M1EK's Bake-Sale of Bile

Ticketing isn't much better than just yelling

2010-03-17T20:04:20Z

Heading out to Houston for the weekend. Yes, I'm gonna ride a real light rail train.

The Statesman and every other media outlet in town, it seems, have been played for suckers again by Capital Metro - as has the City of Austin, who apparently thinks the answer to the bad intersection at 51st/Airport is just giving out tickets. Not one outlet has responded with even an ounce of critical thinking to the contention that the intersection hasn't changed (I'd say running trains 10 times a day at 60 mph is a change from a 5 mph freight train once a week) or the idea that education can substitute for engineering.

Austin police, beginning with Monday's MetroRail startup and for the following two weeks, will be staking out a worrisome intersection on Airport Boulevard, where the track is just a few car lengths from a traffic light and cars often illegally stop on or near the railroad.
Despite new signal gate technology meant to clear waiting traffic near the tracks, Capital Metro officials are concerned that some drivers might flout posted signs and railroad signal lights and find themselves in the path of a fast-moving train.

Police officers, at Capital Metro's request, will be monitoring 51st Street near Airport Boulevard and will issue citations immediately to motorists who stop on the track or under the four crossing arms that Capital Metro has installed where the track crosses 51st Street.

My response in comments to the Statesman article:

I covered this intersection on my blog a long time ago and have spoken about it on KUT several times since. The idea that we can avoid problems here through education and ticketing is just ludicrous - it only takes one person who missed the media coverage out of the thousands of people driving through here to make it all for naught.
The intersection actively encourages drivers to stop on the tracks, albeit briefly, if they want to ever have a chance to make a light - and this isn't just one direction of travel; it's people trying to turn off Clarkson; people just trying to go across Airport to the east; and people trying to turn left onto Clarkson from the east.

But let's just yell and ticket. That'll work, right? As long as we can make sure that 100.0% of all drivers who ever go through here will comply.

The far better policy, of course, would be to fix the intersection, but it doesn't play into Capital Metro's narrative that this was a cheap and easy rail start on all existing tracks.

It only takes one driver not to get the message, or to try their luck to avoid getting stuck for three more red lights to cause a disaster here. Capital Metro needs to be held accountable for their failure to re-engineer this intersection - and nobody in the media appears willing to do anything but repeat their PR about how silly it is to stop on the tracks. Shameful.

Teaser graphic

2010-03-12T15:17:25Z

In the "Why do I keep calling Tri-Rail a failure, and why do I keep saying the Red Line is going to match its record" department; this graphic below is from this spreadsheet, which is a work in progress on developing some metrics from the national transit database.

There are those who think that any rail is good rail; and there are those who think that any rail is bad rail. Then there are those like me who recognize that some rail systems do a much better job than others in a "new rail city" at delivering new riders - and it's frustrating how few seem to recognize intuitively the difference between a city like Houston, where the trains are packed and voters overwhelmingly approved a massive expansion as a result, and an area like South Florida, where after 20-25 years and a massive investment in double-tracking a very LONG route through a very heavily populated area, no community support for rail has developed despite a much more supportive population when the service started.

The metric I have here is basically "how much of the metro area did they get to ride the train, adjusted for mile of track". Here's why that's a good starting point: You should have the goal of maximizing return on your investment - your investment is basically miles of track; and your return is how many people ride - but to compare metro areas against each other, you should also consider how many people are IN that area to begin with (delivering 20,000 riders per weekday in Portland is a far greater achievement than delivering 20,000 riders per weekday in Manhattan).

Light rail systems are being used everywhere here except South Florida and Austin, obviously. (In both our cases, unlike the other cities here, commuter rail has effectively precluded light rail - and is being sold as a light rail analogue anyways).

After the break, the picture...

]]>

The actual data point here, for those interested, is "(average daily unlinked trips) / (metro area population) expressed as a percentage", then multiplied by 100. The extra scaling is necessary because every metro area includes vast regions not served by any of these rail lines; the figures are otherwise far too low to be compared against each other. I had to do "average daily unlinked trips" since the national transit data only breaks down into annual trips for each mode (I divided by 365). I used my l33t math skills to figure out Austin's based on 1500 people per day (3000 unlinked trips).

