Plan B from Outer Space.
Wow…that’s all I can really say about tonight’s Alameda Point meeting. Ok, it’s not all I can really say, but actually, I feel like much of what I can say was said after SunCal’s last meeting: SunCal came to talk with the community about two proposals, neither of which were Measure A compliant. Peter Calthorpe talked about environmental sustainability issues and development.
[quick aside: it’s always interesting what environmental sustainability means to different people. We were lectured by one audience member on how the greenest building is the reused building all while her argument ignored the impacts of avoiding infill development at all costs and sprawling to the hinterlands.]
Two plans were presented and the only real difference in land use was housing. Both plans had 3.5 million sq. ft. of commercial, both had schools, parks, etc. Plan A was a 4,000 household plan and Plan B was a 6,000 household plan with a caveat. The caveat was that Plan B would not cross the 4,000 household limit without the implementation of a major transit solution. Fans of UWI’s proposal, get ready for one possibility they presented:
embedded by Embedded Video
YouTube Direkt
The overall information was well presented and interesting (I didn’t take notes, but the presentation will be up on the Alameda Point website in a few days). The gist was, Plan B, with the major transit infrastructure, had a zero carbon footprint, Plan A had about 1/2 the footprint of typical infill and sprawl sucks. Why talk about sprawl in Alameda with its defined borders? because every housing unit not built here (or in Oakland or San Leandro, etc.) is a housing unit in Tracy, or Stockton or Solano.
The number I was unfamiliar with, was the ABAG projections. Not the 1.2 million households needed in the Bay Area between now and 2035, that’s old hat. But the fact that taking all the city’s in the Bay Area and adding up their housing plans (housing elements, etc.) the Bay Area is 500,000 houses short of what it needs. Is the argument that Alameda should absorb it all? Obviously that’s absurb. But its fair share? If we can’t, who can.
I sat at a table with seven other lovely people, two I knew well, the others I met for the first time. We had a great discussion, just like at the last meeting and in the end, we all agreed that with the right transit solution, Plan B was the best plan for the site. There was skepticism about the PRT (see video), but all agreed that if a solution that could be paid for by the project and sustainable was found, the benefits of the additional housing outweighed the negative aspects.
I was surprised by the unanimity of the group, considering one of our members was a staunch Measure A supporter. But given the boundary constraints and the plans, they said they’d be willing to vote to support it.
In the end, of the 20 tables in the room, to which people were randomly assigned, only 4 came out adamantly opposed to either plan. A couple indicated that there were people who liked neither plan, but the large number supported the bigger plan.
And here’s the great thing, somewhere between 150-200 people came to discuss these issues, and they did so rather civilly (yes there were a few snide remarks here and there, and I won’t mention which Alameda loving side they came from, but rest assured they only came from one) but on the whole, this large group of people identified excellent questions and concerns and did so while working with people of opposing views.
Things are picking up. The process is heading towards a completed Master Plan in November of this year. Yowza.
I want to write more about the commercial aspects another time, there was a lot of really good info, but for now, we’ll leave this post as a meeting report, with a cool video.
Avidor
August 8th, 2008 at 8:17 am
ULTra has postponed its opening a year. It was supposed to open this year… It may never open. If it does, it will be a flop. They haven’t posted anything new on their website since January.
I saw a video of a California politician talking about using PRT as an excuse to build “transit-less transit-oriented development”.
Looks like the same thing is going on here.
They get an area designated as a site for PRT and then they can add density to their developments.
Since PRT is infeasible - the Fed won’t fund it, its a no-cost, win-win for developers and elected officials who get campaign contributions from these hucksters.
They all can pretend to be “green”, make a lot of green and not have to build any transit to move all the new population…. clever!!!
John Knox White
August 8th, 2008 at 8:39 am
“Since PRT is infeasible - the Fed won’t fund it, its a no-cost, win-win for developers and elected officials who get campaign contributions from these hucksters.”
You raise the same point our entire table raised last night. Skepticism about PRT and the need for an on-the-ground transit solution before the building begins. Not a promise of a future one.
As Alameda folks involved in this conversation know, I’m a real skeptic about PRT/GRT myself and have said so numerous times. if my post appeared to be pumping it up, that was not the intention.
By the way, I’m a big fan of your art, thanks for stopping by!
A Transportation Enthusiast
August 8th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Do not believe Ken Avidor - he has spent the last 5 years spreading disinformation about PRT. He’s famous for it.
