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June 27, 2010

CRC Lane Refresher

I don't think this is new, but it showed up recently in the RSS feed on Mayor Adams' site (probably a link from a blog post), and I thought a refresher might be in order.

Click on the thumbnail to see the full image, and understand where lanes get added as we move from the current bridge to 8, 10 or 12 lanes on the Columbia River Crossing.

Posted by Chris Smith at 9:30 PM | Comments (31) | Permalink

June 25, 2010

Merc Covers 8-lane CRC Discussion

Sarah Mirk continues her excellent coverage of the Columbia River Crossing - the best of any of our mainstream media.

Posted by Chris Smith at 4:58 PM | Comments (4) | Permalink

June 23, 2010

Modal Smack-down at JPACT

Freight interests are making a play for flexible Federal dollars that have in recent years been allocated to active transportation.

Excellent coverage at the BTA blog.

Posted by Chris Smith at 9:28 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

June 22, 2010

CRC Tolling Plan not "Stupid", Merely "Myopic"

Kudos to Sarah Mirk from the Mercury for reading the transcripts of the Columbia River Crossing Independent Review Panel.

Nice to see some actual independence from the review panel!

We can't let the DOTs stay in charge of this effort...

Posted by Chris Smith at 11:45 AM | Comments (7) | Permalink

Tab A Now Fits in Slot B

Warning: this is a little techno-geeky. But it's a significant win for those of us who care about open transit data.

Until very recently, you could get a TriMet data feed for your transit application without any problem, and you could get NextBus data for Streetcar arrivals, as long as your application was non-commercial.

But NextBus has now published new terms of service that do not limit commercial applications. You can access these from the Portland/Regional CivicApps datasets page (requires login).

If you haven't seen CivicApps yet, check it out, a wealth of public data is now coming online for your consumption!

Next up - getting the Streetcar data included in TriMet's arrival feed so you only need to access one feed (the obstacle to this is NOT technical)...

Posted by Chris Smith at 1:53 AM | Comments (8) | Permalink

June 21, 2010

Asking the Right Question About Burnside/Couch

It would appear that the debate over the future of West Burnside and Couch is about to re-ignite.

This will be round three. I participated in round one, back in the middle of the last decade, when I represented my neighborhood in NW Portland on the stakeholder committee. There was broad consensus during that process that a couplet with Burnside and Couch on both sides of the river was the best answer to how to tame the traffic on Burnside.

Round two occurred after newly-elected Commissioner Sam Adams was given control of the Bureau of Transportation and with both PDC and the Bureau of Planning expressing concern about the couplet, conducted a complete review. The result was that the eastside couplet received a greenlight, while the westside was closer to a draw, with City Council giving direction that a couplet could only move forward if a streetcar were included (on the theory that the couplet harmed Couch, but that harm could be offset by the addition of a streetcar). The couplet was also terminated at 16th (rather than 18th) as a result of advocacy by the parents at the Cathedral School. PBOT was directed to further refine the options, including a non-couplet option.

Now it appears that Mayor Sam Adams is ready to take up the issue again. An 'under-construction' PBOT web page links to the prior couplet proposal and what appears to be an updated version of the 'enhanced existing' (non-couplet) proposal.

The opposition also now has a web site up and appears to have used the 3-year hiatus to get organized. Round three looks like it could be a spirited debate.

Which leads me to wonder if we are debating the right question. The couplet design was premised in part on the assumption that we could not reduce the amount of auto traffic on Burnside. Given that constraint, the couplet was an attractive option to split the traffic in half, putting two lanes on each street (so a pedestrian did not have to venture a crossing of four lanes of fast-moving cars) and then moving them in a slower but more continuous fashion by using progressive traffic signals on each block.

I am doubtful that Burnside will ever be very pedestrian-friendly if we must maintain the current traffic flow in the same right-of-way. But I'm also confident that if we were willing to reduce the amount of traffic, Burnside could be a very nice place indeed without needing to shift traffic onto Couch.

So I would propose an alternate question for Round Three: how much traffic should Burnside carry for it's desired role in the Central City's future?

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:20 AM | Comments (30) | Permalink

June 19, 2010

The Four-Car Type IV MAX Train

(Or, unfortunately, not a good afternoon for TriMet employees and customers.)

Video after the jump...

