Geographical and Diagrammatic System Maps

A long-lasting concern in communicating transit to the public is how to best package the information: whether to do something like the iconic London Underground map with its complete ignoring of geographical reality or just slap the transit stations on a geographical map and let that do the work, or something in between.

Even London has gone through some evolution historically on this.

And perhaps obviously many cities do both, or a middle ground, or a mixture, since there are obvious benefits to each: the clarity of how the lines intersect and work on the one hand, and the ability to use the transit to get to the actual city on the other.

Montréal, which I recently visited, is I think a really good object lesson in these benefits (and corresponding disadvantages) because its two systems rely heavily on the opposite kinds of information. So today I want to use the REM and the Montréal Metro to illustrate some of the affordances of each--that is, what each kind of map allows to happen and what it makes harder.

1. Diagrams and Intersections

Back in the day, before I was anything of who I am today really, I spent two summers at Canada/USA Mathcamp, a camp for those who wished to pursue more knowledge in math than their middle schools and high schools would provide (I can say definitively that I was the least mathematically gifted student at those camps, but that's neither here nor there--I went). And while I was there, I spent a lot of time, as any normal eighth-grade student would, thinking about graph theory. I remember very little about it now, but the reason for this little trip down memory lane is that the use of graph theory frequently relies on simplifying complex systems into patterns of lines and intersections. Think of the iconic Bridges of Königsberg problem: the question is about how or whether you can pass over bridges in particular manner, but the solution relies on ignoring the physicality of the bridges and their locations in space and treating them as lines between points on a map. An Euler Tour (thanks Leonhard!) doesn't care about what sights might be on the islands that the bridges lead to; it cares only about the graph produced and its connections.

While tourists and commuters aren't solving graph theory problems, they do often care a lot more about what the station connections are than where they are in the city, so there is a major advantage to a diagram rather than a geographical map, especially if the geography will be distracting. I don't care if I'm going underneath Mont-Royal on a segment of the REM if I can't get off the train anyway! 

This REM map, therefore, is highly useful if my concern is "where can I take the REM to, how many stops will there be before I get off, and where should I transfer if I need to go somewhere else." You might recognize these as extremely common concerns for someone taking transit! If I'm not planning on walking/biking myself between stops or between lines, which most users are not, I don't care so much where they fall on the map, as long as I can identify which stop I want for my destination. Once that's identified (possibly on a geographical map), all I need do is follow the diagram of the system to figure out how to use that system to get to my destination. 

The geography of it all matters very little. The exceptions would be places like Leicester Square/Covent Garden in London, where the walk is short enough that I could genuinely use both stops for the same destination. But for systems with more reasonable stop spacing, like the REM, the diagram is not only sufficient, it's better.

2. Orientation in Space

But the converse is also true: there are times it's really nice to know where you actually are--especially if you're interacting with other systems, like a bus system, or a non-grid street pattern, or a bike network.

And for this, the system on the Montréal Metro shines.

Every Metro station has one of these: it needs updating with the REM, but it's a consistent reminder of where the Metro actually goes in the physical city of Montréal (and its neighbors, no shade to Laval or anything). That means that if I'm interested in a neighborhood, or anything else that's larger than a single point on a map, I'll have a much easier time finding my way there than through a purely diagrammatic approach.

This kind of map detail makes it really easy to tell where a specific location you might be going to is in relation to the Metro stations, and I really appreciated it when my phone got low on battery.

There are some factors that help here: Montréal has a fairly straightforward geography for a map like this (unlike say the sprawl of London or Paris or the island-centric nature of the NYC subway) and the lines don't tend to go in completely irrational ways, which means that a geographical map is closer to a diagram here than it would be in a city where the lines curve a lot more and there are more distracting features on the regular map. Since Montréal's Metro is mostly only on one landmass with fairly straight lines (or at least smoothish curves) it doesn't introduce much confusion to use a geographical map, and it provides some grounding in the actual geography of the city for those who benefit from it.

You can even inset one into the other, as they do, allowing a diagram and a geographical map to speak to each other in concert, and getting some of the benefits of both at once.

3. Hybridity

And of course, as astute readers will probably have guessed or noted, there's nothing that requires full commitment to either bit.

