Monday, June 12, 2017

City of the Future, top diversity, real livability, downtown's non-issues, declining transit, and more

I'm back from CA with this week's items, including my own comments:
"In some cases, the decline in bus ridership more than made up for increases in rail ridership. Phoenix light-rail ridership grew by 10.6 percent, but for every light-rail rider gained, Phoenix transit lost nearly four bus riders. Los Angeles light-rail ridership grew by 8.7 percent, but for every light-rail rider gained, Los Angeles lost nearly six bus riders. Ridership on Nashville’s Music City Star grew by 2.6 percent, but the city lost more than 30 bus riders for every new rail rider. Denver opened a new rail line to the airport but lost more than 1-1/2 bus riders for every rail rider gained. Charlotte lost more than 15 bus riders per new rail rider, while Portland lost nearly 2 bus riders per new light-rail rider. 
Other major rail systems couldn’t even record gains. Washington’s Metrorail fell by 10.4 percent; Atlanta fell by 4.7 percent; and the biggest shock of all, New York City subways fell by 0.8 percent. Heavy-rail ridership also feel in in Baltimore (-13.2%), Chicago (-1.3%), Miami (-3.8%), and Philadelphia (-4.5%), among other places.
...
Light-rail ridership declined in, among other places, Buffalo (-6.1%), Cleveland (-4.7%), Dallas (-1.7%), Minneapolis (-0.2%), Philadelphia (-6.0%), Pittsburgh (-4.3%), St. Louis (-4.6%), and Sacramento (-3.5%). Commuter-rail ridership fell in Albuquerque (-7.7%), Austin (-3.5%), Dallas-Ft. Worth (-6.1%), Los Angeles (-4.3%), Maryland (-1.9%), Miami (-1.6%), Orlando (-8.5%), and Philadelphia (-5.9%), among other places. 
Salt Lake City has been getting more federal transit funding per capita than any other urban area, but the region seems to be losing its bet on light rail and commuter rail. Except for paratransit, every mode of transit in the region declined. The same thing happened in Dallas-Ft. Worth, which has built more light rail than any region in the country. Transit in San Jose, home of one of the nation’s worst-managed transit agencies, took a real nosedive, losing 10.0 percent of light-rail riders and 8.5 percent of bus riders."

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5 Comments:

At 6:30 PM, June 12, 2017, Blogger George Rogers said...

Global Houston

 
At 7:21 PM, June 12, 2017, Anonymous Rich said...

Rail ridership's reportedly increasing (slightly) in plenty of U.S. cities but bus-use sure is declining. What can Houston learn from this?

 
At 8:47 PM, June 12, 2017, Blogger Tory Gattis said...

New technologies like Uber are making fixed rail obsolete. Better in invest in special purpose lanes like MaX Lanes. See https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/03/self-driving-cars-high-speed-lane-berkeley-california

 
At 10:25 PM, June 12, 2017, Blogger Tory Gattis said...

Thanks for the link, George. I hadn't seen that report - really good stuff in there.

 
At 5:40 AM, June 13, 2017, Blogger George Rogers said...

There is more stuff at GHP.

 

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