Airport Connections

How important is it that a city have a rail link to the airport?

Well, frankly, it's not that important, in the sense that there are lots of cities that don't, and the world has not ended.

But how important is it that a city have a high quality transit link to the airport? 

Well, that's a different question. I'd suggest that it's very important--for equity for those who don't have cars, for the reduction of traffic, exhaust, and other factors associated with cars going to the airport, and to reduce the amount of space that has to be given to cars around airports.

1. Rail and Transit Aren't the Same Thing

While transit advocates may sometimes be guilty of acting like a rail link to the airport is the only kind of transit that can work, it obviously isn't. To be clear: if you have a direct, regular stop on an already-useful rail line that stops at the airport, that's basically the gold standard here. 

Denver does this pretty well from Union Station, for instance. 

And I'm a big fan of Chicago's Blue Line El connecting directly to O'Hare.

But a good, consistent bus that has clear signage, lengthy operating hours, a relatively express trip, and frequent service can do plenty, like in Montréal, where the REM will eventually go to the airport but the 747 bus isn't bad right now.

Not bad timing at all.

Is it perfect? No. But it's good transit to the airport, and it's not hard at all to use or to then connect in to the rest of Montréal's transit. In fact, the ticket on the 747 is a daypass on the rest of the system within Montréal Zone A automatically, encouraging that transfer.

Then there are cities that do have a rail transit link to the airport but it's not well-implemented: e.g. Boston Logan.

I love the T, but "take a bus to the train to downtown and transfer again" is not the highest recommendation I could give to a "rail" link to the airport. Yes, the Silver Line exists, and it's not that bad, like the 747, but the implementation of the rail connection is mediocre at best. An airport subway station is not itself evidence of good transit to the airport.

2. Where Is the Terminal, Anyway?

Add to the above: where does the transit actually serve in and around the airport? A lot of airports rely on people movers to actually get people to and from the terminals where the planes are even if they've been dropped off by transit.

This example is Chicago, which is not the worst. Perhaps the worst is Seattle, where the transit connection to Link light rail requires a) a long walk from the terminal through the parking garage, with little assistance for the disabled, followed by b) using a people mover to actually get to some of the more distant terminals anyway. Neither the benefit of a close rail connection nor the speed of a people mover: the worst of both worlds somehow.

Look, I'll admit sometimes it's a function of size: O'Hare is huge, hence the need for the people mover. But there are other options. Heck, Heathrow has multiple Tube stations for its various terminals, which means that you don't have to switch transit modes, unlike the people mover model. More generally, it's worth considering: when you say you have transit to the airport, which part of the airport do you mean?

3. Foot Traffic

Now, I'll admit most airports don't do great at this. But you know what's better than just having a transit connection?

Allowing people to safely, easily, and efficiently walk to the airport.

And no, Boston, I don't mean the above giant roadway with a courtesy inclusion of a sidewalk.

I mean people actually wanting to walk in the space you provide. Technically the above photo is of the ferry to Billy Bishop in Toronto, but rest assured you can also walk through a tunnel underneath the lake, and it's very easy and drops you off in a nice enough neighborhood!

Obviously that's difficult for airports that are far from the city center and surrounded by hotels and parking lots. But hey--if you could minimize all that land used for car access, maybe you could make a few more of those airports walkable as well.

More generally: the better you do at making an airport approachable by other means than a car, the better the airport experience--train or not.

Welcome the Connector!

 This post is just to say that hey, it's pretty cool that Davenport has finally connected the trails in the north to the main trail along Duck Creek. 

I'm hoping to ride it soon and have more to say--last time I tried, it didn't go so well.

To be fair, they weren't kidding that it wasn't open!

I do hope they've fixed little glitches like this single square of concrete that for some reason hadn't gotten laid.

And the fact that this section was bumpy as hell even though it was supposedly newly laid.

And let's all hope they keep up the underpasses better than the Duck Creek Trail itself sometimes gets.

But overall--congrats to the Davenport Public Works and here's to even more ambitious plans that help connect our bicycling infrastructure in the QCA!

On Charging

 We've recently started doing more road trips with our electric vehicles, and I have some thoughts.

Not with these guys, though it was nice to meet the owner of the other Leaf.

1. Home Is Where The Heart Is

The first thing that I want to emphasize is that this is a game changer, even for roadtrips.

We installed a level 2 charger at home, and while obviously we're not using that on the road (due to space and time) it means that we can plan a roadtrip without worrying about how much charge we end on when we get back, because the charger will for sure fill the car to a usable amount (usually even full) overnight.

