Tag Archives: Transit

A visual survey of selected elevated rail viaducts: part 1 – the universe of post-tensioned pre-cast concrete

For background, see the prologue for this series.

With phase I of WMATA’s Silver Line through Tysons Corner nearing completion, we now have a better sense of the visual impact of the elevated guideways on the cityscape of Tysons Corner. Elevated rail in Tysons, given the widths of the roads it runs over/along, makes perfect sense. However, there are other examples of urban rail viaducts with more visual appeal and urban design sense than the Silver Line guideways.

Tunnels, all else being equal, would be preferable. Given the costs of tunneling (even with the promise of large diameter TBMs, Spanish-level construction costs, and other tunneling practices that could get American subway costs under control) and the reality of costs and land values means that most potential Metro expansions outside of the core will need to consider elevated rail.

Like the roads in Tysons, many potential rights of way feature plenty of room for elevated rail – if it is done well. While elevated rail in Tysons makes sense, the execution of the guideways could’ve featured better design with less visual obstruction. Jarrett Walker discusses the pro/con of elevated rail here, noting that rapid transit requires full grade separation.

For comprehensive visual documentation of the Phase I construction, I recommend Sand Box John Cambron’s blog.

Through Tysons, the elevated guideway is aligned in the center of the Route 7 roadway and alongside the Route 123 roadway. The guideways use segmented pre-cast post-tensioned box girder spans, with one box girder for each track supported by a variety of piers. Large portions of the guideway use a single pier with a large hammerhead cap to support both tracks.

Metro guideway in Tysons Corner, VA. Image from John Cambron.

Center-running guideway with hammerhead pier caps in Tysons Corner. Image from John Cambron.

Center-running guideway showing single pier supporting both tracks. Image from John Cambron.

Center-running elevated rail guideway in Tysons Corner. Image from John Cambron.

Using hammerhead pier caps increases the visual bulk of the elevated structure. A few columns integrate the pier into the guideway’s structure, providing a slimmer profile for the guideway:

Support piers integrated into guideway, reducing bulk in Tysons Corner, intersection of Route 7 and Westpark Dr. Image from John Cambron

Other aerial examples: This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive survey, but a look at a few illustrative examples of what aesthetic alternatives are available for elevated rail.

These examples are primarly from light rail and rapid transit systems relatively recently constructed; they do not represent the legacy elevated systems of Chicago, New York, and so on.

WMATA examples: Green Line, southern extension to Branch Ave. This extension of the Green line makes use of several segmented pre-cast concrete elevated structures, similar to the kind of guideway used through Tysons Corner. While the majority of the guideway crosses the green environment of Suitland Parkway, this concrete guideway has the advantage of carrying both tracks in a single structure, both minimizing the bulk of the guideway and the support piers.

WMATA Green Line guideway over Suitland Parkway. Image from Google Streetview.

Near the Branch Avenue station, as the tracks separate for the station’s island platform, each track with its own structure. North of the Branch Ave station, the two guideways are able to share a common pier without a large hammerhead cap.

WMATA guideways near Branch Ave station. Image from Google Streetview.

South of the Branch Ave station, each of the guideways feature their own piers.

WMATA Branch Ave station, looking towards Southern Ave station. Image from Google Streetview.

Seattle Link light rail: Sound Transit’s Link light rail could be called a pre-metro, thanks to extensive grade separation combined with the repurposing of Seattle’s downtown bus tunnel. It features a large amount of elevated rail (with the requisite views along the way) also making use of pre-cast concrete segmental bridges used in Tysons.

Sound Transit elevated rail. Image from Google Streetview.

Support piers feature more detailing than in other examples, with the shape of the pier caps matching the profile of the pre-cast box girder segments. Longer spans introduce subtle arches to the guideway, adding a bit of elegance to the concrete structures. The guideway also makes use of metal railings rather than soundwalls next to the track, reducing the visual bulk of the structure.

Sound Transit elevated rail over Duwamish Waterway. Image from Google Streetview.

View of elevated guideway along arterial street. Image from Google Streetview.

Seattle’s light rail pier in roadway. Image from Google Streetview.

On lower traffic roads, Seattle’s light rail includes several examples of dropping a pier in the middle of a roadway, rather than using a bigger straddle bent.

Bay Area: BART’s elevated guideways don’t appear to use the same construction methods as WMATA, but have the same concrete aesthetic. In this case, the guideway runs adjacent to a residential street, while the area under the guideway is used for greenspace and a biking/walking trail.

BART viaduct, with greenway underneath. Image from Google Streetview.