Yesterday was one of those "may you live in interesting times" sorts of interesting times. TriMet had a relatively-new Type IV light rail train (a variation of the Siemens S70) which became stuck at the NE 60th MAX station, right as Friday rush hour was warming up. This is the central I-84 corridor which carries the Blue, Red, and Green line trains.

I subscribe to TriMet's rider alerts via email for the lines which run near my house, and as it happens this station is within a few blocks. I noticed the alert about a mechanical failure at around 4:45pm, and then an hour or so later it occurred to me that I didn't see the alert which usually follows to note that all is up-and-running again.

With a quick double-check of TriMet's web site, I confirmed that service was still interrupted and TriMet was running shuttle buses instead. I decided to grab my camera and walk over to the station for a closer look.

What I found was that a disabled eastbound Blue Line train was going nowhere.

I took care not to disturb the employees while they were working, but what I was able to pick up from casual remarks I overheard, and what was being told to curious passers-by outside the station area, was that an electrical and/or software problem was preventing the train from moving. It appeared that whenever it was attempted to move the train just a few inches, the brakes on one of the two cars would automatically fully kick in.

I'm not sure what all they tried before I arrived, but at this point they were attempting to couple another train (a type II or III) to the rear of the disabled train, and give it a push out of the station. But there were problems during and after the coupling process, and that train eventually left.

More attempts were made to inspect and manipulate the brakes and control connections between the two halves of the Type IV train, but it still exhibited the sticking problem.

Eventually, another Type IV train was brought in from the east, and through a carefully-orchestrated maneuver, was coupled to the disabled train and slowly pushed it to a spare track at the Hollywood Transit Center station. This provided a rarely-seen glimpse of a (slightly inoperative) four-car MAX train operating on the main tracks.

It took some time after this for service to be fully restored, with the final email update going out around 8:45pm, four hours later.

I imagine there's going to be some interesting chats back and forth between TriMet and Siemens in the near future. :-)

Special thanks to the TriMet personnel who tolerated the presence of a camera nearby when it was optional for them to do so.

Posted by Bob Richardson at 12:01 AM | Comments (20) | Permalink

June 18, 2010

Your Questions for Neil

Neil McFarlane will soon take over at TriMet in the role that has been filled for some time now by Fred Hansen.

PortlandTransport has arranged to do an on-camera, sit-down interview with Neil shortly after he assumes the new job. The date has not been finalized, but in advance of that, I'd like to solicit questions from our readers to help round out our interview.

Please share your question(s) in the comments, below.

All topical TriMet/transportation/land-use questions will be considered, including those which come from a strongly critical position, but please do keep things polite, neutral, and in reference to policy & practice rather than personalities.

There is no guarantee, of course, that every question will get asked (or framed in exactly the way that you might phrase it), but we'll do our best to select questions which represent the diverse array of viewpoints in our metro region.

(I'm also soliciting the assistance of a camera/lighting assistant. I've got all the necessary video equipment but would like to focus more on the interview and less on set-up. If you're interested in participating, contact me privately at bob [at] peak [dot] org.)

Posted by Bob Richardson at 11:44 AM | Comments (56) | Permalink

Reslicing Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The conventional wisdom has been that transportation in our region was responsible for about a third of our Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

Metro has just commissioned a new inventory of emissions, and came up with a lower number, about 25%.

Of that, about 3/5ths is "local passenger traffic" (i.e., cars) and 2/5ths is our long distance travel (planes, trains, etc.). Transit is a fraction of a percent and local freight is small as well.

The interesting finding in Metro's inventory is that "materials" make up almost half of emission sources. Materials include the stuff you buy (that flatscreen) and the food you eat. Interestingly, when you trace it back, about a quarter of the emissions from those materials are from transportation (getting them to you - so long-distance freight becomes significant).

Food for thought.

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:06 AM | Comments (4) | Permalink

June 16, 2010

VIPs Headline CRC Freight Session

From the City of Portland:

PFC [Portland Freight Committee] Members and Interest Groups:

I wanted send out a reminder ahead of time that there will be a special joint Portland Freight Committee/Vancouver Freight Alliance meeting scheduled during our normal first Thursday meeting date. The focus of July's meeting will be the CRC project and our special guests will be ODOT Director Matt Garrett and WSDOT Secretary Paula Hammond. To accommodate both groups, the July 1st meeting will be held from 7:30-9:30 a.m. in Room C (2nd Floor) of the Portland Building, 1120 SW 5th Avenue, instead of our usual City Hall location. Please mark your calendars for this date, time and new location. I will send out an agenda one week before the meeting.

