London: Still the Best City for Transit?

 I recently had the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks in London for the first time in a few years,  and as I often do, I took the opportunity to survey the local transportation scene.  My observations follow:

London Underground (the Tube) – The tube is still the best way to get around.  Service was generally excellent.  Headways (time between trains) was often less than two minutes, accommodating a steady stream of customers.  There were some service interruptions due (presumably) to line maintenance work.  Some trains that I rode on, notably on the Circle Line, were definitely dirty, and more cleaning (and probably new trainsets) should be priorities.  But overall I continue to be impressed with this reliable, efficient workhorse of urban mobility.

London buses – Buses were modern, clean, frequent, and efficient, with good information at bus stops and onboard.  The only problem?  They are bound by road traffic, with few opportunities for getting around other traffic, and therefore sloooooow.

Elizabeth Line – This was my first time getting a chance to ride the Elizabeth Line, the new fast, high-tech Underground line that opened in 2022.  It is billed as a sort of regional express metro, running east-west through the city with limited stops at major interchange stations.  Some of its key features are platform screens with doors that open only when the train arrives and individual architectural treatments at each station.  All of this is first-rate and the ride was smooth and fast, as promised.  The downside is a characteristic all too familiar in London – very long walks through what seem like endless tunnels and escalators to reach the platform.  Also, I have to say that I have never quite bought into the rationale for the design of the system.  I’m sure it’s useful to many people, but if given that much money – over $20 Billion – I probably would have looked first at some other opportunities on the Underground system: redesigning some of the crazy connections at interchange stations, upgrading passenger amenities, dropping in a few key infill stations, and making some strategic extensions and realignments.  

Bike/ped improvements and city streets – There are more and more bikes in London and more and more pedestrianized streets.  I got a chance to spend time at the newly pedestrianized area around St Mary le Strand, an area I know well, where a car-clogged street has been replaced by a landscaped plaza, serving the nearby King’s College London as well as the general public.  Not far from there many of the small streets around the London School of Economics, my old neighborhood, have also been transformed into landscaped lanes.  Street by street, central London is becoming more walkable and bikeable and enjoyable.

Key takeaway: Frequency is Freedom! – As Jarrett Walker says, “frequency is freedom.”  What this means is that when you can walk up to a transit stop whenever you choose and expect your ride to arrive within a few minutes you are able to move about your community without timetables, without unproductive time hanging around the stop, and without anxiety that you will be late.  London – at least on the main Tube lines in central London – proves the point.  People come and go as they wish, comfortable in their ability to move across the city quickly and easily.  In many ways, London is still the best city for transit.

Illinois Enacts a Ground-breaking Transit Funding Bill

 If you follow transportation funding issues, you are probably aware that many transit agencies around the US are facing a so-called “fiscal cliff” – a dramatic funding shortfall that coincides with the end of federal Covid emergency funding.  Although transit ridership has been growing in most places, it still hasn’t caught up with pre-Covid numbers, leading to a major reduction in fare box revenue.  With no federal funding to make up the shortfall, transit agencies are left in a pinch.  The fiscal cliff has posed a major political challenge for state legislators throughout the country, who are effectively the last line of defense for transit.  Some states have come up with temporary fixes, some (looking at you, Pennsylvania!) are flirting with disaster, and a few have come up with serious long-term solutions.

Illinois has gone to the head of the pack for long-term solutions.  A new funding bill (passed on Halloween – make of that what you will) appears to have put a long-term funding fix in place, while implementing other pro-transit reforms (story here).

The Illinois funding formula represents a masterful political compromise.  No new statewide taxes are raised for transit.  Instead, about a Billion dollars a year is diverted to transit from the “Road Fund,” which is constitutionally permitted in Illinois, and this is topped up with a regional sales tax to support greater Chicago transit.  Normally, diverting money from roads to transit would cause an uproar from the construction industry and building trades unions.  However, the Illinois legislature essentially held the highway sector harmless by increasing funding for toll roads through a major toll hike.  In other words, the bottom line is a Billion dollar a year increase in transit funding with no net loss in highway funding (see this story from the state association of counties on the politics involved).  Everyone seems to be on board with this solution except the Republicans, who unfortunately seem to be unable to support any transit funding anywhere.

The legislature also used the funding bill as a vehicle for two major transit policy measures.  First, the “People over Parking Act” prohibits municipalities from enforcing minimum parking requirements in most cases on new development in the vicinity of transit stations and major transit corridors.  As many cities have found out, this simple step can boost high-quality urban development.  Second, the new Northern Illinois Transit Authority – created to coordinate the various transit agencies in the greater Chicago area – is given explicit statutory authority to get directly involved in promoting and investing in transit oriented development.  We’ll see how that plays out in practice.