The fact is that ULTra is scheduled to open to the public in 2009. What Ken is referring to is an earlier tentative schedule which had mid-2008 as the target, but that schedule that was revised months ago and the schedule change had nothing to do with the system itself - the delays were due to bureaucratic issues within BAA (owners of Heathrow).
So you can let Ken bamboozle you with inflammatory talk of delays, but ULTra PRT is being built as we speak, and it is on schedule, and the plans for it are ambitious. There have been writeups in CNN, BusinessWeek, and various UK newspapers, and multiple photos of the construction have been released.
Furthermore, despite Ken’s claim that “it may never open” and “it will be a flop”, they’ve been developing this system for nearly a decade and they’ve been testing it at a fully functioning test track for several years. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the Heathrow pilot will be anything but a success.
Ken has an agenda - to kill discussion of PRT whenever and where ever it is raised. He knows people are wary of new ideas like PRT, and he amplifies their fears with empty claims of so-called right-wing anti-transit conspiracies. It’s all bunk. Do some research and you will find what I have found: that PRT is based on four decades of solid engineering and research. There are many research papers and books about PRT - see the Wikipedia page for some solid references.
Or, even better, encourage a local investigative reporter to look into Ken’s claims. PRT people have nothing to hide, and would welcome a thorough investigation of their work. Have one of your papers send a representative to Cardiff (UK) to look at the ULTra prototype there, or to Heathrow, or to Uppsala Sweden, where another PRT system is being tested, or to the United Arab Emirates, where an entire city is being built around PRT.
And then have them investigate Ken Avidor’s claims - they can start by searching the Internet for all of Avidor’s outrageuous anti-PRT accusations from the past 5 years. He’s called it a scam, a conspiracy, a boondoggle, an anti-transit stalking horse… anything to scare people into rejecting PRT without a second thought. You will find his material in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of forums, but you will not ever find a shred of credible proof for any of it. When you ask him for proof, he changes the subject. His goal is to obfuscate. Any good investigative reporter will spot his inconsistencies in a second.
Or if you like, just respond on this thread and I can answer any questions you may have. I’ve been following this technology for years, and I know just about all there is to know about it. Also, I am not affiliated with any PRT company or effort, so I can give you an honest view of all the systems that are out there, their strengths and weaknesses.
Michael Krueger
August 10th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I think Mr. Avidor takes his critique of PRT to extremes, just as some PRT evangelists take their boosterism to extremes. He does raise some legitimate issues, so I think it’s best to take what he says with a grain of salt rather than dismiss it outright because he has an “agenda.” The same goes for the PRT boosters and their agendas.
I am somewhat skeptical of the PRT technology itself, though I think it is merely a matter of time before the technical issues are worked out. I think the cost may turn out to be more of a hurdle than technical feasibility.
Even if we set aside all the possible technical and financial hurdles, my main problem with PRT is its connection (or lack thereof) with land uses and urban form. It’s a problem shared by any grade-separated (elevated or subterranean) transit system. It’s extremely important to have life on the street, with passengers passing through communities rather than soaring above them or tunneling under them. This is especially important in business districts, where street-level transit offers free advertising for potential customers, who have the ability to hop on or off at a whim.
I believe grade-separated transit has a role, especially in extremely dense setting like New York or London. Subways and elevated trains, however, should be seen as complements to street-running buses, streetcars, and light rail, rather than as replacements. It is far better to dedicate street space to these vehicles, through dedicated lanes or even congestion charging (as London has done), than to banish them from the streets in favor of grade-separated systems.
To cut to the chase, I strongly believe that street-running vehicles like buses and streetcars are far and away the best choice for a place like Alameda. Alameda was built around streetcars and interurban trains, and its historic form lends itself better to traditional surface transit than an elevated PRT system.
I can easily imagine that a rapid bus or streetcar line running along the historic railroad right of way on Lincoln Ave. could lead to a business and residential renaissance similar to what Portland, Oregon, has seen along its new streetcar lines. I have a much harder time envisioning a raised guideway (no matter how “light” or “unobtrusive”) running down the median of Lincoln, with elevated stations that require walking up stairs or using elevators and escalators to reach the shops below. That might be fine for Heathrow, but it just doesn’t seem like Alameda to me.