This kind of map, featured at most Metro stations (I think all, actually), is a minor hybrid. It is diagrammatic, but it includes certain indicative features of the island (like the river) and therefore orients the reader to the geography without pressing on it. London does something similar, in fact, despite being the iconic diagrammatic map, because a (diagrammatic, simplified) version of the Thames is visible on the Underground map. Montréal has gone a little more geographically precise, but not much, and it helps.

It also includes these lovely travel times, which I really liked!

The REM also has a hybrid map, one that again helps clarify where you are without pressing all the street-by-street detail of that Metro map onto you. 

And of course they have much more geographically precise maps in the stations about that particular station, because once you're there the diagram doesn't help much at all.

Hopefully this helps in terms of identifying the benefits of both of these approaches. I haven't emphasized the negatives, but presumably they are visible by implication: a geographical map can get too busy or complex by including all the other detail of a city, and doesn't help if all you want to know is how far you are by train; a diagrammatic map only gets you to the point of the station and unless you're like me and just traveling to say you saw a station, that's not actually the goal of transit.

Even though there are some pretty cool-looking stations to visit!

But since both systems have their benefits, its probably unsurprising that some kind of hybrid is the ideal middle ground--even if the systems may have slightly different views of where that ideal middle is. 

How Late is Late? How Early is Early?

 One thing that I constantly find myself thinking when I visit larger cities than the QCA is that things are just open later.

Now, that's not always true. I've visited places where the only coffee shop closes at noon, and where you'll be lucky to get a dinner at 9 pm. The QCA does a lot better than that! But transit (such as it is) ends before my internal clock says dinnertime is over, and grocery shopping after 9 or 10 is a matter mostly of Walmarts. 

Conversely, you have places like New York, branded as "the city that never sleeps," where the trains run overnight and supposedly you can get anything anytime. But most cities aren't like that either: they do have a time when things are shut down, whether for people to sleep, for maintenance to happen, to save costs, or just because.

So how late is late and how early is early? Or, what are some benefits and drawbacks of when things are and aren't open?

1. Varieties of Schedule

One of the more legitimate critiques, in my mind, of 15 minute cities is that they may only be 15 minutes for some people--usually privileged and/or wealthy--who have the chance to take advantage of what they offer in the timeframes when it's available. If I'm working third shift, or rushing to get kids home and to bed, or anything that moves me off a "standard" time schedule, a 15 minute city may not be one at all.

And that goes for all cities too--there are people with all kinds of schedules in the day, and an ideal city should accommodate them all.

This 24 hour fruit stall in Montréal is great for someone (anyone) who needs fruit, whenever that may be. You don't need to make it when the grocery store is open, because it always is.

This market in Croydon requires you to be there at a particular time on a particular day. 

Now, there are benefits to both: the Croydon market will feel like an experience, and that can be a great way to organize a day or a week, and can serve as a relief from everyday pressures.

This Way Experiences indeed.

And the 24/7 shop may have create noise or light at times others would prefer to sleep, or traffic when it's inconvenient. 

But overall, having flexible and varied times (whether they're 24/7 or not) that amenities and necessities are available is a net positive for a city, because there are always people who need the flexibility.

2. Downtime Needed

That said, not everything does need to be 24/7.

The NYC subway is famously one of the only ones in the world that runs 24/7, and there are legitimate critiques of that, and reasons that other subways don't. Basically it comes down to this: almost every system (transit, business, a human body) requires downtime.

And as we know with our sidewalks even, if you don't schedule maintenance it may schedule itself for you.

And a lot of stations are pretty empty at night: is it really a good use of time, energy, and money to keep them all open and staffed?

That goes even more for a business, rather than a public good like transit.

3. Both? Both Is Good

The real key is that good urbanism does or should require both some things that are available later or earlier than a standard 9-5 schedule allows for and available downtime and maintenance on the system. I think of London's Night Bus system as a good model: it allows for transit all night, even if the Tube isn't running the whole time.

In fact, buses are usually the answer for transit issues like this, since they're more flexible than trains (hello Toronto buses!).

