Advantages of Elevated Rail

Here in the Midwest, the most iconic semi-local transit infrastructure is, naturally, the Chicago El, and specifically the Loop.

While the El is not entirely above ground (the Red and Blue lines go underground through downtown), the name and the brand are both about the elevated lines. This contrasts strongly, of course, with a city like London, where the most significant and iconic intracity rail network is literally called the Underground (though, as we'll discuss below, the DLR is often elevated, and there is of course a whole system called the Overground as well).

I also recently visited Montréal, which is building out two different mass transit lines on very different principles: one tunneled belowground and one elevated above it. And one of them is way over budget--the one with the tunnels.

So naturally, I have some thoughts on why elevated rail works well, and why (given those cost advantages we're seeing in places like Montréal) more cities should use it.

To be clear, I'm not saying we shouldn't ever tunnel. There's lots and lots of places it makes sense! I've been snowed on at a Chicago El station and cursed the choice to be aboveground! But given the mounting evidence that elevated lines are quite a bit cheaper, I want to focus on non-cost reasons that elevated rail can be pretty darn good on its own.

1. Look Around You

Most obviously, an elevated train gives a new view of the city: one at least a story up, and often criss-crossing parts of the city that might not be as naturally connected on street level.

This view, from next to the elevated metro station at Amsterdam Sloterdijk, is an angle you can't see without being up top. Perhaps it's not as impressive as others (I could have found a picture, say, of downtown Chicago) but I like the way it shows the sense of the city, as altered from a height. You can see other infrastructure (hello cute little tram!), you get a real sense of the size of the bike parking (which is much less impressive when the bikes block each other), and you can also see the rest of the city peeking out from behind the developments near Sloterdijk itself.

And of course in cool automated systems like the Vancouver SkyTrain (above), the REM, or the DLR in London, that view is out the front of the vehicle, unimpeded. You don't get those trees underground!

2. See and Be Seen

But you don't just see from an elevated line. You are also seen.

I don't really have to ask where the DLR station is at Canary Wharf, do I?

Elevated lines are highly visible and easily identifiable. I don't have to see a little sign to know there's a stop.

Sure, this T sign is iconic! But it's also kinda small, and doesn't tell me which direction the trains go.

This does; thanks outer boroughs of NYC!

Again, this isn't the be all and the end all of transportation needs, but it's nice to be able to see the lines and stations without effort.

3. Flexibility

There are places that are not easy to tunnel in: either they're really hard rock, or conversely too soft and shifting to stay in place, or there's some kind of deposit in the way, or you're in Rome and every dang meter of construction hits another archaeological find.

There aren't many places where factors like that make building elevated rail impossible. The only factor there tends to be local opposition--which is a serious problem, don't get me wrong, but isn't exactly absent from underground digging either. Building the actual elevated line is the easy part, in a way that it often isn't for underground construction, except maybe cut and cover--which likewise produces massive resistance in many cases, and still requires certain conditions for the underground space being used.

If you can build a road, most of the time you could build an elevated line too, since you have the right of way. 

I don't mean to say all roads should become elevated transit, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that as a mode, elevated rail is more flexible in where it can go and how than an underground line.

To be fair, this cuts the other way with things like mountains.

There's a reason the REM goes under, not over, Mont-Royal. 

But by and large, even if an elevated line weren't cheaper (because I said I wasn't talking about cost!) it is easier to build. And given the transit deficit of so many cities, especially in North America, that's not nothing.

Both subways and elevated rail have their merits, and as long as the transit is getting built I'm for whatever there is political will and economic power to build. But it's well worth considering that elevated rail isn't inherently a case of cheaping out: it has other benefits as well.

Privacy in the City

 Today I want to talk about something that I think gets misunderstood somewhat in a lot of discourse over urban density: the question of privacy. How much do you experience privacy in a big, dense city versus a smaller one or a town or rural area?

Well, that's gonna depend on how you define privacy. 

1. Big City Surveillance

Let's start with the obvious: if your interest is not appearing on CCTV, traffic cameras, or other forms of state or corporate surveillance, you'll probably be on camera more in a big city.

There are more traffic cameras, gun cameras (in the US at least), private and government CCTV, etc. in denser places, for obvious reasons. 

But at the same time: there may also be more places that don't have those things, as a percentage. If the only place I can shop for groceries is driving to Walmart, well, I know Walmart has me on CCTV. My local grocery may or may not; the corner store may or may not; the farmers market probably doesn't, depending on what city I'm in. But if those don't exist, I'm definitely, rather than possibly, being surveilled while I shop--even if I may be on camera fewer timers per day.

