Interoperability and Intermodality: Or, Taking More Than One Train or Bus

I was reading recently about intermodal fares, the systems by which multiple modes of transit, and frequently multiple operators of transit, can be (or not be!) experienced as a single seamless whole by their customers through the use of shared payment systems, travelcards, etc.

I thought it might be useful to think through how this operates in three different cities I've visited in the past year or so, and what we might take from those cities about how cities in general can make this idea work for them.

1. Montréal and the Integration of Legacy and New-built Systems

Montréal appears in the article I was reading, and for good reason: the system allows you to pay based on zones across any transit you take in the city, regardless of what kind of transit you're taking in those zones.

This machine can get me tickets to the Metro, where it's located, but also to the buses, the REM, and the local commuter rail. 

Anywhere on this island is the same zone; how convenient! 

But what makes this notable is that these are systems with very different histories and operators: while a Metro expansion is finally coming sometime soon, the bulk of the Metro is very much a legacy system (as are the commuter trains) and the REM is completely new (well, not necessarily the track, but the service). It would be natural to imagine that if you set up a completely new system, operated by completely different operating companies, and functionally competing in many ways with the initial system, they would not integrate fares: after all, they didn't integrate the map (no REM above!) and the stations with interchanges still require you to tap out of one system, walk across to the other, and tap in again. 

It's by no means a seamless service. What it is is a service that doesn't charge you more or differently depending on which service you choose to take, and that's really important: it means not only that the REM was freed up to serve new parts of the island without worrying that lack of coverage in the downtown core would make it less useful but also that the Metro actually derives utility and ridership from the new areas that the REM opens up to that service. 

New systems, even ones not controlled by the same operator (e.g. TfL in London) do not have to be a problem for the old ones: if you properly integrate fares, you get a positive-sum interaction.

2. London and the Menu of Choices

Speaking of TfL, there are a lot of different ways to get around London. Some of them are TfL-owned or -branded (most, honestly) and some are not (hi, National Rail!) All share a common fare card, but unlike Montréal, not a common fare structure (except insofar as a travelcard daypass, monthly pass, or daily maximum payment might include multiple services). 

That's partly a feature of the sheer breadth of options available. Integrating the cost structure for heavy rail, metro, light rail, tram, bus, airways...it would be a nightmare. So you don't get quite a Montréal-style "just make it the same for everyone" result in London.

Instead, what you get is the opportunity to select from a menu of choices without being shut out of any, even if the costs may differ.

Stratford can have all these options and know that anyone getting into any of them (except the taxis) is going to have the "right" payment because they're all on the same scheme. You want to get somewhere from here? Go for it!

The bus in the center here will take your fare.

The Tube on this platform will take your fare.

OK, this freight train running on National Rail tracks probably will not take your fare, but pretty much everyone else will.

That may seem obvious, and thankfully as more and more places are just letting you tap any contactless card in and out it's becoming more and more widespread. But it's not always been true, and it's not true everywhere even now, that you can have that kind of payment system integration. And it makes a menu of choices much less overbearing to know that your card will get you on any of them--there's no secret way in which walking to the wrong faregate will get you stopped (I'm looking at you, Chicago Metra, which for a long time only took passes and not payment on the integrated fare card).

3. Toronto and Active Integration

Unlike both Montréal and London above, Toronto actually integrates not only the fare payment system but wherever possible the actual faregates across different modes.

Yes, it might be a long walk to the Finch West LRT, but I don't recall needing to swipe twice.

And when I got into the station on the LRT, I was already in a paid-fare zone for the subway.

Now, part of this is that they aren't, like London does with some transit modes, charging different fares for different modes. That makes it simpler to do this, and arguably shafts the worse modes (since it would make sense to pay less for that Finch West LRT than the subway, for certain values of making sense).

But it also makes the experience much more pleasant to actually go through.

So the overall takeaway for me here? The less barriers you can put to people actually using your service in concert with others in the city, the more productive transit in the city as a whole will be. Transit is the ultimate in positive-sum (even exponential) interactions: getting to a place via transit that not only goes somewhere else but connects to even more destinations is a force multiplier. The fewer barriers in terms of payment (both cost and method) that we can put up, the more benefit we will reap.

Smaller Public Art

 It's been a while since I talked about public art, but since it's an important topic about what makes cities both distinct and livable, I wanted to revisit it: but this time with an emphasis not on big elaborate set-pieces, but on the smaller touches that can make a city beautiful.

1. Idiosyncrasy

I love little pieces that make the city seem like it has a personality:

This piece in the Montréal subway isn't huge; it's easy to miss. But when you notice it, it makes that station stand out a little bit, and makes Montréal as a whole feel a little more lived in, a little more human.

Or look at this little light-up rainbow ribbon in the Village in Toronto. It's not something huge or permanent; but it does give the neighborhood personality.