Nathan Koren
August 10th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I’d like to address Michael’s very thoughtful points, but first let me introduce myself. I am an architect who grew up in Los Gatos, and lived and worked in Portland’s Pearl District for many years — so I’m quite familiar with what Michael is talking about. I’m also the person who created the PRT video that Peter Calthorpe showed you the other day, and I work for the company (Advanced Transport Systems) which has developed that particular PRT system. So, with my biases on the table, you can decide how much my words need to be salted.
To get to Michael’s points, about cost and technical hurdles. The system we’re building at Heathrow is approximately £25m, for 3 stations, 3.8km of guideway, and 18 vehicles. That’s unquestionably a lot more than some of the more wild-eyed PRT advocates would have you believe (and I agree that some of them are, without a doubt, wild-eyed). Keep in mind, however, that this our first system, and a very small one at that. As with any transit system, there are certain indivisible costs — maintenance depots, control centers, and so forth — which make very small systems less cost efficient. Also, with the limited number of vehicles that we’re producing, it doesn’t yet make sense to set up a dedicated production line. When that happens, the costs will fall significantly.
So we’re already cost-competitive with many transit technologies, and are quite confident that our later and larger systems will be less expensive than Heathrow. I really don’t think that cost will be a problem.
In terms of technical hurdles, there may indeed be some. The issues that are *strictly* technological — vehicle routing & control, that sort of thing — are comfortably worked out. We’ve had vehicles happily running around our test track since 2002, and indeed, such issues have basically been solved ever since the Cabintaxi trials in the early 1970s. Problems which might still arise up are more related to human factors — the usability of the ticketing machines, how long people hold up the vehicles at the berths, how much in-vehicle vandalism will be a problem. Obviously we’ve thought about these issues quite a lot, and are confident that we’ll be able to address them. Fortunately the Heathrow system will be of a limited enough scope that we should be able to understand and solve any such issues that arise before they become large-scale catastrophies.
But truthfully, when it comes to cost and technical issues, the proof is in the pudding, and we’re building the pudding at Heathrow. I can talk at you until I’m blue, but it’s probably best to just let the Heathrow system go operational and speak for itself.
In terms of the neighborhood integration issues, you are right that Heathrow won’t address this issue at all. You raise some very good and important points here, and other points that I would respectfully question. To address the latter ones first: I’m really not that sold on the necessity of transit running on grade (stations are another matter, which I’ll get to shortly). Having used the legendary Portland Streetcar as my primary mode of transit for four years, I observed that very few people — perhaps around 5% or so — actually used it as you describe. At 7mph with 15-minute headways, the sort of hop-on, hop-off, check-out-the-local-scene-en-route activity that you describe was very, very rare. If one was only travelling a short distance (say, less than a mile), it was almost always more practical to walk, and everyone did. Most of the streetcar riders were thus longer-distance travellers who received no benefit from the on-grade travel and concomitant low speed. They *did*, however, benefit from the high station density, even though that was another factor in the low throughput speed.
My take is that the streetcar was a success for several reasons. First, because as a fixed-infrastructure transit system, it could become the anchor for a lot of high-quality mixed-use development, leading to the creation of excellent walkable neighborhoods; second, because it was free for most of its route, and thus almost unthinkingly easy to use, and finally, because it offered a much more pleasant ride than buses would have. It was absolutely a success, but I don’t think that running on-grade was a factor in this.
I grant that you have much more of a point when it comes to the stations, however. I’m not actually a big fan of the sort of elevated, standalone stations that are shown in my video. That was aimed towards a private corporate-campus environment, and isn’t actually how you’d want it to work in Alameda. In public mixed-use environments, at-grade stations are very desirable. This is because you want the stations to be highly active social spaces, fronting directly onto parks and shops and cafes, with many “eyes” on them in in the Jane Jacobs sense. An elevated platform would sever the connection between the transit system and the street life, which in many cases would be detrimental. So I think we’re entirely in agreement on that point.
Fortunately, it’s possible to drop the stations down to grade, with inclined ramps leading in and out of them. There are many other possibilities, from semi-dropped stations which meet up with semi-raised plazas, to much more intriguing possibilities involving blended exterior/interior environments. The reason I actually became involved in the PRT industry was because I felt that the Pearl District didn’t go far enough, in terms of creating a mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented environment. I wanted to be able to create environments which were *continuously* walkable — not broken up by roads at all, or even by hard-and-fast separations between interior and exterior environments. Such dynamic envionments are flat-out impossible to create as long as all transit needs are served via roads, but PRT seemed to offer the flexability to create much more exciting, functional, and human-oriented domains. So it sounds to me like my concerns are the same as yours, but I see PRT as a solution to those concerns, not a problem.
