Beijing accords

Railway Gazette International April 2004: City News CONSTRUCTION of a fourth heavy metro line in Beijing is to be undertaken by a private-sector consortium including Hong Kong MTRCorp, which recently signed a concession in Shenzhen (RG 2.04 p65). The Chairman of Beijing Capital Group Liu Xiaoguang revealed on March 4 that the company had reached an agreement in principle with MTRC to ‘jointly undertake’ construction and operation of Beijing’s fourth line; total value of the project is put at 15�6bn yuan. Liu said the municipal government would take a majority stake, with the remaining equity shared between Beijing Capital and MTRC. The deal includes rights to develop land and property along the route. Liu did not indicate whether this would be managed by MTRC, or by Beijing Capital Land which already has development rights on Line 5. Beijing Rail Transport Construction & Management Company signed anti-corruption contracts on March 11 with 16 departments involved with construction of 86�2km of metro and light lines in the capital ready for the 2008 Olympic Games. On March 2 General Manager Xie Zhengguang announced that Beijing Subway Corp would spend 3�7bn yuan on 44 projects to reduce risk on its metro network by 2007. The work includes upgrading the fire control, ventilation and power supply systems and rolling stock renewal.

Combinos withdrawn

Railway Gazette International April 2004: City News URBAN operators in Potsdam and Basel withdrew their fleets of Combino trams on March 12-13, after Siemens Transportation Systems confirmed that bodyshell problems were emerging at high mileages. On March 1 Siemens revealed that high torsion forces in the articulations of cars with longer bogie centres were damaging the bolted aluminium bodyshells. The company shipped a Freiburg car that had run 215000km to its plant in Praha for detailed examination. This found cracks in the connections between sidewalls and roof girders, such that the safety of passengers in the wheel-less modules could not be assured in the event of an extremely severe collision. On March 12 Siemens advised operators to take out of service any Combino that had run more than 120000km. As well as Potsdam and Basel, the oldest Freiburg, Augsburg, Erfurt, Nordhausen and Hiroshima cars were affected, together with the oldest NF10 cars in D�sseldorf. The Bern, Amsterdam and Melbourne fleets had not yet reached the cut-off mileage. Siemens is examining the various cars to establish how to deal with the problem and advise the operators. With more than 400 cars in service, the rectification cost is expected to be substantial.

Darling launches light rail NET

Railway Gazette International April 2004: City News SECRETARY of State for Transport Alistair Darling and the Lord Mayor of Nottingham Brent Charlesworth joined the ceremonies on March 8 to mark the completion of the UK’s latest light rail network. Revenue services on Nottingham Express Transit Line 1 began at 06.00 the following morning. The 14km line runs from the main station through the city centre to Hucknall in the northwest, with a short branch from Highbury Vale to Phoenix Park serving a park-and-ride interchange. For around 8km the route parallels Network Rail’s Nottingham — Worksop Robin Hood line. The Arrow Light Rail consortium, which includes Bombardier, Carillion and Transdev, holds a 30�5-year concession to build and operate Line 1 (RG 7.01 p477). Bombardier has supplied 15 Incentro all-low-floor LRVs. Councillors John Taylor of Nottingham City Council and Terry Bolton of joint promoter Nottinghamshire County Council pointed out that NET was always intended as a network, and that planning for Lines 2 and 3 to Chilwell and Clifton had been underway for the past year. Public consultation was almost complete, and Taylor hoped to submit a Transport & Works Order application in ‘late summer or early autumn’. Construction would start in 2006 for opening in 2009. However, Darling refused to be drawn by requests to indicate whether government funding would be available.

Delhi Metro extends Line 1

Railway Gazette International April 2004: City News MARCH 31 is due to see the start of revenue service on the third section of Delhi Metro Line 1, following energisation of the overhead line for test running on March 8. At the same time, the number of trains in operation will be increased from seven to 16, allowing services to run at 6min intervals during peak hours. Delhi Metro Rail Corp originally expected to open the 8�8km elevated section from Inderlok (formerly Tri Nagar) to Rohini and Rithala in June, but it has been completed ahead of schedule. With eight stations, the northwestern extension will bring the operational length of Line 1 to 23km. The first 8�3km from Shahdara to Tis Hazari opened in December 2002 and the next 4�5km to Tri Nagar on October 4 2003 (RG 10.03 p614). At present the line is carrying 80000 passengers per day with a peak-hour headway of 8min. Traffic is expected to double with the opening of the next stage which serves heavily-populated residential areas. DMRC expects to inaugurate the northernmost 4km of underground Line 2 between Vishwa Vidyalaya and the interchange to Line 1 at Kashmere Gate by the end of this year and the remaining 7km to Central Secretariat in June 2005. Work is also getting underway on both the elevated and underground sections of Line 3, which will run from Barakhamba Road to Dwarka, replacing a proposed branch of Line 1 from Tri Nagar to Nangloi. DMRC expects to open the first 5�4km from Barakhamba Road to Kirti Nagar in June 2005, including an interchange with Line 2 at Connaught Place. The remaining 20�9km would open in September 2005, bringing the length of the network to 68�3km.

Overbrook light rail line to debut June 2; Trips on new route to be 10 minutes faster

April 24, 2004 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette The Port Authority is about to mark a major milestone in the history of local public transportation. On June 2, it will open the Overbrook light rail line and start operating express service between Library and Downtown, putting a late finish to an “Early Action Program” whose roots date to the early 1970s. By November, Port Authority Chief Executive Officer Paul Skoutelas said, all phases of the $386 million Stage II program are to be implemented, completing a $1 billion modern trolley system that at one time was supposed to be replaced by an automated, rubber-tire system known as Skybus linking the South Hills and Downtown. “This has been a long time in coming … three decades to do it all,” he said yesterday after the authority’s monthly board meeting. “We’re excited.” Details have not been worked out, but a dedication ceremony is being scheduled for June 1 at Castle Shannon Junction. The 42S South Hills Village LRVs will continue to operate through Mt. Lebanon, Dormont and Beechview for several months after the 42L Library line switches to the new 5.5-mile-long Overbrook line on June 2. After both of them are rerouted to the Overbrook line, Castle Shannon will become a transfer station for 42L and 42S riders continuing to Mt. Lebanon, Dormont or Beechview destinations, and vice-versa. Authority officials estimate use of the new Overbrook line as an express service will cut about 10 minutes off of the current travel times to the ends of the lines. Mt. Lebanon, Dormont and Beechview riders will get their own route this fall on tracks now used by the 42L and 42S cars, with LRVs shuttling between Downtown and Castle Shannon. “Those riders will have their own regular service and will be able to get a seat,” Skoutelas said. “One of the complaints over the years has been that incoming cars were jam-packed in rush hours by the time they reached Mt. Lebanon. That will change dramatically.” The configuration of new routes, along with new park-n-ride facilities and communications and signals, are expected to boost ridership significantly. The light rail system, called the T, currently provides about 25,000 weekday rides. The number is expected to grow to about 30,000 in the first year and to 38,000 by 2015. The Port Authority is buying 28 new LRVs and rehabilitating 40 of the 55 LRVs built in the early 1980s for Stage I. At least five of the new LRVs are expected to be in operation by the June 2 opening of the Overbrook line. As more of them are tested and commissioned, the authority will start introducing them on the 42S line. Old-style streetcars operated on a rickety, 90-year-old Overbrook line hugging the hillside above Saw Mill Run Boulevard until 1993, when the authority closed it because of the advanced deterioration of the track bed, bridges and signals. “The implementation of full operations will be incremental” throughout the South Hills, Skoutelas said. “Everybody has to gain experience with the new system. Obviously, we’ll find bugs that will have to be worked out, from the new vehicles to things like the tracks, signals, communications, overhead wiring system, field service and the other components.” The Port Authority has been making $94 million worth of improvements for several years on the existing system, some obvious, like renovating stations, and some behind-the-scenes like a $13 million expansion-modernization of the Operations Control Center near South Hills Village and boosting power to 650 volts systemwide. Two park-n-ride lots were opened last month along the Library line. A 2,200-space, seven-story park-n-ride garage next to South Hills Village Station — the biggest parking garage in the region — will be finished in November. Purchasing 28 new LRVs and refurbishing 40 existing LRVs from the wheels up is costing $151.3 million, the biggest contract in Port Authority history. The cost is paid out of a separate pool of capital funds that cannot legally be used to help out with an operating budget facing an estimated $30 million shortfall for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Stage II had languished for lack of money and political oomph until Skoutelas returned to the Port Authority in 1997 to take the top job. He put the project on a fast track while he searched for money, which includes a 60 percent share from the federal government, 162*3 percent from the state and about $100 million in discretionary funds resulting from successful lobbying in Washington, D.C. The Early Action Program included construction of the Martin Luther King Jr. East Busway and the South Busway. The West Busway and conversion of the long-abandoned Wabash Tunnel into a high occupancy vehicle facility — now under way — were added to the program in the interim, as were numerous park-n-ride lots. Skoutelas and the Port Authority board now are looking for $363 million to extend the T to the new David L. Lawrence Convention Center and the North Shore via twin tunnels under the Allegheny River. It is one of five new transit projects included in President Bush’s budget, which, if approved, could bring completion in late 2008. “If things work out, we hope to advertise for bids for the tunnels by the end of the year,” Skoutelas said.

