Although the fear is that the further upgrades are never made, I guess something is better than nothing? On a side note, did I miss the incorporation of the Melton line?
Tag: Transport
From ancient Rome to modern Atlanta, the technologies that allow people to commute in about 30 minutes have defined the shape of cities.
Building on the idea of Marchetti’s Constant, Jonathan English discusses the role of transport in the development of the city. He traces a path through the past, beginning with the foot, moving onto railways, then streetcars, underground and finally expressways.
I remember when I first saw an oBike in action in Melbourne, a guy rolled up to a train station and dumped it near the on ramp. It just seemed wrong. I understand there are limitations to having organised parking spots, however I think that merely dumping the scooters or bikes where ever is irresponsible. My other concern is the data collection associated with such ventures.
Following the example set by airlines, Uber, and Lyft, public transportation officials are creating frequent-flier-like systems to goose ridership.
I like the endeavor behind the idea of rewarding users of public transport. However, I fear that like all the other ‘reward’ programs (FlyBuys etc) this information will be mined and misused. I always think that we miss the greater good associated with public transport, I am not sure of focusing on the individual really responds to this. To be honest, I am not sure if Luxembourg’s free travel is even solving the problem.
From March next year, commuters in the tiny nation will not be charged for trips on its trains, trams and buses. Marc Auxenfants crunches the numbers of such a move.
Marginalia
The move to free transport has attracted a great deal of international attention. “If the country had launched a promotional campaign, it would have cost millions,” comments economist Michel-Edouard Ruben. “With this announcement, Luxembourg just achieved a worldwide ad campaign for free.”
But he feels the style outweighs the substance. “Free transport is a false, fashionable idea,” he argues. He feels the money would be better spent on rent subsidies or social housing.
Constance Carr, a senior postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg, voices similar views, saying: “Free public transport is a complex issue and fees are not the problem.” She highlights high-priced housing as the key social issue, saying rising costs are driving people out of the city to border areas. Making more land available for housing would be one potential solution, she says, but whether land owners would support that “is a big question”.
I have been listening to a lot of Cory Doctorow lately after reading Walkaway. One of the points that he regularly makes is that everything breaks at some point. The question is often how we respond.
I was faced with that today when my train broke down. It was interesting to see people dash for their cars or call an Uber. What I think is missed in this is that if everyone manages to make their own way, there is no expectation of the transport company to have any sort of backup. So I waited.
Although I waited for 30+ minutes for the replacement bus, I eventually got to work and everything was ok. Sometimes we worry so much that we forget what it means to wait and that sometimes it is about the masses.
The billionaire is drilling for futuristic transit under Los Angeles. He didn’t have to ask the neighbors first.
Alana Semuels explores the intricacies associated with Elon Musk’s boring project in Los Angeles. She highlights the many ways in which innovation is able to bypass the rules and regulations that hamper the development of public infrastructure. For me this is highlighted by fifty year plan associated with transport in Melbourne. I agree with Semuels’ that it would be better to see such time and money spent supporting the state, rather than endlessly trying to circumvent it.
Marginalia
Vicky Warren feels like she’s been attacked from all sides lately. Across the street from her rental apartment in the working-class Los Angeles County city of Hawthorne, noisy planes take off and land at all hours, diverted to the local municipal airport from wealthier Santa Monica, where neighbor complaints have restricted air traffic. On the other side of her apartment, cars on the 105 Freeway sound the frustration of L.A. traffic. She’s even getting assailed within her walls: Termites have invaded so completely that she can’t keep any food uncovered. Flea bites cover her legs; rats are aggressively attacking the boxes she has stored in her garage. So Warren was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn that invaders are coming from underground, too.
I talked to a dozen people who live along the tunnel’s route, and most said they hadn’t witnessed any extra noise or traffic. But none had been informed ahead of time that a private company would be digging a tunnel beneath the street. Some only learned about the tunnel in mid-2018—not when the digging started, in 2017—because the company purchased a dilapidated house on 119th Place for nearly $500,000 in cash.
Yet, in many ways, the tunnel is a triumph of privatization. Plans to extend the Los Angeles Metro system under the Sepulveda Pass first went on the ballot in 2016, after years of planning; the project itself won’t be completed for decades, because of federal and state regulations. Musk just needs to find the money. Since the Boring Company is private, it is able to avoid the years of tedious environmental reviews required when the government tries to build transit. It is also exempt from “Buy American” requirements necessary for projects that receive federal funding. This allows the company to try a new technology much faster than if the government got involved. Musk’s SpaceX was able to lower the cost of space travel through private rocketry, and the Boring Company hopes to do the same for tunneling, a spokesman told me.
Musk seems more interested in finding a convenient test site for a bold idea, one that he believes leapfrogs existing technological options, rather than doing the tedious work of improving an old system.
Abandoned? Post-apocalyptic? Or not…the Chongqing Metro Station in the Middle of Nowhere.
When I saw the image of subway entry seemingly in the middle of nowhere I thought it must be some sort of joke. However, I soon uncovered a different world. One involving rapid development:
The speed at which all this is happening in China makes me wonder why we speak about ten year plans in Melbourne, Australia.
In part this scenario of a station in a field reminds me of the discussion of the development of infrastructure before people in Stockholm:
In contrast, places like Vällingby, a Swedish suburb outside Stockholm built in the 1950s, were sited around a new Metro station. Building rail infrastructure through built-up areas is extremely expensive, but building it through farmland, before new neighborhoods are built, is comparatively cheap.
By as early as 2028, it’s projected to be Australia’s biggest city. By 2050, it will have grown to 8 million — the size of London and New York.