It's got some problems - for instance, Dallas is getting screwed here by the inclusion of Fort Worth in its metro area. (In contrast, Tri-Rail is fairly including all 3 South Florida counties in its population shed - it actually runs in all three - fewer miles in Dade but more passengers if I remember correctly). Also, it would be nice to adjust this for hours of service as well - note that Tri-Rail runs all day long, not just during rush hours. But it's a start, and it backs up what I've been saying about the ridership numbers compared to the potential in the area.

Note that I even used the 2008 data, which is artificially high due to the gas price spike (Tri-Rail ridership collapsed back to 2007 figures in 2009; the national data warehouse doesn't have 2009 stuff yet). Also, the population figures don't rise until the next census - so 2008 looks even better compared to 2007 in the spreadsheet than it really was.

So does the theory fit the observed data? Yes, given its limitations. Houston looks really good - they invested relatively little money (represented by track miles) yet got big riders. Portland is way up there because they have lots of miles AND lots of riders. Salt Lake does well; a lot of people don't pay attention - but they're well-regarded. Given the metro area problem, Dallas fits about where I'd expect it to.

And most importantly, Tri-Rail shows its awful, awful, awful performance here. A lot of people who've never been to South Florida don't know this, but it's a fully urbanized area stretching over a size bigger than Houston with more people than Houston; several mature downtowns with lots of transit interest; etc. It's NOT just beaches and retirees; and the retirees that ARE there started out as incredibly easy sells to rail, since most of them moved from the northeast.

Yeah, it's a tortuous metric. What's your suggestion?

PS: About three times now I've found a typo where I wrote "unliked" instead of "unlinked". Freudian?

Days of Reckoning, Part Three

2010-03-04T14:13:23Z

Today, thanks to skepticism from those who think my position solidified over six years on this subject is because of predetermined bias rather than actual study, I'll switch from my original plan of doing use cases by "estimated level of commute interest" and instead hit what I would guess are the two best possible cases for the Red Line.

Since shuttle-buses are obviously a problem, and since even in the commute to UT (you know, the obvious primary destination for people riding transit in our area, that unimportant little spot) from the furthest out station in Leander, the speed of the train can't make up for the time lost to the shuttle-bus, let's try to assemble one of the few commutes that might not require a shuttle-bus, although that's relatively hard to do.

Frost Tower is just on the edge of the 1/4 mile circle that most transit planners view as the maximum distance people will walk to work from a transit stop. It's also the ONLY major office building within what's commonly considered acceptable walking distance from the 'downtown station'. (Me, I might actually have to take the shuttle even on that trip some days due to my feet, so I'll plan that out too). Let's run there from both Leander (far out park-and-ride) and Crestview (supposed TOD which will supposedly provide the only real walk-up traffic for Austin).

This case also benefits the Red Line disproportionately because both the express bus route from Leander to downtown and the #101 limited first run past UT, and then past the Capitol, then through the rest of downtown; so we're at the very end of the slowest part of that route here. IE, we've picked the destination that makes the bus look its absolute worst.

]]> TripPickup at rail stationArrive downtown stationLeave downtown stationArrive FrostTotal travel time #1L local bus from Crestview8:02 AMN/AN/A8:35 AM33 minutes #101 express bus from Crestview8:18 AMN/AN/A8:43 AM25 minutes Red Line with walk from station8:15 AM8:35 AM8:35 AM8:40 AM25 minutes Red Line with #460 shuttlebus (first one)8:15 AM8:35 AM8:38 AM8:40 AM25 minutes Red Line with #460 shuttlebus (second one)8:15 AM8:35 AM8:40 AM8:42 AM27 minutes

Shuttlebus travel times my estimate; only timepoint is much further down the route. No time advantage to taking the shuttle for the closest major office building. Note that I only had the walk from the train station be to the middle of the block between Congress and Brazos since you could presumably enter the building from the back. The buses drop off right in front.

Summary: Even from Crestview Station to Frost, there is no time advantage to taking the Red Line for the commuter. A slight advantage in reliability will probably, however. Ironically, although I doubt Rapid Bus will do much, it only has to save one minute over the limited service it replaces to make the Red Line lose this contest.