For businesses, a good rule of thumb to me is that the city should be encouraging late hours, but not necessarily mandating them: if the rest of the city's design encourages people to operate all day, so will businesses unless they're not allowed.

That means encouraging density (more people to use the businesses), providing transit (allowing people to move themselves around to get to the businesses), keeping the city inviting (lighting and such matter a lot at night, unsurprisingly!) and getting out of the way (don't make it hard for businesses to get permission to be open late).

This Parisian street lighting is not invasive, but it invites me into the space even in the dark.

So how late is late? As late as you need. And (even though I'm a night owl) the same goes for early. Cities should enable both--with reasonable reductions in services when people aren't as frequently present, but without shutting down with the sun.

Don't Sleep on the REM

 Pun in the title aside, I did get to go to Montréal and I do like the REM, their new "light rail" that is really just an automated metro like Vancouver's SkyTrain. I've talked about it a bit comparatively before, but I wanted to take a moment to talk about it on its own--because I think it's a great system and one that more cities should emulate. 

Heck, Montréal should emulate it itself, since it didn't opt into the REM de l'Est, which would have been a big expansion of the system that they should still totally do--especially if they can do it at REM prices, rather than at the prices they're spending on expanding their Metro at the same time (as Reece Martin has written convincingly about). 

So let me tell you why the REM is such a great system, from the user's perspective at least, and why I'm so excited that the REM is going to the airport soon. 

1. Great Signposting and Information

Look, I don't usually focus on signposting and information, since I tend to copiously research my transit plans in advance of going somewhere, just because I enjoy doing that.

But the REM blew me away.

Clear signage of where you are and what there is to do around there (in this case, not much, but the clarity was good).

These great indicators (which timed up with my camera lens so that it looks striated here, but I promise they look solid in real life) show how empty or full the car that's coming is. It wasn't that useful at the end of the line where I took the photo (they're...all empty) but it will age well with the system as ridership hopefully increases, and it is useful in the more central areas.

Even clear signage in the surrounding areas telling you how connections to the REM are being created and modified by the changes to bus routes around them.

"On se connecte au REM" (roughly, we connect to the REM) indeed.

The little system maps above the doors are a nice touch too, though I can't wait for that A2 extension to the airport to come online...

2. Really Solid Ride

The riding experience on the REM is also excellent, from the stations (spacious, well-lit, platform screen doors) to the actual seated ride. 

I am converted to the idea of the platform screen doors: much quieter and less draughty than the equivalent on the Montréal Metro, which doesn't have them.

The interiors are much less tramlike and much more metrolike than I was afraid of, and frankly feel capacious and comfortable.

Nice open gangways through large parts of the train (though not the whole train like say the Toronto Subway's new cars).

I liked riding REM cars, in contrast to their Metro and other systems I've ridden recently.

3. Opening Up Montréal

Fundamentally, what these elements of a good system mean is that the REM opens up new angles on Montréal, even for locals, that weren't available just from the buses and the Metro. It produces new links, both with and in separate complement to the other systems, and connects areas that were disparate before. Climbing over Mont-Royal is a slog. Taking the bus over it isn't even an option. Going around is a bit annoying.

Taking the REM under it is easy-peasy.

This view is great, but it's not exactly an efficient way to get around town. The REM slides underneath this like it doesn't exist.

And that's only one example.

It opens up areas to the west (and if they ever re-commit to the REM de l'Est, the east too) that aren't served by the Metro or regional rail, and it really does create new options.

Unfortunately, these aren't shown on the maps in the regular Metro, which haven't been updated since I first visited the city decades ago.

But they exist, nonetheless.

And that's really exciting for the city. I think the REM is the best transit expansion I've been on in a city since I first rode Link light rail in Seattle--with all due respect to the Elizabeth line in London.

Now hopefully they can keep building on it, and not letting it stagnate.

The Good and Bad of Houses

 So as I mentioned in my last post, there's a bit of a blind spot to this blog sometimes, which is that while urbanism is about how people live and move in their cities, I tend to focus more on move than live.

I'm not going to fix that with one post and I'm not going to try. But I do want to talk a bit both about how I see the value in the urban form that is most commonly idealized in the US (the single-family detached house) and how I see it as a limiting factor--and that the tension between those two can be, and should be, mitigated to at least some extent by design choices.

