[PRCo] Installment 4, Modern Light Rail and Subways

Thu Mar 3 09:02:00 EST 2011

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO ... YES GUYS ... SINCE 1898 IT HAS BEEN PART OF US ... IT WAS THE NEXT TO LAST NEW CITY TO GAIN FIXED GUIDEDWAY TRANSIT IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA.   Tren Urbano, the Heavy Rail line from Bayamón to Segrado Corazón (Sacred Heart University) opened in January 2005.  They claim over 35,000 passengers a day on the 10.7 mile line (about 3300 per route mile per day).  Almost all of it is above ground and there are a lot of good places for photography.  This was the first place on U. S. soil I saw a TD Bank (Toronto Dominion) and the last place I encountered an Esso gas station.   Great place to spend a January vacation if you live in Pittsburgh, Toronto, Boston, New York or Chicago.   Try the fried plantain ... interesting eating.   OK ... the last link are Puerto Rican foods to try if you go there.   The hotel and restaurant people all speak English but most Puerto Ricans have the same attitude the people up here have ... learning that other language compromises our culture.  
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5acmIltQi8

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkVq4BuM8DQ

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-brbxL6BWo&NR=1

     http://www.whats4eats.com/content/puerto-rican-recipes-and-cuisine

NEW ORLEANS...My first visit to the Big Easy was in 1958 on a family vacation.   The Canal line swallowed up 50 cars in the rush hour, St. Charles needed 35.   That allowed 3 spares ... one in each car house and one in the shop.   The headways then:   Canal in the peak called for a car about every 45 seconds ... closed thing I ever saw to a moving sidewalk.  St. Charles was closer to 3 minutes. 

In the U. S. census, the peak population year was 1960.   Until then the south had white and black rest rooms, white and black theaters, white and black restaurants.   The streetcars were desegregated early in 1958.   Seems that we really never learned how to live with each other.   I recall a conversation in the car shops in New Orleans in 1958 where one of the white mechanics was telling us how great one his black colleagues was.   But the supervisor remarked, "But if he forgets to call me Sir, he will find his f-u-c-king black a-s-s on the floor looking up at me."   Very sad.   

Well, the folks moved to the suburbs.   White suburbs to the west, black suburbs to the east.   Then the flood hit and one-third of those in Orleans Parish never came home.   Jefferson Parish, which was higher and more suburban, was less affected, only about 8 percent have not returned.  

The carlines?   Canal's base headway today is a car every half hour!   St. Charles, historically the weaker of the two, is now better patronized because of tourists.  The first item is a link to the Europeans managing the agency.   Riding was back up to around 13,500 on weekdays in 2008.   By the third quarter 2010 APTA reports show 17,300 on weekdays.

Fifty years ago Canal alone probably hauled 40,000 in just the morning and evening rush hours. 

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtHcxsnx4uQ&NR=1

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CEVl5oVu94&feature=related

The future:   We had to believe, didn't we, that Washington will continue to plow money into a sinking city.   New Orleans RTA plans to build a loop streetcar line around the French Quarter and onto the Amtrak / Greyhound Station (1001 N. Loyola).   Amtrak schedules 10 arrivals and 10 departures a week.   They Greyhound map shows New Orleans only as a stub route from Biloxi to the east with the ticket office open thrice daily for two hours each time before each bus.   

UP THE MISSISSIPPI ON THE EAST BANK IN THE LARGEST CITY IN TENNESSEE IS A HERITAGE TROLLEY LINE WITH TWO ROUTES, ONE OF WHICH WAS SHUT DOWN IN 2010.   Memphis Area Transit Authority began with a 1.3 mile line in 1994, turned it into a 2.3 mile loop in 1997 and then added a 2.5 mile branch out East Madison St. as a possible precursor to an airport light rail line in 2004.   The Madison St. line was supposed to serve two hospitals, one of which closed as soon as the line opened!   Average riding on Madison when I looked was about 3 people per trip.   Riding on the north-south line is heavily dependent on tourists to the clubs as most business has moved out of downtown.    Average weekday riding is around 3,800 a day but it is quite variable by season.   The first picture shows you an run a Melbourne center door car with one-man ... passengers are then asked to walk up front and pay the motorman.     The second link shows a Madison car with a light load (2 passengers) being wiped out by a bicycle.    Third is a former Porto, Portugal car downtown ... count the people on the street.    The Madison line was shut down in September 2010 for rail bonding work ... issues with interference with other utilities ... something we seem to have forgotten over the years.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY0JxUTPw8M