Now, from Leander:

Trip	Pickup at rail station	Arrive downtown station	Leave downtown station	Arrive Frost	Total travel time
#983 express bus from Leander Station	8:00 AM	9:26 AM(*)	9:26 AM	9:31 AM	91 minutes
Red Line with walk from station	7:54 AM	8:56 AM	8:56 AM	9:01 AM	67 minutes
Red Line with #460 shuttlebus (first one)	7:54 AM	8:56 AM	8:59 AM	9:01 AM	67 minutes
Red Line with #460 shuttlebus (second one)	7:54 AM	8:56 AM	9:01 AM	9:03 AM	69 minutes

(* - express bus drops off on Guadalupe; 5 minute walk per google). Had to switch the rail trip later than before because the one used above doesn't start from Leander.

Guess what? This meets my expectations as shown in this old post. Despite Capital Metro's ridiculous claims that this line serves Austin and even "central Austin", the only real beneficiaries of this service are those who live far enough out to be able to use the distant park-and-rides; a lot of whom are residents of Cedar Park and Round Rock, who don't even pay Capital Metro taxes. (I ran the Lakeline numbers quickly on a piece of paper and people boarding there can save about 20 minutes over the express bus, going to Frost; Round Rock residents driving to the Howard Lane P&R can hop the train now but no express bus service existed before; both of those two nominally 'Austin' park-and-rides are unlikely to serve many Austin residents as they are right on the edge of the city limits).

Out of time. Hope this mollifies the skeptics. Bet it won't.

Days of Reckoning, Part Two

2010-03-02T14:01:09Z

Today's entry: Somebody who fell for the "TOD" hype and moved into Crestview Station so they could walk to the Red Line and take it to work at UT. Morning commute this time around; assume they want to get in comfortably before 9:00AM. Note that the Red Line shuttle drops off on San Jacinto; the two bus options here drop off on Guadalupe; the typical UT office is, if anything, closer to Guadalupe than San Jacinto.

Spoiler: Even the local bus beats the Red Line, because of the shuttle-bus trip. Yes, even though that local bus travels through half of the congestion on the Drag.

]]> TripPickup at Crestview StationArrive MLK stationLeave MLK stationArrive UTTotal travel time #1L local bus8:13 AMN/AN/A8:32 AM19 minutes #101 express bus8:18 AMN/AN/A8:32 AM14 minutes Red Line with #465 shuttlebus (first one)8:15 AM8:25 AM8:28 AM8:38 AM23 minutes Red Line with #465 shuttlebus (second one)8:15 AM8:25 AM8:30 AM8:40 AM25 minutes

I wonder if there was anyone who predicted way back when that the Red Line would be slower, thanks to its reliance on shuttle-buses, than existing express bus service? Nah. Couldn't be. Nobody could have predicted this debacle way back in, say, 2004.

July 15, 2004:

The current commuter rail plan, for reference, requires both of these constituencies to transfer to shuttle buses to reach their final destination. This, as I've pointed out before, means that anybody who has a car and can afford parking will never ride this route.The shuttle transfer kills the performance of the transit trip to the point where only people who don't own cars or have difficult parking situations would consider it, as is the case with today's express bus lines.

Well, OK, but nobody could possibly have predicted that Crestview residents might be worse off taking the train than the bus, right?

April 4, 2007

Even if we run commuter rail trains more often, a trip which relies on a shuttle bus travelling through mixed traffic for the last two miles or so will never be reliable or comfortable. This is why our friends at Tri-Rail have egg on their faces year after year after year as the promised TOD around stations never materializes. Here in Austin, we're likely to get at least medium-density development at Crestview Station, but the residents still aren't going to be enjoying the true benefits of TOD, and neither is the city.

More references:

March 2008
hint: there's a lot more - try the category archive

Days of Reckoning, Part One

2010-03-01T21:48:45Z

Using the new schedules on Capital Metro's spiffy new MetroRail site; this afternoon in the 5 minutes I could spend, we now know that, according to schedules, if you're leaving UT for Leander and want to take the first available trip after 5:00, the express bus that currently takes you 68 minutes is on tap to be replaced by a shuttle-bus plus Red Line option that will take you either 71 or 76 minutes, depending on if you feel like taking your chances on maybe not fitting on the second shuttle bus for the 5:40 trip heading up to Leander.