MAX paints N. Portland yellow; After a rough ride, TriMet marks a milestone with the opening of a new line from the Rose Quarter toward Vancouver

Portland Oregonian April 25, 2004 A minor miracle combining steel rails and community hope opens Saturday, May 1, as the fourth leg of Portland’s expanding light-rail system begins public service. The $350 million project marks another big step for a region that has put more money into transit than freeways in the past two decades and is banking on rail to help alter urban development. Though it falls almost 20 miles short of its original bi-state scheme, the 5.8-mile line running through North Portland between the Rose Quarter and the Portland Expo Center ranks as a major accomplishment, given its bumpy history and sacrifices made by surrounding neighborhoods to pay for it. Much of the new Yellow Line runs along North Interstate Avenue, a former state highway that fell into decay after it was replaced by Interstate 5 in 1964. Besides being able to carry 13,900 passengers a day, the new line aims to bolster economic development and housing opportunities in the downtrodden corridor. That’s a big order, given the mixed results of three earlier rail routes dating to 1986. But the Yellow Line starts out as a model of efficiency, being completed four months earlier than scheduled and $25 million below original estimates. TriMet used bidding and managerial techniques borrowed from private enterprise on the project and has drawn national interest in transit circles. “We did it by superb construction management and cost control,” said Fred Hansen, TriMet general manager. Tens of thousands of people are expected to ride the Yellow Line on its first weekend, and public events are scheduled at each transit station. No fares will be charged on the Yellow Line on Saturday, May 1, or Sunday, May 2. Starting Monday, May 3, the Yellow Line starts its life in earnest, ferrying commuters and trying to stimulate what planners call a “ghost highway.” TriMet expects daily ridership to average 13,900 in the first year in an area of Portland that has the region’s highest percentage of transit riders. Most Yellow Line riders will be switching from buses at the outset. But based on experiences with earlier rail lines, Hansen expects it will attract riders who haven’t used transit before. Planners expect the line to carry 18,000 daily riders after 15 years — even if the line isn’t extended by then to Vancouver. By comparison, a total of 79,600 daily riders use existing rail lines. Project scaled back The Yellow Line represents a fragment of a $2.85 billion, 25-mile route once proposed to run from the Hazel Dell area north of Vancouver to Clackamas Town Center. Voters in the Portland area approved a ballot measure to build it in 1994, but Clark County, Wash., voters rejected a local tax increase a few months later that would have helped pay for the northern end. Light-rail supporters submitted a shorter plan in 1998, running tracks from North Portland to Clackamas Town Center. Voters narrowly defeated it. Still, the line refused to die. Transit advocates noted that North and Northeast Portland voters strongly favored the 1998 proposal. “We started asking, ‘Is there a way to do it differently?’ “ recalled Dick Feeney, who was TriMet’s governmental affairs director and is now retired. “Can we serve the neighborhoods? Can we do it right?” Hansen, then in his first year as general manager, said post-election polling suggested that voters liked light rail. “But they wondered if it was the right alignment. They weren’t sure that property taxes were the best way to pay for it. They wanted government to be more creative in paying for it. That’s exactly what we did.” Richard Reiten, then chief executive of Northwest Natural Gas Co., approached neighborhood representatives and City Hall. A revised plan changed the route to protect businesses and houses. The 1998 plan would have taken out 113 houses and business properties in North Portland; the revised model cut that number to zero. Urban renewal plan Working with neighborhoods, the City Council quickly put together the Interstate Avenue Urban Renewal Area, which Portland used to raise $30 million in local property taxes to help pay for the rail project. Supporting the rail plan means little money is available for housing, parks, economic development and other identified neighborhood needs, at least for several years of the 20-year urban renewal district. It’s a sensitive issue for citizens who worked on the larger urban renewal plan. “There ought to be some form of mitigation,” said Walter Valenta, co-chairman of the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Advisory Committee. “You shouldn’t be able to zero out all the other neighborhood programs to carry the whole city’s burden.” Nevertheless, Valenta said he thinks the city will use urban renewal funding, which generates money from rising property taxes, to pay for more transit projects. Lenny Anderson, a major transit supporter on the committee, said the funding picture was clear from the start. “There would be no Interstate renewal district if it weren’t for light rail,” he said. “That’s why we were created.” Pauline Bradford, a 60-year Eliot neighborhood resident who has lived through earlier unsuccessful renewal projects, said, “The people in the district are not getting improvement. When you get through with it, the district has no money for anything.” Before construction began, the revised light-rail plan had skeptics. Some residents contended it was a route to nowhere without crossing the Columbia River; others worried about the loss of traffic lanes on Interstate Avenue. The final product has tempered some of those views. “I think it’s going to be good,” said North Portland resident Roger Troen, who originally objected to the line’s cost and design. He said TriMet made some changes in the construction plans as a result of neighborhood concerns. Meanwhile, TriMet is continuing to work on plans for another rail extension that would run in the Interstate 205 corridor between Gateway and Clackamas Town Center. The agency plans to apply for federal grants this fall. On the edge of Vancouver Can rail to Vancouver be far behind? The Yellow Line brings light rail within a mile and a half of downtown Vancouver. Oregon and Washington transportation departments are starting a study for a new Columbia River bridge that would include a rail right of way. But a final decision, let alone construction, appears to be many years away. “If you look at it on a regional basis, Vancouver is an essential element,” Hansen said. “It’s a matter of accomplishing it in a way that meets Vancouver’s needs. TriMet alone can’t make the call; its jurisdiction ends at the Columbia River. The number of Washington vehicles parked in free park-and-ride lots at the Expo Center and Portland International Raceway on the new Yellow Line could indicate Vancouver interest in light rail. Hansen said TriMet will do license plate surveys at the start. “We want to know where our riders are coming from,” he said. Another indication in the Yellow Line’s attractiveness to Clark County could be ridership on C-Tran’s express buses to downtown Portland. The Clark County transit agency intends to continue its existing express service, at least for now. Hike to change lines The Yellow Line intersects with the Blue Line at the Rose Quarter, but riders hoping to change rail lines there may find the task daunting. Passengers will have to walk the equivalent of two city blocks and cross as many as 12 lanes of bus, car and rail traffic to make a connection among the Yellow, Blue and Red lines. Riders could make an easier transfer at the Old Town/China Town stop, where they would only have to cross a street to change trains — but that would mean making two unnecessary trips across the Steel Bridge. Hansen said TriMet surveys indicate that a large majority of Yellow Line riders will be heading to and from downtown, and thus won’t have to transfer at the Rose Quarter. He also said the Rose Quarter layout could change either as a result of street changes or new rail connections.

The Yellow Line: Project Stands Out As A Model In Management

The Sunday Oregonian April 25, 2004 Summary: Building on experience, TriMet uses a two-pronged approach to shave months off the schedule and millions from the budget Construction techniques borrowed from private enterprise helped TriMet save $25 million on the Interstate light-rail project and complete it months ahead of schedule. As a result, the Interstate project could become a national model for large transit projects. The outcome, including good feelings between TriMet and its two main contractors, contrasts sharply with two earlier light-rail projects that ended with unexpected costs in one case, and a messy, five-way jury trial over costs in another. Don Irwin, TriMet’s director of capital construction, started thinking about a new contracting process after the westside light-rail project, completed in 1998, that encountered higher-than-expected costs in tunneling and laying track on Portland streets. “We learned a lot from that one,” Irwin said. “We sat down afterward and said, ‘How can we do this better?’ “ Changes in state laws about public bidding offered TriMet an opportunity to select contractors not by low bid alone, but by weighing technical competence and willingness to meet management goals. A key lesson from the westside MAX was to get contractors involved in earlier stages of design to help identify potential problems and to manage costs. In the end, TriMet used a two-pronged approach on the Interstate MAX. One was a construction management/general contractor deal with Stacy and Witbeck to build 4.7 miles of the line between the Rose Quarter and Kenton. The second was a design-build contract with F.E. Ward of Vancouver for the final 1.1 miles to the Portland Expo Center, including a 4,000-foot bridge spanning the Columbia Slough. But the process ruffled feathers among some contractors because it never gave them a chance to be the low bidder. “It has an air of noncompetition to it, but you’re really trying to generate a better result than a low bid project,” said Bill Bruce, Interstate project manager for Stacy and Witbeck. Ted Aadland, manager of F.E. Ward, said the design-build process TriMet used is common in private enterprise but new to public transportation projects. “It’s really a method for getting all the players together and getting the best solution,” he said. No low bid So what was different about the Interstate project? In a typical public construction project, TriMet would take final designs for the 5.8-mile line and put them out for bid. Construction companies would examine the plans and submit bids. Typically, the lowest bidder would win the contract, provided that the bidder met state laws and provided a bond to ensure performance. TriMet adopted a different approach with Interstate, similar to one used to build the Portland Streetcar line in 2002. The agency solicited companies to help devise the final designs and cost estimates and then manage the construction. TriMet also had an earlier experience with the design-build concept with Bechtel Infrastructure Corp., which built the MAX line between Gateway and Portland International Airport, completed in 2001. The solicitation process was different, Irwin said, because Bechtel, not TriMet, first brought the project to the table. Irwin said the airport line helped TriMet better understand connections between civil engineering projects and light-rail needs, which proved valuable on the Interstate line. On that project, cost estimates were only one of several criteria used by the transit agency in selecting companies from the pool of interested firms. Other factors included proven success and willingness to work with the community in managing traffic during construction. TriMet also wanted the companies to make efforts to hire minority and women-owned subcontractors from North and Northeast Portland neighborhoods. In the end, the two companies saved approximately $14 million on original estimates and came within 2 percent of meeting their cost pledges to TriMet. And unlike the original Banfield Max line, where payment conflicts ended up being resolved by a jury trial, TriMet spent nothing on lawyers and adjusters to analyze change orders or other claims. Irwin said it is common in complex construction projects to spend 1 percent or 2 percent of a budget on lawyers or consultants to try to settle disputed claims. This time there are compliments all around. “TriMet is a smart agency,” Aadland said. “They pre-plan. They think about what they’re doing. They understand about saving money, but they don’t do it by beating up on contractors.” Bruce, who complimented TriMet for its engineering and contract management staff, said the Stacy and Witbeck contract squeezed out savings in TriMet’s favor before a final price was set. “There are not a lot of windfalls after you go through the process,” Bruce said. “We were impressed with these contractors,” Irwin said. “They bought into our approach of trying to be proactive on resolving issues without letting them fester.” Both contractors had to work with multiple public agencies and private businesses, including the city, the Port of Portland, Union Pacific Railroad and small businesses along North Interstate Avenue. Cooperation among contractors Contractors tried to minimize harm to businesses . Ted Meyer, owner of Hobbies Unlimited, said he lost $3,000 to $4,000 a month when his frontage was being reconstructed. “It was real grim while they were building it,” he said. But Meyer likes the final product. “Generally, I think it has improved the neighborhood,” he said. He added that TriMet’s security staff has helped reduce panhandling. Irwin said finding contractors willing to cooperate as team members was key. “That’s not something that is guaranteed with a low bidder,” he said. The fact that both contractors finished their work in time for a grand opening four months earlier than expected came as a surprise. Aadland said TriMet made it clear from the start that the original September 2004 opening date could not be pushed back. “We worked so hard not to come in late, we wound up coming in early,” he said. The MAX project is thought to be the largest public project in the nation using the alternative design-build management strategy. “There’s been a lot of interest in it” at construction meetings nationwide, Irwin said. “I get lots of questions about it.” TriMet plans to use similar methods on the Interstate 205 MAX project, now in the planning phase. F.E. Ward and Stacy and Witbeck have been selected by the TriMet board to undertake the initial design phase.

