Salt Lake Transit News Thread

[Orlando]

I-215,
Sorry man. I was just poking a little fun at your avatar name due to the particular subject.

I know Portland has suburban streets like any other place, and so does New York City. The point I was making was how much more vibrant and dense their inner city/urban core is. I've lived in both cities and now Seattle. I love Salt Lake City and get excited when I hear new developments popping up that I think will help to make the city more vibrant.

[Viperlord]

Air Canada returning to SLC, offers daily flight to its global-hub Toronto

http://www.sltrib.com/news/3701769-155/air-canada-returning-to-slc-offers

[i-215]

Originally Posted by Orlando

I-215,
Sorry man. I was just poking a little fun at your avatar name due to the particular subject.

I know Portland has suburban streets like any other place, and so does New York City. The point I was making was how much more vibrant and dense their inner city/urban core is. I've lived in both cities and now Seattle. I love Salt Lake City and get excited when I hear new developments popping up that I think will help to make the city more vibrant.

All good, man.

[Future Mayor]

Makid, I was aware of the changes to the Maximum parking in Salt Lake City, which is what I based my rant off of regarding Goltz, and that the initial review was only for the alley vacation. I think it's odd that the developer would even include the massive number of parking places in their initial proposal, even though it was only for the alley vacation. It's seems as if they didn't really do their homework on the entire area and simply threw together their standard parking ratio mix into the initial designs.

I still think they'll fight the ordinance and try to get more parking. Hopefully the PC and CC won't find some stupid loop hole to grant a variance.

[Makid]

The 2015 Q4 APTA Ridership Report is finally available.

http://www.apta.com/resources/statistics/Documents/Ridership/2015-q4-ridership-APTA.pdf

Quick Highlights:

Trax/Streetcar Ridership is now #10 for Light Rail in ridership having been passed with the opening of the new line in Minneapolis.
FrontRunner is #9 for Commuter Rail ridership.

Trax/Streetcar Ridership: 67.3K Average Daily riders. This is down 0.83% over the course of the year but up 0.76% over Q3 2015.
FrontRunner Ridership: 17.6K Average Daily riders. This is up 5.19% over the course of the year and up 4.77% over Q3 2015.
Bus Ridership: 71.9K Average Daily riders. This is up 7.33% over the course of the year and up 1.27% over Q3 2015

Total Ridership: 165.8K Average Daily riders. This is up 3.33% over the course of the year and up 1.55% over Q3 2015.

Observations:

With no additional openings expansions, Trax/Streetcar ridership is essentially flat for the year. As the TOD's along the various Trax/Streetcar lines come online, ridership growth should be more easily monitored.

FrontRunner ridership is continuing to grow even as no additional expansions and openings occur.

Bus ridership is still growing since the additions of 15 minute frequencies within SL County. While it isn't easily tracked, it does appear that the increase is tied more in local ridership. This is based on increased bus ridership while Trax was still declining.

Overall, it is nice to see that ridership as a total is growing and Trax/Streetcar ridership is flat considering the cost of gas is relatively cheap.

While there isn't any meaningful changes to come in the Q1 report (expansions, frequency upgrades or TOD openings), Q2 of 2016 will be interesting to watch as this will be the first quarter where the Prop1 tax increase will be used in Weber and Davis Counties.

While there are some TOD openings planned to occur, the biggest being the complex in Sandy, it will be interesting to see if there are any immediate impacts to ridership with the Prop1 increases.

I would also expect to see Prop1 back on the ballots for Salt Lake and Utah Counties this year. There are already news stories coming out about lack of funding for local roads and desires for increased transit services.

[Hatman]

Those ridership numbers are good news. I am more than astonished that FrontRunner ridership keeps going up. When I used to ride during peak hours I remember the thing was always crammed to capacity. The only way it can be increasing in ridership is if people are cramming it full at other times as well. UTA really needs to get going on adding capacity to it. The very least they can do is to lengthen the platforms from SLC to Ogden (excluding North Temple) to hold 4 bi-level cars + 1 commet car. That would add over a hundred new seats to each train.

Of course, work on double tracking and doubling the frequency really should get going soon, so that they are expanding for growth reasons, not for reactionary reasons. I'd hate to see UTA become a reactionary transit agency.

Anecdotally, I noticed on TRAX that the red line was running at double frequency this morning, and that every other southbound train was headed to Central Pointe. I guess they were going out of service. It seems like UTA adds extra service to the Red Line pretty regularly now, with trains going only as far south as Fashion Place, where the extra track at that station allows them to switch operating ends. I wonder why UTA isn't touting the extra service? It seems like a really good PR thing to do, saying 'Look what we can do! This is more convenience for you!' But I can't find anything official about it. I wonder why?