Granted, there’s still a lot left to do, in terms of exploring all of the urban design possibilities related to PRT. What we’re doing in Heathrow is very different from what we’re doing in Dubai, which is completely different from what we’d do in Alameda. We don’t yet have all the answers for every conceivable sort of environment — although it’s nice to have someone like Peter Calthorpe working on these issues, as he’s an enormously smart and capable guy. I’m always looking for more input from different sources, however — particularly anybody who can offer perceptive and intelligent criticism, as you already have. So if you’re interested in discussing these issues in more detail, I’d be really keen to hear what you have to say. Please feel free to contact me at nkoren@gmail.com.
dave
August 12th, 2008 at 7:41 am
Intersting, Mr. Koren, thank you.
I’m extrememely skeptical of the 25MM GBP cost of the Heathrow. That’s only 50MM USD, and while I am certainly no expert, that number strains credulity.
I suspect some of that gross cost was allocated to or absorbed other areas or that the system was built atop an existing rail line or right of way. I’m not saying it’s wrong because I don’t know for sure, but it sets my BS detector spinning. I know a thing or two about funding projects and 50MM just doesn’t seem like reality.
What funding details can you offer?
Nathan Koren
August 12th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Hello Dave,
We’re a commercial company, and the specific breakdown of our cost structure is proprietary, sensitive information, which I hope you can understand. But I can assure you that 25M GPB is indeed the correct number, and no, the costs haven’t been offloaded onto other programs. This is $21M USD per mile, which is actually rather more than the $1M-$5M per mile that many Powerpoint-driven PRT companies would have you belive. Those companies certainly *should* peg your BS meter to its limit, but we’re not them. Our current costs are at the low end of what one might pay for a streecar/lightrail system, even though our infrastructure is significantly smaller and lighter-weight, and our Right-of-Way and installation costs correspondingly cheaper.
While I can’t provide you with our internal cost numbers, I can *show* you some reasons why the costs are what they are. Take a look at the pictures on this site:
http://www.ultraprt.com/heathrow.htm
This picture, in particular, is nicely illustrative:
http://www.ultraprt.com/stills/July_LHR_129b.jpg
This shows a two-lane (bi-directional) ULTra guideway below some two-lane road viaducts. Notice the difference in scale. PRT is *small*, and that’s the key to its cost. Installation is a relatively simple matter of installing small pylon footings every 20 meters, and then erecting pre-fabricated posts and beams on top of that.
Viaducts like this must be engineered for the maximum possible load. For us, the maximum dead load on the guideway are fully-loaded vehicles parked nose-to-nose. This turns out to be significantly less weight than a crush of pedestrians in the same space, and therefore our guideway can be significantly lighter-weight than a pedestrian bridge would be (the live load comparison is even more favorable).
So, that’s a huge savings on material costs, but it also allows us to save on labor. After the surveying and footings installation at Heathrow, a 4-person crew was able to install 20m of guideway per day. This is significantly less effort — and cost — than any other transit system would require.
Where the guideway meets the ground, the vehicles run on what is essentially an ordinary road surface, with no special footings or bedding required. Again, if you have ever seen a rail system installed, you’ll understand that what we’re doing is significantly cheaper than that. The ground that we’re running on is just outside the perimeter fence; I believe it had been graded some years previously, but not really pre-prepared for the PRT in any particular way.
As for the vehicles, they are fairly straightforward. They’re considerably smarter than your average automobile, and have additional security features such as CCTV systems, but these things can be bought off-the-shelf and are relatively inexpensive. In other respects, they are much simpler than an ordinary automobile. Because they operate at low speeds in completely controlled environments, they don’t need heavy and expensive shock-absorbers, air bags, steel roll cages, or all the other trappings necessary for survive a highway environment. The result is significant savings in both cost and weight
Once produced on an efficient production line, the vehicles should have costs on par with a conventional automobile. Right now they’re definitely more expensive than that — but not *hugely* more expensive, especially considering how highly they’ll be utilized.
Given all of the above, $21 million per mile is what we get when we do this for the first time, as cautiously and conservatively as we can, on the smallest possible scale. Subsequent larger-scale systems will unquestionably be less expensive — still not $1-$5 million per mile, but a less than what we’re building now.
