DENVER | Transportation Thread

[bunt_q]

Poetic, Wizened, well done. But which of those is nearest and dearest for you, personally? Berlin, for me. Those echoes resonate.

[Wizened Variations]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Poetic, Wizened, well done. But which of those is nearest and dearest for you, personally? Berlin, for me. Those echoes resonate.

Tokyo- I spent formative years there and spoke Japanese. To me, as boy, the people on the train were human beings. Beneath that finely honed discipline, the gifts and curses of life.

I spent years growing up with Japanese kids. Fought them, hugged them, bragged to them, lied to them, told secrets to them, and, kissed a couple of their sisters.

That's where I LEARNED public (and privately owned) public transportation works well due to careful design, worker discipline, and, people who become ashamed hurting their own.

[TakeFive]

The Seoul Subway Song was cool.

Sao Paola is where The Girl from Ipanema lives.

[denverryan]

Does anyone know what on earth is going on with RTD's bus voice thing lately? About three months ago, it started saying this every single time the bus stops:

"Attention Passengers: strollers must be collapsed prior to boarding. Thank you."

I ride the bus for more than three hours per day, and I have rarely seen anyone with a stroller, and I'm perplexed why this is such a prominent announcement, but I'm willing to let it go. The crazier thing is that no matter what bus you ride, that stroller announcement somehow makes its way into the regular stop announcements, often overlapping with the actual stop announcement:

"Next stop, Table Mesa ATTENTION PASSENGERS: STROLLERS park and ride COLLAPSED gate B THANK YOU prior to boarding."

This happens at least once a day, and it doesn't seem to matter which bus you take. Local buses, regional buses, they all do it. As if that wasn't crazy enough, the strollers message was modified last week to have different emphasis, as if the once-per-minute reminder was not sufficient:

"Attention passengers: strollers MUST be collapsed prior to boarding. Thank you."

I love public transit and enjoy riding the bus, but being relentlessly scolded for not collapsing my non-existent stroller is going to put me in the goddamn looney bin. SOS.

[PLANSIT]

^ Lawsuit.

[jubguy3]

I visited denver! ill be posting my transit comments here.

1st- fares. WTF RTD! it costs two fiddy here to take the light rail as far as you want (you could take it in excess of 25 miles) and its still 2.50. I was staying in castle pines with a friend (i like it there but i dont like it) and we had to drive to dry creek to take the train because its so expensive... it was still 32 dollars JUST FOR LIGHT RAIL. We had to spend another 6.25 on the bus.

2. Fares aside, you guys have a nice system. I like how there are two destinations downtown and how the 4 main lines run in an x shape to either one of these, with the h and w going elsewhere. The drawback of this is frequency- we had to wait 25 minutes for a train during rush hour at union because the ridership is reduced on each line. SLC defenitely couldnt support a 30 minute freq mass transit system and 20 minutes is becoming difficult on saturday (defenitely not sunday... utah problems, some streets downtown here are EMPTY on sunday mornings and no, the temple is not a church. you apparently have to be all special and stuff to go to the temple here so otherwise no downtown traffic).

3. The graphic design and station design were nice, although they got the neohistorical kiss of death that we did to. It was fun crossing the bridge over I 25 and i like all of the infrastructure and track investment (i.e. very little grade crossings on the southeast line which is what i rode) with the tunnels and all. Every single thing in salt lake is completely at grade except for a bridge over I-215 here and the only non at grade station over a viaduct with our commuter rail and maybe some on the daybreak line with rivers and all and also some out on the wvc lines but thats because its in a jumble of 3 interstates and a freight line and it isnt with bridges anyways, just geofoam).

4. Union station is amaaaaazing. Its so nice and cool i have nothing bad to say except that it was a long walk from the actual union building to light rail

5. branding... RTD gets bus branding right, ALthough it isnt on the system where the bus number shows where it goes if it isnt intercounty or neighborhood (i.e. 205 runs on 5th east because the 200 indicates north south and 5 is either 5th east or 5th west, 21 is 21st south in to sugarhouse). What they do not get right is light rail branding. TheRide is corny to say and isnt a catchy acronym (METRO, MAX, TRAX, MBTA, Muni, SEPTA, DART... you get the point) and its a mouthful saying "gee, geoffry, im going to take the light rail as opposed to gee geoffry, im going to [U]TRAX[U]. Very few people in SLC even realize what light rail is and its weird seeing a sign at our airport that says light rail... literally no one here refers to it as light rail because of the branding that UTA has chosen, and its official name of TRAnsit eXpress (its not all camel cased in its official form, just pointing out the acronym) is used nowhere either, even on the most official of documents (light rail is used in planning and design documents as a mode of travel). That being said, mallride is nice and the frequency is amazing. The buses were even full! almost too full. articulated buses next? i know metroride exists but its still congested and out of the way, so people along 16th everything below like 15th are still going to use it and people along 17th like the frequency of mallride so they just use it too.