This kind of legislation represents, in my opinion, not just progressive transportation policy, but also good governance.  A major public policy problem has been tackled head on in a way that is transparent and that takes into account all the legitimate interests affected.

Good work, Illinois!

UK launches a “new town” initiative

 The British “New Towns task force” has published a report (here) recommending that the government launch twelve “new town” initiatives in England to help address the nation’s housing shortage.  Those of us in the US interested in urbanism and the connection between transportation and land use should take note.

Britain has a history of government-supported new town creation, mostly post World War II, and it seemed a natural fit for the new Labour government to give the old mechanism a try in the 21st century.  

The twelve sites chosen are very diverse, and not all are really “new.”  They range from genuinely new sites on greenfields (Adlington in Cheshire) to transit oriented development in already urbanized settings (Manchester Victoria North) to urban “extensions” (Marlcombe, Exeter) to revitalization of an earlier new town (Milton Keynes).  Target sizes range from 10,000 to 40,000 homes (roughly 25,000 to 100,00 people).

The task force makes a number of recommendations on how to make these new towns happen, but critics are skeptical given the current government’s lack of cash, the orientation of many of the sites toward areas with relatively weak market forces, and the proposed rule that 40 percent of the new housing should be affordable.  (See the comments by British urbanist Nicholas Boys Smith here).

For US observers, however, the main interest lies in the task force’s forceful endorsement of “new urbanist” standards.  Chapter 3 of the report – “Placemaking principles for new towns” – lays out an excellent prescription for urban development, most of which work well on both sides of the Atlantic.

Some of the key principles:

• Vision-led – “Each new town should have a clear long-term vision for creating a well-designed and distinctive place, supported by a town-wide strategic masterplan and design code to ensure placemaking quality.”

• “Ambitious” density – The report calls for designing towns with enough density “to enable residents to walk to local amenities, support public transport, unlock better social infrastructure, and create active and liveable neighbourhoods.”  The authors make clear that they are not talking about high-rise development, but rather what is often called “gentle density.”

• Housing – The task force calls for building a variety of housing types, with a 40 percent minimum of affordable housing.  

Other key principles include planning for “social” infrastructure (access to schools, cultural, sporting and healthcare facilities, etc.), parks and green spaces, environmental sustainability (low-carbon buildings, climate resilience, biodiversity), business and employment opportunities, long-term maintainability, and community engagement.

And – of course – transport connectivity.  New towns should have “high quality public transport,walking and cycling networks within each town and convenient connections into wider transport networks.”  The report notes that “a bold transport vision that promotes a range of transport options and reduces car dependency is critical to ensuring the success of new towns.”  In fact, many of the thumbnail sketches of the 12 candidate new town sites emphasize that those plans won’t be viable without significant public investment in transportation infrastructure – an investment that will be difficult to find within current British budgetary limitations.

Are King Charles’ ideas on town planning finally being translated into public policy?  Perhaps (see BBC story here), although the report has nothing to say on architecture in general or on the use of vernacular materials, one of the King’s main preoccupations, in particular.

Although planning and building new towns is probably not in the cards in the US any time soon, we should watch carefully and be prepared to learn from the UK experience.  As I mentioned in an earlier post (here), the new Labour government is long on ideas but short on cash.  I wish them well.

Abundance

“Abundance” is the buzzword of the day in many progressive intellectual circles – and with good reason.  What the idea of abundance is all about is building more of the good things we need: housing, clean transportation, renewable energy facilities.  Liberals, environmental advocates, and transportation reformers have become so good at stopping bad projects – so the argument goes – that as a nation we can no longer efficiently build good projects.  And we have layered so many requirements on design and construction – all important in their own right – that construction has become prohibitively expensive.

The leading text of what has become known as the “abundance movement” is the book simply called “Abundance,” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (Avid Reader Press).  (For an introduction to the “movement,” see this website.)  Did you ever read a book and say to yourself, “I wish I had written that!”  That was my reaction on reading “Abundance.”  Klein and Thompson lay out, in clear prose, with lots of stories (and statistics and footnotes if you want those) how we got into this mess and why we need to get out of it ASAP (think climate emergency).  

Klein and Thompson analyze in painful detail the failure (at least so far) of California’s High Speed Rail project, what they call “No-Speed Rail.”  This project, managed by the California High Speed Rail Authority, has been beset by every ill that project managers fear: schedule slowdowns, cost overruns, right-of-way disputes, lawsuits, and political infighting on and off since 1982.  The authors summarize the grim reality:

“The project is caught in a strange limbo between political fantasy and physical fact.  The agency doesn’t have anywhere near the money or political capital it would need to complete the Los Angeles-to-San Francisco system Californians actually want.  It doesn’t even have the money to complete the Bakersfield-to-Merced system that [Governor Gavin] Newsom proposed.  It has no line of sight on how it will get that money or that political capital.  But since it has some money and some political capital, it is building anyway, in the hopes that Californians will want to finish what they started.”