2. Big City Anonymity

But the flip side of that is that in a big city there are also a lot fewer reasons for someone to care about you, specifically, and what you are doing.

There may be CCTV nearby, but someone managed to tag this door an awful lot anyway.

I'm sure there are multiple CCTV in this picture (it's Camden in London after all) but who is watching them to see me in particular in this press of people?

There may not be anyone watching at this random intersection in Davenport, but if they are they're definitely looking at me. Because I'm the only one here, and I expect to be the only one here all day, basically.

Even more so here, where there isn't even a school or a business to drive foot traffic. Yes, it's less likely anyone is looking--but if there's a house with a camera, I'm on it and they'll be interested to see me, specifically, on their feed.

There's a reason the stereotype of a small town is that everyone knows everyone else's business: the other people are few enough that you know them all, and they're the entertainment. People watching is a bit different if you actually know the people! That doesn't mean that's a negative; for a lot of people, it's a big positive! But it's also a different kind of surveillance in its own way.

3. People vs Machines

In many ways, this comes down to the idea that in a big city a machine is more likely to watch you, and in a smaller area a person is more likely to do it.

I totally see why the former concerns some people more: my memory is less perfect than a computer's, and so being watched by me means you'll be forgotten, and no one can search their database for what you did or where you were! I also see how the fact that the former is usually corporate or government-controlled is also an issue. 

But if you're most concerned with being able to do things without anyone caring, rather than without anything seeing, you're probably better off in a big city.

It's a balance, and I don't blame anyone for falling on either side. But give me the anonymity of a million eyes over the scrutiny of ten any day.

Centralizing Multimodality

 So here in Davenport we have a single ground transportation station that brings together all the transit modes available in the city.

Of course, that's just buses (intercity and intracity).

But lots of other cities have more transit options, and still manage to bring them together into union/hub/transfer stations. 

Hallo, Amsterdam Centraal!

Other cities lack a single centralized station but have multiple stations that serve a variety of lines, functionally providing a range of multimodal stations: think the many termini of London, for instance.

Or Paris, where the Gare du Nord (above) brings together metro, RER, and intercity lines but not, e.g. the trams (which to be fair aren't designed to come this far into the center city), and other stations like Gare Montparnasse do the same for other lines.

Other cities, though, don't integrate their modes nearly as much. My own chief example would be Chicago, where Union Station is a Metra and intercity rail hub but notably underserved by the CTA.

And the Greyhound station above isn't connected to CTA trains or Union Station.

What I want to talk about today is why so many places do have centralized stations like this, and why it's a real disadvantage for places like Chicago to not.

1. Force Multipliers

Having a wide range of transit all available at one place means that more people will use that transit--and increases the value of each piece of transit non-linearly. As RM Transit has discussed in a podcast about the Eglinton Crosstown, the people already on a transit line are much more likely to take more transit than the general population that might be served by transit-oriented development or other types of density: connecting to a second transit line is thus a more effective way to get people onto the first transit line (and vice versa) than just connecting to a dense destination might be.

This is why the way that the aforementioned Eglinton Crosstown and its Montréal cousin the REM were integrated into their local pre-existing networks matters so much.

Having a smooth connection between the 1 and 5 lines here means that you don't have to rely solely on people who would need the 1 or 5 line alone to fuel ridership.

This is non-linear in a positive way (to a certain limit: not everyone will use transit for every trip): connecting more lines and more modes means more potential for increasing ridership. Thus, a centralized multimodal station can be very powerful.

A station like Denver's Union Station brings together two different local rail lines (one of which serves the airport) as well as buses, both local and intercity, and intercity rail. It's even on local bike lanes! This makes for easy transfers, simple wayfinding from one system to another, and increased ridership for all.

2. Ease of Expansion and Connection

Relatedly, having a pre-existing hub allows future construction to bootstrap itself onto the existing demand quickly and easily.

London's Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line) is a great example of this: with a route connecting to Heathrow, Paddington, Liverpool Street, and Farringdon, it both piggybacks on a huge number of existing hubs and termini and in turn creates new connections from those stations to each other.

This doesn't just apply in giant cities like London. See the Amtrak Intermodal Station in (or really just next to) downtown Milwaukee.

Now add the HOP streetcar!

The station was already intermodal before that was added (buses, Amtrak). 

I'm pretty sure that sign is older than the tramline.