This is particularly important if we're going to get the kind of density we need both for urban transportation to work well and to accommodate all the people who want to live in our cities, let alone if we have the idea of something like a 15-minute city in the back of our minds.

1. Why Houses Rule

Look, I have lived most of my life in a single-family detached house and I'm not going to pretend I don't see the appeal.

There's privacy (see the wall?). There's beauty (OK, I don't love the house color myself but look at those trees!). There's ample space (that house has so many bedrooms!). There's fairly efficient design given the space (it's pretty easy to heat and cool because of its compact nature, if done right). 

This is a good house to live in and a nice place to make your home.

You can have space you make your own; you hear relatively little from neighbors or street noise; you can park cars, play basketball, grill out, do whatever your heart desires in your own space.

Of course lots of people want and like these. It'd be stranger if they didn't, especially as we cannibalize and remove public spaces that might be venues for some of that personal expression and social activity.

2. Why Apartments Rule--or the Limiting Factors of Houses

What we have, in a sense, is a tragedy of the commons. Because single-family detached homes are great for the people living in them. But too many of them in one spot tends to bring a whole series of problems--not least that all those houses tend not to actually be full of families and so the space per person goes way up.

That building above? It's right next to an apartment building. I say this to make clear that you don't need to build only one type of housing in an area. It's not like joinery, where a certain cut only goes in with another cut. It's more like LEGO: you can stick whatever the heck you want next to each other and it works within some basic constraints.

But we often build out, especially in the US, through zoning that emphasizes or even allows only a single kind of home, and then act surprised when too much of that kind of home produces problems.

Gaze out into the fringes of Chicago, where everything becomes a single family home...

If every house is this big, every house is great for all the things listed in #1. But also every house has some limitations too:

a) Cost 

That house sold for over a million dollars. Not everyone can afford this (obviously).

b) Space

As mentioned above, that house is big. How many people are actually living in it? How many per square foot? How much space does that take to house your population? Some of these houses can be reconfigured to fit more than one family, but that's usually inefficient and awkward especially compared to purpose-built multi-family housing. I lived in one in Rochester, NY; I know from personal experience.

c) Size

The flip side: if I have a family over a certain size, I need a bigger house.

d) Flexibility

Due to the above, this house doesn't flip easily, it doesn't rent cheaply or easily (if it were even rented), and it doesn't provide much option for younger families coming up the housing ladder or elderly families downsizing. 

All of the above are things apartments and condominiums do a lot better. They cost a lot to build but recoup that by spreading costs over a lot more people. They can be carved up to allow more and less space in various configurations much more easily than a house (and can be built with multiple options in advance, even). They  allow families to move in and out of an area, or to find larger or smaller space, much more easily, and with a lot less friction than constantly buying and selling real estate.

And that's not even getting into the fact that it's rare for houses to have street-level retail, which pushes buying and selling into their own designated zones and feeds both car dependency and lack of options in a neighborhood.

3. Resolving Tension

The basic point of how to resolve this tension is of course to permit multiple zoning options. If you don't have to build single-family, someone will take a chance on other options. But it goes beyond that. We need to make apartments and condos attractive to people, not just force them into them.

What does that mean?

It might mean having a greater variety of apartment/condo options on the market: not just studios and 1-bedrooms that assume singles and couples, but more 3-4 bedroom options as well that allow people to be part of apartment or condo living while having children, even multiple children, and space.

It might mean using some of that space savings not just on more housing, but on housing-associated amenities, like this park in Toronto that's surrounded by high-rise condo/apartment living (and an urban highway, but sssh!).

It might mean emphasizing those unique elements of apartment-heavy streets, like the street-level retail and the attendant Jane-Jacobs-style eyes on the street, to drive home the benefits of that urban fabric.

It might mean better upkeep of social housing and other high-rise options that have a bad reputation so that people don't associate them with negatives as much.

There's a lot of things it means. But fundamentally, it means remembering that since we can't all have single-family detached homes and all the other things that make cities great, we have to make it appealing to live in other ways--and it can be. 

We can't do that by denying that single family homes are great. We do it by making the alternative just as great or better.