5. Buses. The buses are all old, they smell bad, and they are LOUD. The hybrid buses i saw on 0/broadway were nice but didnt fit with the paint scheme and seemed like an alt fuel campaign bus with the "this bus makes your world... quieter" thing and the blue color. The other buses arent low floor, are ugly and dark inside, smell like old diesel, and the signs are hard to read. Pretty soon there are going to be no more buses if RTD doesnt get on fixing that. Take a look at the gillig natural gas buses in salt lake. UTA knows how to take care of a bus - even the 2011 not egg shaped ones have immaculate (i mean literally immaculate down to the fibers in the seats) interiors complete with new car smell, quietness, and efficiency. The 2013 buses that UTA ordered a shitload of are even better because they a. look like eggs, b. are even cleaner inside, like no salt stains or residue on the floor even, and c. are newer. I cant find a picture of the egg buses but just imagine a regular gillig bus but with something added on top that makes them round shaped and taller by about 2 or 3 feet. they look pretty funky...

thats all. i may be forgetting something but there are things i hate about your system (i.e. fares, buses, frequency) and things i like (union, 6 and soon 7 lines, station design and infrastructure investment). goodbye,

[Wizened Variations]

Nice review Jubguy3.

**********************
The Denver Post this morning was filled with rehash as the buildup to the Union Station building opening begins in earnest. The number of column inches devoted to RTD was rather amazing.

[PLANSIT]

Councilwoman Susman Opinion piece from Saturday's Denver Post:

Denver's transit: going the first mile

In April, I wrote about "the sharing economy" in The Denver Post, in part investigating alternate ways of getting around town: bike, walk, bus, and ride shares like uberX and Car2Go. I even went for a week without using my car. It was a liberating experience.

Denver is in a time of transition between transit policy and transit reality. The city's planning vision and policies strive to discourage driving and incent transit-biking-walking. The Stick: We have reduced parking requirements and stopped widening roads (in most areas), hoping that if we make driving more inconvenient people will switch to transit. The Carrot: We are adding bike lanes, requiring sidewalks with development, restriping roads and, of course, building light rail.

But most of us still don't leave our car keys at home.

There is a term in transit planning called "the last mile." Borrowed from telecommunications technology, it describes the need to carry signals from the broad backbone (the pole) to the shorter distances (hence, the "last mile") to and from homes or businesses. Or, to put it another way, the infrastructure at the neighborhood level. For transit, it translates to the dilemma of getting people from their neighborhood to rail or other rapid transit and back home again...

Continue Reading

[Octavian]

Long article from the Atlantic on Denver/Union Station/Fastracks:

How Denver Is Becoming the Most Advanced Transit City in the West

DENVER—It's a vision straight out of a transportation planner's fondest dream.

In the center of the metropolis, the Beaux-Arts façade of a grand old railway terminus, finished in robin egg-hued terracotta stone, is cradled by the daring swoop of a canopy of brilliant white Teflon. On one of eight tracks, a double-decked passenger train has stopped to refuel. A few hundred yards away, German-built light rail vehicles arrive from distant parts of the city, pulling into a downtown of soaring condo towers and multifamily apartment complexes. Beneath the feet of rushing commuters, express buses pull out of the bays of an underground concourse, and articulated buses shuttle straphangers through the central business district free of charge. A businessman, after swinging his briefcase into a basket, detaches the last remaining bicycle from a bike-share stand next to the light rail stop, completing the final leg of his journey-to-work on two wheels.

An out-of-towner could be forgiven for thinking she'd arrived in Strasbourg, Copenhagen, or another global poster child for up-to-the-minute urbanism. The patch of sky framed in the white oval of the Union Station platform canopy, however, is purest prairie blue. This is Denver, a city that, until recently, most people would have pegged as an all-too-typical casualty of frontier-town, car-centric thinking.

[RyanD]

CDOT's new advertising is kind of dark...

[CharlesCO]

Well that's disturbing. And heteronormative.

[bunt_q]

I'm that guy hehe.