“It’s the fourth-fastest growing developed city on the planet today,” demographer Bernard Salt said.
“If we don’t invest, and continue with this rate of growth, then we collapse under our own weight. You end up with a Bangkok situation — where you have an extraordinary level of growth and congestion, and you simply cannot move around the city.”
Service drives demand. When riders started to switch to the car in the early postwar years, American transit systems almost universally cut service to restore their financial viability. But this drove more people away, producing a vicious cycle until just about everybody who could drive, drove. In the fastest-growing areas, little or no transit was provided at all, because it was deemed to be not economically viable. Therefore, new suburbs had to be entirely auto-oriented. As poverty suburbanizes, and as more jobs are located in suburban areas, the inaccessibility of transit on a regional scale is becoming a crisis.
The only way to reverse the vicious cycle in the U.S. is by providing better service up front. The riders might not come on day one, but numerous examples, from cities like Phoenix and Seattle, have shown that better service will attract more riders. This can, in turn, produce a virtuous cycle where more riders justify further improved service—as well as providing a stronger political base of support.
Jonathan English reflects on the demise of public transport in America. Although it can be easy to blame cars, the real issue is the lack of investment. Build it and they will come. It would be interesting to take a similar look at transport in Australia.
In 1969 a bold new vision for Melbourne’s public transport system was presented to the state government with a deadline for completion in mind; the year 1985. It’s not clear why the Melbourne Metropolitan Transportation Plan set its target date a modest 16 years past the publication of the plan. Perhaps to coincide with a mid 80s visit from Bruce ‘The Boss’ Springsteen when throngs of double denim fans would descend on the city and demand an efficient train ride? Whatever the reason, the public transport developments that emerged from that plan have more than outlasted the ’80s rock star era, in fact, almost fifty years on and it continues to transport millions of Victorians in and out of the City every week.
A look at underground rail loop developed as a part of the Metropolitan Transportation Plan. Interesting to contrast this with the recent announcement of an outer loop.
It’s been almost six years since I rode in one of Google’s self-driving cars. I think about all the data that Google has amassed since then – all the mapping data and geolocation data and sensor data and historical data and traffic data and all the machine learning that their machines are supposedly doing with that. Why, it’s almost as if the problems of navigating the world with AI are much, much harder than engineers imagined.
I really like Audrey Watters’ point about investing in public transport:
Personally, I’d prefer to see greater investment in public transportation than in cars, and I’d rather hear stories that predict that sort of future.
Interestingly, that might be a more logical space for automation, especially trains.
A plan to build a multi-billion-dollar underground rail loop connecting Melbourne’s western and eastern suburbs via the airport, and link all major train lines, has been unveiled by the Victorian Labor Government.
I am intrigued by the announcement of a ring rail around Melbourne. Will they still complete Metro Tunnel 2 connecting the Werribee line with Clifton Hill? I also assume that the Werribee link would probably involve connecting the Wyndham Vale V-Line (which will surely become a part of the metropolitan transport system) with Werribee. It is intriguing to place this against the plan proposed in the 60’s.
Citymapper now supports dockless transport options such as Ofo bikes in London and San Francisco’s Bird electric scooters, offering an insight into the future of transport in cities
Alex Hern discusses the rise of floating transport, something that I touched on recently with the demise of oBike in Melbourne. Hern captures a number of stories from around the world of hope for efficiency, but also issues associated with shared spaces.
Simply being profitable doesn’t necessarily mean floating transport is good for a city, and the growth of the sector has been a bumpy ride. A big problem is that pavement is a shared space, and a limited resource. The overcrowding problems San Francisco has seen with Bird scooters are mirrored in London by Ofo bikes – a model where users abandon their vehicles wherever they want inevitably results in pavements littered with out-of-service rides.
I am taken by Hern’s closing remarks concerning reliability over flexibility.
Ultimately, floating transport is going to have to learn another lesson that conventional transportation bodies have taken to heart: flexible may be fun, but cities run on reliable.
This leaves me thinking that sometimes what is required is community and sometimes that involves patience. What is the cost to the public/private transport industry when everyone relies on private personal transport models like Bird or Uber?
Final designs for Melbourne’s five new underground train stations have been unveiled, with Public Transport Minister Jacinta Allan predicting they will become new landmarks for the city.
It will be interesting to see these spaces when finished and how they will change the surrounding environment.
Essendon and Watergardens DDA, business cases for Broadmeadows/Pakenham, improvements Kananook and Seaford $16m — I’m a bit surprised Watergardens needs major works given it was only built in 2002. Does it suffer from capacity problems?
Dan, I wonder if the changes to Watergardens relates to issues around accessibility. It is currently built around steps and lifts. When the lifts break, as they seem to, it can be a problem.
This issue is only amplified by the capacity on the Sunbury line. I would imagine that this is only going to increase with the development of land between Caroline Springs and Melton. Really they are in need of ramps similar to Sunshine Station.
The 1969 Melbourne Transportation Plan was a road and rail transport plan for Melbourne, the state capital of Victoria, Australia, instituted by Henry Bolte’s state government. Most prominently, the plan recommended the provision of an extensive freeway network, much of which has since been built.
The Victorian Government has announced the development of a tram to Rowville. I have long followed these on and off again project, having grown up in the outer suburbs. I remember talking to someone about the electrification of the Melton line, I did not realise that such plans were proposed 50 years ago:
It is intriguing to think about this about what it might look like in the future. Some talk about fluidity of public transport in the future, will this put a stop to things such as train lines. Time will tell.