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZRxaFtCTHI&feature=related

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeQ-VT9JxgU&feature=related

ATLANTA ... NOW WE'RE TALKING SOMETHING THAT REALLY MADE SENSE ... THE MARTA SUBWAY.   Between 1979 and 2000, MARTA opened 63.5 miles of route.  Of the subway systems in the USA, in total weekday passengers it comes in 7th between Philadelphia and PATH.  MARTA counts around 260,000 fares on a weekday, just a little more than PATH trains into New York City.  That's about 4100 passengers per route mile ... not quite what Houston does on the light rail but good.   Atlanta city is small ... only 540,000 but the metro area is home to about 5.5 million people.   Wikipedia claims it also has the nations fourth largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies.   

I remember a business trip I had to make to Atlanta in the 1970s which gave me an opportunity to interview the MARTA planning people.   I asked for bus statistics and then their projections for the subway.   I went to the hotel that night and started crunching the numbers.   Next day I went back to them and said, "What 'ja do.   Take all the passengers on all the bus routes running any where near where the subway would run, and then count each person getting on and back off.  And a Five Points you count him back on another vehicle and back off again in the middle town to come up with your subway projections to send to UMTA?"   The numbers they submitted were four times the bus counts.   The face was a little red. 

MARTA did something in those days that no other agency I ever encounter did.   They went door to door and asked why don't you use our service?   That's a little different from just surveying the people who ride.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiUMWsP7WV4

BALTIMORE AND MIAMI WENT TOGETHER, IF MY MEMORY SERVES, ON AN EQUIPMENT ORDER FOR RAPID TRANSIT IN 1983-1984.   

THE MARYLAND MASS TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION'S LINE FROM CHARLES CENTER TO REISTERTOWN, 8 MILES IN LENGTH, WAS THE FIRST TO OPEN.    It was extended 7 miles farther north to Owings Mills in 1987 and 1.5 miles east from Charles Center to to Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1995.   This made a lot of sense when construction was proposed.   Baltimore's population peaked in 1950 at 950,000 but dropped very slowly.   It was 905,000 in 1970.   The neighborhoods through which this line were run were still strongly white, Jewish when the plans were laid on the table but by the time it opened the people who were living there were no longer people who went downtown and downtown had collapsed.   About 15% of the population had hemorrhaged from the time planning started until the line opened!   The line only carries about 55,000 riders a day ... pretty sparse for investment that involved  about five or six miles of subway tunnel.   By 2010 the city was down to 620,000 with blocks and blocks of vacant real estate.   Look at all the seats in the train in the third video.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xWKnilGOeM

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCVwt9r7nVw

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4H61yiMm8o&feature=related

Baltimore also opened the Central Light Rail Line from Timonium in April 1992 and progressively extended it so that by 2006 it was double-tracked and reached from both BWI Airport and Glen Burnie on the south of Baltimore to Hunt Valley on the north, a total of 30 miles.  Included in the mileage is also a branch to Penn Station.   Their passenger numbers have always been suspect.   During the recent recession, their passenger counts increased from 18,000 to 34,000 a day but every time I drive up the Jones Falls Expressway and pass a car, it's empty.   I've crunched some of their numbers and find their fleet cannot hold the riders they claim to carry.   Perhaps that is why the transit police run off people with cameras?  The first one is a nice video inside an empty train...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvlZV_8uKGA

