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.

Sharrows Suck

 Look, this is a pretty basic post, and I know that.

I'm hardly the first person to note that sharrows are "bullshit," that they are "useless," and that any initial optimism about them when they were first introduced was "wrong." 

But I'm going to talk about them a little anyway, because the ones on the Goose Creek Connector annoyed me so much.

But because I'd like to focus on the positive despite the post title, I'm going to focus on other options that can exist that do a better job than sharrows--without much more in the way of infrastructure investment.

That is, I'm not going to talk about this:

Because that divided, separated, bike-specific roadway requires real infrastructure investment that many cities aren't willing to put in. Sharrows are lazy--but so too are better options. 

1. Targeted Bike Spaces at Intersections

One problem with sharrows is that they just sort of generically act as a sign of "expect bikes here, somewhere, because there won't be a bike lane for them." They don't have any specific, targeted expectations for either bicyclists or drivers, since pretty much every street at least in the US (sharrows or not) could, legally, have bikes on it, and the sharrows rarely make any legal difference to their presence (you can't hit me on my bike without the sharrows either!).

This little box, however, does: and it doesn't require anything more than paint on the road, just like a sharrow. By giving a clear area at the intersection where bikes are allowed, nay, encouraged to be, and cars aren't, it makes the turn easier  for the bikes, makes the cars understand where the bikes will be, and allows everyone to move by each other more easily.

This is at a stoplight in Montréal; I've also seen them at stop signs (if the cross-traffic doesn't stop, so there's an expectation that cars will back up). Wherever they're positioned, giving a clear sense of where bikes can stop without cars there (and often in front of cars) is a very helpful and low-impact way to make cycling safer and easier--unlike sharrows.

2. More Complex Signage for More Complex Places

Building on this, but adapting it, is the next level: acknowledging that there are spaces where bikes in particular might have difficulty being seen and properly yielded to, and accommodating that--again, just with paint and signage, not with physical barriers.

Chicago does this beneath the El:

See both the "look bikes" signage and the clearly marked space for bikes to stop at the light (as in #1). The El supports by the Loop here make it hard to see bikes, and the expectation of slow and single-direction car traffic (which puts bikes out of mind for many drivers) makes this a place where the reminder is very important. Clearly indicating the presence and location of bikes--not just a generic "there may be bikes" but a specific, targeted indication of where to expect them--is a big help.

3. Consistent Visual Indicators

Look, this example is cheating, because it comes from Amsterdam, but I'll explain why you don't need to be Amsterdam to use it in a moment.

The Dutch bike paths are a distinctive red color. Now, I'm not saying that everywhere needs to be the Netherlands to accommodate bikes (no matter how much I might wish they were, that ain't happening anytime soon). What I am suggesting is that the very consistency of that usage makes a huge difference in people's acknowledgement of the presence of bikes.

A sharrow appears intermittently on the pavement to indicate the possibility of needing to share with bikes.

The changed color of the path is constant and thus makes obvious the expectation of bikes.

This is why what I'm suggesting here isn't full Dutch-scale urbanism: I'm not expecting a whole network of separate bike paths (see above when I explicitly disclaimed that!). What I am saying is that bit of paint on the road could be more paint on the road, in a distinctive color, to indicate a shared street. 

And that, unlike a sharrow, might actually help communicate to the car driver that it is a shared street.

The consistency would be my emphasis, rather than the separation in the Dutch style.

None of these would be expensive in terms of infrastructure (at least not the version of the painted lane I'm suggesting). What they would be is a lot better than a sharrow, which honestly does nothing at all.

Playing in Public

 One element of public infrastructure that I think is critically valuable to developing a culture of people existing outside in community is space for play--specifically but critically, not exclusively for children.

Or at least, not in a way that makes it weird for adults to be present in those spaces if they're not immediately visually attached to a child. We get weird enough about adults and kids together in our society (intergenerational connections are actually kind of important?) but I can see the reason why a wholly-child-centric space with non-attached adults makes people less than fully happy. So urban spaces should have space for both.

Today I want to highlight some examples of what I have liked in some parks I have been to.

1. Effective Use of Unused Space

Let's start with a personal favorite: the downtown park and parklike spaces in Toronto.

This could be a very narrow skyscraper, but otherwise it's not really going to get a lot of use: it's right next to the expressway and it's a narrow space between two streets. 

It's ideal for a park though: it's narrow for buildings but wide enough that no kid is automatically running into the street, and it's long so you can actually have a whole lot of vaguely-connected stuff in the space without it feeling cramped.

There's obvious kid architecture here but also places for people to sit, meditative spaces, and if I recall correctly even a pull-up bar. 

It's an effective use of space that might otherwise be lesser used, and it's a good intergenerational space. It's also big enough that no one feels crowded (though when we were there it was pretty empty, so...no one could have been crowded--hopefully it fills up at other times).

2. Path Integration

Another common technique I see is integrating these spaces into the neighborhood of multiuse paths, as here in Lincoln:

This, itself, is a kids playground: swings, play structure, obviously intended for your 5-12 year olds (and effectively younger, but the city's liability requirements mean it's labeled for 5 and up). 

But you can see the connection to the larger path system that is a bike path along a waterway, and there's a bench in the picture.

A reverse angle on the structure gives you the covered pavilion in the background as well, which is close enough that a parent can supervise older kids from a distance but far enough away that I've seen completely un-playground-related groups happily eating in it while kids play on the structure, with neither group bothering the other.

All in all, it's an effective area for allowing people to exist in public together, all facilitated by that close proximity to the pathway.

3. Fine, Green Space Rocks Too

I can't leave this topic as is without admitting that, for all that built environments can contribute to this, actual green space is considered a key part of the urbanist fabric for a reason.

I do prefer the kind of green space though that, as here in Croydon above, has some shade built in (both trees and structures), paths demarcated, and a little bit of care taken to make sure that people aren't just being tossed into an open patch of grass and told to make do.

You don't need to have a whole laundry list of available activities and buildings like here in Vanier Park, Vancouver, but it helps to have something more than just open space. 

Green space is refreshing, it's multiuse (from kids playing around to organized cricket, below, from Stanley Park in Vancouver):

And to top that off it's good for the lungs of the city.

So while I am all in favor of infrastructure that helps facilitate play among kids and adults, sometimes even I have to admit: green space is usually better than too much design.