Some thoughts on downtown and mass transit
Two posts today on two separate blogs on how mass transit fits into a renewed downtown Columbus. First up is John Kazalia from About.com, comparing Columbus to Portland:
Portland has lots of transit. LOTS OF IT. Light rail from east suburbs through downtown to west suburbs. A north-south streetcar line. Busways and busses everywhere. And most of it goes 24/7. And their ridership numbers show it–Portland transit gets as many riders in two months as COTA gets in a year….
What is there in downtown Columbus to ride a streetcar past at this point? Pretty much a dead mall and state office towers.
Of course, would the streetcars be the catalyst to bring things back to downtown Columbus? I don’t have a definite answer, but having seen downtown Portland I can say that Columbus has miles to go before our downtown is like theirs. Much, much, much more than just building streetcar lines.
Jamie Fellrath of Bike Commuting in Columbus (and into the blogroll with ye) left an interesting comment:
If Columbus could emulate them we would be in so much better shape. But it’s going to take more than just a trolley or some bike lanes - it’s going to take MUCH stricter zoning laws and greater cooperation between Columbus and the suburbs than we have now.
As long as Dublin, Gahanna, Hilliard, Delaware, etc. are pulling businesses outside of city limits, all the trolleys in the world won’t make a lick of difference.
It seems as if Jamie is asking for those satellite cities to cooperate in the destruction of their own business base, which of course is never going to happen. I believe Jamie’s view is based on the old paradigm of the downtown area having all the businesses, be it jobs or destinations like stores and restaurants, and the surrounding areas having all the homes- bedroom communities, as it were. This supports the classic urban mass transit model- all tracks lead downtown. It works best in New York due to that city’s unique geography. But even there, it works best if you work in Manhattan. It’s a real bitch to travel from Brooklyn to Queens, for example. So you can see how mass transit would be easier if businesses were coerced into operating downtown. But it’s a non-starter.
The other post is from Columbusite, whose point #5 on improving downtown is:
COTA, if it is to be useful at all, needs to stop serving sprawling suburbs which were built with total disregard for mass-transit. They aren’t wanted there and they cannot serve these areas well anyway. COTA needs to focus on proving good serve in urban areas, where they improve service like shortening waiting intervals. Streetcars would still be preferred since they don’t have the stigma that buses do, it’s hard to get lost on them, and they attract economic development which buses don’t since those routes could just disappear, negating any investment related to there being mass-transit.
This is the minimalist plan: the streetcars go downtown and to surrounding urban neighborhoods, but don’t really serve the larger metro area- not directly anyway. This is actually Columbus’s current streetcar plan, whose three lines would connect downtown to the Short North, Arena District, and German Village.
Like John, I’m agnostic on whether this would help. It really is a chicken and egg problem for downtown. Can new downtown destinations survive without an extant transit system to deliver customers? Will building a light rail or streetcar system spur downtown development? Columbusite says:
A very general observation but for a city our size to start becoming a 24/7 city we need around 10% of the total urban population downtown, which would be 30,000 people. Streetcars have proven themselves in spurring such development.
If such a plan works, and downtown becomes a much bigger destination, there then might be a call for a metro-area transit plan involving heavier rail. But even so, it’s going against the urban decentralization trend of the last 50 years.
Public transportation shouldn’t exist if there is public funding involved.
Matt, I’m not very high on public transit myself, but I don’t buy that argument. The roads are built with public funding. I’m not so extreme a libertarian that I think all public infrastructure should be privatized. Mass transit easily fits into the public infrastructure category.
My question is whether it would be money well spent.
One important thing to remember about Portland: Back in the 1970s, Oregon’s Republican governor, Tom McCall, signed legislation drawing a circle around Portland. Essentially, no further urban development was to happen beyond that circle.
That, I believe has helped Portland as well as Washington farms and small towns. Portland has been redeveloped.
This strategy stands in contrast to developers moving further and further from core cities, laying waste to farmland and small towns and leaving behind abandoned retail space and deterioating housing stocks in first, second, third, and fourth ring suburbs.
Whether one agrees with this approach or not, it’s clear that developing mass transit systems in a clearly delineated urban/suburban metroplex must be a lot easier than trying to do so in one that’s ever-expanding.
Mark Daniels
This is an issue I follow pretty closely. I don’t think a plan can be implemented incrementally (e.g. the proposed streetcar route), and I don’t think it can be done without regional cooperation through some entity like MORDC, but it really needs to get done.
Me, my out-of-the-derriere plan would be proposing a plan that links Easton to downtown via CMH, Ohio Stadium via the Schott, North Grandview, and the Arena District, and extend the streetcar plan from GV to the South Campus gateway.
Right-of-way would be restricted to Columbus, Whitehall, and Bexley, but tease UA, Gahanna, New Albany, and Westerville.
The idea is to get people who might choose not to drive connected to places they might plausibly choose not to drive to.
Mark: that’s a good point about Portland. It makes it NYC-like in a way, except the boundary is political. You’d need the state to do it here, as happened in Oregon, but it’s not on the table.
bonobo: The GV streetcar aspect is odd. It’s only comes into GV for a few blocks. That wouldn’t tempt me to use it, down here near Thurman.
I sometimes think the best way to do it is just to jump in with a simple plan: very light rail on High and Broad all the way out to 270 with a spur to the airport. Plus, robots! Then see what happens.
The streetcar working group assumed ridership coming from within two blocks of the line in their estimates based on experience in similar cities.
Bonobo: Many other cities found it best to “start small” with something that didn’t need ballot support (e.g. Charlotte and Denver). Most Americans don’t understand the benefits (economic and social) of having solid mass transit, and therefore, vote down any large plans. Based on experience from similar sized cities, I think this method of exposing citizens to what good modern transit is, is probably the best way to build out a system over the long term.
24 years driving,dispatching, and wrenching taxicabs in Columbus taught me two topical facts of life here. This city desperatly needs a subway, and the city government cant even get something as simple as the taxi industry right.(Unless they get donations from a cab company with a monopoly.)I railed at stupid Cols drivers for years”you people belong on a subway not in the middle of my road”. Having been born here I was lucky to live in Japan,NYC,and even spent some time in D.C., All cities with famous subway systems.None are better than Japans(whoses taxi drivers wear white gloves like I used to when I drove my own cab,and they refuse tips!being paid an honorable wage or salary)This streetcar idea is a terrible mistake!Remember me as the one who said I told you so when you come to rue the day.There is no other way to secure public safety and get a happy return on the expensive investment than to put that train UNDER the road.The streetcar is a gimic,an amusement ride that only goes from here to the next election. Without a real subway Columbus cant get to the big leagues EVER.I suggest the city partners with the Bank of Japan, and Japan National Rail Corp.They build subways like Swiss watches and the Bank is begging people to borrow thir money(They print it out of thin air just like our federal reserve note,without all the blessings of government war debt,so they are eager to do business). Maestro Junichi Hirokami of theCSO wants to bring japanese investors here.So do I. THIS IS THE WAY TO DO IT RIGHT.A Subway will save this citys future and if you do it my way it will help save the Columbus Symphony too.