If you continue to have doubts on any specific points, please feel free to bring them up, and I will address them as best I can.
dave
August 12th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Thank you.
I can see why your version is much lower cost than the Morgantown project, but I’m only slightly less skeptical.
A few random questions:
How much steel per mile does it take? Steel prices are up ~50% in the last year (varies +/- depending on grade) .
Would the system as pictured work in a seismic area like Alameda? I suspect that would sharply increase your cost of construction vs London.
Does the 25MM GBP London budget include land acquisition?
Did it require a new electric generation facility, and if so, was this cost borne by the airport or another body?
More later
Michael Krueger
August 12th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Thank you for your thoughtful response, Mr. Koren. Although the concept of at-grade stations is an improvement on the elevated stations typically depicted in PRT mock-ups, I still have reservations about PRT’s ability to integrate well with neighborhoods.
First, I should clarify my position on street-running transit vehicles. I spoke about the ability to hop on or off, but it is really the possibility of hopping on or off that is so important. For example, your observations on the behavior of Portland Streetcar riders jibe with my expectation as well as my experience of riding that system and others like it.
On most street-running transit lines, very few riders hop on and off every few blocks; most are taking longer trips. However, by passing through neighborhoods at street level, riders are likely to notice things like a sidewalk cafe, a store having a sale, a house for rent, or a poster advertising an upcoming street festival. Even if they don’t hop off the bus or streetcar that instant to check it out, they will make a mental note. They may visit sometime in the future, or they may just mention it to their friends. Besides, with such a large number of people passing a business in a given day, it is possible to see a benefit even if a relatively small fraction of people decide to hop off and check it out.
Of course, this process also works in reverse: Residents and shoppers in the neighborhood see transit vehicles passing by on a regular basis, and may decide to ride them. Of course, this could also apply to vehicles on an elevated guideway, but seeing passengers in the windows passing by at street level offers a stronger enticement.
As you probably guessed, I am a traditionalist when it comes to urban planning. I understand the theoretical appeal of “environments which [are] continuously walkable — not broken up by roads at all, or even by hard-and-fast separations between interior and exterior environments,” but in it I hear faint echoes of Le Corbusier’s exhortation: ”We must kill the street!”
The traditional system of blocks and streets has served civilization well for 4,600 years. I don’t see streets themselves as a problem; the problem is streets dominated solely by cars, with no opportunity for people to move about on foot, by bike, or on transit. I don’t think cars should be banned from the streets, but sufficient space needs to be reclaimed for other modes, and the buildings must be oriented towards the street and pedestrians, not automobiles. Raising or burying transit lines simply gives the streets over to automobiles, making life at street level unpleasant for anyone not riding in a steel cage.
Nathan Koren
August 13th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
This is a good conversation, and I hope that Mr. White doesn’t mind hosting it. Both of you are asking very tough, relevant, and fair questions — which I really appreciate. Too often, I’ve seen these discussions become polarized between uncritical neophiles and knee-jerk reactionaries (cue all the Simpson’s Monorail references), neither of which really get to the meat of the subject. PRT can only be a success if it addresses exactly the sort of questions that you’re asking, so I’m glad that you’re asking them.
Anyhow, to continue on with the specific points:
Morgantown: Oh yeah, we’re a heck of a lot cheaper than that. The reasons for the Morgantown cost overruns had nothing to do with the technology itself, and everything to do with some appalling management fiascos made under extreme time pressure.
For example, design of the Morgantown vehicles and control system were given to Boeing, while the station and guideway infrastructure was given to another firm (I forget which one at the moment), with barely any communication between them. Boeing had inherited a decent PRT design from an small company called StarrCar, but its transport division (which was making light rail vehicles at the time) simply didn’t understand how small vehicle operations actually worked — you can’t just plug them into a conventional mass-transit model and get intelligible results. Therefore Boeing enlarged the vehicles until they could carry 20 people, driving up costs and making true PRT operations highly inefficient.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure builder saw the size and weight of the vehicle changing, with no idea where it was heading — yet had to start construction anyhow due to a politically-imposed deadline. So they designed the infrastructure to support full-size trainsets, increasing the weight, cost, and visual appearance beyond all reason. At the same time, they somehow managed to under-estimate the turning radius of the vehicles, requiring a hugely expensive last-minute redesign and conversion to all-wheel steering — and the list of SNAFUs goes on and on and on.
Suffice it to say that these are problems which are entirely avoidable, and so far we’re doing quite a good job of avoiding them.