Marion on board with possible rail development; Other cities vying for COTA project; decision not expected until fall

The Marion Star [Ohio] April 25, 2004 A plan by the Central Ohio Transit Authority to construct a light rail line to accommodate metropolitan Columbus’ growing population could mean jobs to Marion. Still in the early stages, the COTA plan is an outgrowth of a citizens advisory committee that recommended a combined light rail/expanded bus service option as the best way to improve transportation in COTA’s North Corridor. COTA would like to use CSX track and buy CSX’s right of way from near 17th Avenue in Columbus to the area of the Delaware County-Franklin County border, said Mike Bradley, COTA’s director of rail development. The route runs approximately along Interstate 71. According to the proposal, seven railroad tracks that constitute an intermodal center would be relocated north of Columbus along the CSX corridor, Bradley said. COTA has made no decision regarding a location for the intermodal center, which is a site where freight can be unloaded from trains and loaded on trucks and unloaded from trucks and loaded on trains. That’s where Marion comes in. After COTA’s initial exploration of a site near Marysville for the new intermodal center drew opposition, other communities including Marion expressed interest in the project, Bradley said. Bellefontaine and Circleville also have inquired. Several local officials took COTA officials and project consultants on a tour of six sites in the Marion area that they proposed for the new intermodal yard. “We’re really excited these cities are seeing the value of the intermodal yard and the value of railroads in our community and the value they bring to consumers and the value they bring to businesses,” Bradley said. Dave Claborn, president of Community Area New Development Organization Inc., said the visitors looked at sites in the area of the Dual Rail Industrial Park on Marion’s north side and the Marion Industrial Center east of the city. “They were glad to come and take a look at us,” Claborn said. Bradley said the site for the center would have to have good access to roads, be about 250 acres or larger in size and be adjacent to a main line of CSX. Freight would consist “in general” of consumer products for businesses such as Whirlpool Corp., the Limited, Value City, Big Lots and Abercrombie & Fitch. Scotts would ship some fertilizer through the center. The intermodal center would have to fit into a model network developed by CSX; that is being studied, Bradley said. “I think Marion has some very good potential sites,” he said. “It depends on how they would work in a freight network. Marysville was a very good potential site,” he said, adding that Bellefontaine’s sites have potential, also. Circleville just recently approached COTA. He said COTA proposed that CSX relocate its intermodal center “so they could expand their business in exchange for the rail corridor.” Bradley said he did not know how many jobs the intermodal center might produce, but said the existing intermodal center, which would be displaced, has about 70 employees between CSX and its contractors. The intermodal center’s economic impact would extend to the entire region, not just the community where it is located because of the shipping improvement it would offer to businesses that use it. Claborn said such a center could create spin-off businesses and result in improved rail crossings. “I just think it could become an economic engine and begin to attract companies that could make use of those facilities,” he said. “It enhances our attractiveness.” Bradley estimated that COTA would make a decision on the center’s location no earlier than this fall. “None of this is a done deal,” he said. “We simply need to follow the studies and see what location works in central Ohio.”

The Yellow Line: Web Of Rail Lines Threads Across Area, With Severalmore Lines Envisioned

The Sunday Oregonian April 25, 2004 With the opening of Interstate MAX, light rail is racing forward at a political speed never seen in its 18-year history. Several other lines are in the planning stages, with the region’s recipe for linking transit to land use enjoying its deepest, broadest local political support ever. “We will build no line before its time,” said U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Portland Democrat who is arguably the staunchest political advocate for rail. “We had to work some things out. We’ve been the pioneer. Nobody has done this as extensively and from scratch as we have.” The result can be measured in the widening rainbow of colors used to code the lines: blue for Gresham to Hillsboro, red for the airport and yellow for Interstate. Assuming Portland doesn’t get squeezed out of the federal transportation bill, TriMet will draw a 6.7-mile green line between Gateway and Clackamas Town Center and an orange extension from the Steel Bridge down to the transit mall. Hopes are even high for purple: Authorized in the bill but unfunded is the $103 million heavy-rail commuter line between Beaverton and Wilsonville. The region’s last popular vote in favor of expanding light rail was in 1994 for an earlier version of the new northern line that would have extended the service from Clackamas to Vancouver. After Clark County, Wash., shot down its five-mile stretch by a 2-1 ratio, Portland voters got to reconsider a shorter version, turning it down by a 4 percent margin in 1998. But support for MAX has continued to grow from two other sources, said Metro President David Bragdon. “There’s been market acceptance for a long time,” he said, citing a total of almost 80,000 riders daily. “But there’s increasingly acceptance in the political realm. The opposition is now saying don’t expand it so fast, where 10 years ago they were saying tear it up.” On Interstate MAX’s first ritual run Feb. 20, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., happily hopped aboard, saying, “You can’t have a big-league quality of life with a little-league transportation system.” He was joined by his Republican comrade, Sen. Gordon Smith, an equally stalwart rail supporter. To advocates, an equally important turnabout may be starting across the Columbia in Vancouver with Mayor Royce Pollard more actively supporting rail. The Bi-state Transportation Committee recently approved going to Congress with a $2-billion plan for an Interstate 5/State Route 500/Interstate 205 light-rail loop. “This will be the No. 1 priority for the next transportation bill,” Blumenauer said of the plan that will encompass rail, freight and automobile traffic. “With both states’ congressional delegations deeply engaged, it can take on awhole different dimension.” In the city center, TriMet has overcome its own resistance to building anything but light rail. The agency’s powerful former lobbyist Dick Fennel, now retired, once described the Portland Streetcar as a “donkey trolley,” but in the coming decade — should Blumenauer’s “Small Starts” program survive transportation bill cuts — TriMet could be operating another streetcar line stretching across the Broadway Bridge through the Lloyd District and, eventually, into the Central Eastside and back over the Hawthorne Bridge. Transit opponents continue to point to bus lines as a more financially efficient, flexible means of moving commuters. Vancouver City Councilwoman Jeanne Stewart, for instance, blocked a study for expanding C-Tran with a transit-tax increase because of the mere inclusion of the words “light rail.” She and other Vancouver lawmakers support rapid buses. TriMet General Manager Fred Hansen thinks that buses only move people and that subways, pushed hard by some transit advocates, drain the city’s pedestrian life by putting transit users below ground. Light rail, by contrast, has spurred more than 8,500 units of housing along the Hillsboro line alone, according to TriMet. On the transit mall, it will spill thousands of commuters and shoppers off at seven stops instead of channeling them through two or three subway portals. “A major investment in transit infrastructure is more than getting people from point A to B,” said Hansen. “It’s really about transformational infrastructure that changes the nature of our community. Almost as much as Mount Hood, light rail is part of the signature of Portland.” With no voter-backed bonds or taxes for funding, light rail’s local match increasingly may have to come from added tax revenues created through urban renewal. The city used that method for the Airport and Interstate MAX lines. Clackamas County will use it for the I-205 line. Washington County is considering it for the Beaverton-to-Wilsonville commuter rail route. Vision plays out at two stations But the successes of such “transit-oriented development” — the tag used to describe the housing/commercial mix light rail is supposed to spawn around its stops — have been mixed, even advocates concede. Bragdon praises the much ballyhooed Orenco Station in Hillsboro but points out that downtown Lake Oswego spawned a similar town center with no rail at all. Other areas, he adds, are “mathematical accomplishments” in terms of housing numbers, but they “aren’t great places.” In fact, of the 64 stations in the entire MAX system, only two have grown the dense mix of low-income and market-rate housing directly abutting a rail station envisioned by urban planners: Northeast 60th Avenue and Goose Hollow. The streetcar has been far more successful as a city shaper, with more than 3,600 condos and apartments developed along its route, according to the Portland Development Commission’s most recent housing study. Beaming ahead six years to the next federal omnibus transportation bill, Blumenauer, Hansen and others in what some have called the “light-rail mafia” have a menu: the loop through Vancouver, an extension to Milwaukie, a streetcar to Lake Oswego. Beyond that, pick some new crayons for Southwest Barbur Boulevard, the Southeast Powell Boulevard/Foster Road corridor, and extensions to Mt. Hood Community College or even Forest Grove. Blumenauer is even thinking about what the most farsighted transportation planners have dubbed the “sunrise corridor” from the Columbia River to Damascus. The congressman sees a ripe opportunity to link transportation initiatives with what he calls “shovel-ready industrial land.” The new Sunnyside highway to Damascus is being engineered with provisions for rapid transit, though Hansen said that could be rapid bus, light rail or streetcar. “The key to the success of the regional rail vision that we promoted in 1987 was everyone would have their turn,” said Blumenauer. “The region is now 50 percent bigger, so the key is to keep reaffirming that.”

Agency comes well before trolley in new paint scheme

The San Diego Union-Tribune April 25, 2004 San Diego Trolley cars are getting a new look that will drop three little words some consider indispensable: “San Diego Trolley.” The redesign will maintain the light-rail cars’ signature red paint but is intended to boost recognition for the Metropolitan Transit System, parent of both the trolley agency and its sister bus companies. So the white-lettered trolley name will come off the outside of the vehicles, replaced by “Metropolitan Transit System” and a hard-to-miss version of its new, stylized MTS logo. The change will be introduced gradually, as limited repainting funds permit, and could take years to complete. Julie Andrews, communications design manager for the transit agency, said board members want riders to view the buses and trolleys as parts of a single, seamless public transit system. “The (MTS) logo will be a lot bigger” than the one used today, Andrews said. “They want to really brand it.” Harry Mathis, a nonvoting member of the board, said it is a mistake to discard a name that has become a nationally recognized icon and a symbol of the regional transit system. “When you remove that, you remove that very identity that has been a symbol of the trolley’s success,” said Mathis, a former San Diego councilman. “That’s what puts us in touch with the public instead of being some corporation.” “Tourists want to ride `the San Diego Trolley,’ and we have people stand in front to get their picture taken,” he said. “The thing that gives it that association with San Diego is not just the red car, it’s that little label there.” Buses are due for an even more dramatic makeover approved by the board earlier this year. Eventually, San Diego Transit, National City Transit and Chula Vista Transit vehicles all will sport the MTS brand name.