San Jose: VTA light rail features several grade separations. VTA isn’t exactly the kind of agency you’d want to emulate (good discussion here from Cap’n Transit). However, the basic geometry of their elevated track segments shows what kind of visual impact you can have with center-running elevated rail along wide roads. In this example, center-running light rail turns into an elevated alignment down the center of a wide arterial street:

VTA light rail elevated track above the center of an arterial street. Image from Google Streetview.

VTA light rail aerial station in the center of the roadway, with pedestrian access via normal sidewalk and crosswalk. Image from Google Streetview.

Since VTA uses proof of payment, faregates aren’t necessary and allows for a minimal ‘mezzanine’ area for fare control. Contrast that to the visual bulk of the rather large mezzanines in the Tysons Corner WMATA stations.

Aerial view of the same VTA station. Image from Google Maps.

Any other examples to consider?

Table of contents:

A visual survey of selected elevated rail viaducts: prologue and index

Under the Chicago El. Photo by the author.

Elevated rail has a bad name; urban rapid transit requires full grade separation. These two facts are inconveniently opposed to one another. Is there a future for elevated rail in urban and suburban areas? Cheaper elevated construction opens the door for more rapid transit expansion in our regions, but only if the real negatives of elevated structures can be overcome.

Some background reading:

Grade separation is the critical element for rapid transit. Jarrett Walker highlights the technical reasons and advantages to full grade separation: speed, frequency, and reliability.
Richard Layman presumes urban elevated rail isn’t workable in this post title, asking us to remember why we build transit underground. He notes that the real value for transit is in the grade separation.
Jarrett Walker again writes about the tensions and interaction between good transit (speed, frequency, reliability), good urbanism and urban design (streetscapes, aesthetics, design), and the demand for cost-effective infrastructure, using Honolulu’s planned rapid transit project as an example.
Yonah Freemark looks at the same case of Honolulu here – construction is currently stalled as legal battles play out.
Discussion at archBoston on how we’ve done better with integrating elevated structures into the cityscape in the past; a similar survey from the CA HSR blog.
Alon Levy on conditions to make elevated rail work: branding it as something new to avoid the visual associations with Chicago-like structures; ensuring that new structures are aesthetically pleasing; and focusing on wide rights-of-way with room to build without overshadowing the street.
Keep Houston Houston on the “limits of cute transportation.”

In addition to mitigating the negatives from elevated structures, there’s also the matter of emphasizing the positives of transit. Considering that a great deal of the public opposition to elevated structures is likely now framed by thinking of freeway overpasses and flyovers rather than Chicago-style Els, it’s worth considering the relative capacities of each. Market Urbanism writes about benefits vs costs, citing Robert Fogelson’s Downtown:

Elevated rail lines are far smaller in footprint than elevated highways, and although highways may have been quieter than rail lines a century ago (though I’m not sure if this is even true), the technology has surely shifted in rail’s favor with regards to noise. And even if the technologies were equally obtrusive on a per-mile basis, you much fewer less elevated rail miles to transport the same amount of people as with an elevated highway – perhaps even almost an order of magnitude less.

From Downtown:

John A. Miller was one of the few Americans who was puzzled by the construction of elevated highways. “Elevated railways with a capacity of 40,000 persons per hour in one direction are [being] torn down,” he wrote in amazement in 1935, “while elevated highways with a capacity of 6,000 persons per hour are being erected.”

Thankfully, we appear to no longer be considering urban highway expansion. Urban rail expansion shouldn’t be off the table, however, thanks to the ill-advised highway expansions of the past.

In a brief series of posts, I wanted to take a visual survey of elevated rail precedents around the world. My work here is by no means exhaustive; I welcome any feedback you might have.

Index of posts in the series:

Prologue
Part 1 – The universe of post-tensioned pre-cast concrete
Part 2 – Best practices of integrating viaducts into urban designs
Part 3 – Els that gave Els a bad name
Part 4 – Monorails, active uses under viaducts, and precast concrete in Puerto Rico
Part 5 – Vancouver and Tysons Corner
Part 6 – Hong Kong

Growing cargo traffic at Dulles – the challenges of realizing the value of an aerotropolis

Dulles International Airport – from Google Maps

In DC’s western suburbs, two related battles concerning growth are at the forefront. One is a plan for a new highway, the other is the desire to expand air cargo operations at Dulles International Airport. Both concepts seem to be hitched to one another, but they ought to be considered separately on their own merits.

The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has expressed a desire to grow cargo traffic at Dulles. At the same time, sprawl interests are pushing the bi-county parkway, pitching the road as a benefit to Dulles. Jonathan O’Connell’s profile of several road advocates in the Washington Post shows how much of the advocacy is another verse of the same song.