These little touches make a place feel different, but not foreign (despite, I suppose, these literally being foreign to me, as Canadian cities). They make it feel like a place people like enough to make their own.

2. Texture

Now, individually these produce this sense of idiosyncrasy--but collectively, in large numbers, they can create a larger texture to the city that makes all of it (even the bits without public art) feel more human-scaled.

Sometimes that's practical in terms of actual use, like these little steps in the Boston metro area that people can sit on and such, but often it's just a sense of place.

Things like fountains are common as an example of this kind of low-stakes creation of distinctive spaces--though not all of them have this many dog statues, Toronto!

3. Public Doesn't Necessarily Mean Government-Funded

Of course, not all "public" art in the sense of art that makes the city feel distinct is "public" in the sense of funded by the government, whether directly or by things like a "percent for art" program. 

Graffiti is the most obvious example of this: a culture that accepts or even promotes graffiti in certain locations looks different than one that scrubs every instance of it off as soon as possible.

A little free library may be a less contentious example. But the point is that encouraging this kind of smaller-scale, non-monumental public art can make a city feel special. 

And having places that feel like distinct places is a key part of urbanism, just as much as housing or transportation.

Advantages of Underground Rail

Well, if I'm going to talk about the advantages of elevated rail, it feels only fair to discuss some other advantages: like the advantages of the other main grade-separation option, underground rail.

Because if there weren't any, well, we'd all build the cheaper, elevated option, wouldn't we?

Note that when I say "we," of course, I don't mean the Quad Cities. Lord no! It would be nice, but let's get some basic bus frequency and maybe a rail link to Chicago first.

But "we" in the larger sense do keep building tunneled, or cut-and-cover, rail: so why? What is it bringing to (or rather, under) the table?

1. Land Use

Probably the most obvious advantage of underground rail, besides grade separation itself, is that it has limited demands on the surface: while it requires just as much space as anything else when you consider the space underground, we as a society tend to value the surface much more than the depths: we live there, after all.

That means that a form of transportation whose visible surface-level footprint is minimal has big advantages.

This space doesn't count: the platform, the tracks, the rest of it is all under the everyday life of the city.

Even a big suburban station like this one on the Toronto-York border is still just a single building at the street level.

When your footprint is small enough you need an actual sign for anyone to know it's there, that's small.

2. Unexpected Connections and Paths

The knock-on effect of putting all the actual train stuff down underneath everything is that you're not as constrained by the surface-level patterns in terms of where you put the tracks or stations. True, it's very expensive to tunnel under a river or through a mountain, and going through dense areas has its own problems (good luck avoiding all the other hidden underground systems on which modern cities depend, like sewers, electrical, etc.) but whereas elevated rail tends to mirror or mimic street grid patterns because otherwise you have to knock down the buildings in the way, underground rail...doesn't have to do that.

This could go anywhere! It's like a portal to Narnia, if Narnia had a metro sign instead of a lamppost.

That's how you can build something like Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line) and connect a bunch of destinations that weren't previously connected: you have (assuming political will and budget) substantial freedom in how you zigzag beneath everything else.

3. Whether the Weather...

And of course, underground rail is out of the way of the biggest objection to elevated rail: the weather. Now, the London Underground may be constantly overheating itself, but by and large you have more control over the temperature and the (hopefully non-existent) precipitation underground than above.

Platform screen doors make this even more pronounced, as you can do more to the platforms as well as the actual cars themselves.

Pictured: a space that will only be rained on in an absolute disaster. 

Now, do these advantages counteract the advantages of elevated rail we looked at before? Of course not. Otherwise we'd build only one kind of rail. But they are significant, and they offset the generally greater cost of underground rail substantially. That's why both are viable options--and why, if we can afford it, a lot of cities opt for going underground.

Transit and Sport: US and Europe

 So while the 15-minute City brand has been damaged by a lot of conspiratorial thinking, I do think the central idea that we should have easier, more consistent, and car-free access to the things that make life pleasant, easy, and livable remains a vital one.

And while that applies for sure to things like groceries, jobs, schools, and the other things that we need to live a modern life, it also applies to the things that make life better without necessarily being required.

So I want to talk about getting to sporting events.

1. Sports Are Perfect For Transit

Fundamentally, a sporting event is a natural fit for public transit, because it involves a lot of people travelling to and from a known location at a predictable set of times.

That's why even in cities that don't do transit well, sporting events often get better transit. Famously, it's a pain to get to Foxboro, the stadium where the NFL's Patriots play, but you can do it on gameday because they run a special commuter-type service.

This means that even sporting events that are not really "15 minute" events (since Gillette Stadium in Foxboro is hours outside of Boston) are transit hubs.

But we can do better than that.