Art Review: Light Rail, Light Art

The Sunday Oregonian April 25, 2004 Summary: There are a few heartfelt successes, but too many of the 75 artworks along the Interstate MAX light rail lack artistic chutzpah, ingeniousness In its best moments, the ambitious public art project for the 5.8-mile-long new Interstate MAX light rail, opening May 1, integrates civic pride, Northwest history and art into beautifully eloquent statements. But the disappointing thing about this $1.4 million project funded by TriMet’s Percent for Art program is that those high poetic moments are too rare and, most of all, too often without a guiding melody. Featuring roughly 75 works by 44 regional artists, the art along the Interstate MAX is ultimately an episodic narrative that fails to give the varied work at 11 stations and several nearby greenspaces a collective heft and focused meaning. Even a long, multipart miniseries has a central theme. Aesthetically and contextually, the project moves arbitrarily, creating a sprawling conceptual nebulousness. One moment it wondrously reflects on tree-hugging environmental and industrial concerns through Brian Borrello’s sprouting metal trees at the Interstate/Rose Quarter Station, then playfully conjures up the glories of past Northwest frontiers with Tina Hoggatt’s sculptural cutouts of cows and cowboys that line the guardrails of the Kenton/North Denver Avenue station. In other moments, tragic historical events such as the 1948 flood that whisked away Vanport, the federal housing project, are somberly recalled in Linda Wysong’s installations at the vertiginously placed Delta Park/Vanport station. One of Wysong’s works, a winding bioswale at the foot of the station, features three Cor-Ten steel shapes on top of the burgeoning greenery to poignantly symbolize the bobbing, floating rooftops of that fateful day. This medley of themes seems closer to miscellaneous hodgepodge rather than true diversity. But there are reasons. TriMet’s public art team understandably wanted to acknowledge the many community interests and past and present histories on the Interstate Avenue corridor. The area is Portland’s epicenter of ethnic diversity. Physically, the avenue is a winding, working-class maze of industrial buildings, mom-and-pop retail stores, cheap motels and character-driven bars such as The Alibi. As the presence of a new light-rail system suggests, the area is also ripe for revitalization and gentrification. But in responding to the neighborhood’s multiple layers of life instead of assessing their meaning, they’ve produced a project that tries to acknowledge too many things: environmental issues, various ethnic histories, the area’s labor roots, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. It’s a smorgasbord of ideas without a main dish, a center. There were other considerations, too. The artists working on Interstate MAX struggled with physical restrictions that affected their artistic vision, such as limited platform space and safety precautions. And this being public art, the work had to be both visually appealing and resilient in the face of outdoor elements and possible abuse. That’s not an easy thing to accomplish. (Compared with the artists who worked on the Westside MAX art project, however, the Interstate artists had unlimited freedom. Previous Federal Transit Administration regulations did not allow artists to make their work, only to design them, thus rendering the art along the Westside MAX an extension of light-rail architecture.) Wonkish details Still, artists haven’t responded as ingeniously as they should have. The art at some stations is little more than such wonkish details as stone-engraved community maps embedded into the ground and such glorified embellishments as the stainless-steel comets and orange tails that speckle the guardrails of the Vanport Bridge. Other stations are just sorely missed opportunities. To design and execute the art for the North Killingsworth Street station, for example, TriMet picked Adriene Cruz and Valerie Otani. Otani is an experienced public artist, and the charismatic Cruz is one of the region’s most acclaimed African American artists. Yet the two have done little beyond beautify the columns of this station in the heart of North Portland with exquisitely colored African-themed glass mosaics and tiles. Such decorative touches merely reiterate the demureness of public art. Where’s the artistic chutzpah to match the implications of a historic new light rail? Some heartfelt works The best works inventively maneuver physical restrictions while managing to express something heartfelt or humorous about neighborhood history or social concerns. At the Albina/Mississippi station, Wayne Chabre pays homage to the area’s night life, arts and sports demimondes by turning part of the platform into a jazzy celebration called “Second Growth.” The 12-foot-tall sculpture is equal parts Surrealism, Pop art and junkyard assemblage, a bronze vine that gradually rises and culminates in a massive bushel composed of musical instruments, boxing gloves, beer bottles and paint brushes. The sculpture looks as if it’s about to launch into the heavens. Similarly, at the Overlook Park station, noted public artist Fernanda D’Agostino finds room on the crowded platform to make a few striking set pieces — a series of standing, multicolored shrines and separate windscreen glass panels that pay homage to the area’s Polish roots, nature and the healing powers of nearby Kaiser Permanente. The glass-walled shrines feature portraits of community residents, their eyes closed, subsumed, presumably, in memories of nature. Like the ebb and flow of a dream, the colored panels lighten or darken depending on the amount of sunlight and weather conditions. Borrello had more platform space at his disposal than other artists, and he’s cleverly used it in his environmental homage, which mixes Portland’s forestry heritage and industrial future. The artist has turned the Rose Quarter into a striking beacon of lime-colored light whose majesty is best experienced at night. The platforms are festooned with a grove of metal trees, their inverted shuttlecock branches bearing solar generating panels that leap out like blossoming petals. At night, nature lights up but only with the help of modern technology: The station seats covertly house the batteries. These three great successes, though, merely highlight the project’s biggest failure: to bring its many artworks together under one collective vision. Think of how powerful that would have been. It’s tempting to attribute most of the Interstate MAX art project’s shortcomings to the consensus-building method that blunts much public art — its reputation as a civic process that’s so sensitive to community and bureaucratic interests that artistic vision gets dulled, culminating in work that’s more often civic balm than artistic bravado. A vital art form But that would be hasty. Public art is a vital art form, and no less is public art on a light-rail system. Take a look at one of the project’s more scintillating moments: Otani’s work for the Expo Center station. At the station’s entrance, Otani has constructed five timber gates with scores of metal strips hanging from each. The metal strips represent the identification tags worn by Japanese Americans interned at the Expo site during World War II. When the Expo Center’s parking lot is empty and silent, you can clearly hear the tags chime with the movement of the wind. It’s a sadly musical reminder of historic misdeeds and the thousands who suffered because of them. It’s also a dramatic alignment of weighty history, physical location and artistic vision that could converge only in the realm of public art. D.K. Row: 503-294-7654 or

Road builders see bumpy ride in tax proposal

Sacramento Bee April 26, 2004 In November, Sacramento County voters likely will be asked to extend a half-cent sales tax for transportation projects for 30 years. This is the second in a series on the biggest local transportation debate in decades: How should the revenues be divided? What kind of spending plan will get voters to say yes? Last week, we looked at the case for public transit for the elderly and those with disabilities. This week, we explore the argument for road expansion. Road builders once were budget kings in Sacramento County. Now, they fear they could become paupers — pushed aside as others jostle for bigger pieces of the transportation money pie. What’s wrong with this picture, asks Tom Zlotkowski, head of the county department that builds and maintains roads. More than nine out of 10 Sacramentans drive their cars to work each day on, yes, roads. Yet the initial draft of the county’s planned November sales tax extension allots less than 50 percent of its revenues to road maintenance and construction. That is far less than Zlotkowski says county and city road builders need to bring the street system up to date, much less respond to growth over the next 30 years. Moreover, the county’s ad hoc style of growth — producing checkerboard suburban sprawl — has left his Department of Transportation years behind in adding basic roads. To do their job, the road people say they’d need more than 60 percent of the ballot measure’s projected $4.7 billion in revenue. Roads are the fundamental transportation infrastructure in the county. Buses need them. Businesses shipping goods usually need them. So, how come road builders are scrapping for less than half the pot? Times clearly have changed since voters approved the original transportation sales tax measure in 1988. Recent polls show that voters want a wide variety of transportation improvements, not just roads. So, Sacramento Transit Authority executives have stuffed a little something for everyone into the first draft measure. Zlotkowski said he understands that. He laments that “roads aren’t as sexy” as newer mobility concepts being considered in the ballot measure — such as light-rail lines, off-road bike trails and transit-oriented developments, which are denser communities of housing, offices and stores grouped on public transit lines. Zlotkowski is well aware that critics see roads as enablers of an unhealthy, costly, fossil fuel-based lifestyle that the county can no longer afford. He acknowledges, “There’s room for that argument.” But he gets as steamed as hot-laid asphalt when some people want to cut his budget because, they contend, county roads cause more congestion by encouraging more growth. A lot of congestion, especially in new growth areas, stems from this, he says: Governments are allowing big subdivisions to be built on the urban fringes before the money is available to build the planned connector roads. Many roads — such as the controversial widening of Grant Line and White Rock roads from Highway 99 in Elk Grove to Highway 50 near El Dorado Hills — have been on the books, in the county general plan, for more than a decade. “Build the roads you promised!” Zlotkowski argues. “We need the will to do that.” Instead, Zlotkowski fears road builders have lost political momentum — and that is hard to get back. He hasn’t lobbied much, he says, because he believes compromises are needed to allow the STA to write a ballot measure that voters will like. But he worries the county may be making a mistake in taking the road less traveled. What happens, he asks, when the county’s motorists go to the ballot box in November and see less than half of their money will go to roads? “I agree roads are not the only solution, but you’ve got to give roads a fighting chance,” he said.

Budget woes may put transit plans on skids; Governor wants to borrow gas tax funds