[s.p.hansen]

Originally Posted by Hatman

Anecdotally, I noticed on TRAX that the red line was running at double frequency this morning, and that every other southbound train was headed to Central Pointe. I guess they were going out of service. It seems like UTA adds extra service to the Red Line pretty regularly now, with trains going only as far south as Fashion Place, where the extra track at that station allows them to switch operating ends. I wonder why UTA isn't touting the extra service? It seems like a really good PR thing to do, saying 'Look what we can do! This is more convenience for you!' But I can't find anything official about it. I wonder why?

It's for general conference

[UTPlanner]

No, General Conference starts tomorrow. They have been running extra red line trains every morning for a while. I have noticed it too.

[Makid]

So I got a bit bored and decided to play with the numbers. I used the Q4 numbers for the calculations.

I wanted to get an estimate on Ridership for just SL County. I didn't include FrontRunner for this to avoid too much cross county usage.

Trax/Streetcar numbers are entirely within SL County. So that was easy 67.3K.

Bus ridership is harder to do. As roughly 70% of the routes are within SL County, I took 70% of the riders and we come up with 50,330.

I did account for 2 way ridership so I did divide these numbers in half when doing the calculations.

For the County population, I didn't use the exact estimates but used a steady 1,010,000 for the population. This could go up with more correct numbers.

For the modes we get:
3.33% population usage of Trax.
2.49% population usage for Buses.
5.82% population usage combined.

Now, the population does include infants and children that are less likely to use transit. So, not knowing the number of infants and children that would be too young for transit I just used an estimate of 700,000 (Over 16 years old).

When I use this we get the following:
4.81% usage for Trax.
3.60% usage for Buses.
8.40% usage combined.

I then went another step. I wanted to find out about the estimated working population (575,000 estimated).

With this we get:
5.85% usage Trax.
4.38% usage Buses.
10.23% usage combined.

Lastly, I wanted to find out how many use transit for commuting. I used 350,000 as the population estimate for those that commute greater than 5 miles or to/within SLC.

With this we get:
9.61% usage for Trax.
7.19% usage for Buses.
16.80% usage combined.

Now, as I said early on, these are population estimates against constant ridership numbers. Ridership on buses in SL County could be higher or slightly lower but I feel fairly confident that I am close to the actual number.

For the percentages of usage, this doesn't include transfers. I don't think there is a good estimate on how many transfers occur nor what percentage of riders transfer.

Because of variances in population estimates and possible transfers, I think it would be safe to say that roughly 9% of the working population of SL County uses UTA buses/Trax daily.

These numbers could be done again when the Q1 numbers are released. After that, the formula for SL County bus riders will need to change as Davis and Weber Counties will see increased service starting shortly and we will see increased ridership in Utah County when their BRT line and other lines are added over the next couple of years.

I would be interested to see how the SL County numbers stack up against other systems but this might be difficult due to the service level alone in SL County compared to the service district size.

Finally, I did do an estimate on combined usage if the number of 15 minute or better frequency service was expanded and additional routes were added within SL County (Basically Prop1 passing). The combined estimate would increase from 9% to 12%. This is the average increase on ridership on those lines that saw their frequencies increase to 15 minutes.

I did save these formulas in a spreadsheet and I do plan on updating them based on population updates so I can run these against other numbers, I just need to know what numbers I should try.

[s.p.hansen]

The Transit of Greater Salt Lake City



https://www.behance.net/gallery/34077942/City-Transit


https://www.behance.net/gallery/34077942/City-Transit

Peter Dovak

[Hatman]

^^^
Very cool. Man, FrontRunner will look great with 5 bi-level cars. Also, it's cool to follow the link and see Salt Lake City thrown in with other much larger city's transit systems.

[Liberty Wellsian]

Perhaps we should be adding gondolas to our transit portfolio. They are cheaper than streetcars, offer impressive views, and seem like they would fit in well with the existing backbone of our transit system. Below is a few lines that could be considered.

Salt Lake Central Station to Washington Square. This line would serve as a jump for commuters to the U and the 4th south corridor. It would have fantastic up close views of downtown.

600 North and 12th west Smith's to Fair Park Station This line would extend the walkable service area of the North Temple Trax line.

Either line above could be extended into Poplar Grove not sure which would be better.