[COtoOC]

Has the I-70 widening project been discussed much? I received a call last evening that allowed me to be in on a "town hall" phone discussion regarding widening I-70 from the airport to downtown. So the solution they seem to have settled on is to rebuild the entire thing with 3 general lanes in each direction and two HOT lanes in each direction, so it will be 10 lanes wide. From what they said on the call, I still couldn't understand the logistics of tearing down the viaduct part while keeping the freeway open for traffic. But through that area, the plan is to sink the freeway below grade (like I-25 around Downing stretch) and cap part of it for a park near Swansea Elementary. Obviously, a lot of homes and businesses will be torn out.

Overlooking their "spin" on how toll lanes will help us all, it sounds like there just isn't much Federal funding for such projects anymore and CO taxpayers refuse to pay one more cent to upgrade infrastructure. Therefore, the private partnership/tolls is the only way to do this.

What I can't figure out is, if they're toll lanes, how do you get in and out? It seems like there can really only be one entrance and one exit from the toll lanes. Or is there some new technology that I don't know about? I'm just thinking how this will work if I wanted to use the HOT lanes to get from Central Park Blvd. to downtown.

It sounded like construction is planned to start in 2016 and be completed in 2021. Is it just me, or do freeway projects take three times longer in CO compared to CalTrans in CA? Damn, they're slow here. Kind of like it's taken over 2 years to widen 3 miles of 225.

[jubguy3]

Hey guys, do you have a transportation master plan for downtown denver? The whole SLC master plan got released and we have plans for linear parks in the street (our ROW downtown is 132 feet... Each street has parking, bike lane, 2 lanes, center lane, another two lanes, bike, and parking...) essentially converting streets in to parkways. I wanted to see if you guys have anything like it and what the plans are because in retrospect the idea is actually very good.

Also we have a prettier master plan than you (graphic design wise)

I'm also posting this to hopefully break up the political debate here :/

[RyanD]

Day 59 as a fellow Cory-Merriellion, here is my transit update, this time in mileage:

(This is from Day 1 living in the new neighborhood)

Car Miles: 357

Bus Miles: 223.20

Light-Rail Miles: 128

Walking Miles: ~100 (Hard one to gauge but I've walked a lot to Wash Park, grocery, Lollicup (LOTS OF LOLLICUP), to and from bus stop for work (2 miles a day) and of course downtown when I do my DI stuff.

Car2Go Miles: 12.7

Bike Miles: 7 -

[Cirrus]

I moved all recent posts discussing the RNC into a new RNC thread.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by RyanD

Day 59 as a fellow Cory-Merriellion, here is my transit update, this time in mileage:(

Those are quite respectable numbers I'd say. What do you think they'd be if you weren't given an ecopass by your employer? I'm always curious to think what would happen to mode shares more broadly if we eliminated transit fares altogether (which is essentially what your employer has done for you).

[RyanD]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Those are quite respectable numbers I'd say. What do you think they'd be if you weren't given an ecopass by your employer? I'm always curious to think what would happen to mode shares more broadly if we eliminated transit fares altogether (which is essentially what your employer has done for you).

I'm actually surprised they came out like that, and I'm very happy with them. Yes, my ecopass is the primary reason why I take so much transit. With my last job, who didn't pay for transit, I still put out the 20 dollars a week to take the bus. Now to get downtown sans ecopass, I would say cut the LRT miles in half.

With all that said, I would focus more on buying a new bike if I didn't have an ecopass and bike the hell out of my commute during the summer. When I do get a bike, I would also expect all of those numbers to go down and my bike mileage to skyrocket.

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

What do you think they'd be if you weren't given an ecopass by your employer?

Probably similar to what would happen if we started charging a driving toll on every road.

I'm always curious to think what would happen to mode shares more broadly if we eliminated transit fares altogether (which is essentially what your employer has done for you).

How much did it shoot up in Boulder when CU students started getting unlimited passes?

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Probably similar to what would happen if we started charging a driving toll on every road.

How much did it shoot up in Boulder when CU students started getting unlimited passes?

Maybe on the tolls, but driving is still a major time saver. And gas isn't free. Cost equivalency clearly favors driving. I view no-fare transit as a subsidy, which balances the greater convenience of driving. And that's good, we should subsidize things we want to encourage. (My disagreement is with the notion that we should charge more to drivers to dissuade auto use, along the lines of a "sin tax.")

Was there a time before CU students got bus passes? That's before my time. Wonder if that data is available...