The San Francisco Chronicle APRIL 25, 2004 Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may be used to life in the fast lane, but critics say his proposed transportation budget could drive the state back to the mid-1970s, when then-Gov. Jerry Brown braked highway spending to a full stop. Already, more than a third of the nearly 200 projects on the Bay Area’s transportation spending list face delays of as many as five years — projects that include freeway widenings, carpool lanes, additional BART parking and new train stations. And the gridlock threatens to get grimmer. Bob McCleary, executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority and a veteran of 25 years in the state’s transportation bureaucracy, has survived four major downturns in transportation spending, but this one, he said, is the worst — worse than the mid-1970s, when Brown froze Caltrans spending on new projects for six months and laid off nearly 3,000 employees. “The possibility is there,” said McCleary, when asked whether ongoing projects could be halted by this transportation financing crisis. The problems started during the administration of former Gov. Gray Davis, who plundered the transportation treasury of $2.2 billion as the state’s budget hole grew deeper. Schwarzenegger finds himself in a similar predicament. His budget proposal would transfer nearly another $2 billion in transportation funds to the state’s general fund by suspending Prop. 42, which voters approved in 2002 and devotes sales taxes paid on gasoline to highway and transit improvements. If approved by lawmakers, it would bring the total taken or loaned from transportation funding to more than $4 billion over four years, according to the legislative analyst’s office. In addition, the budget proposal also would end the Transportation Congestion Relief Program, the 181 projects that were guaranteed funding by Proposition 42 from the gas tax until 2008. “It would be like a highway pileup,” said Randy Rentschler, spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s transportation planning agency. “Some projects could be salvaged; a lot couldn’t.” The state legislative analyst’s office is preparing a list of projects that might need to be shut down if the governor’s budget passes, McCleary said. Two big Bay Area projects — Muni’s Third Street light-rail extension and Caltrain’s Baby Bullet express trains — could be affected, though both agencies think they’re far enough along and have enough money available from other sources to avoid having to stop work. Bay Area transit planners are waiting to see what action the Legislature takes before trying to figure out how projects might be affected and determining whether the region needs to rearrange its spending plans and priorities. “We’re not going to go through that kind of pain just on speculation,” said the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Rentschler. “But it doesn’t mean we’re not thinking about it.” Lawmakers are well aware of the implications of shutting down projects. Republicans in the Legislature have decided to make transportation a key issue — telling Schwarzenegger that they want any extra money that comes in to the state to go straight to transportation projects. “Transportation funding is our highest priority,” said Senate Republican Leader Jim Brulte of Rancho Cucamonga (San Bernardino County). “Transportation expansion is critical to growing the California economy.” But Republicans aren’t likely to see much extra money headed their way. Democrats, while supportive of transportation, have staked out their priorities as health and human service programs. The administration is looking at other sources of funding, including $800 million in federal bonds, to allow some projects to move forward. “Clearly, one of the difficult decisions in closing a $14 billion budget gap was suspending Prop. 42,” said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the Department of Finance. Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill said delays in transportation spending cost the state $4.7 billion in wasted time and fuel a year. She recommends that the state use its gas tax to make up for the lost revenue. That idea is not likely to win much support from elected officials, but the administration is exploring ways to stabilize transportation funding in the future. “The governor wants to get to a situation where the budget has structural balance so that we can resume the kind of investments he, Republicans and also Democrats believe are important,” Palmer said. “There are needs out there that we are not able to meet immediately because we are still paying for the largesse of the past.” Some lawmakers have also introduced a constitutional amendment to close the loophole in Prop. 42, making it impossible to borrow money from the fund. “When the money gets taken repeatedly, people lose faith that government is carrying out the will of the people,” said Assemblyman Keith Richman, R-Northridge (Los Angeles County), who helped write Prop. 42. Business groups would like to see more transportation investment, but are also realistic. Bill Hauck, president of the California Business Roundtable, said companies want to see the state commit to a reliable investment in transportation projects. “We recognize that we what we need is a steadier long-term financing scheme,” he said. “The bottom line is that if we can’t move people and goods, the economy is in trouble.” Slow lane State budget woes have meant delays for Bay Area transportation plans. Some of the nearly 100 projects that have already lost funding and face delays — ranging from one to five years — include: — The Oakland Airport light-rail connection to BART — Additional BART parking at Richmond — Extending the Interstate 80 carpool lane from Hercules to Carquinez Bridge — Widening Highway 101 through the Novato Narrows — Adding carpool lanes to Highway 101 in the San Rafael and Santa Rosa areas — The Devil’s Slide tunnel on Highway 1 — Widening Highway 92 and adding slow vehicle lanes in San Mateo County — Completing a southbound carpool lane on the Sunol Grade on I-680 — Improvements to the I-80/I-680/Highway 12 interchange at Cordelia junctionE

Reps. Rothman, Pascrell, State And Local Officials To Highlight State-of-the-art Railcar For Northern New Jersey

States News Service April 26, 2004 The office of Rep. Steve Rothman, D-N.J., issued the following press release: As part of his continuing effort to bring new, expanded rail service to Northern New Jersey, Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ9) today joined Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ8), New Jersey Transit Executive Director George Warrington, and other local officials for a demonstration of the new, state-of-the-art Colorado Aero DMU Railcar. Since the DMU Railcar can run on already existing freight tracks, it is seen as a quick and efficient way to develop new rail service, improving residents’ quality of life by relieving the traffic congestion that plagues Northern New Jersey. “The new, self-propelled DMU commuter railcar shows us what may be a cost-effective solution to bringing new rail service to Northern New Jersey and across the country,” Rothman said. “It offers the potential to provide the flexibility needed to develop an effective commuter rail system in a densely populated area, and the ability to roll out service on existing freight rail tracks instead of having to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building new rail lines.” The DMU Railcar is a diesel-powered locomotive that can carry up to 228 passengers, or 412 on its double-decker train. With its ability to operate on existing freight tracks, the train’s use could be implemented quickly in Northern New Jersey, avoiding the need to build new tracks. This service would connect with existing rail lines across New Jersey, into Manhattan, and nationwide from the Secaucus Transfer Station. “New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the union,” Pascrell said. “Adding lanes for automobiles is not the answer to our regional congestion and mobility problems. We need more passenger friendly and environmentally efficient public transportation and we need it now.” Rothman added, “Since coming to Congress eight years ago, I have been working to relieve congestion on our roads by modernizing outdated intersections and widening roadways that are too narrow, and persuading Congress to invest in new rail service. Whether it is the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail line or new rail networks in Bergen and Passaic Counties, I am committed to the expansion of passenger rail here in Northern New Jersey.” Rothman has voted consistently to secure congressional authorization for funds to develop new rail service in Bergen and Passaic Counties, including the extension of the Hudson Bergen Light Rail up the Northern Branch, the creation of a Cross-County rail line, and a rail link to the soon-to-be redeveloped Meadowlands site. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, which allocates all of the discretionary money in the federal budget, Rothman has already helped secure nearly $7 million for the development of a series of rail stations and shuttle service links for a future rail network in Bergen and Passaic Counties. Rothman has pledged to continue using his position to bring home more federal money for the new rail network, which will improve residents’ quality of life, while sparing local and state taxpayers the added tax burden.

Loss making trams under fire

UK Newsquest Regional Press — This is Lancashire April 26, 2004 PLANS to expand the tram system in Greater Manchester have been dealt a blow after a Government watchdog criticised it for running at a loss. In a damning report on light rail systems across the country the National Audit Office said the private sector was being discouraged from investing in new lines and said cheaper methods of building tramways must be found. But transport bosses in Greater Manchester have hit out saying the report has been put together by “bean counters” who are failing to see the impact the tram systems have had in most cities. Manchester’s Metrolink system is in line for a huge expansion in a scheme dubbed the “Big Bang”. It will cost more than half-a-billion pounds to expand the current system which runs from Bury Altrincham and Eccles into Manchester. The expansion will see lines to Stockport Oldham Rochdale and the Airport being built with an option for an extension to the Trafford Centre. It is hoped lines to Bolton and Wigan will be created in the future. But the National Audit Office has lumped the Metrolink in with systems in Sheffield Croydon the Midlands and Tyne and Wear and said they are losing money failing to attract enough passengers not integrating properly with other transport and are having little impact on reducing road congestion. Bolton councillor Guy Harkin deputy chairman of the Greater Manchester Passenger Transport Authority has blasted the report accusing those who wrote it of being unprogressive. He said: “Metrolink is not losing money in revenue terms. It makes enough each day to pay people’s wages and ensure replacements and repairs can take place. Of course it hasn’t recouped its capital expenditure but then neither has the Channel Tunnel. “It costs an enormous amount of money to install transport systems but if you go along the lines of the National Audit Office you’d never build anything. The bean counters are not taking into account the other benefits of the tram systems. With Metrolink the number of users have gone up and performance is exceeding the targets. If anything we need more Government money to provide transport systems which match the first class facilities in Europe.” The National Audit Office singled out the Sheffield Supertram which was expected to raise £80 million on privatisation but only raised £1 million. The report said not enough use was being made of complementary park-and-ride schemes and systems took too long to put in place. Cllr Harkin said the Sheffied system was built on political guidelines putting in lines where politicians wanted votes whereas Metrolink was devised with passenger numbers in mind. Just seven light rail systems have been built since 1980. The National Audit Office said the Government envisaged up to 25 new lines could be built by 2010. Twelve were being developed but major barriers were preventing further expansion said the report. Passenger numbers on the Sheffield Supertram were 45 percent below expectation and the Midland Metro was 38pc below. It added that the Midland Metro Manchester Metrolink Croydon Tramlink and Tyne and Wear Metro were all running at a loss with Midland Metro losing £11.4 million a year. The report compared the UK systems to those in France and Germany where the systems were much better used more closely linked to other transport modes and better sited. NAO head Sir John Bourn said: “UK systems need to be better integrated with other modes of transport to attract more passengers and help to reduce urban congestion. “And if more systems are to secure private sector investment construction costs must be brought down and operations placed on a sound financial footing.”

Rail Firms Battle To Stay On Track

Asahi News Service April 27, 2004 In the board game “Monopoly,” owning railroads ensures profit. But that’s not always the case in real life. The semipublic corporate owners of two Tokyo railways have had their hopes to repay construction loans on time derailed. But unlike “Monopoly,” government intervention may help get their budgets on track. The companies were jointly established by the Tokyo metropolitan government and a group of private entities to bring much-needed rail links to western Tokyo and the city’s eastern seaside region. On April 7, it was disclosed that Tama Intercity Monorail Co.’s liabilities would outstrip its assets for the first time at the close of the 2003 fiscal year on March 31. Its liabilities are expected to exceed 500 million yen. But operators of the 16-kilometer monorail between Kamikitadai Station in Higashi-Yamato and Tama Center Station in Tama could be doing worse. Tokyo Waterfront Area Rapid Transit Inc., which operates the Rinkai Line between Osaki and Shin-Kiba, will likely post 57 billion yen in shortages over the next 11 years. Both companies have high construction costs to thank for their deficit woes. Tama’s monorail started partial services in 1998, and full operations in 2000. Since it was designed and built during the late 1980s asset-inflated economy, construction expenses were comparatively high-125.8 billion yen ($1.15 billion). Despite the company’s year-on-year increase of 6,000 passengers a day in fiscal 2003, it didn’t generate enough income to pay its debts. While initial estimates were for 110,000 passengers a day, an average of 103,000 rode the rail daily last fiscal year. However, the company now anticipates its assets will continue to gradually shrink. In response, Tama Intercity Monorail has cinched its belt with fewer staff and salary and other expense cuts. The Tokyo metropolitan government has stepped in to help by revising ordinances for posting advertisements in public spaces. Ads can now be displayed on the trains, and the additional revenues enable the company to see light at the end of the tunnel. But it’s a long tunnel. The cost of building the railway will likely hit the company’s financial standing more severely than it expected. It is now obliged to pay 3.5 billion yen ($32.1 million) annually on the debt and depreciation. Owing to ongoing deflation, the issue of raising train fares is a third rail. Tama Intercity Monorail had planned a 15-percent rate hike this year and again in 2009 but company officials are hesitant about doing this because of deflationary concerns. Tokyo Waterfront Area Rapid Transit fares even worse. Although the daily 122,000 passengers who used the line last fiscal year was close to its estimates, the company is a bit like “the little engine that could” when it comes to getting on top of its 442.6-billion-yen ($4.06 billion) construction debt. The high construction bill is partly due to seawater leakage into the railway line. The Tokyo metropolitan government will come to the rescue. It will likely spend an additional 30 billion yen for the company over the next five years-including 11.5 billion yen ($106 million) this fiscal year.

