There's a lot to be said about light rail and streetcars; in this post I want to focus on how these two kinds of trolleys fit in with our goals (as articulated above), and particularly how they can get people out of their cars. If you're trying to decide which kind of train to push for, there are three major questions: (a) Can the train mix with cars and trucks? (b) Can the train mix with freight trains? (c) How long can the train be?
In contemporary usage, streetcars run for most of their length in mixed traffic. We don't have a good example here, but if you go to Girard Avenue in Philadelphia you can ride one. Light rail trains run for most of their length in their own right-of-way, but may cross many (or all) streets at grade. Good examples include the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail and Newark City Subway in New Jersey.
There are important differences between light rail, streetcars and other forms of rail. Elevated rail is raised above the street like the #7 train for most of its length, and subways go below the streets like the R train. Commuter rail can run elevated or in a cut like the LIRR Port Washington Line in Queens, but sometimes crosses streets and roads at grade like the LIRR Hempstead Branch in Garden City.
Commuter trains in the New York area typically share tracks with freight trains, which means that the Federal Railroad Administration requires them to be unnecessarily big and heavy. PATH trains run in subway tunnels in Manhattan, Jersey City and Hoboken, but they have a waiver from the FRA to run on shared track between Journal Square and Newark. Light rail and streetcar trains are typically not allowed on shared tracks, but the River Line between Trenton and Camden splits the time with the Chesapeake freight railroad: they run passenger service during days and evenings, and CSX runs freight overnight.
Because they mix with cars so much, streetcar trains are typically only one or two cars. Light rail trains sometimes have up to five or six cars. Subways and commuter trains can have ten or twelve cars.
Streetcars are often considered to be cheaper than light rail, and light rail to be cheaper than subways or commuter rail, but this is not magic. The cost comes primarily from grade separation and longer, heavier trains. This has important implications for transit, particularly in the New York area.
The first is that building the wrong system can limit your capacity. If you've got enough passengers to fill a four-car light rail train but you've only got a two-car streetcar, you're going to get crowding. Same if you've got enough passengers to fill a ten-car subway but they're trying to squeeze into a six-car light rail train.
The second is that building the wrong system can limit your speed. All other things being equal, a streetcar in mixed traffic is going to be slower than a light-rail or commuter train in a dedicated right-of-way with grade crossings, and a train with at-grade crossings is slower than one without them.
Both of these speed and capacity limitations have the effect of limiting how many passengers the line can carry, which can in turn limit revenue. They also decrease the value to passengers, which can drive them away. You may be able to pack those cars, but you'll have to keep the fare low to do it.
In a future post I'll discuss these factors in terms of specific projects here in the New York area.
Showing posts with label Delaware Valley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Delaware Valley. Show all posts
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Monday, October 14, 2013
The Eighth Borough
Some things that have been called the sixth borough of New York City:
Some things that have been called the seventh borough of New York City:
Some things that have been called the eighth borough of New York City:
Sunday, January 9, 2011
A regional perspective on road deaths
There's a whole bunch of different battles being fought across the greater New York area, and I was trying to figure out which ones were worth focusing on. To help with that, I created this map of traffic fatalities per capita in the various counties of the metropolitan area.
I got the data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. You can get the data sliced and diced in various ways; I chose fatalities from 2005 by county. To get per capita fatalities I divided it by the population estimates of the 2005 American Community Survey, available from the Census Bureau. I used a blank county map from the Tri-State Weather forum that turned up on Google Image Search, and colored the highest fatalities per capita: the darkest are over 4 fatalities per ten thousand inhabitants and the lightest less than 1.5 fatalities.
There seems to be some kind of Upper Delaware Valley of Death going on, with 6.49 fatalities per ten thousand inhabitants in Sullivan County, NY, 4.11 in Pike County, PA and 4.04 in Warren County, NJ. It's not just because people drive more there: in 2005 there were about 10,000 vehicle-miles traveled per capita in Sullivan and Pike (roughly in line with Middlesex, Bergen and Dutchess Counties), and 12,000 per capita in Warren (slightly less than Ulster and slightly more than Orange). But there were 6.25 fatalities per hundred VMT in Sullivan County, 4.11 in Pike and 3.28 in Warren.
It may be that the fatalities are due to the large highways that cross these counties: Sullivan hosts NY Route 17, while Pike has Interstate 84 and US 206 and 209, and Warren has Interstates 78 and 80. It may be other factors: Sullivan was also highlighted by Slate Labs as the worst "food desert" in the entire Northeast, the county with the highest percentage of people (8.05%) living more than a mile from the nearest supermarket without a car. DWI is also a potential factor: if you can't get to a supermarket without a car, you probably can't get to a bar either.
Counties with between three and four fatalities per ten thousand inhabitants were Ulster, Orange, Mercer and Litchfield; those with two to three fatalities per ten thousand included Sussex, Suffolk, Monmouth, Putnam and New Haven. The five boroughs of New York City plus Westchester all had less than 2.2 fatalities per ten thousand inhabitants in 2005. The Bronx had the lowest per capita fatalities, with only 109 deaths for its 1.4 million people.
As tragic as the 49 deaths in Sullivan County were, it's important to keep in mind that they were only slightly more than one percent of the total 3,601 people killed in car crashes in 2005. The 44 Warren County deaths were also slightly more than 1%, and the 24 people killed in Pike County were 0.67% of the regional total. So I made this chart to show how the various counties contributed to the death toll:
The biggest contributor, with its 402 fatalities in a population of 1.5 million, is Suffolk County, with eleven percent of the total. Brooklyn, Queens and Nassau were the next biggest contributors, then New Haven, Manhattan and Monmouth County. All the others had less than four percent of the total. This means that the island of Long Island (including Brooklyn and Queens) accounted for a full third of the region's traffic deaths in 2005, and any island-wide improvements that can be made would bring down carnage significantly.
Obviously, I'm not distinguishing deaths of pedestrians, drivers, cyclists or car passengers here, let alone people killed by cars in buildings and parks. Pedestrian killings discourage people from walking, so they're more significant, but for the purpose of this exercise I wanted to look at the overall human impact of car culture.
I got the data from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. You can get the data sliced and diced in various ways; I chose fatalities from 2005 by county. To get per capita fatalities I divided it by the population estimates of the 2005 American Community Survey, available from the Census Bureau. I used a blank county map from the Tri-State Weather forum that turned up on Google Image Search, and colored the highest fatalities per capita: the darkest are over 4 fatalities per ten thousand inhabitants and the lightest less than 1.5 fatalities.
There seems to be some kind of Upper Delaware Valley of Death going on, with 6.49 fatalities per ten thousand inhabitants in Sullivan County, NY, 4.11 in Pike County, PA and 4.04 in Warren County, NJ. It's not just because people drive more there: in 2005 there were about 10,000 vehicle-miles traveled per capita in Sullivan and Pike (roughly in line with Middlesex, Bergen and Dutchess Counties), and 12,000 per capita in Warren (slightly less than Ulster and slightly more than Orange). But there were 6.25 fatalities per hundred VMT in Sullivan County, 4.11 in Pike and 3.28 in Warren.
It may be that the fatalities are due to the large highways that cross these counties: Sullivan hosts NY Route 17, while Pike has Interstate 84 and US 206 and 209, and Warren has Interstates 78 and 80. It may be other factors: Sullivan was also highlighted by Slate Labs as the worst "food desert" in the entire Northeast, the county with the highest percentage of people (8.05%) living more than a mile from the nearest supermarket without a car. DWI is also a potential factor: if you can't get to a supermarket without a car, you probably can't get to a bar either.
Counties with between three and four fatalities per ten thousand inhabitants were Ulster, Orange, Mercer and Litchfield; those with two to three fatalities per ten thousand included Sussex, Suffolk, Monmouth, Putnam and New Haven. The five boroughs of New York City plus Westchester all had less than 2.2 fatalities per ten thousand inhabitants in 2005. The Bronx had the lowest per capita fatalities, with only 109 deaths for its 1.4 million people.
As tragic as the 49 deaths in Sullivan County were, it's important to keep in mind that they were only slightly more than one percent of the total 3,601 people killed in car crashes in 2005. The 44 Warren County deaths were also slightly more than 1%, and the 24 people killed in Pike County were 0.67% of the regional total. So I made this chart to show how the various counties contributed to the death toll:
The biggest contributor, with its 402 fatalities in a population of 1.5 million, is Suffolk County, with eleven percent of the total. Brooklyn, Queens and Nassau were the next biggest contributors, then New Haven, Manhattan and Monmouth County. All the others had less than four percent of the total. This means that the island of Long Island (including Brooklyn and Queens) accounted for a full third of the region's traffic deaths in 2005, and any island-wide improvements that can be made would bring down carnage significantly.
Obviously, I'm not distinguishing deaths of pedestrians, drivers, cyclists or car passengers here, let alone people killed by cars in buildings and parks. Pedestrian killings discourage people from walking, so they're more significant, but for the purpose of this exercise I wanted to look at the overall human impact of car culture.
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