2. Stadia In The Community

US sports stadiums are typically in the midst of giant parking lots. This makes sense, as the majority of people who will access the stadium are assumed to be arriving by car, since most trips in the US are by car.

This is not always the case everywhere.

Here's Stamford Bridge, a major football stadium in London, home of Chelsea FC, a top-ten global football club in terms of fanbase.

It's right on the street in the midst of that mix of Chelsea, Fulham, and Earl's Court that is its neighborhood.

I got there on foot, and it's a 4 minute walk from Fulham Broadway station.

Here's a picture I took just after getting off a tram in Paris, of the Paris FC stadium. Now, Paris FC is not Paris Saint Germain, and thus not one of those global top-ten in terms of fanbase: but it's a pretty darn accessible stadium:

Yes, in both cases there is space around the stadium, because on match days you need it: queues, crowd control, vendors, etc. But the space around it blends right back into the streetscape: you don't have to cross a huge parking lot to get there, you just have to walk up to the pedestrianized spaces around the stadium itself.

Emirates Stadium, home of Arsenal (another of those big clubs) has a very visible street presence and a giant walkway to get to the stadium--but notice that it's just kind of a neighborhood as soon as you pass the sign.

Craven Cottage, home of Fulham, a smaller London club, is even more integrated. Would you know that was a stadium of a major league team if you didn't know from this post?

They even want you to help the neighbors by binning your trash.

This is how people exit Craven Cottage after a game: not a traffic jam, but a wave of walking people as far as the eye can see.

That's what integrating a stadium into a city can look like. It may not make it a "15 minute" city, unless you are like London and have a major football club every 15 minutes. But it certainly makes it closer to one when people can get to their sports as easily as to their grocery store--and neither by car.

3. Green Shoots

Of course, not every US stadium is like this. The old-school baseball stadiums, like Fenway Park in Boston, are nestled neatly into their neighborhoods too. But that's a legacy, not a current commitment. 

What's more impressive is that US cities are doing better going forward in some important ways.

No one would accuse St. Louis of being anywhere but the US, or anything but American, but when they built a new stadium for St. Louis City FC, they put it downtown.

During construction, they were very proud of their identity.

And what they built was nestled into the city, not separated from it (except by, you know, ticket barriers).

This picture isn't of the stadium--it's the zoo. But I took the train from one to the other. Magical! Admittedly, it took more than 15 minutes. But the larger concept of the 15 minute city--the idea that I should be able to do this easily, without a car--remained valid.

And St. Louis isn't alone. US cities are starting to return to the idea that a stadium doesn't have to be a parking lot. Let's just hope the movement continues, and is married (as it was in St. Louis) by transit improvements as well. 

And if it does, I look forward to taking transit to a lot more sporting events. 

Protecting Views

 I was talking to someone recently and they brought up the golf course that used to be in what is now extremely prime real estate by the river in Chicago.

My friend's claim was that this happened because people wanted to protect their views of the lake, and that building tall towers there (which is eventually what happened, of course) would impact others' views. 

I'm not here to litigate whether this is actually the reason (though it seems plausible to me). Rather, I want to talk a little bit about this concept of protected views--both why it can make sense, and when it can go too far.

1. A View Is A Genuine Amenity

Let me start with the most important point: I do think that there are levels at which a view is, legitimately, part of the value of a place, and something to be protected. 

We can think of this in a reductio ad absurdum: if my neighbors put up tall buildings on every side of my lot and across the street that mean I can see literally nothing but the street straight down and their blank walls on each side, I think it's pretty clear that my quality of life and the value of my living space have been impacted.

The brick building doesn't have much view to the right, does it?

But we can go beyond that. There are good reasons for not just the ability to see out the window in general but for views of certain buildings or sights to be protected.

St. Paul's is genuinely the centerpiece of the City of London: being able to see it is valuable.

As this downtown Vancouver logo suggests, the mountains are an important thing to be able to see in that city.

We could say the same about Lake Michigan in Chicago (not that you'd have any trouble from the height this photo was taken).

So there are genuine reasons to protect views.

2. How Much Protection?

But the counterpoint is that not every scrap of visibility needs to be equally protected. Once we've hoisted ourselves over the "completely blocked by all surrounding buildings" bar, we enter into a more complicated space where countervailing interests need to be accommodated. 

We can imagine this with the opposite reductio ad absurdum: if we don't allow any building at all that might enter into the sightline of an existing building, we can't build anywhere anytime; we can't accommodate the density we'd need in a functional city; and we're imposing just as much cost on our neighbors (now unable to build) as they were on us in the first hypothetical (unable to see). 

So the question becomes: how much of a view needs protection?

Certainly, we can't expect everyone everywhere in Chicago to see the lake, or in Vancouver to see the mountains--the cities are too big, and sheer distance plus the existence of height variation in the land is going to mean not everyone can see everything all the time.