My main criticism of Klein and Thompson is that they give too little credit to the Biden Administration, which not only adopted most of the policy direction they are advocating but succeeded in getting Congress (with a razor-thin majority in the Senate) to pass major legislation, backed by billions of dollars, to implement it.  Yes, the pace of implementation was much slower than some of us hoped for, and much of the progress already achieved is being rolled back by the Republicans.  And some of the toughest problems (notably how to break the environmental/productivity/cost bottleneck) were not wrestled to the ground.  But many problems outlined in Abundance were addressed.

One small example is the need for “clean” cement.  As the authors point out, the manufacture of cement – needed in growing amounts for growth around the world – is a major contributor to climate change due to the carbon dioxide released in the manufacturing process.  They call for new efforts to stimulate research and development of new cement production techniques.  What they don’t point out is that the Biden Administration designed and began to implement a program to do just that.  Sadly, that program has come to a screeching halt in the new Republican administration.  In one of the program’s initiatives, for instance, the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, the main industry trade group, was in the process of implementing a five-year program, funded by a $9.63 million grant from the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, to “help concrete producers reduce the carbon footprint of concrete by 50% by 2028 from 2014 levels and achieve carbon neutrality by 2045.”  That funding has now been stopped.

Kudos to Klein and Thompson for crystalling this very important issue.  If we had had another Biden (or Harris) administration, with working majorities in Congress, we might be making great strides toward abundance today.  But we don’t.  So, time to put our heads down and keep grinding.

Latest Freeways Without Futures Report

 The new 2025 “Freeways without Futures” report is out!

For those of you not familiar with this biennial report published by the Congress for New Urbanism (available here), it features a rogue’s gallery of 10 (or so) freeways or freeway widening projects that are really bad ideas and that are really good candidates for replacing, scaling back, or otherwise being brought into a reasonable relationship with reality.

This year’s report (full disclosure: I was a member of the jury that selected the “winners”) highlights 9 projects from around the country.  I won’t summarize the findings (you should read the report - it’s an easy read), but I will mention a few of my favorites.

Texas – always striving to be the biggest – wins the competition for biggest, most expensive, most ludicrously oversized projects with the proposed I-45 widening in Houston and the I-35 widening in Austin.  These freeways, which run right through the heart of their respective cities, are already way too big and making them even bigger, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, is nothing short of outrageous.  There are, of course, alternatives that would be far more sensible for addressing mobility needs while also addressing climate change, urban redevelopment, accessibility, equity, and so on, but these concepts fall onto rocky, drought-ridden soil in Texas at the moment.    There is lots of opposition to both projects, but the Texas DOT is moving forward relentlessly – until we stop them.

Buffalo is a hard luck town with some serious problems, but it also has some real assets.  Among these is a park system designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, which includes a beautiful landscaped boulevard through the east side of the city, called Humboldt Parkway.  Correction:  formerly included Humboldt Parkway.  Transportation planners decided 60 years ago or so that that wide landscaped median would be a super place to put an expressway.  So they did.  And today’s generation of planners wants to widen part of the expressway and put it into a tunnel!  In case you haven’t noticed, Buffalo is not growing.  The last thing the city needs is more ugly, overbuilt infrastructure.  This is a perfect time to take down the whole thing and re-establish Buffalo’s “green necklace,” which would be a far better support for a brighter future for the city than an expensive, unneeded, unwanted expressway widening.

Florida enters the list with I-175 in St. Petersburg, a one-mile-long under-utilized, outdated, spur connecting I-275 to downtown but dividing the community.  It is, according to one resident, “the Berlin Wall of St. Pete…. literally just a wall of concrete and earth.”  Fortunately, the Florida DOT is now conducting an alternatives study which seems to be leaning toward replacing the legacy freeway with a modern, at-grade boulevard, which would serve automobile traffic while reconnecting the city’s street grid.  We may be able to chalk this one up as a win for the good guys!

You may have your own favorite after reading the report.  More importantly, you may have a freeway without a future near you.  Are you near a big, ugly, noisy pile of concrete that lies heavily on your neighborhood or town?  Now imagine replacing it with a lively boulevard with a modern tram in the median, connecting you to where you want to go.  Or cheerful neighborhood streets with children playing.  Or a linear park, with fountains and bike lanes.  

The next step is to make the future happen.