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z140LpqipM4&feature=related

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY TRANSPORTATION DEPARMENT OPENED ITS SOUTH LINE IN MAY 1984 FOLLOWED BY A NORTH LINE TO EARLINGTON HEIGHTS IN DECEMBER 1984 AND AN EXTENSION TO OKEECHOBEE IN MAY 1985. A short extension of 0.7 mile to Palmetto opened in 2003 bringing the system to 22.4 miles.   Like Baltimore, it is under utilized at 57,000 riders a day for a double-ended system with a city in the middle.   An airport extension is scheduled to open next year (2012) and two other extensions that could double the length of the system are on the drawing boards.  In order to minimize costs, much of this line was built along the right-of-way of the Florida East Coast Railroad. This keeps it out of the high rent district.   A downtown distributor people mover, called the Metromover, 3.5 miles in length, was created to bring people from the heavy rail system to the city but it requires a transfer and transfers have historically deterred riding.  Metromover transports about 26,000 people a day;  I am not sure how you count people on Metromover because it is a totally free operation.    

There can be no easy solutions here.   Subways are not simple because of the high water table in a sandy environment.  

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USavhFJvzPs&feature=related

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHf6mQ8Rs0I

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvbKx2I5heQ&feature=related

JACKSONVILLE TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY OPERATES A 2.5 MILE PEOPLE MOVER THAT WAS OPENED IN 1989 AND EXTENDED IN 1998.   Because of the decline in the downtown area it serves only about 2100 people a day.   
But if you are passing through Jacksonville and have an hour to kill, it's worth riding.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMmSJraA6qM

THE HERITAGE STREETCAR LINE IN TAMPA, FLORIDA, (Tampa Electric Co. operated by Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority) OPENED A 2.4 HERITAGE CARLINE IN 2002.  The short downtown extension downtown opened January 11, 2011.  Note the item from the Tampa Bay News where the politicians, at the dedication of the extension, think it should be extended farther north but there is an admission that the operating endowment is running out.   The line hauls between 800 and 1200 people a day depending on how many ships are in port at Channelside that month.   

     http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/news/2011/01/31/station-opening-completes-teco-line.html

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGqh-pEVLmY&NR=1

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSBRmcxrFUk&feature=related

SAVANNAH (Chatham Area Transit Authority) BUILT A HERITAGE TROLLEY LINE ABOUT A MILE LONG ON THE RIVER FRONT THAT OPENED IN 2009.   It uses one former Melbourne, Australia, tram driven by an on-board diesel-generator driven off waste oil from local restaurant deep fat friers.   It does not appear in the current APTA ridership numbers but it does appear on the agency website under free services.   When I was there, the operator was stopping and getting off the car to invite people to ride.   Like New Orleans, the area can be jammed with tourists in the summer.   It was put there for tourist promotion, not to haul the locals.

     http://www.connectonthedot.com/

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5K3IHlwPyY

CHARLOTTE'S LYNX LIGHT RAIL BEGAN LIFE AS THE RAILFAN-OPERATED CHARLOTTE TROLLEY RUNNING ON THE FORMER SOUTHERN LINE THAT WENT SOUTH TO COLUMBIA AND AUGUSTA.   THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT USURPED THE RIGHT-OF-WAY, EVICTED THE RAILFANS, AND BEGAN RUNNING LIGHT RAIL TRAINS IN 2007.   The railfan equipment was liquidated.   Mr. Crawford's Red Arrow car was moved to a warehouse.   The former Norfolk Birney wound up as a second car in Fort Collins, Colorado.   The single restored Charlotte car remained for special duty. A Gomaco heritage car (no. 92) ran service on weekends but budget cuts saw it removed from service with the schedule change of June 28, 2010.    Has light rail been successful?   Light rail in the banking capital of the south hauls one-fifth of all CATS riders.   As a heritage line it moved about 500 people a day; as a full-fledged light rail, the 10 mile line hauls 20,000 a day ... not too shabby for a highly dispersed southern city.   This is one of those growth areas.   Unlike the northeast where cities grow smaller, Charlotte has gone from 134,000 in the 1950 census to more than 710,000 today.     Add a million to that for the two-state metro area.  There are plans for additional extensions but no money.    Hmmm.   Wonder what the Wachovia - Wells Fargo merger will do to employment there?   It was Wachovia's headquarters.   

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0BxodAMy48&feature=fvsr

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=789NKyzcNeA&feature=related