American Transportation

The 250th anniversary celebration of the US seems like as good a time as any to think about how the US stacks up globally in terms of this blog's focus of urbanism and transportation.

To be clear, by "globally" I mean here against other Westernized, industrialized countries. If we want to claim to be the wealthiest, best, most shining-city-on-a-hill country in the world, we should be comparing ourselves to people who are in similar circumstances and do urbanism in a model that's based on similar wealth and a similarish social organization. I am not here to debate the value of a traditional Micronesian village as an urbanist space or to try to distinguish between the various ways that societies have organized themselves and their spaces across time and space and declare one or the other superior. Rather, I'm suggesting that there are certain standards that we look for in Western societies, of which the US is one, in their social, geopolitical, and spatial organization, and then looking at how the US might compare to its apparent peers.

And since this is around July 4, I'm going to look at how the US is doing on urbanism along three Jeffersonian axes: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

1. Life 

Let's start with a big, long list: nations by traffic-related deaths. 

Obviously, there's per capita here, which the US looks middle of the world pack in, just under the global average. But look at the countries above us and below us, and think about their wealth. And then adjust the same list by per billion km of driving. Well, you lose a lot of countries for lack of data. But we look good compared to say a Belgium, a New Zealand, and a South Korea, each of which are higher--but then there's Canada and most of Europe well below. 

This is not intended to be conclusive data, but rather an indication: in terms of allowing, promoting, and sustaining the fundamental guarantee of "life," the US is not doing its best.

And that's just actual deaths. 

There's a good argument to be made that specific deaths from traffic (while obviously to be minimized) are neither the only nor even the most significant life impacts of transportation and urban design. 

There are significant health and environmental benefits from reducing car use. Conversely, cars produce massive negative externalities--that is, beyond the direct effect of a car going somewhere, other social and environmental effects happen to those who are not necessarily behind the wheel or in the vehicle, and these tend to be bad.

Now, how does the US stack up? Well, a lot of those negative externalities are global (i.e. climate change) but not all of them are. And the US has a lot of good programs that help with environmental problems caused by car-centric design, such that it actually comes out pretty well on things like global air quality rankings. 

So overall, this is a matter of something that the US could do better on rather than something that's absolutely tanking. The design isn't always great: this type of road is not designed well for life.

And neither is the highway right next to it.

And despite that I would say Milwaukee, where the pictures come from, is better set up for urban design for life than most of the US.

So a middling grade--but goodness could we do better than middling if we prioritized this.

2. Liberty

I've posted about freedom and liberty in urban design and transportation before, multiple times. So I don't want to belabor the point too much. 

But honestly, I feel freer in a city where I can go where I want without a car than in one where I can go where I can take my car anywhere.

And this car is limiting my freedom as a pedestrian, of course.

But let's be fair: there's lots of places in the US that do provide some of that freedom. I think of these 14th Street Station patrons as pretty darn free to wander NYC.

And while this meerkat is caged, the people who visit him in the DC Zoo have admirable mobility and freedom.

This dockless bikeshare in Seattle is a great example of urban freedom (even if, like the car on the sidewalk, a pedestrian might disagree).

And I think these Chicagoans are having a wonderful time walking in the street, which is more freedom than they always have but still.

Basically, we know how to build cities in the US that are free to roam and free to wander--but it's not our default urban design.

This is our default design (though this in particular is Louisville, KY).

And the thing is: that's not unheard of internationally either.

This Dutch street is just as parked up.

And presence of a bus aside, this Toronto street ain't so great a design either.

So it's not like we're uniquely doing this poorly--but the degree to which it's the default in our city design is a problem. And the most annoying thing is that it didn't have to be this way. We rebuilt our cities like this; we used to have different, less car-centric systems.

Perhaps we are all, truly, Waiting for the Interurban.

3. The Pursuit of Happiness

This is of course a difficult one to grapple with, because I cannot deny the number of people for whom the car itself is a symbol of both happiness and its pursuit.

And I also don't want to discount the people for whom other elements of our urban design that I don't tend to talk about as much are important as well: the big house with its fenced yard and space.

Say, the house I grew up in as a child.