Looking to untie the road interests and airport interests David Alpert asks why MWAA is pushing all things Dulles in a Washington Post op-ed, when passengers seem more interested in DCA:

Virginia and airport officials seem to behave as though their mission is to make more stuff happen at Dulles, whether that stuff wants to happen there or not.

A quick glance through an MWAA powerpoint from their strategic planning exercises explains the logic of focusing growth on Dulles. DCA is constrained (physically, legally) with room to grow only on the margins. DCA can never be the full-service International airport that IAD can; and MWAA fears maximizing value at DCA would hurt IAD’s currently fragile position – the FAA’s recently approved slot-swap gave JetBlue a foothold at DCA, with a corresponding reduction in flights at IAD (slide 16).

Dulles relies on air traffic for approximately 75% of its revenues. While Dulles has tremendous capacity to grow, realizing that potential requires additional capital investment, such as Dulles’ Aerotrain and other elements of the recent D2 program. Now, Dulles finds itself trapped with a higher cost per enplanement than other airports due to the capital program, and a revenue stream overly reliant on aviation revenues.

Increased air cargo has the potential to help on both counts. More freight means more flights, boosting aviation revenues without requiring new airport facility investments. More freight also means increased demand for revenue-generating uses of airport land that currently lie fallow.

The catch is this: it’s not easy creating a freight business out of nothing. Dulles does not have the central location like Memphis or Louisville, the central US hubs for FedEx and UPS, respectively. The area does not have a huge manufacturing base, either – air cargo shipments originating or terminating in IAD would need to focus on consumer goods. Likewise, the airport does not currently have a major cargo presence that would lure the manufacturing that does exist in the area to cluster around the airport. Chickens and eggs are both missing.

There are opportunities, however. Dulles does have huge tracts of land, the ability for 24 hour operations, and lots of airfield capacity. Both FedEx and UPS operate regional hubs in the US to avoid the need to route all cargo through their core hubs in Memphis and Louisville. On the east coast, FedEx operates out of Newark while UPS operates their east coast hub in Philadelphia. Linda Loyd profiled the UPS operation in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Starting at 7 a.m. each day, UPS planes arrive in Philadelphia from Cologne, which is UPS’s European hub, and from England and Paris. International flights from Louisville, Ky., stop in Philadelphia heading to Europe, and planes leave Europe, stopping in Philadelphia, bound for Louisville, which is UPS’s air headquarters. Each afternoon, flights arrive here loaded with packages from Dallas and Southern California.

UPS is the world’s largest transportation company, and the Philadelphia facility – second in size only to Louisville – handles 70,000 parcels and documents per hour. That number reaches 95,000 at peak times like Christmas, with parcels headed to and from 18 states, as far west as California.

…

Just before midnight, as passenger terminals and commercial flights are winding down, operations are heating up at UPS. Package sorting largely happens at night. More than 1,000 UPS workers report at 11 p.m. for the “night sort,” which continues until about 3 a.m., or until all packages are unloaded and sorted and put back into trucks, trailers, and planes to leave again.

Cargo moves around the world in multiple stops, not one long journey.

At each stop, planes and trucks are emptied, and packages are sorted and scanned, and reloaded on other flights. The network tracks packages on each leg of the trip, in order to maximize the weight and loads, through constant sorting and resorting. While a lot of the work is automated, it requires an army of people, along with bar-code scanners and a city of conveyor belts that crisscross like freeways.

Philadelphia’s UPS facility might be ripe for poaching: As Loyd’s article notes, the 212 acre site lies in the way of a proposed runway expansion at PHL. The airport’s proffered alternative location is smaller, closer to residential neighbors, and without room for expansion. Unsurprisingly, UPS does not favor the expansion (nor does PHL’s anchor tenant, US Air – fearing the increased fees that currently hurt an airport like Dulles).

In the case that UPS is looking for alternative airports, MWAA Board Minutes show the courtship in progress. Dulles can offer an east-coast location with room to grow and unconstrained flight operations, and hooking an anchor cargo integrator like UPS would be attractive to other air cargo operators, as well as businesses with lots of air cargo shipments.

While increased cargo is one option to grow non-aviation revenues through land development, it is not the only option. Increasing non-aviation revenues is important to provide a counter-cyclical revenue source for airport operations. It also represents a change in MWAA’s practices – while most airports have been increasing their share of non-aeronautical revenues, MWAA has been going in the opposite direction (page 28).

The options under immediate consideration, however, sound awfully uninspiring (if functional): more parking, another gas station, and an additional hotel (page 29). On the western side of the airport, near the proposed highway expansion, MWAA envisions industrial development that can benefit from direct access to the airport’s ramp.