That goes double with St. Paul's, which is, after all, itself a building built into what would have been a different view before it was built (and indeed there was a different St. Paul's there before the Great Fire). 

This is what the concept of Vancouverism is intended to balance: tall buildings, as above, but also wide pediments that mean that there are gaps in between the buildings so people can see.

The above picture isn't classic Vancouverism, despite being in Vancouver, because the high-rises are fairly wide, instead of thin shards above wider, shorter buildings. But I use it to point out that the style matters less than the substance; it matters less that the buildings be the distinctive narrow towers of downtown Vancouver than that there be space between them to let others peek through.

We can see similar trends, though less of the pediment-tower style, in the Chicago skyline as well. Everyone can see the water (or in this case be seen from the water) and yet we do not have a race to the bottom where everything has to be 1 story.

In other words, there is space to protect views without that meaning that we don't build.

3. Reasonable Accommodation, Not A Veto

The fundamental point here is that protecting a view should be a matter of a reasonable accommodation, where you can't deliberately and significantly block someone else's view of something important, but it should not be a veto where you can block all development simply so you can look across someone else's property. 

Or make them turn it into a golf course because it's shorter.

It can be reasonable, as here in London, to prevent the riverside (or lakeside, or other major point of culturally or environmentally significant views) from becoming clogged with high-rises that block everyone else from seeing it.

But especially as we suffer collectively from a housing crisis across the world, it's not reasonable to say we can't build up at all.

And as St. Paul's shows, you can have consistent density at medium heights without impeding a good view at all.

Views matter--but they're not the be all and the end all. Letting people actually live where they want is another significant good, and one we can't ignore.

When It Rains, It Pours

 There's no denying that weather happens to every city. If it didn't, we'd live in an airless void, which I guess means we wouldn't live, which means no city because no people.

But I digress.

My point is that every city has weather. Cities have different climates, of course, and thus different weather occurs in them, but the common issue of needing to allow people to continue to operate the city regardless of the weather crops up worldwide.

And one of the most consistent issues that cities have to deal with is rain. Most places people choose to live, especially in urban numbers, get rainfall. Some more, some less, but some.

Heck, I've even been in Phoenix in a rainstorm. It happens.

But what cities do to deal with that rain can be highly variable, and can massively impact the experience of living there. Today, I want to talk about some rain options I've seen, and how they operate.

1. Just Suck It Up (Because You Can)

This is the attitude of cities like Seattle and London to rain: yeah, it rains here. So? 

Now, this kind of attitude actually relies very heavily on the urban infrastructure, which is designed to handle (most) rain because it's a common occurrence.

Take this sunny photo of Pike Place Market in Seattle. Notice anything about the market itself? That's right, it's covered. Seattle assumes that there will be a lot of days where it's at best overcast and likely drizzling or actively raining; as such, it defaults to design where public spaces are rainproofed. This empowers the city's moment-by-moment unconcern for rain: it's already built into the plans.

It's subtler in an open, uncovered space like the University of Washington's Red Square, but the bricks here are organized and patterned so that the ground channels water down to massive drains, leaving the space not dry, but not puddled or hazardous, in all but the worst moments of a squall.

The city is built to just accept the rain, because it's easier than fighting it.

2. Wait, It Rains? What Do We Do?

The flip side of this is cities that seem to sometimes forget that it rains at all.

Sometimes I worry that Davenport is one of these.

In these cities, there may be rain infrastructure (there's a drain in the above picture, somewhere, though it's losing the war to the water) but it's not well maintained, and seems mostly vestigial as a result of standardized city planning, rather than intentional for the space.

Even unclogged drains may not be up to the task of draining the water the comes when it does actually rain.

Sometimes, this is should be linked to climate change: perhaps the style or frequency or intensity of rain is changing. But often it feels more like a cost-benefit analysis: everyone will hate it when it rains anyway, so is it worth the money to improve this system for a time that won't be appreciated?

Doing similar things with snow and ice leads to a lot of freeze-thaw cycles, though that's technically beyond the scope of this post.

3. Prepare But Don't Stress

Then there are cities that fall between these extremes: the ones that actually do things about the rain, but don't keep those preparations visible 24/7 because they don't think it's always coming.

Like Paris, for example:

Notice the available but not used extendable cover in front of Shakespeare & Co. here. 

With apologies for the blurry picture, you can see several other equivalent preparations here, some extended and some not (it had rained that morning). And the cobblestones likewise are good in the rain but not built as intentionally or permanently to deal with rain as Red Square is.

This is a neutral ground, where the city can adapt to a rainstorm but is not constantly cowering in fear of one (not that Seattle fears the rain--but it is always assuming that the rain will return soon). 

What about your city? How do you see it dealing with rain? Does it deal with rain at all? Or are you, like the Quad Cities, constantly surprised when water comes from the sky?

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.