But now it's more intermodal. And that strengthens both the value of the streetcar (which now connects to an awful lot more transit!) and of the station (which is now connected by a fairly quick, very easy, free route to major downtown destinations despite being a bit peripheral itself). 

That's the thing about a central station: even if it's not optimally organized itself, it still has a lot of value for anything connecting to it, and it is in turn elevated by each line that connects in.

3. It Builds Resilience (As Long As It Works)

Now, there's a big caveat to what I'm about to say: it requires the central station itself to stay operational.

But if it does, it increases the resilience of the rest of the network, by giving users a natural place to change modes or routes if something goes wrong somewhere along the line.

The trams and buses in Toronto may not be as efficient as the TTC Subway, but if one of the two systems is less than fully operational, Union Station is a really good place to switch between them and still get to your destination.

Amsterdam Centraal remains my favorite example of this: I've taken regular NS trains, trams, buses, a ferry, and the metro out of it at various times to a very similar set of destinations, depending on where else I was going, what was closed (the northern part of the metro when I visited), and various other factors.

Now, this admittedly creates a potential vulnerability: if the central hub goes down, so do all those connections. This is probably why cities like Paris and London operate so well through a multihub system. 

If the Elizabeth Line is going to connect to all those little labels (each of which is at least one line of transit), it's going to go better than if all the labels are only on one spot. It's a quirk of their history, but London and Paris benefit a lot from this: they have so many big hubs that you can really get around easily no matter what.

So that's why I advocate for making sure lines touch, intersect, and connect at a central hub--at least from the positive view. Maybe someday I'll do the negative view (what happens when cities don't do this), but for now: remember that it's a good thing, and if you can do it more than once in your city that's even better!

Predictability

 A topic I keep coming back to is the idea that good transit is not merely extensive, frequent, or fast--it is, specifically, predictable.

That is: the benefit of car travel is considered by most advocates to be some element of freedom to go where you want when you want. The way to create this freedom for transit users obviously includes extensiveness (get where you want) and frequency (you can go whenever you want), as well as speed (you don't give up a lot more of your time). But it also includes predictability: the legibility to the user of that intersection of extension, frequency, and speed. If I can't tell how to get the transit, where to get the transit, or how to use it to go where I want, I won't use it. I need to be able to predict how my transit experience will go (in a positive sense--if my prediction is that it's gonna suck, being right won't encourage me to take it again).

1. Visible Stops

Now, most major transit agencies in the world have done a pretty good job of making it clear where the transit goes. 

Maps help, especially ones posted publicly near where the transit is.

Visible stations and stops help too (even if no one is coming for these statues anytime soon). A line on a map is great, but not if I can't tell how to get on it.

This goes for bus stops too: a visible shelter or at least a good sized sign helps identify the transit's availability.

I emphasize this because, well, Davenport does a really bad job of it.

This is, in fact, a bus stop--in that it's a corner on a street a bus serves, and in Davenport that means I can get on or off here. But there's literally no signage for it.

Not great for being able to predict if I can use transit here!

2. Visible Lines

You know what's on that transit map besides the stops, though? The lines!

And the lines may not be printed on the ground, just like the first-down line on an NFL broadcast isn't on the field. But there are ways to make it more visible and predictable anyway--just like the markers on the sidelines still tell you where a first down is.

This is, of course, the great advantage of rails: they make the continuity and directions of transit predictable just by looking down.

 But as these lanes in Amsterdam prove, a transit lane can do this without the transit being tracked: buses run on them as well, and they're still predictable lines on the street because of the dedicated lane, even if the vehicle is a bus.

A tunnel can also do this, though only if you're underground to see it--the whole point is that it's not visible aboveground.

We don't use these tracks in Davenport for passengers, but if we did--we'd get that benefit too. Or we could do as the old trams did and slap rails down on River Dr, Mound St, Brady, Harrison, etc.

3. Obvious Interchanges

But it's not enough to know that there's transit: we also need it to be predictable how you'd use that transit to get places. This is one of the things I've mentioned that I think Montréal generally does well:

Note both the predicted times to each station and the well-marked interchanges at Bonaventure, Berri-UQAM, etc. 

Chicago's Loop is a great example of a very obvious interchange point in the system (even if Chicago would, in fact, benefit from more non-downtown transfer points).

And Paris does quite well by running a tramline directly by the front door of a RER station.

Ah, for a world where Davenport's Ground Transportation Center had more ground transportation options...

You could build a great system, and if no one can predict how the pieces work together, it won't function the way you want, no matter how quality an individual piece of it might be. So make your transit more predictable, and let the pieces operate in concert. 