MWAA supports road expansion near the airport because MWAA is not in a position to argue against improvements to airport access. However, that doesn’t mean the shape of development on and around the airport can’t move in a more sustainable direction. There are a great deal of opportunities to green the airport, but perhaps the most promising would be re-thinking the shape of airport development with the arrival of Metro into something akin to other ‘airport city’ concepts around the world – capitalizing on the real estate value Metro will bring, the on-airport location, and the virtuous cycle of improving IAD’s airport experience – certainly more ambitious than a second convenience store.

Part of the challenge is in counting on growth – the accuracy record of forecast traffic doesn’t exactly build confidence, but the future for more urban development, walkable places, and transit-oriented development in the region is promising. The challenge will be in taking the city approach to the airport; thinking beyond just infrastructure, cargo, and agglomeration economies. Airport terminals are already, by necessity, pedestrian-oriented environments between drop-off and the gate. Extending that mindset beyond the terminal is the next step.

The costs of moving Madison Square Garden from atop Penn Station

CC image from wallyg.

The New York City Council recently voted to approve Madison Square Garden’s operating permit for a period of just ten years, with the goal of expediting the arena’s replacement and thereby easing the potential renovation of the city’s main inter-city rail station. Given that operating permits are frequently handed out indefinitely, and given the emerging consensus of the city’s elites that the station needs to be replaced, it’s not surprising to see this characterized by some as an eviction notice.

MSG, unsurprisingly, is pushing back. They argue the arena cannot “be forced to move” through the permit process, as they own the arena and the air rights it occupies outright. The government can certainly force MSG (with proper compensation) to move through eminent domain, though the cost of buying MSG out could be prohibitive, and Mayor Bloomberg has ruled out using eminent domain to do so.

Regardless of the method, moving MSG will require a great deal of money. Taking the property would be plenty expensive; luring MSG to move with a new arena would be similarly pricey. Unlike the previous plans for a new MSG as a part of a Penn Station redevelopment plan, the arena’s operators are finishing a large renovation, essentially a complete re-building of the interior of the venue. With the renovation complete, the promise of a modern arena is less lucrative – particularly when a re-located arena would likely require a less-valuable location.

Proponents of the short extension of the operating permit assert that ten years is enough for MSG to amortize the investment of their renovation. When considering the value of the property alone, that claim is dubious:

Further, under these projections, if MSG were forced to move in 15 years, it would have earned back only $375 million. To recoup its entire renovation cost would take 40 years—which is about equal to the useful lifespan of the rehabbed arena. The building had undergone only minor updates since it opened in 1968.

This analysis, however, is the most conservative way of looking at MSG and isn’t at all the way the business community has seen the Garden since Madison Square Garden Co. was spun off from Cablevision three years ago.

To the Wall Street crowd, MSG is not merely an arena, but a fast-growing media company whose crown jewel is the MSG Networks, which broadcast games for the teams that call the Garden home, plus the New York Islanders, New Jersey Devils and Buffalo Sabres. Operating margins in MSG’s cable business are 68%, based on data from research firm SNL Kagan. The robust revenue stream explains why the company has been able to renovate its signature arena without taking on debt.

For the purposes of valuing a piece of real estate to be taken for public use, considering the value of the entire media business would not make sense. Either way, even if the costs of the renovation are fully amortized, MSG would still be owed just compensation for its property.

The high costs of relocating MSG against their will make the outcome unlikely. Even with MSG as a willing partner in a relocation, completing a deal would be complicated and expensive. Realistically, the likely outcome will involve station improvents that fall short of demolishing the arena. These can address some of the staiton’s design flaws, rather than mere aesthetic concerns.

Shifting DC’s mode share – Sustainable DC’s complimentary policies of population growth and increasing non-auto transportation

Last month, the Washington Post’s Dr. Gridlock column profiled DC’s various new transportation investments might change transportation in the District. However, Dr. Gridlock used some odd phrasing to frame the city’s varied goals:

“In the Sustainable D.C. plan we released earlier this year,” the mayor said at the crosswalk event, “we set an aggressive-but-realistic goal of increasing the use of public transit, biking and walking to comprise 75 percent of all commuter trips in the District in the next 20 years.”

In other words, Gray told me afterward, the future of city travel is about sharing routes safely. Look for more bus routes, streetcars, bike lanes and devices such as the pedestrian signal, which can make walking safer and more popular without infringing on people’s ability to drive autos.

But for any city, getting three of four commuter trips done without cars is a major shift in people’s behavior. Why set the target so high?