Trip	Pickup at UT	Arrive MLK station	Leave MLK station	Arrive Leander station	Total travel time
#987 express bus	5:04 PM	N/A	N/A	6:12 PM	68 minutes
Red Line with #465 shuttlebus (first one)	5:16 PM	5:28 PM	5:40 PM	6:32 PM	76 minutes
Red Line with #465 shuttlebus (second one)	5:21 PM	5:33 PM	5:40 PM	6:32 PM	71 minutes

July 15, 2004:

The current commuter rail plan, for reference, requires both of these constituencies to transfer to shuttle buses to reach their final destination. This, as I've pointed out before, means that anybody who has a car and can afford parking will never ride this route.The shuttle transfer kills the performance of the transit trip to the point where only people who don't own cars or have difficult parking situations would consider it, as is the case with today's express bus lines.

More references:

March 2008
hint: there's a lot more - try the category archive

M1EK in comments: Why waste your time giving input?

2010-02-26T20:30:41Z

Really sorry I don't have more time to spend on this blog - day job; family; etc. But this comment needed to be saved somewhere other than CM's blog so I could point to it. I've been meaning to write a long post on "staying friends versus getting something done", but this will have to suffice for now.

Commented to this post:

SR, it's really simple: Mike Krusee was willing to fight for his interests (kill light rail, allow commuter rail), and our city council members were not (nor was anybody else in Austin, except yours truly, as evidenced by this sad bit of history).
Talking, having charettes, staying connected, keeping in contact, maintaining relationships, giving input - none of this matters if the guy on the other side is willing to exercise his power to get what he wants and you aren't. (This, by the way, is why I don't bother showing up and giving 'input' at things like the 2020 service plan meetings - despite nice invitations and hurt feelings when not taken up on; I'm better off with speaking to hundreds of readers and having a 1% chance of slightly modifying the opinion of somebody with real power than I am giving my one input and having it roundly ignored).

In reality, the message really isn't "don't waste your time by giving input", but rather, it's make sure you're giving your input to people who are willing to listen and are willing to exercise their power to help get what you want. An awful lot of people in the political ecosphere are very, very, very skilled at using the input-gathering process to defuse opposition to things they've already decided they're going to do. Don't allow yourself to be effectively neutered in this fashion - make sure you're only spending your time with people who aren't just listening politely to keep you from talking to somebody else about it.

Capital Metro's Service 2020 plan: Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

2010-02-18T19:07:50Z

I only have five minutes, but am officially out of time to crackplog this, so here goes.

Three special areas of stupidity in the Capital Metro 2020 plan:

Luckily for me, two others already hit two of my three major points. (No, Wells, it wasn't due to secret meetings of the echo chamber; note Shilli wasn't even involved).

1. Covered by Austin Contrarian: Moving major (i.e. the #1) bus routes off Congress, which is walkable and dense, to Guadalupe/Lavaca, which are infested with low density garbage for blocks in certain parts and farther away from the core of downtown, is stupid. Yes, the buses will move quicker. No, this isn't better; the reason the buses will move quicker is that they will be far away from the places people actually want to go downtown. (No, the residential density developing west of Congress isn't relevant here; every one possible reverse transmit commuter from one of those condo buildings is matched by a hundred or more existing work commuters trying to get to an office building - and the office building center of mass is on Congress).

2. Covered by a commenter on Capital MetroBlog; moving certain local routes like the #5 off the Drag is stupid. Most people going to UT are closer to Guadalupe than San Jacinto; this seems like a poorly justified way to pretend like Guadalupe isn't where the action is, to forestall complaints by people like yours truly when the Red Line finally opens.

"Robert"'s comment:

This would be a disaster. Quite a lot of the #5’s ridership–myself included–consists of UT students and staff who are destined for the engineering complex, the communications buildings, the west mall, or the six-pack–all very dense clusters on campus. The proposed changes would drop them off a good deal farther away from their destination, and at the bottom of a hill–not at all pedestrian-friendly. This seems, like the proposed switch from Congress to Guadalupe/Lavaca downtown–to be the general principle: move the bus routes away from the places people need to go, and into areas that are less congested. That is not a plan for increased ridership.