Eastside streetcar concept hits a bump; Supporters are concerned to find Portland’s proposed budget does not commit an anticipated $1.1 million

Portland Oregonian April 28, 2004 Advocates of a streetcar loop through Portland’s Central Eastside were surprised when a proposed city budget listed $1.1 million for streetcar planning as a contingency, rather than a “go” in the new fiscal year. Was it the beginning of the end for the eastside streetcar dream? “We feel this is a very critical project for our district,” said Kelly Bruun, chairman of the Central Eastside Urban Renewal Advisory Committee. Bruun was one of eight streetcar advocates or urban renewal advisory members who urged the Portland Development Commission on Monday evening to restore the planning money as a commitment in the agency’s $212.8 million budget for 2004-05. The money would have to come from the Central Eastside Urban Renewal district budget, unless the redevelopment agency could find another source. Mike Bolliger, another Central Eastside business representative, said streetcar proponents have selected a firm to do a traffic study of the proposed route, which would include the Lloyd District and the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard-Grand Avenue couplet between the Broadway and Hawthorne bridges. “We want solutions, and it will cost some money,” Bolliger said. He said he feared that delay in planning would slow potential construction. There’s a good chance the planning money will be restored next month when the commission is expected to take final action on the budget. A letter from U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Portland, assured the commission that a new federal transportation bill nearing passage has $1.5 million targeted for the eastside streetcar. Total costs for the streetcar extension are estimated at $100 million. The new tracks would connect with the downtown streetcar running between the westside waterfront and Northwest Portland, thus creating a loop around the central city. “At the time we wrote the budget, we heard there might not be a federal appropriation,” said Nancy McClain, the renewal agency’s chief financial officer. “We want to make sure it is appropriated.” The prospects could be less encouraging for citizens working in the Interstate Corridor Urban Renewal Area. Eight members of that district’s advisory committee also spoke out against some $438,000 in cuts between the agency’s draft budget and the proposal before the commission. Key losses included livability projects including parks improvements that fell from $150,000 to zero, and a Kenton business district program sliced from $200,000 to $4,000. Walter Valenta, co-chairman of the Interstate advisory committee, warned the redevelopment agency that it was testing the continued willingness of citizens who spent four years debating and planning renewal projects in North Portland. Valenta said budget reductions are “ripping at the soul of volunteer capital in my district.” The Interstate district contributed $30 million from its rising property taxes to the new TriMet light rail line that opens Saturday. That expense reduces the money available for other projects. “I wish I could give them everything they wanted,” McClain said of requests from various renewal district advisory committees, “but we don’t have the dollars.” The five citizen directors of the redevelopment agency did not tip their hand about possible budget changes Monday. They are expected to approve a final budget May 12. It will be incorporated into the City of Portland budget to be approved by the City Council before the end of the current fiscal year June 30.

TACOMA: City’s streetcar system hits 500,000-rider mark

The News Tribune — Tacoma, WA April 28, 2004 Tacoma Link, the $80.4 million, 1.6-mile streetcar system in downtown Tacoma, carried its 500,000th passenger last Saturday, according to Sound Transit. Weekday boardings are averaging an estimated 2,320, exceeding consultants’ projections that it would take until 2010 to exceed 2,000 weekday boardings. From Link’s debut Aug. 23, 2003, to Dec. 31, Link carried an estimated 267,000 riders between the Tacoma Dome Station and the city’s Theater District. So far this year, Sound Transit estimates that more than 235,000 riders have used the system. Actual ridership is part head count and part guesswork because the streetcar is free. Streetcar operators count the number of people waiting at each stop and write them down most days. There are two entrances on the passenger trains, and drivers don’t count the actual number of people who get on the train. Voters in Pierce, King and Snohomish counties approved the $4 billion initiative to create Sound Transit in 1996. The agency is charged with providing commuter rail, light rail and express buses. The bulk of its funding comes from local taxes, including a 0.4 percent sales tax and a 0.3 percent vehicle license tax.

Busway 4 Months Late; Crews Trying To Catch Up On Orange Line

The Daily News of Los Angeles April 28, 2004 Construction of the San Fernando Valley busway has fallen four months behind schedule, and crews are working 12-hour shifts to catch up for the planned August 2005 opening, officials said. The MTA said the discovery and excavation of contaminated soil along the Orange Line route delayed the project at least 28 days, and it is sorting out responsibility for the remaining hold-ups with the contractor. But officials say the $3 million remaining in the MTA’s contingency funds will cover overtime and other costs and that the $330 million project will stay within budget. “This is not a complicated project. It should not be late. I’m hopeful that it won’t be,” said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board. “We’re going to do everything we can. What we expect is the contractor do everything he can. There’s no reason that we know of today that makes it impossible to finish it on time.” The project manager from Shimmick/Obayashi, the joint venture awarded the main contract, referred calls to the MTA. The Orange Line between North Hollywood and Warner Center has emerged as the Valley’s alternative to a once-promised subway or light-rail line across the Valley. The 14-mile route is intended to shuttle commuters between the east and west ends of Valley in 40 minutes or less. At North Hollywood, riders can transfer to the MTA’s Metro Red Line subway to Hollywood and downtown. Valley commuters have long been waiting for a project that could provide an alternative to the jammed Ventura Freeway and busy surface streets. But a failed lawsuit to stop the busway — it alleged that the environmental review was inadequate and did not fully consider safety issues — remains on appeal. Critics remain dissatisfied with the project and complain about construction noise and dust as intersections are dug up, the old rail line is paved over and the region’s first-of-its-kind busway takes shape. “I think people are beginning to see the reality,” said Diana Lipari, chairwoman of Citizens Organized for Smart Transit, which filed the lawsuit. “It’s been horrific for the people close by — the noise has been bad, the dust is worse. I think we’re going to see a dramatic hue and cry from the public when it’s up and running.” MTA officials said the work crews must adhere to construction regulations or face fines, and the agency’s three-person community relations team is on call around the clock to handle residents’ questions and complaints. The MTA also included $180,000 in this year’s budget to help the community deal with construction, including carwash coupons, screening walls for properties that back up to the rail line, and fliers and ads to help small businesses keep customers during the work. “We urge everyone’s patience,” said the MTA’s top construction official, Rick Thorpe. “They’re going to see a whole lot more construction going on. We’ve got 15 months to go. And the Valley will have a tremendous asset open for their use.” The agency believes it’s better to try to recoup the lost time by putting crews on overtime now than to let them work beyond the August 2005 deadline, he said. Crews were put on 12-hour shifts just over a week ago, and occasional night and Saturday work could become the norm. Officials also might close intersections to ensure the work gets done. “It’s too early to determine what additional actions we will implement,” Thorpe said. Part of the $3 million remaining in the project’s $15 million contingency fund will go for 60 workers’ overtime and other costs to step up the schedule. The discovery of additional soil contaminated with arsenic and lead has also required more work, which is handled through a separate fund. Shimmick/Obayashi is simultaneously designing and building the busway, which supporters say is being constructed in a fraction of the time and costs of rail. “Necessity is the motherhood of invention,” Yaroslavsky said. “We could either wait 25 years, until there was enough money for a rail line, or try to accelerate by 20 years and get something for the here and now.” Residents earlier had fought the subway and light-rail proposals and ultimately the financial problems the MTA encountered during construction of the Red Line subway forced it to halt work on all other rail lines. Since then, a separate agency built the $860 million Gold Line train to Pasadena that opened last summer, and the MTA is now poised to break ground this summer on its six-mile extension to East Los Angeles. Shimmick/Obayashi is in line to be awarded that $600 million contract. LATEST CONSTRUCTION Daytime and nighttime construction on the Metro Orange Line began Monday at two locations along Victory Boulevard in Woodland Hills. For the next five months, crews will work 7 a.m.-9 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturdays, rebuilding Mason Avenue, north of Victory Boulevard, officials said. The work will consist of excavating, grading and repaving the intersection; installing underground utilities; and building new curbs, gutters and crosswalks. Crews also will work 7 tonight until 7 a.m. today. Daytime work will continue on Victory Boulevard just north of Topham Street. Crews also will be working there 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Wednesday and Thursday, officials said.

Government Must Act To Save Light Rail Plan

Contract Journal April 28, 2004 Audit Office says private sector is losing interest because of unfair share of revenue risk. Standardisation, a better understanding of risk and the use of a common procurement route are the only way light rail schemes will survive, according to the National Audit Office (NAO). In its Improving public transport in England through light rail report, the NAO has drawn up a list of urgent recommendations for the government to adopt if it is to attract industry interest and press ahead with the 25 light rail schemes it wants to implement by 2010 as part of its 10-Year Transport Plan. Only seven schemes are operational. Two other projects — the proposed £171m South Hampshire Rapid Transit and the £442m Leeds Supertram — are under government review due to escalating costs. One of the main concerns of the report is the decreasing level of interest from the private sector due to an unfair share of revenue risk and escalating construction costs. The report highlighted that, although contractors are well equipped to take on the construction risk, an unfair burden was being placed on companies to cover unpredictable full revenue risks such as fare levels and passenger numbers. In one example it revealed that John Laing had been hit hard on its £145m Midlands Metro scheme after it saw a 38% shortfall in expected annual passenger numbers, which resulted in a £3.5m operating profit loss (not including exceptional items) between December 2001 and December 2002. Poor choices of procurement have also been blamed for construction costs on the seven existing light rail schemes, busting their budgets by an average of £23m. Costs to build light rail schemes in real terms have escalated to £13.2m per km for schemes up to 2007/08 compared to £10.2m per km for schemes between 1994 and 2004. One solution alluded to in the report is the separation of a scheme’s construction and operation, which was used successfully on the £200m Lewisham extension of the Docklands Light Railway in 1994. Standardisation of track and components is another solution mentioned. The NAO also wants Transport and Works Act Orders approved quicker. The recommendations will now be put in front of the Public Accounts Committee, which is then expected to bring in the Department for Transport for questioning before it draws up its own report.

