Making Biking Livable

How do we make biking liveable? By this I don't just mean, how do we make biking pleasant, enjoyable, a part of everyday life that's embraced (as we might mean by liveable cities or a liveable neighborhood). I also mean: how do we make it survivable given the current car dominance of American cities?

I ask because everywhere I go in the US it seems like bike infrastructure outside of the absolute largest cities is basically out to kill its users.

1. The Edges Aren't Options

Here's a fun question: where should I bike here:

Now, I approached this as a pedestrian, so unless you're in the UK it looks like the wrong side of the street. But ignore that; assume I biked back the other way. Where am I to go?

Lots of automotive users will tell me to bike on the sidewalk. That's obviously not an option here. Neither is where I'm actually supposed to bike, on the edge of the shared road. I could bike around the car, and I certainly would, but the whole reason the car is parked on the sidewalk is that there's not really supposed to be parking here at all, and so biking around pushes me out into the middle of the street, where the cars really don't want me either.

How about here?

This is a normal street. No car is parked oddly. But it's also a fast road, and the only way through this area without zigging and zagging a million times. But the only options for biking on it would be the side of a road where cars are zipping past over 40 mph, that is to say 2-3x my speed, or on the sidewalk which is both illegal and not designed for wheels (a conversation for wheelchair users as well of course).

We need to stop pretending that just putting bikes on the edge of the road is giving them space of functionally incorporating them into the city.

2. Don't Squeeze Pedestrians

The reasons I shouldn't bike on the sidewalk begin with the law, but there's reason behind that law--and not just the way sidewalks are often built out of slabs that don't lend themselves well to riding. 

One of them is this: the width of paths designed for pedestrians and only technically incorporating bikes. Yes, the Mississippi River path is gorgeous, and it's underutilized so a bike usually has no problem. But actually passing a pedestrian, or a group of them, here is a bear. And that makes sense: people on foot take a lot less space to safely negotiate their way around each other than people on bikes, due to things like speed and reaction time, and the paths were built with either just pedestrians or pedestrians and very slow bikes in mind. 

Sidewalks for natural reasons do even more of this, and have cars on one side as an added danger.

But now we have both e-bikes increasing speeds and the kind of spandex/road bike combinations that passed me on the Duck Creek Trail last week (no shade, it was impressive! But it's also a lot faster than the trail was designed for).

Now, a wider and better engineered path can work for this; I'm not against shared paths! But all too often if we get bikes out of the gutters on the streets, we just shove them into pedestrian spaces without redesign or accommodation.

3. Plan for Biking 

What this boils down to is that we need to actually plan for biking not as a behavior that we can't eradicate and thus must grudgingly give something to, but as an actual mode of transportation and movement. 

That means space given to bikes independent of the car and the foot traffic. It can share space, if the space is engineered to be shared, like this slightly wider path on the other side of the Mississippi:

But it shouldn't be simply putting bikes where others go and hoping it works out.

That's why spaces that actually acknowledge the bike formally are generally preferable.

Note that there's actually not much if any more space for the bike here than in the trails above; what's been done is to visibly and tactiley separate the bike space, and thus make it so that no road users need to accommodate each other without help from the road design.

I used Boston above, to emphasize this is doable in the US, but of course there's European examples as well, like the classic Dutch street:

The cities may be larger than, say, the Quad Cities, but the streets aren't; do we really think Brady and Harrison, all four car lanes each way, get more traffic than downtown Amsterdam or Boston? 

And if they do, isn't that actually a bigger indictment of how we've organized these much smaller cities around the car?

Biking can be liveable--can be survivable--but only if we actually design streets to make it so.

Stations That Don't Suck

How do we design stations that don't suck?

All too often, the stations on US public transit, well, suck.

Either they're far too overbuilt, leading to high costs, project overruns, and visibly unused station areas, or they're completely minimal to the point of nonexistence, or they're just plain inefficient and ineffective.

So how do we make stations that don't suck?

Well, of course, some good advice might come from the rest of the world--and from our own past practice.

1. Label Clearly

Whether you build a giant palace to the train or a simple hovel by the side of the tracks, making sure people can actually find their trains or buses is important.

There are two different signs here that identify this as track 32, and there's clear signage of what is at track 32. Now, I'm not going to say Paris Gare du Nord does everything right (the numbering of tracks can be confusing when they're in different train halls within the overall complex) but this is solid. 