Posted by Chris Smith at 5:27 AM | Comments (6) | Permalink

June 15, 2010

Two Paradigms for Transit Parking

Last month I had the chance to sit in on a brown bag session about the new bike parking facility under construction at the Sunset Transit Center.

Currently, the main way to get secure bike parking at a transit center is to rent a locker for a monthly fee. This has never worked for me, because my bike/transit use is not on a daily basis, but rather on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Reserving a locker would be economically inefficient and would also leave that valuable locker vacant and unusable for other folks.

So I was excited that the new facility will use a card-lock system (you pay for what you use) and will also use a form of dynamic pricing: you'll pay about 3 cents per hour during the day, but only a penny per hour overnight (both seem pretty cheap).

In part, this supports the idea of 'station bikes', bikes stored at the work end of your commute trip and used to travel the final distance to your day-time destination. I was surprised to learn that TriMet believes that about 15% of paid bike storage at transit centers is in fact for station bikes. The phenomenon is common in Europe, but I did not realize it had become this popular here.

Dynamic pricing also allows for the possibility that if the new facility is regularly overflowing, TriMet could increase the prices to manage demand (and maybe fund more capacity).

But what struck me is the contrast with auto parking at Sunset. While TriMet is charging for bike parking and to some degree using pricing to ration capacity, auto parking is rationed on a different basis: it's free, and goes to the folks willing to show up earliest in the morning. We're rationing it on a convenience basis.

It seems slightly insane that we charge for parking for the mode that contributes to health and the environment and subsidize the parking for the polluting mode. But I understand why it happens. The Federal TSUB criteria require TriMet to project sufficient ridership to justify funding, and that means increasing the ridership capture area by making it easy to park.

What's a better way we could construct policy around this?

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:01 AM | Comments (9) | Permalink

June 14, 2010

Another Chance to Bend the Ear of the CRC Independent Review Panel

Before they head off into closed session (emphasis mine):

On behalf of IRP Chair Tom Warne, please find the following information about the upcoming Columbia River Crossing Independent Review Panel Meetings:

CRC Independent Review Panel meets June 17-18

Public comments to be heard June 17

OLYMPIA -- An independent panel of transportation experts will meet June 17-18 to discuss planning and environmental aspects of the I-5 Columbia River Crossing project. The meetings on June 17 are open to the public.

The Independent Review Panel for the Columbia River Crossing project was convened by the governors of Oregon and Washington. The governors have directed this work to ensure that key project study assumptions and methods are reasonable. The eight-member panel has been asked to assess the implementation plan for the CRC project; review the financial plan for the project; and review and evaluate post-construction performance measures.

The June 17 meeting is scheduled for 8 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. in the Multnomah Room at the Jantzen Beach Red Lion, 909 N. Hayden Island Drive, Portland. The agenda includes a discussion of the CRC finance plan and project management. A community comment opportunity will begin at 7 p.m. at the same location.

The June 18 meeting will be a panel work session, closed to the public.

More information on the IRP purpose, the panelists and the schedule of meetings is available on the panel's website: http://www.crcreview.org . The website also includes materials from previous meetings of the panel and a link to provide written public comment.

The panel's final report will be provided to the governors of Oregon and Washington this summer.

Information on the Columbia River Crossing project may be found on the CRC website at www.columbiarivercrossing.org.

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:30 AM | Comments (2) | Permalink

June 11, 2010

Miscellaneous Links for the Weekend

A few things to keep you entertained:

• TriMet launches a mobile web site
• How is a parking space different from a toilet?
• Metro adopts Regional Transportation Plan after four years of process.

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:01 AM | Comments (2) | Permalink

June 10, 2010

New Low-car Magazine Launches

Portland Afoot is a "A four-page monthly newsmagazine about low-car life in Portland, Oregon" according to its publisher, Michael Andersen.

The "micro-publication" will be available in both online and paper forms.

Full disclosure: I am a board member of Portland in the Round, the parent organization of Portland Afoot.