Grapevine : I Wanna Know

Philadelphia Weekly April 28, 2004 Q: Why would the city go to the expense of restoring trolley service and constructing new trolley stops along Girard Avenue when the existing bus service is adequate, and the potholes all over Phila-delphia are both a hazard and a disgrace? A: While the bus service along Girard Avenue is adequate, it was never meant to last. “When trolley services ceased we had an agreement with the city to return the services. That’s why the tracks stayed. It was never intended to be a permanent bus route,” says SEPTA community relations coordinator Wendy Green. The Route 15 trolley last ran on Girard Avenue in September 1992. Construction on the $50 million effort to restore the trolley service funded on federal, state and local levels began in the fall of 2000. Starting this summer the Route 15 trolley will run the length of Girard Avenue, from Port Richmond in the east to Overbrook in the west. A more specific time frame is not yet available, says SEPTA spokesperson Sylvana Hoyos. Earlier this month operators began training on 18 rebuilt PCC cars, the models that ran on the line starting in the late 1940s. “For the most part stops will remain the same, especially at major intersection locations,” says Green. The trolley will run 24 hours a day with peak-hour pickups every 10 minutes and non-peak-hour pickups every 15 minutes. The potholes, though, are a different issue. “A pothole within the track area is SEPTA’s responsibility,” says Green. “It depends where it is.” According to the Streets Department’s website, potholes between trolley and train tracks or within 18 inches of the outside of the tracks are SEPTA’s responsibility. The Highway Division of the Streets Department gives priority to potholes on major highways or those that pose immediate danger to motorists or pedestrians. To report a pothole, contact the Streets Department’s customer service unit at 215.686.5560. To help speed up the process, be prepared to provide more than just the location of the pothole. Being able to describe the size and depth of the hole, or whether it’s near tracks or along a bus route, will help the Streets Department determine who should respond to your report.

We must solve this mystery

The Evening Standard (London) April 28, 2004 THE great congestion charge mystery remains unsolved. We still do not know the full effects of this huge policy experiment. Yesterday Transport for London published new figures about travel patterns in central London. Between 65,000 to 70,000 car trips previously made into the charge zone each day between 7am and 6.30pm no longer take place. It is estimated that perhaps 60 percent of the displaced commuters now use public transport. However, as peak-hour Tube use slumped during 2003, it would appear that many of these ex-car users have switched to buses. TfL estimates that 20 to 30 percent of travellers now divert around the zone, while 5,000 car trips have not been replaced at all. These people — and any purchases they might have made — are simply lost to the central area. On the other hand, traffic circulating within the zone is down 15 percent and pollution has been cut. Despite the Mayor’s self-confidence about the success of his charge, some sectors appear to have lost out. TfL’s data suggests several different changes are taking place to central London travel. Peak-hour Tube and car use both seem to be in sharp decline. Buses are showing major increases in ridership, though this might have been expected given the Exchequer-funded £600 million boost to bus spending. Despite fewer cars, what remains unclear is how seriously the total number of people crossing into central London during each week — by all forms of transport — has been affected by congestion charging. TfL itself admits the London economy “has been subject to a wide range of influences during 2003”, which has made “quantifying congestion charging-related impacts more difficult”. The John Lewis Partnership commissioned Imperial College to undertake a report on the impact of the charge on their Oxford Street shop. This rigorous analysis concluded there has been a marked congestion charge effect, reducing turnover at the store. Yet Mr Livingstone has kept largely silent on the issue of how far the charge has affected traders. The official acknowledgement that upwards of 5,000 drivers a day have abandoned central London suggests trade is likely to have been reduced. London is defined by its West End shops. Threaten this particular golden goose and other parts of the capital’s economy would surely be damaged. We need to solve the mystery of how congestion charge really affects West End shops.
  • Tony Travers is director of the Greater London group at the London School of Economics

Streetcar delays among growing pains; But new Canal line attracted 125,000 riders in its first week

Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA April 30, 2004 Delays likely will be the norm along the Canal Street streetcar line in the near future as the Regional Transit Authority continues to grapple with growing pains associated with breaking in the popular new service. “It’s no secret we’re not consistent just yet,” Gerald Robichaux, the RTA’s deputy general manager, said Thursday. “But after this weekend, I promise we’ll get much better.” The return of streetcars to Canal after a 40-year absence has been a rousing success, attracting 125,000 paying customers during the first week of service, which ended Sunday. But the RTA has been bombarded with complaints from rush-hour commuters about long waits along the Canal Street route between City Park Avenue and the Mississippi River, and the North Carrollton Avenue spur that terminates at Beauregard Circle. In addition to the community-wide excitement that has accompanied the streetcar renaissance, the launch of the new line coincided with the final day of the French Quarter Festival, whose patrons used streetcar service in large numbers. While the crowds have slowed the system at times, particularly last weekend during the first three days of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, there have been other vexing problems. For example, transit officials said drivers and riders still are adjusting to the super-sensitive fare boxes on the new streetcars that often refuse to accept worn currency. And despite stepped-up police enforcement and new signs, motorists are failing to obey the no-left-turn rules up and down Canal Street, blocking intersections and impeding the flow of streetcars. Thus far, transit officials said there have been only a handful of minor accidents involving vehicles and streetcars, and none has been the fault of RTA personnel. But perhaps the most unanticipated obstacle to on-time performance was the large number of wheelchair-bound customers who used the line during its debut week. Unlike RTA buses and the agency’s only other commuter streetcar line on St. Charles Avenue, the Canal streetcars are equipped with hydraulic lifts to accommodate disabled riders, as required by federal law. The St. Charles line is exempt from the requirement because it is on the National Register of Historic Places. During the seven-day period that ended last Sunday, 245 wheelchair-bound customers used the two dozen streetcars on the Canal Street line, officials said. Each streetcar can accommodate two wheelchairs. In a typical week, RTA managers said about 125 riders using wheelchairs board the system’s 350 or so buses. “We advertised that we are an accessible system,” Robichaux told the RTA board of commissioners during their monthly meeting Thursday. “And they’ve said, ‘OK, here we come!’ “ On average, it takes a driver about 12 minutes to board and secure a rider in a wheelchair. While Robichaux said the enthusiastic response from the handicapped community has been “heartwarming,” it also “slows us down. But that’s part of the game.” With experience, RTA brass hope drivers can reduce the time it takes to board a wheelchair passenger. When it comes to traffic hazards, the RTA intends to enforce the law. Last week, in fact, transit police officers told the board that they issued 114 citations for illegal left turns at a single intersection: Canal at Claiborne Avenue. As for the fare box problems, the RTA is encouraging riders to use coins or transit tokens, rather than bills. The one-way streetcar fare is $1.25. Tokens are on sale at two fare booths, one at Canal and Carondelet streets, the other at Canal and North Peters streets. The booths are open from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. during the week and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekends. Customers also can buy tokens and multiday transit passes at dozens of commercial locations across the city, including Hibernia and Whitney Bank branches and Winn-Dixie supermarkets. The list of vendors is available on the RTA’s Web site, www.norta.com, or by calling the agency’s RideLine at 248-3900. RTA officials also said they are exploring the possibility of installing machines that dispense tokens along the Canal Street route. While regular bus service along Canal Street has been discontinued, customers still have the option of using the West End and Canal Boulevard express lines that travel the route on weekdays during rush hour. The express buses operate every 30 minutes or so from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. The express buses pick up riders at every stop between the lakefront and the intersection of North Anthony and Canal streets, and between Claiborne Avenue and the Mississippi River. There are no stops between North Anthony and Claiborne. Ideally, Canal streetcars are supposed to arrive every six minutes between Carrollton Avenue and the river and every 12 minutes along other sections of Canal and along the spur line. But RTA officials acknowledge that they have not been hitting those marks. “Ridership so far has been beyond our imagination,” RTA General Manager Bill Deville told the agency’s board. “But with success comes a few growing pains. It took 14 years to design and construct this project. And it will take a few weeks to straighten things out.”

Light-rail trains put to the test

Sacramento Bee April 29, 2004 Sacramento Regional Transit will begin testing a new light-rail extension from Mather Field Road to Sunrise Boulevard on Saturday, and officials are warning pedestrians and motorists to be more careful crossing the tracks. The tracks, which run along the south side of Folsom Boulevard, are now used by freight trains, but only one or two per day pass by. “Once the light rail starts running, we’re going to see 138 trains a day,” said Jo Noble, a senior public information officer for Regional Transit. “There are people who drive through there now and probably don’t realize the tracks are even active.” The light-rail trains run every 15 minutes from about 4:30 a.m. to 1 a.m. When both outbound and inbound trains are counted, trains will pass by about every eight minutes during those hours. In May and early June, the light-rail trains will run sporadically, as transit workers test the trains before the opening. Regular light-rail service at the Sunrise Boulevard, Olson Drive and Zinfandel Drive stations will begin June 13. The estimated cost for the Mather-to-Sunrise extension, including construction of the three light-rail stations, is $76 million. Construction also has begun on the light-rail extension to Folsom. Light-rail service at Hazel Avenue, Iron Point Drive, Glenn Drive and Folsom’s Historic District is scheduled to begin in spring or early summer of 2005. Regional Transit officials expect 6,000 riders per day on the Mather-to-Folsom route. In Rancho Cordova, motorists can expect longer waits at traffic signals once the trains are running regularly, said Cyrus Abhar, public works director for Rancho Cordova. “We could expect some delays and probably some congestion at some of the major crossings, like Zinfandel,” Abhar said. One area of particular concern for transit officials is south of Folsom Boulevard at Coloma Road, where pedestrians regularly cross the tracks. Regional Transit is installing a pedestrian crossing, with fencing and flashing lights to warn of a train’s approach. Officials also are concerned about the live wires that power the trains. Although people cannot reach the 720-volt lines, officials are warning them not to throw things at the lines or climb the poles that hold them. Regional Transit is sending fliers to schools and erecting 16 temporary signs at major light-rail crossings along the new extension to remind people to be more careful. “I think people just have to pay more attention now,” Abhar said. Construction near the tracks will continue through June, with workers smoothing pavement at the crossings and finishing sound walls.