“We’re looking at adding 250,000 people over 20 years,” Gray said. “If everyone drives, that’s unsustainable.”

Is the Sustainable DC goal really setting the bar ‘so high?’

First things first, the Mayor is absolutely right: adding 250,000 new residents would not be sustainable if everyone drove. The good news, however, is that adding that many new people to the city is entirely complimentary to increasing the use of non-auto transport modes. There is no ‘if,’ those 250,000 new residents will not all drive.

What about that goal of 75% of trips by non-auto modes (with 25% of trips by bike or on foot)? First, let’s consider where we are today. On Page 80 of the full plan document:

The data is commute mode share from the 2010 Census for DC. That is, residents of DC who work (and therefore commute to work). The usual limitations apply; this data is for commute trips only, it only counts the primary mode for the commute (if I walk to a bikeshare staiton, bike to a Metro station, then ride a train, and walk to work – you wouldn’t know it from these stats), and it only applies to DC residents, not to all commuters into DC.

Looking at that 2010 data, the goal is a strong one, but hardly unreachable. Contrary to Dr. Gridlock’s focus on commuters from outside the city, basing the data on DC residents shows how close to the goal we already are. If you look at the 75% goal through the lens of the region (where 15.4% commute via transit), it indeed looks like a high bar. From the view of the city, however, the non-auto share keeps growing.

Not only are non-auto modes growing in their share of the commute, but the city is growing in population. Given DC’s fixed boundaries (no annexation of our neighboring states here), any growth in population, by definition, means an increase in DC’s population density. This growth is complimentary to the goals of increasing use of non-auto modes. Infill development, focused around transit, and built with walkability in mind all adds up to a city where non-auto modes are easier for more trips; therefore they are the ones used by the public.

As a point of comparison (with the caveat that some of the statistics might not be exact apples-to-apples comparisons) to other places and other commutes. In Paris, France: 60% walking, 27% transit, 4% bike, 7% by car. Note that this appears to be all trips, not just commute trips. Also note that 60% of Parisians do not own a car. Add in the macro-level trends concerning the drop in vehicle-miles traveled, particularly among younger Americans.

For American cities, compare the state of the DC’s non-auto mode share to other American cities in the 2012 State of Downtown report from the Downtown Business Improvement District:

The difference between DC residents commuting and people commuting to DC is significant, but not as large as the difference between DC and the region as a whole – such are the benefits of ruling out most of the auto-dominant suburb-to-suburb commutes.

Likewise, the total non-auto share for DC residents stands at 55%. Getting to 75% is a good target, but certainly not unreasonable given the starting point. Brooklyn, for example, currently has a 75% non-auto mode share (60.8 transit; 8.7 walk, 3.9 work from home, 2.1 other = 75.5%).

Making up that 20-point gap is realistic; adding 250,000 new residents is similarly realistic. These goals are complimentary to one another.

What’s wrong with ‘Metro Brown?’

Last week, the Washington Post featured a lengthy profile of WMATA’s head architect, the man behind the concepts in Metro’s recently unveiled ‘station of the future‘ concept. The article offers some insight into the thinking behind the proposed re-design of the Bethesda station, as well as some of the pushback Metro has received already from the Commission on Fine Arts (among others).

Some changes seem sensible, like higher-output light fixtures to replace current fixtures, with the goal of increased light levels while staying true to Harry Weese’s indirect lighting scheme. These seem more like mechanical or operational challenges for the most part, the kind of behind-the-scenes stuff that won’t make such a huge difference in the appearance of stations.

Other proposals seem like change for the sake of change: replacing bronze with stainless steel, for example:

Karadimov acknowledges bronze as a central element of the “original palate” of Metro. But operationally, it is not ideal. Bronze needs polishing, not just cleaning, and the grime on the railing in Bethesda easily comes off to the touch. In the NoMa-Gallaudet and Largo stations, some of the system’s newest, there are already stainless steel railings that Karadimov says are less expensive to clean (though he did not have a cost estimate) and lighter in color. Same for the first group of five Silver Line stations under construction and the canopies that cover some Metro entrances.

Karadimov proposed replacing the bronze railings and escalator panels throughout the Bethesda station with stainless steel; after criticism over the idea of stripping out so much bronze, however, he retreated, agreeing not to replace the bronze with stainless steel or any concrete parapets with glass. Instead he says Metro will keep all its bronze railings. But he says the escalator panels are a less central element that needs replacing. “That is one thing that we are going to have to have a further conversation about,” he said.