I'm already on the record as a fan of Montréal's REM, but the ability to find where the train doors are coming and how full each car is makes a pretty strong combination--not to mention that system map that's right next to those indicators, making sure you understand where this particular train is within the larger REM network.

The Montréal Metro also has some nice labeling here, as they tell you where to go on the floor, not just on the wall.

2. Provide (the Right Kind of) Space

A good station has space for people and things, but it doesn't fall into either of the two most common pitfalls I see in US: way too much space for the service demand or nowhere to actually sit down.

Toronto does fall a little bit into this on the Eglinton Crosstown, but at least the labeling helps you understand that this part of the waiting are won't actually receive a train.

Chicago's Union Station has a very impressive hall, but it's quite far from the trains--and that means that while you can sit here, you then have to hustle your bustle to actually get on something. 

And that's not even getting into the weird combination of overbuilt and underbuilt at the more rural Amtrak stations, where you simultaneously have a small built footprint (just a tiny stationhouse and a little covering for waiting passengers outside) and a huge area you have to walk across to get on the train itself.

Contrast that with the similarly minimalist train station at Noisy-le-Sec, and you see a station that is actually designed for people to wait near where the train stops and move the train on again quickly.

Yes, the intercity rail patterns are very different, and that contributes to the difference in experience--but it also is a matter of design. American stations frequently centralize waiting areas and then don't really have much in the way of a platform-side space, which makes for awkward bunching and crowding followed by an unpleasant experience if the train is late (which they often are).

3. Minimalism in the Right Places

Here let me complement a US metro system: the DC Metro gets this one right.

This station is basically just a platform inside a tunnel. It's minimalist. But the minimalism is used effectively: the decoration here is just lines and arcs, and yet it creates a sense of visual expanse and consistency that transforms the space from boring to impressive. 

Not all WMATA stations have that effect, of course--the aboveground stations are just as prone to ugliness and lack of seating (notice the lean in the foreground) as anywhere else--but the underground stations are a triumph of not overbuilding to make something impressive, while not forgetting that a station can and should look cool.

This is how I feel about things like the tiling in Jean-Talon in Montréal. 

If the station is going to have tiling anyway, it's not that much different to make it patterned, colored tile. But it adds a lot to the station. So it's minimalist in the sense that it doesn't involve a massive art installation (not that those are terrible, but they're certainly not necessary the way "tile on the floor" is) but it's using that to still improve the station appearance--and in this case also the wayfinding and directing of traffic.

So how do we build a station that doesn't suck? We make sure people can get around it, we make sure that the space they're getting around in isn't too inefficient or unpleasant, and we keep the design simple without sacrificing some level of distinctive attractiveness.

How are the stations around you? 

Ridiculous Transfer Lengths

Transfers on transit are funny things. On the one hand, it is undeniably helpful to have multiple lines connect to each other and feed ridership; trying to have a single-seat ride for every trip would require infinite money (a glitch which, if found, would change city planning in more ways than this). At the same time, there is a limit to what makes a reasonable transfer. And today I want to talk about one of those limits: how much walking you have to do inside a station that claims to be connecting.

1. Up and Down

One of the ways in which a transfer can feel like "too much" is when there's a lot of up-and-down motion required to make the transition between lines or systems. Note that I don't simply mean going down or up: it's perfectly reasonable and indeed feels quite natural to go from a deep underground line (like a true tube line in London) to a more cut-and-covery, shallow line. 

What feels less reasonable, and can make a transfer feel indeed quite annoying or onerous, is making a transition up to go down or down to go up, especially if you can't actually see the tracks you're avoiding by making that movement.

It's one thing to go up and down over a visible piece of surface rail: that makes sense, as you can intuitively understand why you're going up and over and then back down to the platform level.

This walkway at Denver Union Station is a reasonable one, for instance.

But where it becomes difficult is underground, where you don't have that orientation. I'm pretty sure, for instance, that the same thing is happening at Toronto's Eglinton station as you can see in Denver: from the 5 to the 1 and back you're going up and down over the tracks. But you don't see it! You just...have a lot of travel to get to different lines.

Instead of pretty walkways with a great view of the tracks and the city behind them, you have...empty white mezzanines, albeit ones with nice public art.

It makes the whole trip feel much less reasonable and much more annoying, and thus makes the transfer feel less smooth.

