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!