While stainless steel might require less maintenance, that doesn’t make it maintenance-free. Plenty of Metro’s entrance canopies are already showing their age, along with accumulated dirt and grime. Likewise, I can’t see any objection to the use of stainless steel features in new stations, but fail to see why this is such a critical element for the improvement of existing stations. If an escalator replacement opens the door for a stainless steel enclosure instead of a bronze one, so be it – this would hardly be Metro’s first stainless escalator. However, that reasoning doesn’t apply to bronze railings that are not in need of replacement.

Stainless steel station elements at NoMa-Gallaudet U Station. Photo by author.

Aside from bronze, the other element of Metro’s aesthetic under attack is the color brown:

But if the stations are to get brighter, Karadimov said, brown cannot continue to be the dominant color. “We’re not going to keep any brown,” he said. “We believe that having a lighter color will help make the station more bright.”

Like the bronze, brown unquestionably contributes to the placid feeling of the stations, but Karadimov said it contributes just as strongly to views that the stations appear dated. Whether the agency will have to retreat on the color brown as it did on bronze has not been decided.

Karadimov also has not formally proposed a color to replace it. He talks about light gray and silver, which he said would make signage easier to read, but without stainless steel to pair it with he may have to reconsider.

As ubiquitous as brown is within the Metro system, it is by no means the dominant color inside stations. The complaint that bronze is too dark seems to ring hollow, as well. Concrete and the red tiles are far more dominant in the palate than either brown or bronze.

Brown elements are limited to accent pieces and signage. The shade of brown itself is so dark that it doesn’t readily register as a brown at all, but almost a black-brown. Contrary to the assertion from Metro, this dark background provides a great deal of contrast for white lettering, making signage easy to read. White text on dark backgrounds is hardly unique to DC in terms of mass transit signage, either.

Combination of stainless steel, painted steel, and brown signage elements at NoMa-Gallaudet U Station. Photo by author.

Even in Metro’s newer stations (those not a part of the originally planned system), Metro’s white-text-on-brown-background signage standard remained intact. Why change it now and disrupt the uniformity across the system?

The addition of gray elements to Metro’s signage scheme is not new, either. Gallery Place, WMATA’s designated ‘test’ station for new signage, has seen lots of designs over the years, including different background colors and fonts and backlit signage, and the use of gray backgrounds for directional arrows – but none abandon Metro Brown.

Metro’s ‘station of the future’ – why mess with what works?

This week, WMATA unveiled a concept for their “station of the future.” The press release and accompanying video flythough of the pilot station (Bethesda) for these improvements lists the reasons for these changes, including “improved lighting, better information and improved customer convenience.” And who would be against those things? All three have been criticisms of Metro in the past, particularly station lighting.

However, what they’ve shown in the ‘station of the future’ looks a lot more like a wholesale redesign of some of Metro’s iconic station architecture. Dan Malouff at BeyondDC lists the six concepts to be tested:

New wall-mounted lights along the length of the platform, and new information pylons with larger signs and more real-time displays.

Reflective metal panels along the vending wall will be brighter, eliminate shadows, and reduce clutter.

Smaller manager kiosk will make room for more fare gates, which will be reflective metal instead of “Metro brown”.

Anti-slip flooring at the base of the escalators.

Overhead lighting in the mezzanine.

Glass walls replace concrete, allowing more light through.

All together, that’s a mix of sensible station improvements, but also some serious assaults on the system’s architecture and design.

Some of these shouldn’t be controversial at all, such as the non-slip flooring at the base of escalators instead of Metro’s notoriously slippery tiles. Likewise, ticket vending and customer information displays mounted into the mezzanine walls seems like a welcome change. Smaller station manager kiosks in order to provide more faregates makes sense; however, the current renovations on the Orange/Blue lines in DC are putting in larger kiosks, not smaller.

Other changes aren’t new concepts, but rather long-standing challenges Metro has looked to address. The overhead lighting in the mezzanine appears from the flythrough to be the same light fixtures Metro tested at Judiciary Square. The quality of the lighting tends to be cool and harsh (a common trend for WMATA recently), but it’s certainly brighter for mezzanine users (and not nearly as abrasive as WMATA’s Friendship Heights experiment using Metro’s outdoor pylons indoors).

Glass parapet walls have been used in other stations, as well – most recently in the baseball renovations at Navy Yard. That staircase, however, is a rather surgical change to the station, cutting a hole in the mezzanine floor where there was none before. This concept proposes replacing an existing concrete parapet with glass.

The ‘station of the future’ proposes three really big changes to Metro’s design: eliminating ‘Metro brown’ in favor of stainless steel; a completely new winged pylon design; and indirect lighting provided by new wall-mounted fixtures that can double as station signage.