(pre-emptive comeback to inevitable complant from CM insiders: Guadalupe near UT is the best place for UT trips. Guadalupe near downtown is NOT the best place for downtown trips).

3. Covered by nobody else, so it falls to me: Eliminating West Austin routes like the #21/#22 (which my stepson uses) is stupid. Yes, I said eliminate; if you believe that the proposed 'flexible' service being provided in its place will (a) work and (b) last, you're more credulous than Capital Metro deserves at this point in history.

Look, ridership on some of those routes out west IS low. But here's a little hint: Capital Metro isn't at risk for having their sales tax cut because too few people ride the bus in Tarrytown; they're at risk for having their sales tax cut if enough people listen to that Neanderthal pantload Jim Skaggs and VOTE to cut their sales tax. Guess what? Voter turnout in the parts of town served by the #21/#22 is extraordinarily high. Guess what tends to happen to voter support for transit in areas with no visible transit service when you have elections on sustaining taxes to support transit service?

To say nothing of the PR impact of removing one of the primary ways transfer students from less affluent neighborhoods get to schools like O Henry and Austin High (yes, my stepson is among them; but there's kids a lot poorer on the same buses doing the same thing). No, the flexible service, even if it lasts, won't be any help here; nor will service being proposed to replace UT shuttles. And this may even impact students from the west who want to, say, go to the Kealing magnet school.

I've said for years that I give Capital Metro credit for doing the best job possible in the political environment in which they operate at the job of running a city bus service through a built environment that doesn't naturally sustain much choice commuter interest. I've spent a lot of time on the internets defending them against charges of "empty buses" and the like.

But you know what? If CM is stupid enough to commit this kind of suicide, after screwing the city of Austin for a generation on the rail front? I'm not so sure I'm in their corner any more - even on the city bus issue.

References:

Rapid Bus ain't BRT

2010-02-03T16:53:44Z

A collection of comments made elsewhere.

First, on KUT today, you can hear yours truly with the following supporting arguments left out due to time, but brought over here from skyscraperpage:

1. Travel time savings quoted are versus the local (#1), not the existing express (#101). They're still only 20%; pretty lame.
2. The signal-holding doodad won't be much help in the most congested part of the corridor - anybody who spends any time between, say, south of 15th and 30th going northbound on an afternoon knows that the backup you're in is from the next 10 lights, not just the one in front of you that the bus could modify.

Things commonly considered part of BRT which are missing completely from this plan: reserved lanes, queue-jumping lanes, off-board payment. Were it not for the signal-holding doodad (which won't work anyways in most of this corridor), this would just be like normal bus service with new vehicles (they have articulated buses running normal and express routes in cities all over the country; the difference is that we apparently fooled the Feds into buying us new rolling stock on the justification this would be a BRT route instead of just a really marginal case of 'better bus').

Second, on Capital Metro's self-congratulatory post:

Very misleading. The 20% travel time reduction is compared to the existing LOCAL service (#1), not to the existing express service (#101).
Y'all may have fooled the Feds into buying you new rolling stock under the guise of BRT, but some of us aren't buying it. The signal-holding device won't be worth anything in the afternoon congestion on Guadalupe (it's not the light in front of the bus holding it up; it's the light six blocks down and the cars in front).

About all this service WILL do is finally put a nail in the coffin of rail on Guadalupe - where, in any sane city, rail would be delivered first, as it's where all the jobs and all the other activity centers are - not anywhere near the Red Line; not, even, over on San Jacinto.

]]> Third, my letter to our city councilmembers who serve on Cap Metro's board:

Councilmembers,
I hope you two will have the courage to once again forcibly steer Capital Metro off the path of Rapid Bus on Guadalupe, as your predecessors on the board did a few years back. Implementing Rapid Bus on the corridor that most needs rail transit in our city will be a decision we will be paying for 50 years from now, if not longer; and it will be politically impossible to move those buses off that high-density corridor once they've started running. In other words, even though we don't have the political will right now to run trains on this corridor (even though everybody knows it's the best place for them), we don't want to preclude the option to do so later on; but Rapid Bus will, in fact, make it effectively impossible to do that later on.