Steel: The guideway at Heathrow was engineered by ARUP, and I don’t have their numbers available off-hand for exactly how much steal it uses (I myself haven’t been directly involved in the Heathrow project). I’m sure the amount isn’t trivial, and that rising steel costs have undoubtedly had an impact on the system’s capital costs. However, raw materials are not the majority of our costs, so I wouldn’t expect the impact to be huge. Certainly the amount of steel that we’re using in our elevated guideway is less than you’d use for an elevated railway or roadway, so although fluctuations in the price of steel will impact us, the impact should be less than for other sorts of infrastructure.
Furthermore, the ULTra guideway design is uniquely flexible, because we are running on conventional wheels rather than rails. All we need is a smooth surface that will support the necessary loading, 1.6 meters wide, with small curbs on either side that act as navigational aids. There is also a series of inductive loops in the guideway (called the Automatic Vehicle Protection system — an anti-collision technique borrowed from the rail industry), and occasional small communications boxes. That isn’t really very much, and there are numerous ways to support it, making for a lot of flexibility in our guideway design. We have one design, for example, which uses about 60% less steel than the Heathrow guideway, albeit with more labor required for installation.
Where we run at ground level (which roughly half of the Heathrow system does), there is no steel involved at all. So your answer to the question of how much steel it takes is highly variable, but I think that it’s safe to say that it is less than anything else.
(I should make it clear that this is a particular feature of Advanced Transport System’s ULTra PRT design, and does not necessarily apply to other PRT systems, some of which are wedded to much more steel-intensive guideway designs. In the case of our primary competitor, Vectus — which is backed by POSCO, an enormous Korean steel conglomerate — they probably regard this as a feature rather than a bug.)
Seismic: The Heathrow guideway wouldn’t engineered for California-style seismic conditions (again, I haven’t personally been involved in the engineering of that system). But based on my fairly extensive experience building in seismic zones, I can estimate that the elevated guideway costs would be increased by 10%-15% at most. Not negligible, but not huge, either. Grade-level guideway costs would be unaffected.
ROW Acquisition: The £25M did not include any land acquisition, because all the land that we’re building on was already owned by BAA, our client. In other circumstances, there would certainly be land acquisition costs, and obviously those would vary tremendously by location. To give you an idea of what those costs might be, I can say that on the ground, a one-way guideway needs a 2-meter-wide ROW, and a two-way guideway needs a 3.8-meter-wide ROW. This is roughly 30%-60% narrower than what road or rail infrastructure would be, and, on the face of it, presumably correspondingly less expensive. Furthermore, because of our small profile and turning radii, we can squeeze into ROWs that nothing else could ever fit into — which was actually BAA’s original impetus for building a PRT system in the first place — so 1:1 comparisons might not be appropriate.
For elevated infrastructure, you can see that our footprint on the ground is only slightly greater than a row of telephone poles. Depending on the circumstances and location, I expect that the ROW acquisition costs in that case will range between “nothing” and “not a whole lot”.
Electric Generation Facilities: None required; this runs off the grid.
Elevated vs. Street-level vehicles: Basically, you’re talking about the “discoverability” of a neighborhood (to appropriate user-interface terminology; why not?). I guess I disagree that vehicles need to be a part of this. If a neighborhood isn’t sufficiently discoverable at the pedestrian level, then it’s a failure; conversely, if it *is* discoverable at the pedestrian level, then vehicular discoverability is superfluous, and it isn’t worth compromising the effectiveness of the transit system in order to achieve this. Among the various places I’ve lived, the most vibrant, dynamic, and “discoverable” pedestrian environments have invariably been pedestrian-only — places like Pearl Street in Boulder, or Haymarket Street in my current home of Oxford. I really don’t think that these environments have suffered at all due to a lack of heavy vehicles trundling through them.
I know that in the minds of many planners, there’s a correlation between elevated transport and poor streetscape environments, with the elevated APMs in Detroit and Fort Lauderdale probably being the poster children for this. I actually think that there *is* a causal relationship here, but it doesn’t have anything to do with neighborhood discoverability. Rather, it’s because the separation between the transit and pedestrian elements allowed the two items to be addressed independently — or forgotten about independently, as the case may be. Detroit and Fort Lauderdale put all of their eggs into the elevated transit basket, while ignoring the pedestrian environment, to their considerable detriment.
