and property development is the cornerstone of the MTR’s success. In the U.S., coordination between transit authorities and developers tends to be mediocre at best. In Hong Kong, however, the MTR is both the transit authority as well as the property owner, and this makes all the … [Read more...]
Why No One Drives to Work in Hong Kong
Need to get 4 million people to the office every day? Hong Kong has you covered.The Mass Transit Railway (MTR) is a rail system in the city of Hong Kong, currently managed by the Mass Transit Railway Corporation Limited (MTRL). The system opened in 1979 and now operates over 135 miles of track … [Read more...]
Sobyanin’s horrific plan for Moscow
It's been a few months since longtime Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov was fired, so I figured it would be a good time to check in on the city. In spite of Moscow's infamous traffic and "perversely-sloped" population density gradient, the former mayor's plan to build 100 km of new metro tracks and over … [Read more...]
The inanity of airport connectors
Despite my issues with how new transit projects are implemented in America today, I'm generally happy to see them built. Even though they're flawed, heavily-subsidized government creations, they make upzoning more palatable and can later be sold off and privately managed. There's a lot I'd do … [Read more...]
The Great American Streetcar Myth
by Stephen SmithAmong liberals in the planning profession today, the story of the Great American Streetcar Conspiracy is widely known. There are more nuanced variants, but it goes something like this: Streetcars were once plentiful and efficient, but then along came a bunch of car and oil … [Read more...]
A comment on rolling stock protectionism
by Stephen SmithIn response to an article I posted yesterday about protectionism in public transit procurement, frequent commenter Alon Levy left this great comment about the history of rolling stock procurement in the US:What happened in the 1970s was that the rolling stock market shrank, … [Read more...]