2. Side to Side

The flip side of this, of course, is something like Monument-Bank in London. Bank is notoriously complex. Part of this is that it's even got two names on one station because of how massive the complex is and how wide the area being served by a single underground (in the sense of below-ground as well as Underground) station.

And so it feels crazy to transfer there not because of up-down shenanigans, but because it's just such a trek.

And it's all underground, so again, it feels even longer.

Look, it's good that people can transfer for free from one of these lines/stations to the other. It's good that they can do so without being exposed to the elements or exiting a faregate! But it's still so dang long that the article I linked above is about trying to speed it up by dealing with both the elements and the faregates, and that's a bad sign.

3. Mobility Issues

Of course, both of these problems are exacerbated for users with disabilities (whether major or comparatively minor) that cause difficulty with mobility. A cane, a wheelchair, a walker, a limp: each of these makes transiting these kinds of massive interchanges more difficult.

Sometimes it feels like you need to rent one of these scooters just to move around the station itself--even if you aren't mobility impaired.

And yes, these stations do have some accommodations for this--witness the elevator pictured for Eglinton. But it's still important to note that accommodation doesn't make the difficulty not exist in this case--it just eases it somewhat.

So what can cities do about these? One thing is to plan the connections between lines better: don't just figure that "close enough is good enough" when bringing a new line in to connect to a new one. Try to make it so that the transfers are actually reasonable--the best of course being a cross-platform or same-island exchange, but that's hardly always possible. Failing that, try to provide visual cues (not just wayfinding, but including wayfinding) that allow people to know where they are relative to the transfer and why they're being diverted when they have to go around something they can't see. At the same time, make at least a gesture towards the idea that the transfer isn't just a hodgepodge, but something with actual planning and intent involved.

And maybe try to make them a bit more accessible, as well.

Beneath the Bridges

What do you do below something big?

This is a very general question, but an important one. Many pieces of urban architecture are quite large, especially overpasses, bridges, elevated rail, etc. And there are a lot of different approaches to what you put below that, from "nothing" to "actively hostile to homeless architecture" to "cool stuff."

So let's consider the advantages of each.

1. Nothing in Particular

Sometimes you build something big and high, and just ignore what's down below.

This bridge is up there, but there's nothing in particular brewing down here.

This is common when the big thing is so big that it's just not really engaging with anything below it except at the ends--like this huge bridge in Seattle. 

This, to me, is a bit of a missed opportunity. No, I don't expect life underneath this kind of bridge to fundamentally transform, but the opportunity would exist to take advantage of the effect of the bridge--both aesthetic and physical, e.g. shade--and plan something around it.

Still it's better than:

2. Actively Hostile Architecture

The greatest fear of a certain kind of planner seems to be that someone might accidentally not be inconvenienced further when they already don't have somewhere to sleep.

The Wall of Death probably belongs itself in category 3 (see below) hence why I have a picture of it.

However, the chainlink fences here don't.

This is very common: a lot of places have spikes, or fences, or concrete blocks that are just there to stop people from using the space. And I get it to a certain extent: homelessness is not something cities like to advertise, and there's probably some liability issues from building spaces that attract homeless people if something happens to them in that space.

But often, as with this fence, doing that is gratuitous and implemented in a way that doesn't exactly make the space better on its own terms. It's just mean.

3. Something Cool

Of course, sometimes the space is occupied by something that has its own value (see: the art element of the Wall of Death).

See also: the Troll.

I'm not saying every bridge needs a troll (we'd need a lot more than 3 Billy Goats Gruff if so) but certainly the Troll is a good example of adding something more than just a big nothing or worse underneath a bridge.

It need not be art; here's a public space in Milwaukee that's under the interstate there too.

The point is this: this space could be normal, or wasted, or actively awesome.

I know which one I'd prefer. And I bet you would too.

Bike Commuting and the Human Body

 If you've read this blog enough, you're probably aware that I prefer to commute by bike, but can't always for a variety of reasons. Some of these are practicalities in the Quad Cities (infrastructure, weather, etc.). Some are choices I've made interacting with those practicalities (school schedules, where I live, where the services I wish to access are).

And some are more about the human vessel that has to actually do the biking.

1. Weather Can Be A Problem

I, as a person, do not mind rain much.

I, as a bicyclist, mind it a lot more.