But I do also want to emphasize that, as with the car-centric design and freedom, I think the pendulum has swung too far in how we build our cities. We tore out the interurbans in Seattle; likewise, we zoned out the possibility of building more of these little apartments (just down the street from the house above):

I grew up in a house with a yard--next door to a multifamily apartment building. I don't think the kids there had a worse childhood than I did. We could catch the same buses, go to the same schools, eat at the same restaurants, shop at the same stores.

But for a long time their building was only there because it was grandfathered in; any new construction in our part of town had to be like my house (Seattle is doing a bit better on that now, but still not enough in my opinion). And that's the flaw: there's nothing wrong with people wanting the house, as long as that isn't used as a reason to stop the existence of the apartment as well--especially as we experience a massive housing shortage across the country and indeed the world.

And it is a worldwide problem: the pursuit of happiness through homeownership (whether that's house ownership or not) and even just stable renting is a problem worldwide, and so I don't want to pretend that the US has failed here more than anyone else.

And while other countries have tried things like social housing, that hasn't always been a panacea, and even the places that have done so haven't stemmed the tide of rising prices and demand.

This quintessentially Dutch street isn't exactly filled with new buildings. We're not the only ones who need more.

Everyone needs to build more, and build better, in order to allow for that pursuit of happiness for our ever-growing population.

But we have to be smarter about how we build: and the US is one of the biggest offenders in terms of building out into the wilds instead of infilling or building up. Again, there are exceptions, but by and large we sprawl. And that makes for longer commutes (and longer potential commutes even if individuals find better jobs) which have their own impacts on happiness.

So overall, what do I think of how the US is performing on these three metrics?

We're clearly lagging on life--and it's reflected in the underlying life expectancy data. 

We're doing better on freedom and the pursuit of happiness--but partly because those are less objective measures. And also partly because everyone is doing less well on some of the elements of those two.

And after all, if this is supposed to be a time of American exceptionalism, of making America great again, of America First--should we really be happy with doing better relatively only because others are doing it badly too?

We can be better at how we build our cities--and we owe it to ourselves now and in the future to do so as soon as we can.

Seeing Cars from Transit

 There's nothing quite like being on a train and looking out at the cars that you're passing. Conversely, there's little more annoying than looking out and noticing the cars are passing you. So here are some thoughts about that.

1. Hands-Free, Mind Free

One of my main thoughts in such a context is remembering that I'm privileged to be able to look at the cars as much as I want: after all, when I'm driving, I really shouldn't be looking at the train at all.

Who can tell if these cars are passing the Finch West LRT or not? What I can tell is that those drivers are having to pay attention to the road in the rain, and I'm not.

This streetcar may be stuck in traffic, but at least if I'm on it I'm not the one paying attention to that traffic and the red light.

There's a freedom to being on a train--or a bus!--that is distinct from the experience of driving, and it's one I remember every time I watch cars from transit.

2. Imagining Other Lives

Sometimes the cars you're seeing aren't competing with your transit, though: sometimes they're just an excuse to imagine how other people's lives are going while your mind wanders--or while your body is lifted hundreds of meters in the air.

Hello, motorists driving down the Thames! I wonder why you're there! It's probably not the same reason that I'm in the sad little cloud car. Unless you're new here and a car is just as unusual to you as a gondola!

I guess the above picture is of another bus, and not a car, but one of my favorite activities on the second story of a double decker is to look about at the other vehicles and consider why everyone else is here.

3. Not Needing Parking

Sometimes the cars you see from transit aren't even driving.

Apologies for the misty picture, but the windows on the Citibus weren't as clean as they could be. Still, you can see the parked cars, right? It's a nice reminder that I don't have to find my own parking on transit--though to be fair, parking in the QCA isn't the hardest thing to find.

And sometimes they just seem parked (sorry London)...but that's more like #1 and #2 above.

Overall, for me the chance to see cars from transit is just another form of transit tourism: it's a chance to think about others' lives and the choices we make--both individually and collectively. What does it say about our society that we have so many cars? What does it say about us individually each time we take those cars out on the roads? And what does it say about me that I'm sitting on the once-hourly bus instead of a car that would let me go where I wanted when I wanted?