But don't forget that this works best if it's also extensive, frequent, and fast. All of that works together to make a great system go.

On Bike Racks

 A pair of videos that still live rent-free in my head are the "Safe City Showdown" pair from Not Just Bikes and Shifter a few years ago. In them, the two bicyclists bike through Amsterdam and Calgary and compare the positive and negative elements of the two rides. The ride in Calgary reveals a bike rack at the hardware store that's the end point of the ride, and the two reviewers have opposite reactions: one is excited to see a rack at the store at all, and the other complains about its poor location and visibility.

It's a strong reminder that the existence of infrastructure is not the same as the quality of infrastructure, and that here in North America we often get too obsessed with the question of whether there is even any non-car infrastructure at all at a given location, and not with whether that infrastructure is actually making bike/pedestrian/transit functional, pleasant, or positive.

This brings me to the subject of bike racks. A friend recently pointed out that the bike rack at their kid's school was big, but functionally only had two spots they could lock up their cargo bike--the two ends.

My bikes aren't as big as theirs, but I also know this feeling very well.

Another friend recommended I write about that here--and so I am. What makes a bike rack better than merely existing? What bike racks might be worse than nothing? And how do we tell the difference?

1. Is It Significantly Better Than Leaving My Bike Out?

There are a surprising number of bike racks that are not, actually, much better than just leaving my bike out.

Sometimes, that's because the rack is unusable or doesn't fit my bike, so I have to leave my bike out anyways.

Cool as bikeshare is, it doesn't actually include any parking for my own bike, for instance.

Sometimes, it's because the bike rack isn't actually secured to anything, so while it's more bulky for a thief than just having my bike there, it's not really much more secure.

This rack can be moved anywhere, and often is (I frequently see it on the other side of that staircase, for instance) which doesn't really give one a sense of security.

2. How Much Can I Use?

This goes back to my friend's point: sure, there might be a bike rack, and I might even be able to use it, but what percentage of the actual rack is useable to me?

This rack has one usable space for my cargo bike, because the other end is on the wall and the middle spots are too tight together to allow my cargo bike access. So I can lock up on one end, only.

This rack has two spots for me, despite being advertised, I'm sure, for a dozen.

These racks are better proportionally, though because they're higher up they are useful for different bikes--still, as a proportion of space, it's much superior to the wide racks whose middles are useless for large bikes.

These racks are much better--but they're still a bit tight together for a larger bike. As a matter of spacing, though, they're far superior to the ones above that only work for front tires (ask me how many bikes I've seen that had the front tire removed to steal them over the years).

3. How Many Options?

The bike racks in the tram picture above might seem inefficient, since they can each take at most two bikes, but note that they're really frequent on the street. Toronto does OK with this; Montréal, I noticed, does even better.

This street has a lot of these little posts, which allow a chain to pass through, and also allow the street to have a lot of them without blocking everything else.

If you don't like those because your U-Lock won't go through, perhaps this street full of this design?

Or this one with these?

The key is that the street is just full of places to park your bike, ones that are relatively efficient in space-per-bike and are very firmly anchored in place.

Then there's Amsterdam, of course:

I can scarcely evaluate the actual posts because the bikes are so crammed in there. Frankly, I expect the racks themselves are mid-tier here at best (the underground parking is better) but the sheer quantity of bikes serves as its own protection--is yours the specific one someone will steal?

I like this kind, which as you can see allows for multiple bikes to be anchored well to the ground but has enough space between curves to allow a bigger bike or two.

And the weird hanging racks in downtown Davenport, while not my favorite, do have good anchoring and a number of spots--and there are a sheer lot of them at the Farmers Market, so you can again get a good set of options even if an individual rack is less than optimal.

For huge ones like this cargo bike, the wave rack is not really that different from a single loop--you can only get one on, but hey, at least you got one.

The real key in my mind is this last question of how many options relative to demand. A single rack will probably only take one to two huge bikes like this--and even for smaller, more recreational or single-person bikes, they'll only have so many places that are actually securable (the bike in the first picture in this whole post is attached only with a basic cable lock through the front tire--that's not secure).  But a series of them across a market, a street, or a giant bike parking lot can mean a lot more options even if each individual rack is not ideal.

What you shouldn't do is a single rack that isn't even tied to the ground in any real way and pretends to offer access while really creating merely an illusion of security.

These are cool, though--as long as the tree-sprayer isn't hitting your bike.