Nothing in the plan has changed since the first time we decided we didn't want to preclude rail on our highest density jobs/attractor corridor; there are no new proposals for anything more 'rapid'; it's still just going to be the Feds paying for most of a bunch of new rolling stock, with some signal-holding devices that won't be able to provide any speed or reliability improvements in the most congested part of the corridor (since the vehicles today are usually stuck in backups from traffic lights many intersections ahead - not just the one directly in front). Capital Metro is misrepresenting this service as a 20% speed improvement - comparing to the #1 instead of to the existing #101; and any speed or reliability improvements over the #101 are likely to be so minimal that they won't get a single person to leave their car at home and ride the bus instead.

Short link here: http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/archives/000629.html

Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help you in this matter. We can't afford to get this wrong.

Regards,
Mike Dahmus
City of Austin Urban Transportation Commission 2000-2005

Capital Metro flips city the bird

2010-01-28T14:32:24Z

or, in short, Ben Wear was right.

I don't have time to do anything but excerpt and link; incredibly busy at work and elsewhere.

Full Statesman article and relevant quote:

The city is due the money, say the two people caught in the middle: Austin City Council Members Chris Riley and Mike Martinez , who also serve on the Capital Metro board — Martinez as chairman.
"Capital Metro's obligations to the city are legally enforceable," Riley said at an board meeting last week. "That does not mean, 'whenever we feel like we're flushed with money.' That language (in the agreement) does not mean we can pay whenever we want.

"You can dismiss this as coming from a city guy. But I believe Cap Metro would be in a weak position if it came to litigation."

Note this proves that CM was lying about their reserves, and their enablers who insisted they'd be paying the 1/4 cent money owe Ben Wear a big fat apology.

Earlier coverage:

Capital Metro is trying to mislead you

No, I can't stop beating that horse

2010-01-18T14:21:15Z

A lot of people wonder why I keep talking about the Red Line, seeing as how any month now it'll finally open - it can't actually be stopped at this point. The dead horse analogy is repeatedly invoked, sometimes by people on 'my' side; often by gladhanders like JMVC on the other side.

]]> Check out this post on Capital Metro's blog, especially this comment:

alas, yes. When MetroRail starts up, it will be a commuter service to get people to work M-F. We can’t immediately expand to all day/night/weekend service because we are obligated by law to carry freight (remember passenger and freight rail use the same set of tracks). Of course we will work towards expansion over time–we want to take you to downtown at night!–but it will take time because we have to build more track and possibly get more railcars, too.

I have responded in a comment, but since it's always a crapshoot if/when they publish me (I'm in moderation and sometimes 'forgotten'):

Spending scarce local rail dollars on a service which even if/when double-tracked and run all day will, by the Feds own judgement back in 2000, be a ridership loser, is a really bad idea - especially when we have a much better local project needing the money (city urban rail plan).

Yes, even today, Capital Metro's #1 priority publically is sending even more local and federal rail dollars down the Red Line rathole when, as referenced above and in the last crackplog, even with two tracks and all-day service and overhead electric wire, the Feds rated the line unlikely to achieve even moderate levels of ridership. Why is that? Well, for those not tired of the dead horse, you can't take it anywhere worth going without transferring to a shuttle-bus, and never, ever, ever will.

(metaphorical depiction of Red Line courtesy of "anw.fr" on flickr

Dead horse? Capital Metro keeps re-animating it, so I guess I need to keep beating it.

A few relevant past articles:

History, Not Learning From

2009-12-18T14:18:32Z

A couple weeks ago, I posted this "Quick Hit" about the fact that the Feds rated what is now the Red Line very poorly back in 1998-2000. To be more precise, they actually panned a doubletracked light-rail proposal on what is the current Red Line's route (i.e. running down the existing freight rail corridor rather than going down Lamar and Guadalupe as in what eventually became the 2000 proposal). This Red Line proposal was floating around for years as the primary rival to the Red/Green Line (that 2000 LRT route). To refresh your memory, from the old Chronicle article:

The prevailing wisdom has been that a project in Smart-Grown Austin, serving major trip generators like UT and the Capitol complex, supported by Cap Met's ample sales tax revenue, would be a slam dunk for a "highly recommended" rating. (Conversely, the original Red Line, which had far lower ridership and -- even though it was on existing rail right of way -- only marginally lower projected costs, was headed, Cap Met insiders say, for a "not recommended" kiss-of-death rating, which is why the transit authority switched tracks at the 11th hour.)

