More transit, more traffic problems, says think tank. But is that really the problem?
Interesting study out of the USA, but unfortunately wrong conclusions will be made, especially by the roads lobby.
As for buses not attracting new customers, well duh, that little gem has been known for at least 30 years and if this were not so, we would not have been building new light rail lines in the first place!
The problem is simple, we build rail transit or rapid transit wrong in North America and the blame can be placed squarely on both the engineering and planing fraternities at major universities, which unlike Europe, do not offer university degrees in Urban Transportation. The one result is that the preconceived notion that speed trumps all when planning rail transit has dumbed down transit projects to such a point, that they are next to useless. In North America, transit planners plan and build railways, not tramways, with massive over engineering taking away any cost advantages when compared to other transit modes. In North America, we just do not plan for cheap transit!
The great philosophers stone for all rail transit projects is speed and the faster the commercial speed, the better the transit system is. But speed comes at a cost; fewer stations per route km., which makes the transit system less accessible and grade separation, which greatly increases the cost of a transit project. Fewer stations and small transit networks deter customers. The engineering types are very happy with this state of affairs, as they get ample work designing grossly over engineered bridges, viaducts and tunnels, and do not want to change their lucrative ways.
With a few exceptions, in North America, rail transit schemes are built to satisfy political & bureaucratic prestige and corporate pocketbooks, not to provide the transit customer with a viable transit alternative. In Europe, transit planners, many with university degrees in Urban Transportation, design and build rail transit to meet the transit customer's needs. In Europe the transit customer comes first.
As for the study, Zwei thinks better time would have been spent studying why North American transit projects cost more and attract fewer customers than their European cousins, but then the authors of the study do not want to find the truth, but just want to continue their puerile anti-transit temper tantrums and the roads lobby just love that!
Rail for the Valley engaged company with real transit experience, to design a 21st adaptation of light rail, the TramTrain, for the old BC electric interurban route from Vancouver to Chilliwack with the resulting study being all but shunned by TransLink and the transit fraternity in the Greater Vancouver area.
Why?
Simple, the RftV/Leewood report claims the impossible possible, that one can built light rail cheaply and of course we can't have that can we; the SkyTrain/metro lobby would lose a great deal of income.
From the Tyee
Seattle think-tank Sightline Institute has some bad news for city planners: investing more in public transit might not be the answer to reducing road congestion. Director of Programs Clark Williams-Derry posted on the institute's Daily Score blog last week a list of reasons he believes transit is not the solution to a city's traffic woes that we hoped it would be:
Transit advocates sometimes argue that bus or rail investments can help ease traffic, by getting people out of their cars.
Yet as far as I can tell, the evidence for this isn't so good.
This paper by researcher Antonio Bento and colleagues suggests that significant increases in bus service have essentially no effect on vehicle travel. Rail service increases do decrease vehicle travel, but by a surprisingly modest amount.
This paper by researchers from the University of Toronto found — unsurprisingly — that increases in road capacity were quickly matched by increases in traffic volumes. But it also found that increases in transit service had no effect on traffic volumes. In the authors' words: "these results fail to support the hypothesis that increase provision of public transit affects [vehicle miles traveled]."
And this study from a University of California-Davis found that higher residential densities and greater land use mix did decrease vehicle travel — but found no statistically significant link between better transit service and less driving
I'm sure that there's more literature on this issue, some of which finds stronger connections between transit and vehicle travel. But in general, based on what I've found I have to align myself with Anthony Brooks and transit planner Jarrett Walker, who both argue that transit investments have little impact on how much driving goes on in a crowded urban area. To quote Walker:
To my knowledge…no transit project or service has ever been the clear direct cause of a substantial drop in traffic congestion. So claiming that a project you favor will reduce congestion is unwise; the data just don't support that claim.
Transit is good for an awful lot of things. It helps move people to where they want to go; it gives people who prefer not to drive, or who can't drive, a decent transportation option for many trips. It can reduce a region's reliance on risky fossil fuels; and on and on. But for folks who hope that transit investments will offset the impacts of road expansions — well, sadly, I don't think the evidence lines up that way.
The study