We experienced the opposite when we visited my father-in-law and couldn't charge at his house at all (it was difficult to even set up a trickle charge on the portable charger that comes with the car at level 1). So even if we're talking roadtrips, it matters what is available at your home base. A lot.

2. Gas Stations Are Sort Of Your Friends?

I originally called this "not your friends," but they still are a necessary part of the charging infrastructure in much of the US. But unlike for a gas car, where a fill-up is a short pit stop of a few minutes, charging an EV can be an hour or more for real roadtrip lengths of charge. Now, that depends on charging speed and that's why higher-end EVs tend to focus more on increasing that speed than on increasing battery capacity (beyond a certain point). But it matters a lot to have something to do that isn't wandering the tiny aisles of a gas station like an increasingly bored tiger in a zoo. 

This guy doesn't have a ton to do in him while the car is charging, except for refilling your cup again and again.

3. Other Countries Still Do It Better

In both Europe and Canada I noticed something I have yet to see in a US city.

Can you spot it?

How about here?

That's right, it's street-parking chargers.

Yes, we have them in parking garages sometimes in the US, but they're not visible from the street, so you can't see if you can use it in advance. Just sliding a few of these onto the street makes a huge difference for visibility and usability for the chargers, and thus for the EV users.

It really helps if those are high-speed chargers (so that the spots turn over faster). I noticed in Lincoln, NE, that most of the charging infrastructure is level 2, not level 3 fast chargers, which limits how much charge you can get unless you're spending 3+ hours somewhere. If it wouldn't fill up my Leaf, with its tiny battery, it's not going to do much for bigger cars at all. 

But speed can be somewhat compensated for by ubiquity: if every place you stop has a charger, that adds up.

Overall, the state of play for EV charging along I-80 is improving, but not amazing (there's a highly notable gap between the Des Moines and Omaha metros, with basically one CCS charger at the Casey's in Avoca between). It's certainly better than it was 5 years ago. But we can and should do better, especially if we want to transition our car-centric urban design to electric cars.

We should also be looking more at trains, as always, but that's a different post.

Some Thoughts on the Montréal Metro

 In addition to the REM, of course, Montréal has an older mass transit system, the Metro. 

I love the logo (that down-pointing arrow is very clear that we're talking about an underground system, but also visually distinct and identifiable). But I have other thoughts, and they aren't necessarily quite as complimentary.

1. Needs Updating

Montréal is spending a massive amount to expand the Metro right now, and while I think the costs are way too high the need for the system to expand and develop is certainly there.

But before spending billions on expansion (or while doing so) there are some more basic updates that would help a lot.

As I recently mentioned, there are details in these Metro system maps that I love. But one glaring absence is the entire existence of the REM. 

I know they're different systems built by different companies, but they share fares (thank God for that) and more broadly they're both crucial parts of the overall transit and urbanist experience in Montréal. They should both be on the maps. I realize these maps are older than the REM, but that's just a sign that the stations really haven't been updated in too long.

These maps, while again helpful in some ways, are also just as or even more out of date.

And that's before I get to the Blue Line, which is running rolling stock that the other lines would be embarrassed to see on their tracks.

Boxy, old, and while I love the retro aesthetic the contrast is really harsh with even the other Metro lines, let alone the REM.

It's not like the Metro doesn't have nice trains! They just are highly segregated by line, and that makes parts of the system feel laggard. Now, the extension is coming on the Blue Line and I believe that will bring new rolling stock too, but for now it's pretty stark.

Updating the station displays and the Blue Line rolling stock would make the system feel a lot more modern.

2. Lovely Stations, If Kept Up

That said, I really like the incorporation of public art into the stations on the Metro, and I think that with touch ups and updates (see above) they could really still feel pretty darn nice.

Little things like this concrete inset take the stations from "just Brutalist" to "cool Brutalist" in my opinion.

And this, at Jean-Talon station, is again retro but cool instead of just retro-and-old like the trains themselves.

And I have always loved the giant cubes at Namur.

3. Suffering by Contrast

The real thought I have on the Montréal Metro is that it's an OK system, even good, that suffers mightily by contrast with its new partner, the REM.

The newer rolling stock has nice interiors, clear gangways, and good lighting. Perhaps it speaks to the low standards for urban transit in North America generally that I think the Metro would actually rank quite highly in my personal system ranking for the continent (or rather Canada-US, excluding México; I should really visit there so I can talk more coherently about that) if I ever got around to doing them. But REM's existence casts its difficulties and weaknesses into starker relief, since they serve the same city. No platform screen doors (unlike REM); more expensive to build and (obviously) less extensive recent expansion; the older rolling stock and station signage; no airport link (which REM is eventually supposed to deliver).