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:06 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink

June 9, 2010

Proof that CRC Alternatives Do Not Violate Laws of Physics

Courtesy of the Mayor's office, here is the presentation (PDF, 1.8M) of the URS Columbia River Crossing analysis and alternatives that was presented to the Portland Freight Advisory Committee last week.

We also have a full-size PDF map (3.4M) of the combined Marine Drive/Hayden Island interchange. The key idea seems to be to use a small bridge across the slough to access Hayden Island from the freeway, rather than on-island ramps.

Another intriguing feature is keeping MAX and bikes on a separate structure across the slough. Apparently there is some discussion of continuing this on to Vancouver and building it before the bridge replacement to provide a travel alternative during bridge construction. What a wonderful idea... train all those commuters to use MAX!

Posted by Chris Smith at 7:42 AM | Comments (86) | Permalink

June 8, 2010

Next CRC Public Input Opportunity June 14th

From the project:

Project Sponsors Council co-chairs invite public testimony on Hayden Island access options June 14

PORTLAND - The co-chairs of the Columbia River Crossing Project Sponsors Council invite public testimony on Hayden Island access options on Monday, June 14.

Oregon co-chair Henry Hewitt and Washington co-chair Steve Horenstein will hear public testimony on alternatives for access to Hayden Island. The PSC asked a group of Hayden Island stakeholders, the City of Portland, Metro and CRC staff to evaluate additional access concepts for Hayden Island along with the current design for a rebuilt Hayden Island interchange. The stakeholder group has forwarded options for on-island and off-island access to Interstate 5.

Comments received at the meeting will help inform PSC members as they consider proposals for the Hayden Island interchange at their June 25 meeting.

Hayden Island Public Meeting

Monday, June 14, 2010

5:30 - 8 p.m. (Presentation at 6 p.m.; public testimony begins at 6:15 p.m.)

Jantzen Beach SuperCenter, Community Room (Across from the food court)

1405 Jantzen Beach Center, Portland

The meeting site is accessible to persons with disabilities. Accommodations for people with disabilities or people needing language interpretation can be arranged with advance notice by calling the Columbia River Crossing project at 866-396-2726. Persons who are deaf or hard of hearing may contact CRC through the Telecommunications Relay Service at 7-1-1. The meeting location is accessible by the #4 C-TRAN bus or #6 TriMet bus.

Posted by Chris Smith at 9:02 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

8 Out of 9 Experts Support Federal Transit Aid

Via Planetizen:

A panel assembled by The National Journal overwhelmingly favors the bill now in Congress that would provide $2B in operating assistance to transit agencies.

Posted by Chris Smith at 9:03 AM | Comments (2) | Permalink

Car Culture on the Wane?

In a post titled "The Great Car Reset" creative-class guru Richard Florida documents the decline in young people getting drivers licenses.

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:57 AM | Comments (8) | Permalink

June 7, 2010

A Brief Glimpse of the URS CRC Report

A little bit ago, I referenced that testimony had been presented to the Independent Review Panel for the Columbia River Crossing by a consultant hired by the City of Portland to review the project data.

A few PowerPoint slides (PDF) from the URS (the consultant hired by the City) presentation are now on the the review panel web site.

The slides hint at two important ideas:

1. It would appear that I-5 South will congest (V/C or Volume/Capacity ratio approaches 1.0) by 2030 at about the Alberta exit
2. URS is suggesting looking at combining the Hayden Island and Marine Drive interchanges as a way to reduce the number of overall lanes

I don't quite grasp how that combined interchange would work, but I'll look forward to seeing concepts. URS is also charged to develop ideas for reducing additional auxiliary lanes in both directions and I'll look forward to concepts as well.

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:15 AM | Comments (6) | Permalink

June 4, 2010

Open Thread for June 2010

Prediction: Rain today.

Posted by Bob Richardson at 4:10 PM | Comments (110) | Permalink

CRC Capsule Review

Back in April, I enthused about the international design panel brought to Portland to critique the Columbia River Crossing and suggested it was worth the 2 hours to listen to the audio of the event.

Happily, the highlights of that session are now available as three video segments of about 6 minutes each. If you don't have 18 minutes, pick any one and watch. They are all great viewing.

