Why Aesthetics Do Sadly Matter

So I'll start by saying that my default orientation is that when we spend money on urbanist issues, the money should go to doing as much as possible: more bike lane, more transit, more parks, etc.

Thus my default would be to say that spending that same money to make things pretty is a waste: that decoration could be used to have another few miles of track, or another exit on a station, or something.

But I have had to grapple with the fact that this is fundamentally short-sighted, and indeed counterproductive, for the following reasons:

1. People Gotta Feel Comfortable Using It

This is really all the reasons rolled into one, if you interpret it correctly, but for these purposes I'll define it a bit more narrowly than that: people need to want to use the service, system, or project, and to not be repeled by its appearance either aesthetically or in terms of cleanliness or repair.

Look at this ramp in Chicago. It's technically perfectly functional, but it is very worn, and doesn't induce people to use it. It looks janky. And while I obviously still walked up and down it, it's not exactly a comfortable experience.

Or take this Davenport bike rack, which doesn't inspire confidence either: it's not actually anchored to the ground anymore!

Now, these are examples that are about wear and tear or damage: they could fit my utilitarian preferences set up above too. But they stand in for a larger point: that which looks less impressive than it should be will get less of a positive response than it should. Aesthetics can make people want to or not want to use something, and we need them to use it.

2. People Need to Feel Safe

A major element in feeling comfortable is feeling safe: bare concrete, minimalist metal, and other simple and cheap solutions can make people feel unsafe.

Standing in the Ground Transportation Center in Davenport does not always inspire one with confidence, inside or out.

And while I don't mind graffiti much, for some people waiting for that bus by that graffiti will mean they feel unsafe and don't want to wait there--and may not use it at all.

3. People Need to Be Invited

For this section, let me use positive examples.

The classic appearance of the Metro signs in Paris is presumably more expensive than a sign in Helvetica on blank white. Certainly the process of designing and commissioning it was, even if the marginal price of the sign itself is not. But it makes the metro seem like a more inviting and interesting place, inducing people to want to use it.

Likewise, the public art around Gare du Nord gives a sense of a place that you want to be.

Making people feel not just that a space can function for them, but that they want to be involved in it, want to be there, want to use it, is a positive good.

So even if I don't like spending money on making things look nice, rather than just functional -- it's actually pretty important (and as usual, I should get over myself).

Getting Around: Chicago

 Chicago is a lovely city. One of my favorites. I spent many happy years there, and also I go back periodically. So today I want to talk about Chicago as a transit city, much like I did London and Paris. How do you get around? What are the options? And how much do I enjoy it (spoiler: a lot).

1. The Bus

The workhorse of the Chicago transit system is, unsurprisingly both in a global and in a US context, the bus.

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is the primary transit agency in the city, and it operates a lot of buses. Some of them are workhorses like the articulated vehicles above and below:

Others are more modest sizes, but I don't like those as much so I'm not going to show a picture of one.

They run local and express, they criss-cross the city, and fundamentally they are the backbone of how you get around Chicago. If you are taking the CTA, and you aren't going to a particularly iconic or significant spot, you're probably starting or ending your journey (or both!) on a bus.

It's notable that Chicago has recently been improving the experience of bus-riding, especially downtown, where there are now much more fully recognizable stations rather than just signed stops for the bus.

This also comes, as you can see in the picture, with red bus-only lanes, which make the bus experience downtown not as entirely excruciating as it used to be.

2. The L

Of course, the bus is vital, but it's not iconic, or distinctive (many places have buses and the Chicago buses are very similar to buses run in other cities).

The L (sometimes styled El), however, is.

Now, the Loop (the elevated track seen above) is the most iconic version of the L, and the reason it gets that "elevated" name.

And the elevated sections are significant both in terms of the advantages of elevated rail and the amount of the city they cover in addition to the Loop.

Just a great section of train line, in general, is the L.

But it also goes underground, on the Blue and Red lines through the city center.

The infamous Jackson tunnel (between the Red and Blue) stinks to high heaven, but it does also make transfers very easy.

Still, even with the underground sections, you're probably thinking above the street if you're thinking of the Chicago "subway" that we call the L.

And for good reason.

3. The Metra

But the L is not the only major rail in Chicago; it runs in concert with a commuter rail line (and "commuter" is definitely the right word, not regional rail) called the Metra.

The Metra does do pickups and dropoffs within the city, even though it's oriented for commuters from outside of it; it's just the timings that are bad, not the stops.

OK, some of the stops are pretty minimalist too.

Ironically, despite not being the "L," much of the Metra is elevated as well; it's just Chicago's favorite way to incorporate the train into the cityscape.

Pictured: a Metra overpass.

4 & 5. Amtrak and Greyhound

I would not recommend Amtrak trains as the main way to move about Chicago. But Chicago is more than Chicago, if you know what I mean, and for some points in Chicagoland, Amtrak is technically viable: it connects to mostly other cities (some effectively, like Milwaukee; some less so, like anywhere further than St. Louis) but some of those "other cities" are suburbs like Napierville or Aurora. 

(This is a Metra train, but it is running on the same track).

The same is true of Greyhound (below).

Both of these are mostly intercity transit, but deserve being mentioned because Chicagoland is legitimately big enough to incorporate such transit into itself (though not nearly as effectively as either Paris or especially London do).

6. Other Buses

Did you think we were done with buses? The more fool you! Pace, the other main transit agency in Chicagoland, also runs buses around the metro area.

Pace buses actually penetrate deep into Chicagoland, and provide substantially more frequent transit in some of the suburbs than one might expect given their size.

Pace also connects frequently with the CTA and Metra to create something of an integrated corridor.

So that's how you get around Chicago: mostly on CTA buses and trains, but also on the Metra, Amtrak, Greyhound, and Pace. 

The Pleasure of Finding Bikes in the Wild

One of the things I've realized I do when I'm in a new city, or a new part of a city, or back in a part of a city I haven't been in in a while, is that I take pictures of bikes.

Above: Toronto. But it doesn't really matter, because I do it everywhere.

Why do I do it? Because I think that bikes, especially the kind of cargo ebikes I tend to love taking phoots of, like that one, but really any kind of frequent visibility of bikes, are an indicator species of a kind of effective urbanism that I quite like.

In other words, where there are bikes being used, parked, and ridden in an area, that's an indication that something good is going on there in terms of the area's desirability (someone wanted to bike there), accessibility by non-car means (someone biked there), and what it normalizes (someone biked there, left their bike, and it is visible where others can see it) that I like.

1. Someone Wanted to Bike There

This line of bikes in Montréal indicates that this is a place people want to be, and that they wanted to bike there. Now, bikes are cheap, and sometimes that means people use them because they have no other option. But given the car-dependent nature of most Western cities, a beater car is not that expensive as an initial investment, and much more practical--so someone still had to want to use a bike for this (after all, foot is free).

Seeing bikes somewhere is a good sign that it's an area people want to be in, and that it's close enough either to other areas people want to be in (that they'd already biked to) or where people actually live (because the bike has limited range in practice) to justify the bike as a mode.

2. Someone Biked There

Relatedly, the presence of the bike means other bikes could come there too: a bike is a potential mode here, unlike on a highway median or something.

The more casually it's left here, as above in Seattle, the more likely you are to see other bikes and to think of the bike as normal (I include "huge racks of bikes ala Amsterdam" as casual, because when there are that many racks, it becomes casual to have one).

No one who parked here had to think about it a lot and mull the options.

3. The Bike Is Normal

And that, ultimately, is what I think the presence of these bikes that I photograph means to me. The bike is normal, or at least normalizing; people besides me are also using it.

I'm not the only one riding a bike to the grocery store!

Sometimes the grocery store takes the bike to you.

But either way, seeing these bikes is an indication that, well, there are bikes. And that might be ultimately tautological, but it's also important: seeing bikes means more people see bikes, and the cycle hopefully continues in the positive direction.

And that is why I love taking photos of bikes.

Also, I think they look cool.

Free Transit on Election Day in the QCA

Free transit may not be a great strategy for a transit agency long-term, but it's definitely a good thing to let people get where they need to go on important days.

Election day is just such a day. So I'm glad that the QCA transit agencies are all offering free rides on that day.

It's a very good thing that anyone can get to the polls--to the extent, of course, that any transit serves their polling place.

And if someone is going to go, the less that gets in their way the better, which is why I think it's also good that they're not requiring people to show proof that they're going to vote. Instead, it's just all rides that are free, which should make it easier for everyone.

Good on you, CitiBus and Metro. Good work.

And now it behooves us all to get out and vote. 

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.