Search Results for: rail

Minneapolis Light Rail Loses Another Passenger

By | | News commentary, Transportation
33 Comments

A woman who stumbled as she tried to board a light-rail train in Minneapolis fell under the train and was killed. Horrifically, the driver of the train did not realize what had happened, so proceeded to take the blood-splattered train four more stops to the end of the line.

Passengers on board the train said they heard knocking on the doors, then “bup bup bup bup,” and then saw blood spattering the windows. But none bothered to inform the driver even though the trains are equipped with a passenger-to-driver intercom.

Continue reading →

Charlotte to Revote on Light Rail

By | | News commentary, Transportation
13 Comments

Angry taxpayers raised enough money to collect tens of thousands of signatures to put a transit tax back on the ballot in Charlotte, NC. Charlotte-area voters had approved a half-cent tax to support light-rail construction in 1998.

But cost overruns made the project controversial, and opponents want to stop the transit agency from beginning construction on more lines. The voters will get a chance to repeal the tax in November, just a few weeks before the first line opens for business.

Will Charlotte drivers switch to light rail or do they just want other people to switch so they can drive on uncongested roads?
Flickr photo by jacreative.

Continue reading →

Will Seattle Spend $10.8 Billion on 50 Miles of Light Rail?

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters, Regional planning
14 Comments

Sound Transit, which is way overbudget in the construction of Seattle’s first light-rail line, now wants voters to approve a measure to build 50 more miles of light rail for the modest cost of $10.8 billion (in 2006 dollars). That’s a mere $216 million per mile, which is about four to five times the average cost of light-rail construction elsewhere.

I suspect this is going to be an uphill battle for the transit agency, if only because the Seattle Times article reporting this story emphasizes a much-higher figure of $23 billion (which includes projected inflation and some finance charges). Newspapers that want to promote light rail usually underplay the cost, but the Times feels burned by the last rail plan, which it supported, and which ended up costing far more than was projected.

Sound Transit, which wants to build 50 more miles of light rail, is also running commuter trains. Ridership proved so far below forecast levels that the agency ended up selling many of the commuter cars it had purchased for the operation.
Flickr photo by MGJeffries.

Continue reading →

Denver Rail Still on Track — Barely

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters, Transportation
10 Comments

The latest estimates say that Denver’s FasTracks rail projects are only $1.5 billion overbudget, not the $1.8 billion originally reported. The $300 million savings comes from such things as single-tracking light-rail lines that were originally planned to be double tracked.

Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD) plans to make up the $1.5 billion by selling $800 million more bonds (thus making for a longer pay-back period), and asking the federal government for more money. But officials still expect a $400 million or so shortfall.

Continue reading →

Monorail for Portland?

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
5 Comments

When I was a kid, I had a toy monorail. It looked like a rocketship, only pointed on both ends, or possibly two airplane fuselages back to back, and it hung from a thin, round metal rail. I saw one on a web site about historic toys once, but can’t find it now.

Now a former Boeing engineer wants to build a full-scale monorail like it in Portland. Instead of calling it a monorail, which is what it is, he calls it an “air tram,” possibly because he thinks that will sell better in a city that has already built an aerial tram.

Continue reading →

Rail/Fire Plan Not Followed

By | | Transportation, Wildfire
Leave a comment

Here’s an interesting congruence of two of my favorite topics: fire and rail transit. Albuquerque’s new commuter train was running by the Islete Pueblo, which was doing a prescribed burn of some of its grassland. The railroad tracks formed one of the borders of the fire, and passengers reported they could feel the heat of the flames as the train passed by.

Apparently, fire plans required that fire managers notify the railroad before doing prescribed burning, but they failed to do so. As New Orleans learned, plans aren’t much good if you don’t carry them out.
To ensure safe results with kamagra tablets however, it is advised to take them djpaulkom.tv levitra professional online as recommended to you. Spurious medicines can cause a lot of damage to levitra online your body. Robert Boyd the buy levitra djpaulkom.tv suggests what he sees as the hitherto missing link in the world of medicine. These are not quite the serious side effects mentioned above then cialis generic overnight you should seek immediate medical attention, as this will ensure you are safe from further harm.
Don’t forget to watch the hot video of the train going by the fire.

My, My, Light-Rail Corruption!

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation
2 Comments

The Maricopa County Sheriff is investigating possible corruption in the construction of the $1.4 billion, 20-mile Phoenix light-rail project.

The investigation may relate to the project’s former construction chief. Last October, it was discovered that she offered to pay a consultant team extra money if it hired a friend of hers. When the firm refused, she revoked a $150,000 work order for the company. When this was made public, she was fired, but the agency decided what she did was only unethical, not illegal.

Continue reading →

Transit Follies #4: The Kansas City Light Rail

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation
2 Comments

Today’s entry in the April Fool’s week of transit follies is a sad story of a light-rail project that threatens to destroy a transit system in spite of the wishes of the transit agency and other urban leaders. In 2006, against the recommendations of the entire Kansas City political establishment, voters approved a measure to build a light-rail line.

In 2005, Kansas City did a wonderful thing: It started a bus-rapid transit system the way bus-rapid transit ought to be done. The transit agency didn’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars building exclusive bus lanes. It didn’t buy million-dollar buses just to have a semi-futuristic look.

Continue reading →

The Antiplanner’s Law of Rail Transit

By | | Transportation
5 Comments

I often hear people say things like, “Light rail might make sense in Europe, but it doesn’t make sense here because our city isn’t dense enough.” To which I respond, “Light rail doesn’t make sense in Europe either.”

In fact, based on the numbers in the post on moderate-capacity transit, we can derive the following Antiplanner’s Law of Rail Transit:

By the time a city is dense enough to justify rail transit, it is too dense for light-rail transit.

Continue reading →

Ho-Hum, Another Rail Transit Project Is Way Over Budget

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation, Urban areas
5 Comments

FasTracks, the $4.7 billion project that aimed to build six new rail transit lines in the Denver metropolitan area, now looks like it will be a $6.5 billion project at least. Transit agency documents obtained by the Denver Post reveal that the latest cost estimates for every single rail line are an average of 64-percent greater than when voters approved the project in 2004.

A light-rail train slowly makes its way through downtown Denver.

According to the Post, the overruns “include almost $1 billion in design and engineering, $345 million in construction materials, $56 million in the price of rail cars and nearly $600 million in unexplained “contingency” costs, among other elements.” RTD, the transit agency, says it thinks this is high, but agrees that the cost will definitely be higher than the 2004 estimates. (The numbers in the Denver Post story are in 2006 dollars, while the $4.7 billion total is in “year of expenditure” dollars.)

Continue reading →