The "original Red Line" they're talking about is, to be clear, a proposal floated around 1998 which would have put down two new tracks and run light rail vehicles on the current Red Line. Note key phrase: far lower ridership.

Now, Jeff Wood picks up the history angle, pointing to his masters' thesis on the 2004 debacle. Note that even today Capital Metro's Doug Allen is claiming that the Red Line should have been done with two tracks from the getgo (although the quoted $300M would pretty much have to be two tracks with those stupid DMU cars, not electric trains), yet, once again, two brand new tracks in the Red Line right-of-way still doesn't go anywhere worth going. Nor would three, or four, or ten tracks. The problem isn't the number of tracks; the problem is where the tracks are.

As Jeff points out,

I don't think this should be hard for everyone to understand. 38,000 riders for LRT in 2000 versus 2,000 riders for Commuter rail in 2004. It's not rocket science. The politics was messy and Capital Metro allowed themselves to get pushed into it. This didn't start with the current contractor, this started back before 2000 with Krusee who was head of the House Transportation Committee.

As I've pointed out on what seems like a billion occasions, Mike Krusee is why this happened back then. Go read Jeff's article for independent confirmation, if for some reason you doubted me.

Again: 38,000 riders for the 2000 light rail plan, 2,000 riders for the 2004 commuter rail plan (with or without second track).

The Feds figured this out before 2000. For one brief moment, Capital Metro knew it too. Why are they being so obtuse now, and more importantly, why are our City Council members on their board allowing them to continue this delusionary path to spending hundreds of millions of dollars MORE on a line that will never be a functioning part of our transportation system? This is how Tri-Rail wasted almost two decades and a couple hundred million dollars in South Florida - adding a second track to the wrong line. Will our elected officials have the courage to make Capital Metro stop before we make the same mistake here?

MetroFAIL

2009-12-15T16:20:24Z

A project of a former cow orker and friend of mine, Mike Kaply:

As for the contract stuff with Veolia and the new guys, I'm sorry, folks, but I know my limitations - and I don't know enough about contract law to be able to say anything worthwhile other than it sure seems like Veolia had their act together (specific and detailed rebuttals of many CM charges, while CM kept things vague). I also find it hard to believe you can switch contractors at this point and not push back the start date, as I told KUT, but then again, Allen probably has some experience with the new guys from up in Dallas, so who knows.

I see that over the weekend I also missed a second good KUT story by Mose Buchele on Veolia's response to being thrown under the bus. This is something I've hinted at for a long time - Capital Metro used Veolia as a scapegoat way back in March when the line didn't open, when in retrospect it clearly wasn't their fault. Highly recommended.

Red Line Death Watch Part 1

2009-11-23T20:00:16Z

No, not like the GM Death Watch at my favorite car blog; this is a "how long before somebody's killed" series. Today, some pictures of the intersection I talked about on KUT last week.

First, the overheard. Imagine you're headed west on 51st across Airport because you just went to Home Depot and are headed back to Hyde Park or points south. (Hint: Red River starts just south of this image as a turn off of Clarkson; turning on Clarkson is thus by far the best way into or around Hyde Park by car).

Not a lot of room there to queue up for that left turn, huh. Let's zoom in with google's streetview:

]]>

Uh-oh. That don't look good. But surely Capital Metro has done something about this intersection since then, right?

Yep. They've flapped their gums about how stupid drivers are to stop on the tracks - but have done precisely nothing to address the conditions at this intersection that almost always require you to stop on or just past the tracks if you ever want to make this left turn.

Guess who just did that on Sunday? If you were following the twitter machine, you'd already know. And yes, I know better; but no, the trains weren't running, at least not yet. At the time I made this turn, traffic was moderate - too much to sit across Airport until clear on the other side; too little to be in serious danger on the other side (i.e. if the gate started going down I had an escape path ready).