It has weird and distinctive bits (like the above doors, which half-pivot rather than either being rotating or simply opening). These can be cool and distinct, or they can feel dated and annoying. Metro would, I think, fall more on the former if they didn't have the REM as a contrast.

And I think that should be more of a call to action than a condemnation. REM was just built in Montréal. There's no reason Metro can't build in Montréal, or update its current status in Montréal. 

And if it can, Montréal could really elevate itself over Toronto, Vancouver, and the various US cities with metros--because it has great scaffolding for that with these two systems.

Small City Urbanism: Estes Park

A lot of my examples on this blog come from larger cities. This is natural, because density is one of the major components of successful urbanism, especially both walkability and transit, and even more diffuse large cities often end up with what we might call accidental pockets of density: put enough people in a city and some of it has to be dense. But the QCA itself is not particularly large or dense (148th biggest MSA in the USA!), so it's worth checking in on some smaller cities that have different things going on.

In this case I want to look at Estes Park, Colorado. Now, Estes Park has some distinct things going for it: it's a heavy tourist town, right next to Rocky Mountain National Park and all the majestic wonder that comes with that.

Nice backdrop, am I right?

That in turn means that there are a few distinctive features of Estes Park's urban form and planning that may not be replicable elsewhere, but I believe that there are nevertheless lessons that we can take.

1. Know Thyself

Estes Park has a tourist economy, and that means both a strong income base (hotel taxes, high property values that lead to tax income) and a highly seasonal, highly predictable stream of where people are and where they want to go. Not every city has that; most don't, in fact.

But I've been in places that take those advantages (and they are both advantages in the senses I'm talking about today) and don't do as much with them as Estes Park does.

Estes Park does a really good job of signposting (which I've recently mentioned can be a really helpful element in a good system). Because they know where you want to be, and it's a fairly small area, they could take one of two approaches: trust that because it's small and everyone has a smartphone, they can find anything anyway, or invest in making it really easy to navigate because it's small and predictable.

Taking option 2 is great urbanism, in my opinion. 

This is the equivalent of a single metro station-level map, but it covers most of downtown Estes Park (really, all): but why not do that? Why not make it so that anyone who is anywhere in town can easily find their way around? 

Knowing the town and where people will go isn't a failing or a weakness; it doesn't make your town better if there are secrets about how to get around it. Instead, allowing people to actually navigate, visitors or not, is beneficial to everyone, from shopkeepers to tourists to even locals.

2. Build Attractive Spaces

Yes, there's money floating around Estes Park. But they use it for public amenities, in a way that I really appreciate.

There are a lot of small, pleasant amenities in the city center, focused on the lake and the rivers flowing into it, like this bridge and the two spaces on either side of it.

And even the bear-proof trash cans (another public amenity, but a very necessary one in mountain-area Colorado) can get some personality, though I doubt this one was provided by official sources.

I have other pictures, but they have kids in them so I'm omitting them here. Just know that downtown Estes Park leans into being a place people would actually want to spend time in addition to spending money, rather than forcing you into paid spaces as the only option, and that's a really great idea.

3. Target Transportation

Estes Park provides free shuttles in and around the town.

Now, the question of free transit is hotly debated. But my point is less that this is free, than that it exists at all, and it's treated as a basic amenity to reduce crowds, allow parking of private cars to be in less valuable areas, and keep people moving around the town. Free helps because it reduces the barriers to use, and because oddly tourists who are already spending hundreds if not thousands to be there can be highly cost-conscious around the margins. But the point is frequent and predictable transit.

15-20 minute headways in a town the size of Milan, IL. On multiple routes.

Yes, that's the tourist demand speaking. I'm not downplaying that. But I'm admiring that they use the tourist demand to generate this. Making transportation a key allows that downtown to be walkable and pleasant, instead of a highway during tourist season.

What could the QCA learn here? Well, we don't have the same tourist demand. But we do have the issue of some of our predictable corridors getting treated like highways around major events like the farmers' market and baseball games at Modern Woodman. Perhaps we could concentrate transit around those in a helpful way, increase signage and visibility of the fact that there are other parts of downtown Davenport (and across the way, Rock Island) that visitors could also patronize easily, and keep improving those spaces (the latter is underway)? 

Estes Park is a unique case. But it is also tiny and yet urbanist in many ways that other small areas could do more to emulate.

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.