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:40 AM | Comments (4) | Permalink

June 3, 2010

Oregonian Makes it Official: We Can Talk About CRC Alternatives

So the editorial board decrees:

The Columbia River Crossing, imagined for a decade and energetically planned since 2005, had bogged down this winter over objections from the city of Portland, Metro, Hayden Island residents and a gaggle of alarmed architects and urban planners. The delicate consensus reached two years ago to proceed with the bridge had evaporated amid complaints that the Oregon and Washington departments of transportation had been allowed to dictate the shape and size of the bridge and its interchanges. The people and communities most affected by the bridge felt increasingly estranged from the planning process.

But then the dynamic started shifting, thanks at least partly to the co-chairman of the Project Sponsors Council, Portland lawyer Henry Hewitt.

"Henry recognized we were not getting where we need to go," explains Catherine Ciarlo, transportation director for Portland Mayor Sam Adams. She credits Hewitt with driving the creation of a working group to reassess problems such as the project's heavy footprint on Hayden Island.

Getting past the spin and more to the point:

Later, the city of Portland hired its own transportation consulting firm, San Francisco-based URS Corp., to explore alternative configurations and issues related to expanding the traffic crossing over the Columbia. URS' research and presentations helped expand the bridge conversation to include its effects on the Rose Quarter.

At Wednesday's meeting of the review council convened by the governors of Oregon and Washington, highway engineers said their primary unresolved issues involve the configuration of connections to Hayden Island, the width of the bridge and downstream effects on congestion at the Rose Garden. That acknowledgement is a form of progress, demonstrating an understanding of how many parties are needed to steer the bridge to a conclusion.

In other words, the City paid a truly independent (from the DOTs) analyst to review the data and confirm what we all knew.

OK, let's get on with some real conversation.

Posted by Chris Smith at 9:23 PM | Comments (13) | Permalink

Why We Live Where We Live

Portland State University
Center for Transportation Studies
Spring 2010 Transportation Seminar Series

Speaker: Cynthia Chen, Associate Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington

Topic: Residential Choice Locations - A Search in the Mirror of the Past

Abstract: We propose to decompose residential self-selection by understanding its formation process. We take a life course perspective and postulate that locations experienced early in life have a lasting effect on our locational preferences in life. In other words, what was experienced spatially is a key factor contributing to our residential self-selection and our preferences in residential locations are formed long before our own self-selection begins. We further hypothesize that prior locational influence interacts with period effect such that the same location experienced in different periods may have distinct effects. Using an empirically collected dataset in the New York Metropolitan Region, we estimated a series of models to test these hypotheses. The results demonstrate that prior locational influence precedes residential self-selection. Furthermore, we show a variety-seeking behavioral pattern resulted from locations experienced during adolescence.

When: Friday, June 4, 2010, 12:00 - 1:00pm

Where: PSU Urban Center Building, SW 6th and Mill, Room 204

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:12 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink

June 2, 2010

KBOO Bike Show: Pedalpalooza 2010

Listen to the show (mp3, 25.6MB)

Kicking off on June 10th, Portland's Pedalpalooza packs over 250 bike themed events into just two weeks. From Cruller Crawls to Pedal Potluck Picnics . . . From Legal Clinics to Naked Rides, there should be something of interest to everyone. And almost all events are free!

On this month's KBOO Bike Show, Lindsay and Sara host a conversation with three veteran Pedalpalooza event organizers, Leah Jackson, Steph Routh and Steven Upchurch.

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:30 PM | Comments (2) | Permalink

June 1, 2010

Coming Up on the KBOO Bike Show: Pedalpalooza 2010

Kicking off on June 10th, Portland's Pedalpalooza packs over 250 bike themed events into just two weeks. From Cruller Crawls to Pedal Potluck Picnics . . . From Legal Clinics to Naked Rides, there should be something of interest to everyone. And almost all events are free!

On this month's KBOO Bike Show, Lindsay and Sara host a conversation with three veteran Pedalpalooza event organizers, Leah Jackson, Steph Routh and Steven Upchurch.

11AM-Noon, Wednesday, June 2nd
KBOO FM 90.7
Streamed live at KBOO.fm
Podcast here later that day

Posted by Chris Smith at 3:50 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright...

Via Planetizen:

The vastly oversubscribed Tiger program now has a round 2, with $600M in funding.

Posted by Chris Smith at 12:00 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink