Light Rail
Basics
Light Rail Line Hangs By a Thread as Maryland Goes to the Polls
With Election Day fast approaching, Streetsblog Capitol Hill is turning our attention this week to key governor's races. As Ya-Ting Liu of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign recently wrote (and as New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has made painfully clear), "decisions by state and local elected officials ultimately determine whether federal transportation policies become instruments of reform or tools to be abused." Today we look at the gubernatorial election in Maryland.
October 25, 2010
Avoiding the Unintended Consequences of Transit-Oriented Development
We see it over and over again in our cities. Migration out of central cities hollows out neighborhoods and leaves the people who remain struggling with the consequences of disinvestment. But when development returns to urban areas, the arrival of new residents can impose burdens on people who never left. Often, as amenities come into an area and crime goes down, property values rise and poorer residents can no longer afford to live there.
October 25, 2010
Report: Bush-Era Transit ‘Cost-Effectiveness’ Rule to Cost Charlotte $67M
When the Obama administration moved in January to undo a 2005 rule that made a federal "cost-effectiveness" rating the most important factor in determining which transit projects received funding, critics and even some transit advocates were skeptical, questioning whether the U.S. DOT would be able to legitimately quantify the community-building benefits of rail and bus networks.
April 5, 2010
U.S. Transit Trips Hit 10.2B in 2009, With Light Rail Up in Nine Cities
The nation's transit systems hosted 10.2 billion trips last year, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) reported yesterday. While that figure represents a 3.8 percent decline from 2008, APTA's data showed light rail ridership rising in nine cities and the long-term increase in transit use continuing to outpace growth in population and vehicle miles traveled.
March 9, 2010
Economic Downturn Hits Transit Ridership — But Not in These Cities
The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) got the mainstream media's attention during the holiday season after reporting that the dismal economy had helped push transit ridership down by 3.8 percent during the first three-quarters of 2009, when compared with the previous year.
January 4, 2010
Streetfilms: Take a Ride on the Seattle Streetcar
Seattle's South Lake Union Streetcar is a 1.3-mile line that opened in December 2007, the first leg in the city's commitment to new transit and light rail. It passed the half million passenger milestone in its first year, surpassing ridership projections.
March 10, 2009
Transit Blamed for Suburban St. Louis Crime
Last week Freakonomics picked up a story from the Riverfront Times that connects an uptick in shoplifting, fighting and other crimes in the St. Louis suburbs to a two-year-old expansion of the city's MetroLink rail system.
October 30, 2008