Ignoring for a moment its impact on infrastructure, weather also affects my body much more when I bicycle than when I drive--or even when I walk. The heat feels more hot because I am exerting myself; the rain beats down harder at speed; the cold feels more chill because the air is moving faster.

I can of course compensate for this. My dad is a pro at this; you'd think when he was biking that the rain didn't exist. But there are limits to this, especially as commute rather than a recreational choice (what I'm wearing isn't entirely up to me and there isn't a usable shower at my destination usually). 

There are even bigger limits when I'm carrying someone else with me or going shopping after work or any of the myriad other errands that attach themselves frequently to a commute.

Not to mention parking the thing...

This is fine in the sunshine; it's a pain that it's not covered at all when it's raining or snowing.

The Tern Storm Shield is great at protecting my passengers, but not my seat.

2. I Age

Cars depreciate; so, I suppose, do e-bikes, though there's a less familiar resale market there.

So, alas, do human bodies.

I have had a few ailments in the last few years that have made bike commuting harder. Tennis elbow makes grasping the handlebars as the street bumps you along painful. Gout flareups make pressing on the pedals difficult. Sciatica...well, enough said.

Infrastructure does play a part here: the street above, with its big pothole and loose gravel, makes most of those physical conditions worse. But they're barriers even on the best of roads or paths. And they can take weeks, months, or forever to go away.

Though one positive of the e-bike is that it does double as a scooter (at least here in the US in Iowa): the existence of a throttle up to 20mph (Class 2) makes for a major benefit. I'm not stranded if I biked in and had a flareup of some kind of condition at work.

3. Mood Matters

Now, I want to preface this as follows: I actually think I drive worse when annoyed, tired, or pissed off too, and it would best for all involved if I (and everyone else too) could avoid the car when in a bad mood.

But I do feel that biking exacerbates that in many ways as well.

If I'm exhausted, well, I have to move myself along now, which is more work.

If I'm annoyed, well, the way the city and the cars treat bikes is not going to help with that.

If I'm pissed off, I also think I tend to bike a little less straight and a little less clean and generally less safely (see: also not optimal with car).

Now, the bike brings its own prophylactic to this: biking does improve my mood.

And sometimes, how could it not?

But that only goes so far. When I'm really out of sorts, I often don't take the bike because I'm so aware that being in a bad mood makes my biking worse.

Now, if only we could do that with cars too...

Maybe the takeaway today is really that I just want better public transit, dagnabit.

Though then we'd be talking about level boarding, and distance from stop to destination--because the human body is ultimately the vehicle we all take everywhere.

So maybe this is actually covertly about the 15 minute city.

Either way: bike commuting is great, but it does have some limits due to human involvement--as does everything we do.

Interoperability and Intermodality: Or, Taking More Than One Train or Bus

I was reading recently about intermodal fares, the systems by which multiple modes of transit, and frequently multiple operators of transit, can be (or not be!) experienced as a single seamless whole by their customers through the use of shared payment systems, travelcards, etc.

I thought it might be useful to think through how this operates in three different cities I've visited in the past year or so, and what we might take from those cities about how cities in general can make this idea work for them.

1. Montréal and the Integration of Legacy and New-built Systems

Montréal appears in the article I was reading, and for good reason: the system allows you to pay based on zones across any transit you take in the city, regardless of what kind of transit you're taking in those zones.

This machine can get me tickets to the Metro, where it's located, but also to the buses, the REM, and the local commuter rail. 

Anywhere on this island is the same zone; how convenient! 

But what makes this notable is that these are systems with very different histories and operators: while a Metro expansion is finally coming sometime soon, the bulk of the Metro is very much a legacy system (as are the commuter trains) and the REM is completely new (well, not necessarily the track, but the service). It would be natural to imagine that if you set up a completely new system, operated by completely different operating companies, and functionally competing in many ways with the initial system, they would not integrate fares: after all, they didn't integrate the map (no REM above!) and the stations with interchanges still require you to tap out of one system, walk across to the other, and tap in again. 

It's by no means a seamless service. What it is is a service that doesn't charge you more or differently depending on which service you choose to take, and that's really important: it means not only that the REM was freed up to serve new parts of the island without worrying that lack of coverage in the downtown core would make it less useful but also that the Metro actually derives utility and ridership from the new areas that the REM opens up to that service. 

