A Tale of Four Light Rails

 I recently had the opportunity to visit Toronto, which in turn recently opened two new light rail/tram/streetcar lines--with a distinction in branding that marks these lines as more intended to be part of the metro/subway network than the existing tram lines. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about my experience, and how these three different light rails (together with the also fairly new Montréal REM, which Google Maps has decided to also mark as a light rail) show very different sides of what we can mean when we say something is a "light rail"--and what makes a "light rail" effective.

1. Priority Matters

The single biggest difference between these various light rails is the degree of priority that each receives in relation to other transit modes serving the same space.

The regular Toronto trams (the 500 numbered streetcars) get no signal priority at all and are indeed just...on the street (with a few exceptions like the Queensway tunnel).

The Finch LRT, line 6, does better, because it mostly exists in a separate center lane, but it doesn't get signal priority at all and is mostly on the street surface, so it still stops at red lights--sometimes right in front of a station--and famously isn't necessarily faster than a person on foot.

The Eglinton LRT, line 5, is faster, not because it actually has signal priority, but because (despite the above picture), it spends a lot more time underground, and thus grade separated from the traffic.

This makes it act more like a metro, and therefore faster and less at the whims of traffic, lights, or anything but its own passengers and track.

And then there is our friend the REM, le Réseau Express Métropolitain, which is, despite Google's claims, actually an automated system like the Vancouver SkyTrain and maybe "light rail" but not a streetcar or tram at all in the way that the other systems are. It doesn't run on the street, because it's automated so its entire length is grade-separated to allow for that. It therefore needs no signal priority over cars because it doesn't even bother with them. I don't have a picture of just a train of it, because it has platform screen doors (above) which means that it's actually more advanced than most North American metro systems.

Yeah, it's basically just a second metro for Montréal, and good for them.

2. Capacity Matters

Here's where the REM is most like the other systems: they do all run "tram-like" vehicles, without full gangways between the cars across the whole train (unlike, say, the TTC Subway or some lines of the Montréal Metro). But the capacity differences are still surprising. Here the almost-entirely roadbound TTC streetcars fall woefully behind.

Even when they're grade-separated, like here, they're really just a couple units long, and combined with the slow speeds created by the lack of separation from cars, that means that you can't really get that many more people on them than you could on a bus line. 

Finch West LRT is a bit bigger, and the rolling stock also seems (subjectively to me) to have a bit more space on it.

Same for the Eglinton, which I would bet moves more people per hour than Finch West LRT but only because of speed, not necessarily actual max train capacity.

And once again, the REM trains kick everyone's butt, because while you can't walk down the length of the whole REM train, there are multiple units connected together that each equal the other LRTs' size.

In real terms, then, the REM is both faster and more capacious than the other systems, and the main difference between the lines 5 and 6 in Toronto is how well they actually let the system run as opposed to letting cars get in the way. And then the streetcar is basically a bus on rails.

3. Common Experiences

What these do have in common is that they're all pretty comfortable to ride, and in very similar ways because they share a lot of that "tram-like" body.

I'd suggest this is the best aspect of the streetcars in Toronto: they do feel better than a bus to sit on, and their comfort is much closer to the others in this study.

The Finch and Eglinton LRTs felt very similar to me, with the main difference being the color palette where the Finch (above) and Eglinton (below) are very similar to each other but distinct from the red of the streetcars.

And then there's the REM, which I got fewer pictures of the interior of (because there were more other people and I tend to avoid taking too many pictures of people in public), but which is a bit more spacious and "metro-like" but still clearly the same tram-style overall space. As you can see in the picture in the last section, it has more space for standing and less comfortable seats--with more emphasis on capacity than on fabric.

This is perhaps the only way in which I'd "prefer" to be on the other systems than the REM: the seating is legitimately more comfortable on all 3 Toronto lines.