So, the one benefit that I’ll concede for street-level transit is that it forces planners to deal with both issues simultaneously. When the streetcar was built in Portland, it was part of a comprehensive corridor improvement package which included widened sidewalks, curb extensions, planters and trees, bike racks, public benches, and so forth — all the elements of a good pedestrian environment. The streetcar had forced planners to think about these things, since it would have obviously been a bad idea to run the streetcar through what was a dilapidated industrial wasteland at the time, without any improvements to the surrounding urban fabric.
If an elevated PRT somehow caused urban designers to forget about the streetscape environment, then that would be a shame. Both are absolutely necessary for the creation of a good, liveable city. I think that ground-level stations will help insure that this doesn’t happen — but the real solution is to simply ensure that your planners are wise enough to care about both. It shouldn’t be necessary to force an awkward marriage between two not-very-compatible programmatic elements so that both get their due; the solution is to simply do both elements correctly, each in their own right. I think this is generally quite likely to happen todayl contemporary planners now seem to have a vastly better understanding of how to make good pedestrian environments than they did in the 60’s and 70’s; back then, the streetscape designs were typically pretty lousy, overhead transit or no.
Le Corbusier and “Killing the Street”: You *wound* me! Ouch! Seriously, “Towards a New Architecture” has the dubious honor of being the most thrown-across-the-room book that I’ve ever read. (It’s also the *only* book I’ve ever thrown across a room — but still, I did it eight or nine times). One of the book-throwing moments came when he described Parisian Cafes and Bistros as “that fungus which consumes the pavement of Paris”.
My own personal agenda is wholly and entirely *pro*-fungus, in the Corbusian sense. Therefore, comparisons to Christopher Alexander or Hassan Fathy will be much more favorably entertained, if you don’t mind.
Anyhow, If PRT merely frees up streets for more automobiles, then I promise that I’ll find another business to be in. But I honestly think that this is extremely unlikely. Part of the whole economic rationale for PRT is that it can allow planners to consolidate and economize on costly elements of the landscape such as car lanes and parking lots, thereby creating economic savings that help balance out the cost of the PRT, while simultaneously creating a better pedestrian environment. Traditional transit-oriented development, in other words — but with a much more effective form of transit. How can that be a bad thing? In any case, it’s much easier to make these numbers balance out, than if one were to both install a PRT system *and* make the roads wider and parking lots larger. That actually wouldn’t make any sense at all.
Getting back to the question of streets, I would say that they have *mostly* served civilization well for the last 4,600 years. During the past 50 years, however, since the full ascendency of the automobile, an average of 2 million people have died every year because of the streets (1.2 million directly in accidents; .8 million indirectly due to car-caused urban air pollution), which mean that they’ve taken a worse toll on human life than warfare and genocide put together. I regard this as a problem that’s worth trying to solve. While PRT surely isn’t the whole and entire solution, I believe that it will be a very important part of the mix.
To get a bit more abstract and radical, there are alternative urban typologies that *aren’t* based on a street-and-block planning systems, and those have also served some cultures well. Think of the courtyard-based “pols” of medieval Islamic cities, or even the multi-level urban agglomerations of the southwestern Pueblo cultures. On a very personal level, I find these environments to be tremendously exciting, and wish that something more like them could be part of the modern planner’s repertoire. But the only way to do this — while still retaining the all-important economic benefits created by mechanized transport — is with PRT and its unique ability to transgress the conventional interior/private/habitation vs. exterior/public/transportation boundaries.
Okay, we’re quite far afield here, off in theory-land — but, I hope you can see, an entirely different theory-land than what Corbusier advocated. I categorically would *not* endorse any radically new and unusual urban forms for a community like Alameda! And of course the business case for PRT rests entirely upon addressing very immediate, prosaic, localized, here-and-now sorts of problems — and there’s no shortage of such problems to deal with. But as a longtime student of urban planning, addressing someone who seems to have similar proclivities, I find it entertaining to speculate about about the far-flung implications of introducing a significantly new transit mode into the mix.
Nathan Koren
August 13th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
And man, I wish I could go back and edit these posts for spelling and grammar. If you see anything that gives you pause, the explanation is not that I’m a moron, but rather that I was typing too quickly…
Stop, Drop and Roll » What!? Another meeting?
August 26th, 2008 at 6:31 am
[...] Task Force will hold a meetnig tomorrow (Wednesday night 8/27) in City Hall to present and discuss SunCal’s proposals for Alameda [...]