It’s not clear to me what’s wrong with Metro Brown. Given the multitude of other options available to improve lighting, blaming the limited amount of brown metal panels in the stations seems like a stretch. Given the cost to Metro’s architectural legacy, it’s hard to see how this is worth it.

Metro’s desire to distance itself from the color brown isn’t new. The three newest stations in the system (and not part of the originally planned system) make use of glass and stainless steel, but still use Metro brown for signage and entrance pylons. Metro’s newest railcars will ditch the brown stripe at window level in favor of a gaudy disco-ball logo.

The voiceover in WMATA’s video expresses concern about brown representing a dated look, but I’m not sure anyone really objects to the color and the role it plays in Metro’s overall visual brand. The brown pylons and signage have aged well compared to Metro’s original car interiors or the idea of carpeting. Why change what works?

It’s hard to tell the extent of the use of stainless from Metro’s flythough of what looks to be a Sketchup model, but the voiceover makes it seem possible that the new pylons could be stainless; the Sketchup signage in the flythrough is the same color as the pylon, making it hard to tell which elements are steel and which would be Metro brown.

The stated benefits of the pylon re-design seem dubious. The winged directional signage seems unnecessary to me, and putting wings on each and every pylon clutters the space created by Metro’s vaults. Adding more PID displays is a positive, but I’m not sure that many displays are necessary. Two or three along the length of any platform would probably suffice.

System wayfiding is important, but there are lots of other ways to accomplish that goal without adding wings telling you which side of the platform is for outbound trains to every pylon. Likewise, one of the benefits to Metro’s spacious vaulted stations are the clear lines of sight in most stations – alighting passengers can usually see their exit mezzanine within direct view, providing intuitive wayfinding within stations.

I’d bu curious to know if the goals of improved lighting from the indirect fixtures mounted into the walls could be just as easily met with better maintenance of the existing trackbed lighting, cleaning station vaults more regularly, and looking into the use of newer technologies like LEDs in existing lighting locations for both higher lighting levels and lower maintenance requirements.

Here, grab a seat

Brookland Metro Station – photo by author.

While in the midst of repacing the old terra cotta tiles at the Brookland station (the most colorful of all Metro stations) with the newer concrete tiles for outdoor stations, Metro was kind enough to build some temporary wood benches for customers.

Metro highlights frequency in new bus map

This week, Greater Greater Washington highlighted WMATA’s latest iteration of their new bus map (as post on the first iteration is here), which opts for a diagrammatic representation of the bus network, highlighting frequent, all-day bus services over infrequent and irregulat coverage bus routes.

The new map is a huge improvement of the old one. Digging through the archives, I found this post, with a screencap of roughly the same part of the city – just for the purposes of comparison.

The inspiration for posting about the shortcomings of the WMATA map back in 2010 came after reading Jarrett Walker’s blog. Walker emphasizes the value of frequency, and the importance of highlighting frequent services in an operator’s communications, such as maps. WMATA’s old maps made no such distinctions – in fact, the map highlighted rather useless distinctions, such as whether or not a bus crossed state lines.

The timing of Metro’s release of the new map was fortuitous. Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in Walker’s two-day transit network design course. The exercises in the course force participants to deal with the trade-offs between conflicting goals, limited budgets, constrained geography, and the fundamental geometry of efficient transit service.

(Jarrett has posted reviews of the DC course here – I would definitely recommend the course both for those working on transit/transportation, as well as anyone interested in how cities function)

Towards a DC S-Bahn, part 2

VRE train at Franconia-Springfield. CC image from nevermindtheend

DC’s existing (yet fragmented) commuter rail network is a huge low-hanging fruit for expanded and improved transit service (see this previous post). Writing at Pedestrian Observations, Alon Levy makes the statement that nobody likes riding North American commuter rail. Alon compares two locations in New York that have both subway and commuter rail service – and in each case, the subway ride wins a much larger share of riders despite often faster rides on commuter rail.

Though the data isn’t easily available for the commuter rail operators, the differences in ridership are substantial. The Rockville Metro station alone has more boardings than the entire MARC Brunswick line.

Alon identifies four reasons – a poorly structured network that does not serve non-downtown destinations; poorly designed transfers, often with financial penalty; cost differential and a lack of an integrated transit fare structure across all modes; and low frequency service.

Addressing the DC region specifically, some of these are undoubtedly true. A lack of through-routing prevents serving non-downtown destinations on the other side of Union Station MARC could easily serve dense employment clusters in Crystal City and Alexandria, VRE could offer service through to Rockville, Silver Spring, Fort Meade and others. Likewise, train frequency isn’t good – structuring it more like urban rapid transit could be a huge improvement.