New systems, even ones not controlled by the same operator (e.g. TfL in London) do not have to be a problem for the old ones: if you properly integrate fares, you get a positive-sum interaction.

2. London and the Menu of Choices

Speaking of TfL, there are a lot of different ways to get around London. Some of them are TfL-owned or -branded (most, honestly) and some are not (hi, National Rail!) All share a common fare card, but unlike Montréal, not a common fare structure (except insofar as a travelcard daypass, monthly pass, or daily maximum payment might include multiple services). 

That's partly a feature of the sheer breadth of options available. Integrating the cost structure for heavy rail, metro, light rail, tram, bus, airways...it would be a nightmare. So you don't get quite a Montréal-style "just make it the same for everyone" result in London.

Instead, what you get is the opportunity to select from a menu of choices without being shut out of any, even if the costs may differ.

Stratford can have all these options and know that anyone getting into any of them (except the taxis) is going to have the "right" payment because they're all on the same scheme. You want to get somewhere from here? Go for it!

The bus in the center here will take your fare.

The Tube on this platform will take your fare.

OK, this freight train running on National Rail tracks probably will not take your fare, but pretty much everyone else will.

That may seem obvious, and thankfully as more and more places are just letting you tap any contactless card in and out it's becoming more and more widespread. But it's not always been true, and it's not true everywhere even now, that you can have that kind of payment system integration. And it makes a menu of choices much less overbearing to know that your card will get you on any of them--there's no secret way in which walking to the wrong faregate will get you stopped (I'm looking at you, Chicago Metra, which for a long time only took passes and not payment on the integrated fare card).

3. Toronto and Active Integration

Unlike both Montréal and London above, Toronto actually integrates not only the fare payment system but wherever possible the actual faregates across different modes.

Yes, it might be a long walk to the Finch West LRT, but I don't recall needing to swipe twice.

And when I got into the station on the LRT, I was already in a paid-fare zone for the subway.

Now, part of this is that they aren't, like London does with some transit modes, charging different fares for different modes. That makes it simpler to do this, and arguably shafts the worse modes (since it would make sense to pay less for that Finch West LRT than the subway, for certain values of making sense).

But it also makes the experience much more pleasant to actually go through.

So the overall takeaway for me here? The less barriers you can put to people actually using your service in concert with others in the city, the more productive transit in the city as a whole will be. Transit is the ultimate in positive-sum (even exponential) interactions: getting to a place via transit that not only goes somewhere else but connects to even more destinations is a force multiplier. The fewer barriers in terms of payment (both cost and method) that we can put up, the more benefit we will reap.

Smaller Public Art

 It's been a while since I talked about public art, but since it's an important topic about what makes cities both distinct and livable, I wanted to revisit it: but this time with an emphasis not on big elaborate set-pieces, but on the smaller touches that can make a city beautiful.

1. Idiosyncrasy

I love little pieces that make the city seem like it has a personality:

This piece in the Montréal subway isn't huge; it's easy to miss. But when you notice it, it makes that station stand out a little bit, and makes Montréal as a whole feel a little more lived in, a little more human.

Or look at this little light-up rainbow ribbon in the Village in Toronto. It's not something huge or permanent; but it does give the neighborhood personality.

These little touches make a place feel different, but not foreign (despite, I suppose, these literally being foreign to me, as Canadian cities). They make it feel like a place people like enough to make their own.

2. Texture

Now, individually these produce this sense of idiosyncrasy--but collectively, in large numbers, they can create a larger texture to the city that makes all of it (even the bits without public art) feel more human-scaled.

Sometimes that's practical in terms of actual use, like these little steps in the Boston metro area that people can sit on and such, but often it's just a sense of place.

Things like fountains are common as an example of this kind of low-stakes creation of distinctive spaces--though not all of them have this many dog statues, Toronto!

3. Public Doesn't Necessarily Mean Government-Funded

Of course, not all "public" art in the sense of art that makes the city feel distinct is "public" in the sense of funded by the government, whether directly or by things like a "percent for art" program. 

Graffiti is the most obvious example of this: a culture that accepts or even promotes graffiti in certain locations looks different than one that scrubs every instance of it off as soon as possible.

A little free library may be a less contentious example. But the point is that encouraging this kind of smaller-scale, non-monumental public art can make a city feel special. 

And having places that feel like distinct places is a key part of urbanism, just as much as housing or transportation.