But overall, this should speak to the wide variety of what we mean when we say "light rail." It can cover everything from a fully separated, fast, capacious system like the REM to something that is basically a bus like the Toronto streetcar--and a lot in between, as we see at Finch and Eglinton. 

Perhaps we could use some better definitions...or at least a wider array of terminology for the systems we already have.

And perhaps also we could consider building more of our "light rail" to a REM standard than a TTC Streetcar.

Boring is Good

Now, I love trains, buses, and all forms of public transportation. That's probably pretty obvious from this blog! But I'm quite familiar with the critique that these are, from a certain perspective, a bit, well, boring. Not flashy--or, ironically, at their worst when they try to be flashy. Quotidian, quite literally. Ordinary, almost by definition.

But for me? Boring is good.

The most interesting times on public transit are when it doesn't come, or when you have to do something extraordinary to compensate for its failures. It's a good story, at least in the right crowd or context, that I once walked an hour across suburban Rochester snow and semi-non-existent sidewalks to a boardgame place for game night. It's kinda interesting, again in the right group, to have tried once to commute to Brockport from Brighton (sorry for piling on, Rochester) across multiple buses and infrequent connections.

What it isn't is a sign of good transit.

It's much less interesting to hear how my dad commuted day in and day out via a single direct bus from our house to his work for most of forty years. It's hardly narrative at all; it's not a story, it's just a fact. 

But it's a fact that speaks to a much better transit experience--especially when we consider that my dad worked weird and irregular hours, so that wasn't just a single well-timed bus.

 It's not exciting to hear about transit with smooth connections, no emergencies, and consistent coverage of a mettro area.

But it's pretty dang great to live with, or to visit.

Boring is good; it's excitement that you have to worry about. 

QCA Survey

 No post midweek this week, except: take this survey if you're in the QCA to tell our transit agencies what they should prioritize!

Integrating Water

 Here in the QCA we have rather a lot of water, most of it contained within the Mississippi River. Most human settlements have water, of course. That's kind of a necessity for survival after all. But today I wanted to talk about how we integrate that water into the life of a city--and how we don't.

1. People On The Water

One of the most obvious ways a city can integrate the water into its life is to actually put life on the water.

Hello kayakers! Hello architecture cruise! Chicago's river is both central and small enough that you can have significant people on the river and not interrupt the rest of day to day life. There's stuff to do and see from the water, but also the water isn't taking up too much of the city--it's on a human scale in the way that the Mississippi isn't always. 

If you can make the water part of the life of the city by putting people on it, it becomes more of an amenity than a barrier. 

2. Cross It

Another very obvious technique is to cross it. That picture above is from a bridge, so these can clearly co-exist.

We do this in the QCA, obviously, and we're talking about other ways to do it. But we don't do it a lot.

And we don't do it in people-friendly ways. Now, a pedestrian/bike-only new construction over the Mississippi is indubitably a pipe dream--but it would be nice to have crossings that were pleasant for pedestrians. Even if you count the new I-74 bridge (which I don't, since it's a very windy, long experience) the other bridges in the area treat pedestrian or bike traffic as at best an afterthought.

Something like the Millennium Bridge above is unlikely. But conversion of a current bridge when replaced, or making sure that the new Centennial Bridge is actually decent to walk or bike across, would make a big difference.

3. Admire from the Edge

Of course, the other main way we integrate water into cities is the waterfront. 

This is perhaps easier where there's a beach.

But there doesn't have to be a beach. We do have some nice biking trails on the river here (see above). And there's a big push in Davenport to make the waterfront more attractive. This is probably the one we both do best and have the best potential for--though I'm still skeptical that "Main Street Landing" will survive the first big flood.

Letting people exist near the mightiest river in the USA (deal with it Missouri) is a good start. But maybe we can, in the future, work on getting more people onto and over the river as well.

Big Round Things (A Silly Post)

 As I anticipate visiting Montréal again sometime this summer, I was looking back over my old photos from visiting it before, and it made me realize something. I think cities are sleeping on the benefits of a big ole round thing as a tourist destination. Hear me out!

