Taking public transit kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
Though Zwei is not a fan of Jarrett Walker, our Ottawa friend, Haveacow, recommended this post from his blog.
http://www.humantransit.org/2014/07/california-topples-a-tyrant.html
It seems that transit improvements, especially light rail, have been hamstrung by ensuring that traffic flows are not reduced, which is the cornerstone of the light rail Renaissance, emanating from Europe.
So, our American friends are waking up to the fact that at-grade transit, which will reduce auto traffic is a good thing and is far cheaper than hideously expensive grade separated transit systems like SkyTrain or subways. The monies one saves by building at-grade, can be spent enlarging the system, attracting more transit customers by serving more destinations.
One wonders how soon this revolutionary thinking will take to reach Vancouver?
2030?
It is frustrating but it is true, we may not have laws like the one in California which make sure transit (or anything non car related) projects never reduce the capacity of the road and highway networks in any way however, we sure do our best to follow that spirit of that belief. I have seen so many good transit/cycling projects die over the years because it might take away a single car lane in each direction. The sad part is people don’t want to give up a single lane, even if the result is a transportation system with far greater capacity.
Just a note:
When the Manchester LRT was about to become a reality, the British government, rewrote the tramways act (I do not know if that is the correct name), completely updating it for “today’s” use. This included vehicles, signage, and on-street operations. I have not seen anything like this happen in Canada at all and only sporadically in the USA, where state law is involved. In BC, one has to remembered that most of the laws and rules pertaining to streetcar and interurban use and operation were written when people drove on the left hand side of the road in the province (until Jan.1, 1922)! Zwei thinks it is high time we update these rules and laws to fit the year 2014 context!