Alon’s four points open the door for a comparison between Metro and the area’s commuter rail services. The commuter rail network shares several stops with Metro. Shared stops are as follows (stations in bold are those along the shared track segment of a conceptual through-routed network):

Maryland:

Rockville
Silver Spring
College Park
Greenbelt
New Carrollton

DC:

Union Station
L’Enfant Plaza

Virginia:

Crystal City
King Street
Franconia-Springfield

While transfers aren’t particularly easy, some of the physical connections aren’t terrible. Some stations share the same basic platform access (New Carrollton), while others easily could do so (King Street) with a little construction. The Crystal City connection is a bit of a stretch – it involves several blocks of walking, either along Crystal City’s streets or through the warren of tunnels and underground retail space. L’Enfant Plaza does not have an actual connection to the Metro platforms, just adjacency.

Financial transfer penalties are another story. MARC offers an add-on TLC pass (at the cost of $102/month on top of the cost of a monthly MARC pass) that allows for unlimited use of local transit (rail and bus) in both DC and Baltimore; VRE offers a similar product with a similarly-large surcharge per month.

Using MARC’s $102 per month figure, and assuming 40 last-mile Metro trips per month, that would require a minimum of a $2.55 peak fare to make the pass break even on commute trips alone (roughly the equivalent of a ~15 minute Red Line ride from Union Station to Van Ness).

The fare structures aren’t entirely integrated either, though the disparities aren’t as large as in Alon’s example from New York. Thanks to Metro’s time-and-distance based fare structure, you don’t find the same disparity of a flat-fare subway system up against a graduated fare commuter rail system. The example of Far Rockaway shows the disparity – a subway ride to Midtown is a flat $2.25, while the LIRR to Penn Station is $10.00 at the peak, $7.25 off peak.

Compare that to the single ride fares for MARC/VRE and Metro – all fares to Union Station as a point of comparison.

Maryland (Penn Line fares, Camden and Brunswick line fares; Metro fares from Union Station):

Station – MARC fare to Union – Metro fare to Union
Rockville – 5.00 – 5.75 (time: 35-42 mins via MARC; 34 mins via Metro)
Silver Spring – 4.00 – 3.35
College Park – 4.00 – 3.65
Greenbelt – 4.00 – 4.30
New Carrollton – 4.00 – 4.20

Virginia (VRE fares – single ride price used; Metro fares from Union Station)

Station – VRE fare to Union – Metro fare to Union
Crystal City – 6.20 – 2.60
King Street – 6.20 – 3.70
Franconia-Springfield – 6.80 – 5.60 (time: 36-41 mins via VRE; 45 mins via Metro)

MARC fares are all rather close to Metro; VRE fares have a different problem of the LIRR-Subway comparison at Far Rockaway; the longest possible competing trip (from Franconia-Springfield) has the smallest fare differential, it’s the shorter trips that are out of whack (a one-station VRE ride from L’Enfant to Union Station costs $5.55 on VRE, compared to the minimum Metro rail fare of $2.10). This structure obviously reflect’s VRE’s role as an AM-peak-inbound, PM-peak-outbound operation, but certainly discourages usage within the core of the region for rapid transit.

Commuter rail isn’t always more expensive, either. Looking at Rockville, (which, again, draws more boardings than the entire Brunswick line) a monthly pass to Union Station costs you $125 with the various discounts, while 40x trips per month via Metro at $5.75 a pop totals $230 ( !!! ); a weekly MARC pass totals $37.50 compared to $57.50 for ten peak-hour rides on Metro. A person who was dropping $230 a month on Metro fares could easily purchase a $125/month MARC pass, add on the $102/month TLC pass and still get unlimited Metro usage off-peak for about the same cost.

A unified fare structure would likely involve lowering fares within the inner VRE territory (further integration would assume a single fare table for a through-running merged S-Bahn-like operation between MARC and VRE) to better mirror the various Metro fares for similar distances. I would imagine this to be an easier organizational lift than, say, trying to bridge the gap in peak fares at Far Rockaway between $2.25 and $10.00.

The biggest difference in usage (thereby indicating usefulness) would appear to be frequency. MARC’s Penn Line features the most frequent service, and even that is 20-40 minutes between trains at best during the peak, hourly trains at mid-day, and longer headways in the evening – plus, no weekend service. Frequency is freedom, after all. Thus, the purpose of any effort for through-running commuter rail services should be to help the transition of DC’s commuter rail network into a frequent S-Bahn-like network of interlined rapid transit services.

City Block

a work in progress…