There is just barely enough space before the gate for a small car to stop, if they don't mind sticking out past the beginning of the left-turn bay. There is not enough room past the gate for a left-turning car to stop without risking having the rear end of the car at or past the crossing gate. In other words, quite often there isn't enough space for even one vehicle to queue up for this left turn without being in violation of the crossing gate or the double yellow behind. Not even one. So what do you think drivers are going to do here, in the real world?

You don't open up a rail line that requires that people be willing to sit through multiple light cycles on the other side of Airport to make this turn safely (if you can even judge that far ahead - you usually can't; oncoming traffic comes too quickly). You redesign the intersection to eliminate the turn, or re-engineer it some other way to make it safe rather than just hoping your gum-flapping will convince motorists to do something which may prevent them from ever making their turn. That is, unless you sold this thing as a pig-in-a-poke by claiming it would be easy and cheap to run diesel trains on existing track.

More later, if time warrants. Yes, there's other problems just at this one intersection.

Two quick hits

2009-11-18T17:33:04Z

Check out me on KUT yesterday about the intersection problems along Airport and notice that I'm not alone in failing to buy Capital Metro's BS about it just being a simple education problem. Good job, Mose, getting some key points across from a variety of interviewees.

Also,

While searching for something else, I stumbled on this old Chronicle article with this money quote, which backs up what I was saying for a long time about the failure of Capital Metro to seek federal funds despite it being promised in the run-up to the 2004 commuter rail election:

]]> The prevailing wisdom has been that a project in Smart-Grown Austin, serving major trip generators like UT and the Capitol complex, supported by Cap Met's ample sales tax revenue, would be a slam dunk for a "highly recommended" rating. (Conversely, the original Red Line, which had far lower ridership and -- even though it was on existing rail right of way -- only marginally lower projected costs, was headed, Cap Met insiders say, for a "not recommended" kiss-of-death rating, which is why the transit authority switched tracks at the 11th hour.)

Note, though, that this was back when they'd be talking about running new track in the Red Line corridor - not reusing the existing freight rail track (which, as it turns out, hasn't been as cheap or easy as advertised). The important point, though, is that the Feds (and Capital Metro) acknowledged that even with brand-new double-track, ridership on the Red Line as delivered today would never even approach the levels at which the FTA would have considered good enough to help pay for. And this wasn't the Bush FTA that hated rail - this was the Clinton FTA which paid for good light rail starts all over the country (although even Bush's FTA funded a couple, like Seattle's).

As per yesterday's crackplog, note that Capital Metro is still out there seeking funding, both federal and local, to double (or even triple) track the Red Line despite the fact that it won't make much difference for ridership - because as the Feds knew and CM used to admit, it doesn't go anywhere worth going and never will.

Why The Horse Isn't Dead

2009-11-16T15:04:00Z

Extracted from a comments thread on facebook; name omitted to protect privacy in case they mind.

we can always count on our buddy Mike to leave no dead horse unbeaten! Certainly Urban Rail will be great (if we do it right) and we all need to support it, but calling the redline 'useless' is a bit much. Perhaps useless to you, Mike, but so are dozens of bus routes (and roads for that matter) you will never use - that doesn't make them useless to the folks who do (and will) use them.

And my response:

http://mdahmus.monkeysystems.com/blog/archives/000573.html
(done with the old rail timetables, not the new presumably slower ones which aren't up yet).

The Red Line is 'useless' because for most people, it will be a slower commute than the existing express bus service. We spent a lot of capital dollars, in other words, to get lower quality service than what we already had. (And operating costs are likely to be close to express bus with the shuttle-bus costs added in).

And it is most definitely not a dead horse - because your agency continues to seek to spend additional scarce rail dollars on the Red Line (repeating Tri-Rail's mistake of trying to polish a you-know-what instead of building something more useful somewhere else) and on other similarly useless commuter rail lines - meaning those dollars obviously can't be spent on the CoA project.

So tell me, readers, is the argument of the CM guy compelling at all? Before the rebuttal? After? I really mean what I say here - the horse isn't dead, because it keeps getting fed. Those rail dollars (federal and local) could in fact be saved for the City of Austin's urban rail program - but once they're spent on commuter rail they're gone for good, and we aren't exactly swimming in other money to make up the difference. We need to stop further 'investments' in commuter rail, in other words, if the urban rail line is to have a decent shot at getting built in our lifetimes.