1. Round Things Are Cheerful

Look at this big round buddy! It's just a place to buy corndogs (pogos in local vernacular) but doesn't it just look cheerful? It makes me smile to look at it.

Also, it makes the city skyline nearby look more distinctive(ly cheerful) and breaks up the monotony of modern boxy buildings and designs.

Note also that there are a lot of people at it (there were more at other times; I tend to prefer to take photos with fewer rather than more people but that does make it harder to make these kinds of points so perhaps I should alter my habits). People are drawn to the cheer of the ball!

2. Round Things Are Photogenic

I'll go back to the US for this. Technically this is called Cloud Gate, but Anish Kapoor can be annoying so let's call it the Bean. And let's go further and admit: yes, there are cool non-spherical properties of it, but at it's heart, and from a distance, it's a big round hunk of metal.

That polished, reflective, sphere-ish outside is appealing. And as you can see even in this relatively less-peopled photo, people like taking photos of it. I did, for sure! And so do thousands every day.

3. Round Things Are Flexible

Besides not having to be truly spherical, cool round things in cities don't even need to be solid to be awesome. Back to Montréal here (which is what inspired this post):

The Biosphere is hollow, but oh so cool. 

I haven't here even touched on such icons as the Knoxville Sunsphere, the Vegas Sphere, or of course Davenport's own St. Ambrose Dome. 

Big Round Things make a city cool, OK? We should have more of them. And I'm gonna take a bunch more almost-spherical pics when I visit Montréal and Chicago this summer.

Bike Commuting Continued: Expectations vs. Reality

 After a couple years now of biking to work (most days) in the Quad Cities, I have a few thoughts I'd like to share on the idea of expectations versus reality: both where my expectations have been positively exceeded and where they've been underwhelmed. Overall, I enjoy commuting by bike, but there are specific things that make that possible for me, and I'll try to make it clear how that works or doesn't in what comes below.

1. Easier Than Anticipated

Overall, I would say that using a bike as my primary mode of commute this year has been much easier than I anticipated. I'm not going to pretend that our infrastructure here in the Quad Cities is great for bikes--it sucked significantly that the city took weeks-to-months to redo the bike underpass under Harrison--but for the ~1 mile distance I'm usually riding (5 miles roundtrip including two school dropoffs, but 1 mile-ish straight line to work) it's more than adequate.

This guy can do a bunch of roundtrips on one charge, as can my other main cargo bike, and as you can see from the bulging saddlebags, I don't have any difficulty either taking what I need to work and back or stopping for an errand or two. Obviously it's not in child-carrying mode in this photo, but that works just fine too. 

Are there days I need to use the car? Yes, because sometimes I'm taking the kids to the dentist across town or meeting my partner in Illinois or something. But for everyday commuting and normal errands within the neighborhood and just outside of it, the bikes work great. And the kids even demand them: we went to the library and the grocery store this week and I offered them bike or car and we ended up on the bike. It's a treat for school dropoff too, because we can skip the car line but not go as slowly as we would walking. And then I get to work energized and can park the bike right next to the building I work in, so really it's a good deal in the mornings.

2. Roads Are Worse But It Matters Less

The roads here are worse than I expected for the bike (I've had multiple blown tires from that!) but they matter less than I expected for the experience. Why? Because for all their faults, most QCA roads are wide. Here's a section of Locust (not actually on my route, and the photo is taken from the sidewalk which I don't bike on, but it should suffice to stand in).

The road isn't in great shape, but this is actually one of the less bad sections. I'd call it serviceable: if you were actually biking on it you'd notice a lot of little bumps and ridges, but big cargo bike tires take care of that just fine. The street is way wider than it needs to be here, to the point where it's probably too wide for the speed that cars are supposed to take (25 mph, there's a school right there). But while that makes speeding cars a danger, it also means that there's plenty of space in the lane and even out of it for cars to pass you on the bike. 