Brickyard-SugarHouse-Westminster-(eventually maybe the UofU)-This line would could help solve the north south traffic issues without taking up valuable real estate on some of our thinner roadways. The streetcar could be extended east instead of turning North.

/thoughts?

[s.p.hansen]

Originally Posted by Liberty Wellsian

Perhaps we should be adding gondolas to our transit portfolio. They are cheaper than streetcars, offer impressive views, and seem like they would fit in well with the existing backbone of our transit system. Below is a few lines that could be considered.

Salt Lake Central Station to Washington Square. This line would serve as a jump for commuters to the U and the 4th south corridor. It would have fantastic up close views of downtown.

600 North and 12th west Smith's to Fair Park Station This line would extend the walkable service area of the North Temple Trax line.

Either line above could be extended into Poplar Grove not sure which would be better.

Brickyard-SugarHouse-Westminster-(eventually maybe the UofU)-This line would could help solve the north south traffic issues without taking up valuable real estate on some of our thinner roadways. The streetcar could be extended east instead of turning North.

/thoughts?

Gondolas aren't SLC's style, we don't waste money over engineering things. If we're gonna do fluffy touristy transit the best thing we could do is connect downtown with the State Capitol. An automated funicular running up and down the incline portion of State Street or Main Street to the top of Capitol Hill would be pretty cool.

Angels Flight in LA over the years:

[Hatman]

I like the looks and concept of the LA Flight funicular, but every time I've tried to ride it, it has been closed.

Gondolas are also pretty cool. I regularly check in on this site, THE GONDOLA PROJECT, which I recommend every transit enthusiast do too. Cable-powered tech is vastly underrated. I think the best candidtate for a gondola route in our city would run from Salt Lake Central Station and run down 200 South, stopping at Main Street (near Galivan Plaza and/or the Convention Center), then continue all the way up the hill to President's Circle up at the U of U. It would be a very quick way to get from FrontRunner to conventions or to the U without dealing with any traffic or congestion, ever.
Imagine if 200E looked like this (except with a streetcar directly below the gondolas in the downtown area, using the gondola support poles as its catenary support structure!):



For comparison, Here are two dudes proposing a system for Austin, on TEDx no less.
• Video Link

[Liberty Wellsian]

Originally Posted by s.p.hansen

Gondolas aren't SLC's style, we don't waste money over engineering things.

They cost less money per mile and take up less real estate. That's not wasting money. That's saving money.

Originally Posted by s.p.hansen

If we're gonna do fluffy touristy transit the best thing we could do is connect downtown with the State Capitol. An automated funicular running up and down the incline portion of State Street or Main Street to the top of Capitol Hill would be pretty cool.

What's fluffy about it?

• Video Link

[Future Mayor]

It may be cheaper, but the Colombian one you reference goes 10 miles per hour, while the S-Line goes 25 miles per hour. So it's going to take 2.5 times longer to get to a destination by gondola than it would by street car. Maybe ones that aren't climbing a steep incline go faster, but do they go 2.5 times faster than the Colombian one? That reason alone, IMO is enough to not change from streetcar to gondola. Many critics already complain that the S-line is to slow, imagine how many more complaints would be raised if it's twice as slow.

[Liberty Wellsian]

Originally Posted by Future Mayor

It may be cheaper, but the Colombian one you reference goes 10 miles per hour, while the S-Line goes 25 miles per hour. So it's going to take 2.5 times longer to get to a destination by gondola than it would by street car. Maybe ones that aren't climbing a steep incline go faster, but do they go 2.5 times faster than the Colombian one? That reason alone, IMO is enough to not change from streetcar to gondola. Many critics already complain that the S-line is to slow, imagine how many more complaints would be raised if it's twice as slow.

1st 25mph is the maximum speed of the streetcar. The average speed is 10mph.

2nd I wasn't suggesting we replace rail just that perhaps gondolas could augment it.

[Hatman]

Fair point about criticisms and public perception. But what matters is not top speed, but average speed.

For example, the UTA 2X bus, the 200 South Express (no stops between central station and 13th east) will get you from Salt Lake Central Station to the University Medical Center in 30 minutes. I am too lazy to measure the exact miles by road, so I'll use the direct route a gondola could take - down 200 South then straight across the U campus for a total of 3.75 miles. So even though the top speed on 200 East is 25 miles per hour, the average speed is 3.75miles/0.5 hours, or 7.5 mph.