This is typical of the QCA biking environment. It's not great, because no cars expect you there and the roads aren't good for biking on. But it's not horrific, because they're wide enough to make up for that in most instances. Now, if you biked here at the absolute height of rush hour, or during the infinite construction season that sometimes narrows those wide roads, there would be more bike-car interactions (derogatory) but for most purposes it actually works out.

3. Lessened Flexibility In Surprising Ways

I knew that I would need the car for things like getting to Moline or Bettendorf from Davenport. I hadn't quite realized how much I would need it (or need to plan ahead) for smaller trips as well. I know I said above that it works great for errands around and just outside the neighborhood, and I stand by that! But it requires a bit more planning ahead than perhaps I was used to. If it's going to take 10 minutes instead of 5 to get home or to work, or 15 minutes instead of 7 to get my kid from school, I've learned that I'm evidently the sort of person who leaves that to the exact required margin--and thus changing the margin has made a surprisingly large impact on my time.

If I were a person who believed that on time was late, perhaps this would not be such an issue.

This is a fast vehicle compared to my own legs walking or acoustic cycling. It is a slower one compared to a car. 

Now, there are still times I've surprised myself by how quickly I can get from place to place, especially when there's construction on a main road (which I tend to avoid on the bike anyway) or problems with parking (rare in the QCA but possible, and the bike tends to have an advantage). But by and large commuting via bike requires just that little bit more planning ahead and awareness of time--even when I can leave a virtual meeting, much less one in person--and that's something I somehow hadn't anticipated.

Have you commuted by bike, here or elsewhere? What does it change about your routine, and how did it live up to your expectations?

A Somewhat Frustrated Rant

 It has struck me repeatedly recently that there are some very odd things about how we do infrastructure around cars: and particularly the ways in which building our cities around cars have made them significantly less safe.

1. The Obvious

The most obvious point is probably that cars do, demonstrably, kill people. 

A death machine.

Now, of course, trains kill people too. So do bikes. So does walking. 

But not in the same way or at the same rate. 

So maybe it would be better to not build our cities around vehicles that do that.

2. Individual Operation

Part of the reason for that deadliness is that cars are driven by individuals, often licensed only once early in their lives, and pretty much every vehicle is single operated or carrying one passenger at most. 

Tired? Still gotta drive yourself. Sick? Same. Drunk? Well...

Yes, you can carpool, you can call a cab, you can phone a friend, but...the default is to drive yourself. And there is societal and economic pressure to do that: cabs aren't cheap, and it's generally considered a bit odd to ask someone else to drive you unless you have a particularly close relationship or a very distinct and obvious impairment.

Plus if you're tired, drunk, sick, etc. somewhere other than home, your car is going to be stuck wherever you are if you call someone else. That's not insuperable, but it's a barrier, and a major one if you're far from home--which in turn incentivizes driving yourself precisely when you have the furthest to go, regardless of impairment.

Pictured: a bunch of vehicles that definitely aren't driving themselves yet.

Pictured: a vehicle that allows one driver to transport multiple people regardless of their fitness to drive (and a car).

The view from a vehicle that allows zero drivers to transport a great number of people (thank you Vancouver SkyTrain).

3. The Law

And of course, as you might imagine, all those individual operators aren't the best at actually following the law, even if our laws were ideal for safety.

It's great that Islington is a 20 kmph borough. And given congestion, maybe it actually is. But people don't actually follow the speed limits, do they, unless there's another car in the way?

 If the driver of this speeds, there's an awful lot of signals and supervision that tell him to stop--and we can easily identify the individual driver who did it. If a car speeds--well, so's everyone else.

And don't get me started on stop lights and turn signals and all the other ways that individual drivers don't actually stick to the rules that might make the road safer.

Cars are good at one thing: allowing you to go from one point to another while only caring about other people's presence when they're actively in your way.

They're not good at actually moving people around a city. And it would be nice if we stopped building cities pretending they are.