Let's imagine the gondola makes only two intermediary stops between Salt Lake Central and the Medical Center, one at Main Street and the other at President's Circle. This is safe to assume because gondola stations are huge expensive affairs, slightly more complex than building an elevated rail station (this is the main reason it isn't fair to compare the S-line to a gondola, because they would serve different transit niches). So let's just say that for simplicity's sake, we use the 10 mph top speed also as the average speed. That same distance of 3.75 miles would be traveled in 22.5 minutes, or 7.5 minutes faster than the bus. Which doesn't sound like much, but considering what effects traffic and weather can have on the bus schedule, I still think it's a good idea.

Add to this my belief that a gondola built in SLC would be superior in quality than the urban gondolas in South America, and that our's would have a higher top speed. Go 3.75 miles at 12 mph, and the trip can be accomplished in 18 and a quarter minutes. Raise the top/average speed to 15 mph, and you get a trip time of 15 minutes. Twice as fast as the bus, because the average speed is twice as fast, even though the top speeds differ.

That is why in a few limited point-to-point situations, gondolas are a very good choice. Even the best choice. Obviously you can't rely completely on gondolas (which is why the Wire video I embedded above is mostly fantasy), but you can use gondolas to directly link end locations better than buses or streetcars or any multiple-stop system can.

EDIT: I was responding to Future Mayor, but L.W. beat me to it.

EDIT OF EDIT: I got so enamored with my own idea that I made a terrible map to post on this thread. Here it is.

Obviously the thin white line measuring out the distance is the cable, and the four red dots are the stations. One at Salt Lake Central built above 200 South, one at Main Street straddling the intersection (with walkways descending down both sides to the convention center and to Galivan Plaza), one at the University in the open space at President's Circle (politically impossible, I know, but go with it) and one at the University Medical TRAX station.

[Liberty Wellsian]

Originally Posted by Hatman

Fair point about criticisms and public perception. But what matters is not top speed, but average speed.

For example, the UTA 2X bus, the 200 South Express (no stops between central station and 13th east) will get you from Salt Lake Central Station to the University Medical Center in 30 minutes. I am too lazy to measure the exact miles by road, so I'll use the direct route a gondola could take - down 200 South then straight across the U campus for a total of 3.75 miles. So even though the top speed on 200 East is 25 miles per hour, the average speed is 3.75miles/0.5 hours, or 7.5 mph.

Let's imagine the gondola makes only two intermediary stops between Salt Lake Central and the Medical Center, one at Main Street and the other at President's Circle. This is safe to assume because gondola stations are huge expensive affairs, slightly more complex than building an elevated rail station (this is the main reason it isn't fair to compare the S-line to a gondola, because they would serve different transit niches). So let's just say that for simplicity's sake, we use the 10 mph top speed also as the average speed. That same distance of 3.75 miles would be traveled in 22.5 minutes, or 7.5 minutes faster than the bus. Which doesn't sound like much, but considering what effects traffic and weather can have on the bus schedule, I still think it's a good idea.

Add to this my belief that a gondola built in SLC would be superior in quality than the urban gondolas in South America, and that our's would have a higher top speed. Go 3.75 miles at 12 mph, and the trip can be accomplished in 18 and a quarter minutes. Raise the top/average speed to 15 mph, and you get a trip time of 15 minutes. Twice as fast as the bus, because the average speed is twice as fast, even though the top speeds differ.

That is why in a few limited point-to-point situations, gondolas are a very good choice. Even the best choice. Obviously you can't rely completely on gondolas (which is why the Wire video I embedded above is mostly fantasy), but you can use gondolas to directly link end locations better than buses or streetcars or any multiple-stop system can.

EDIT: I was responding to Future Mayor, but L.W. beat me to it.

I may have beat you to it but you said it much better.

[Future Mayor]

While cheaper per mile than streetcar, the service area, in Hatman's scenario above, seems very limited with only 2 stops between Central Station and the Medical Center.

The scenario you posted suggests that IF the average speed could be increased to 15 mph the trip could be made in 15 minutes, while not significant, each stop (two of them) for even one minute takes you back up to 17 minutes, at the 12 mph speed that takes you to 20 minutes. While I understand the desire to cut the travel time from Central Station to Medical Center. Is the cost of Gondola vs existing bus worth the amount of money that would be required to build the Gondola, while not serving any area between Main St and Presidents Circle? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't?

Just a couple of hundreds of others questions that would need to be addressed. What are the potential negative side effects to building a station above Main St or along the side of 200 S? Are there economic benefits, that could result from a station near Main and 200 S? Would additional vehicle traffic be eliminated from surface streets for those commuting to the U? Would it reduce passenger numbers on existing Trax lines?