Waiting for a train that never comes

Newsday (New York, NY) April 29, 2004 On a sunny October day in 1972, dark-suited dignitaries shuttled up to East 102nd Street in Manhattan to break ground for the mythical Second Avenue subway. There was Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, Metropolitan Transportation Authority chairman William Ronan, Mayor John Lindsay and a young congressman named Ed Koch. “Whatever is said about this project in the years to come, certainly no one can say that the city acted rashly or without due deliberation,” Rockefeller said smugly. The new line was first proposed in 1920. Then, New York’s most powerful men symbolically swung their pickaxes into the impenetrable ground. Not a single crack in the steel-like pavement. “They had to call in a union guy with a power tool to do it,” said subway historian Brian Cudahy, who attended the affair. It was a fittingly inauspicious start for what would become an enduring monument to nonachievement. At 10:20 a.m. yesterday, the MTA board approved the issuance of a request for proposal for building the subway line’s first segment from 63rd Street to 96th Street. The dream lives. “We’re closer now than we’ve ever been,” said MTA chairman Peter Kalikow, a real-estate magnate committed to putting his name on the first major subway expansion in decades. Board member Nancy Blakeman called it “the most ambitious and important mass transportation project” in decades. “I’m convinced that it will materially improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers,” she said. The reference was to the most aggrieved of city subway riders, those who must daily elbow and push their way onto the intolerable Lexington Avenue trains. Manhattan’s West Side has three subway lines. The East Side has one line, which now runs at 18 percent above capacity. By 2025, the Lex will be 27 percent above capacity. The Second Avenue line was first derailed by the Great Depression. Then, in 1951, voters approved bonds for it. The Third Avenue el in Manhattan was demolished several years later amid promises that the Second Avenue line would soon be there. Over the years, workers did build three segments of tunnel that went nowhere. But the 1970s fiscal crisis shelved the old plan again. “The federal government said the project wasn’t abandoned — it’s merely deferred,” Cudahy recalled. By the 1980s, the MTA looked to rent out the tunnels. Someone proposed turning them into mushroom farms; someone else suggested wine cellars. Yesterday’s approval by the MTA board paves the way for a contractor to start work on the line’s first segment by the end of this year, the subway system’s centennial. Of the $3.8 billion cost for the first segment, the MTA has already budgeted $1.05 billion in its current capital plan. The federal government has committed $9 million. The remaining $2.8 billion will have to come from the agency’s next capital plan and the federal government. “What happens after that is anyone’s guess — politics, the condition of the world, et cetera,” said Bob Olmsted, 79, who was the MTA’s planning director during the 1972 groundbreaking ceremony. He recalled that, at the time, Ronan, the ex-MTA chairman, vowed to have the Second Avenue line running by 1978. If it’s ever completed, the 8.5-mile subway would offer two lines of service, one down Second Avenue from 125th Street to Hanover Square in lower Manhattan, and the other connecting to the F line at 63rd Street and continuing on to the Broadway line and Brooklyn. The price tag for the project’s full length is $16.8 billion. Kalikow said the MTA hopes to have the first phase ready for riders by 2011. Said Cudahy, who just turned 68, “I intend to be there and ride the first train and will stop to pick up mushrooms at the mushroom farm.”

Four Chambers of Commerce Gather to Welcome New Multinational Railcar Manufacturer to Region

Business Wire April 29, 2004 Leaders from the region’s four major chambers of commerce welcomed the arrival of United Transit Systems (UTS), to Greater Philadelphia. The gathering was hosted by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce with the participation of the African American Chamber of Commerce, Philadelphia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and Asian American Chamber of Commerce. UTS, established by Rotem USA Corporation of South Korea and Japan’s Sojitz Corporation of America (SCA), will open its North American corporate headquarters and production facility later this year at the Philadelphia Naval Business Center. UTS’s facility will assemble railcars for shipment nationally and internationally, thus helping to reanimate an industry once prominent in Philadelphia as well as to re-establish the region as a corporate headquarters. The UTS consortium has over 90 years combined experience in building and financing rail cars for transit systems worldwide. A recent study by Econsult estimated that the positive economic impact of UTS’s move to the region could be $250 million. The four chambers of commerce represent a diverse workforce of thousands of companies in southeastern Pennsylvania. Present at the presentation were Dong-Hyun Choi, Rotem USA Corporation, and Hats Kageyama, Sojitz Corporation of America, representing UTS; former Governor Mark Schweiker, Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce; A. Bruce Crawley, Anthony Fullard, and Jacqueline Hill of the African American Chamber of Commerce of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware; Benjamin Ramos, Philadelphia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; and Josephine Wang, Asian American Chamber of Commerce. GPCC head Mark Schweiker is pleased that UTS has chosen to select Greater Philadelphia. “We welcome United Transit Systems to Greater Philadelphia to continue the tradition of rail car production. We expect that they will contribute much to the region’s economy for years to come.” UTS has leased Building 603 at the Naval Business Center for its rail car assembly, fit-out, and testing facility. Greater Philadelphia has a great rail car history: Edward G. Budd Manufacturing Company made trains there known around the world for both their superior engineering and style during the period from 1930 through the 1980s. (Even Philippe Paul Cret, designer of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and Rittenhouse Square, created a rail car design for the Budd Co.) UTS also will make Philadelphia its U.S. administrative headquarters. “For us, UTS’s commitment to job creation and diversity — in both employment and procurement — is especially appealing,” said Crawley. “This is a world-class company with inclusive, world-class values.” A majority partner in UTS is Rotem USA Corporation, a South Korean manufacturer with over 40 years’ industry experience. Its most recent joint venture with Mitsubishi Electric delivered rail cars for Hong Kong’s Mass Transit Railway Corporation, for which it earned a bonus for completing the project on budget and ahead of schedule as well as for satisfying MTR’s stringent quality standards. UTS’s project manager, SCA, a concern recently created through the merger of Nissho Iwai American Corporation and Nichimen America, Inc., has long experience with U.S. companies, including an 18-year relationship with Kawasaki Co., New York City’s MTA, and Boeing Commercial Aircraft.

New Interstate Max Calls For Fancy Footwork

The Oregonian April 30, 2004 Summary: Keeping rail and bus services flowing east of the Steel Bridge will test TriMet’s planning A good front seat to watch the growing complications of Portland’s 17-year history with light rail can be found on the east side of the Steel Bridge, where Interstate Avenue and Multnomah Street intersect. At 4:45 p.m., a 45-minute rush of traffic begins: 32 trains, 45 buses and somewhere around 3,500 cars pass over six sets of tracks and 12 lanes of roadway, plus six bicycle lanes. Starting Saturday, six more trains will join the fray, courtesy of Interstate MAX. The sheer volume of vehicles testifies to mass transit’s growth. But the merging, crossing, stop-wait-and-go choreography hints at problems ahead. “Speed is something we’ve really shortchanged,” Metro President David Bragdon said about the system. “Light rail is trying to do too many things — a regional transportation system and a streetcar.” The criticism is hardly new. The Portland Bureau of Transportation and rail experts such as the Association of Oregon Regional Transit Advocates — AORTA — have long raised the issue. Even some TriMet planners are worried. But TriMet’s official view is that everything will be fine. “We are not designing the system with the idea there will be undesirable delays,” Fred Hansen, TriMet’s general manager, firmly states. Four light-rail lines have been completed. Three are in the starting gates for federal funding, with a fourth in the planning stages. Northward expansion to Vancouver is a gleam in planners’ eyes. But in the coming weeks the Steel Bridge and Rose Quarter are likely to show the early strains of overcrowding. TriMet’s manager of rail operations and planning, John Griffiths, likens the increasingly crowded MAX lines to a rush-hour freeway. One lane can be designed, in theory, to carry one car every two seconds. But the reality is that anything from a brake-happy motorist to a collision can quickly slow traffic to a crawl. “Capacity is seldom reached at designed speed,” Griffiths said. “When Interstate MAX opens, we will experience delays.” From Gresham to Hillsboro, a typical lag might be only four to five minutes, he said. But most of the clogging of the system’s arteries is between the Lloyd District and the west side of downtown, meaning the already creeping, 15-minute commute between Portland’s two major office districts is likely to get longer. Areas for improvement Portlanders may relish what Hansen lauds as MAX’s “convenience and consistency.” But contrasts with other cities will grow. Compare, for instance, the latest Chinese airporter — a 268 mph magnetic-levitation train that delivers passengers to Shanghai’s airport in 8 minutes — with Portland’s 38-minute-and-growing, 17-stop plod to and from PDX. There are numerous small improvements MAX can make, from more refined computer technologies for controlling trains to reducing the number of stops. But the speed bumps in the way of faster mass transit are political and economic. The six-year federal funding cycles for transit projects make creating expensive, long-term transit systems difficult, a problem further complicated by Portland’s on-again, off-again voter support for rail. “Beyond the next project, there is no overall plan” for light rail in Portland, Griffiths observes. “But given the funding realities in our region, it isn’t possible. If we had a long-term source of capital, it would be easier to develop a plan.” The result is less an integrated system than a collection of lines, with the interface between them getting more and more complex. The Steel Bridge, for instance, can carry as many as 40 trains each way an hour, TriMet planners say. But every train must slow to 10 mph due to joints between the bridge’s fixed and lift spans, a condition that cannot be fixed until the 1912 National Historic Landmark is completely renovated — an estimated $40 million project, Portland transit officials loosely guess. The routing of trains over the bridge to and from Gresham, the airport and the Interstate line requires that they merge and cross over tracks, as northbound and westbound trains make left turns, creating the potential for delays as they wait for each other. Hansen downplays any looming problems in the Rose Quarter/Steel Bridge interchange, arguing that the necessary 2 to 2.5 minute headways between trains now possible will easily suffice at least until Vancouver is connected by rail. TriMet planners such as Griffiths and transportation planning director Ken Zatarain agree but concede they’re not sure how it will work. “We’re still looking into it,” Griffiths says of the Rose Quarter’s mergings and crossings. “It’s complicated and will take some time to understand.” Even Hansen says he’s worried about adding Interstate trains to Southwest Yamhill and Morrison streets. With the MAX stops only two blocks apart, a train door held a few seconds too long could ripple in backups for both incoming lines. Transit mall rescue TriMet’s planned extension of light rail down Southwest Fifth and Sixth avenues will be key to relieving the system’s overloading. It will serve as a pressure valve for the six peak-hour trains that will be added in 2009 with the opening of a new line linking Clackamas Town Center to Gateway. The transit mall line will include another set of merges and crossings as the trains head to and from the Steel Bridge. But downtown has other complications. At the evening peak traffic hour, the central city’s traffic signals are on 60-second cycles. Counting the 15 seconds required for a train to slow to a stop and get started, that leaves 45 seconds or less to unload and load or face idling through another signal cycle. Unlike buses, MAX trains can’t stack up. Overall, as more and more trains crowd the system, each line will need to operate with the intricacy of a clock’s gears. “Everything,” according to Griffiths, “is predicated on trains only stopping one cycle.” Any big fixes to the system — such as additional tracks on the Steel Bridge — are decades away, Hansen says. Meantime, he and TriMet’s key political backers such as Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., are pushing for more rail lines: along I-205, to Milwaukie, a Washington County commuter line, and beyond. The bottleneck of the Rose Quarter, Hansen believes, can be solved by frequency and transfers. “Ultimately for really high-quality service, we can’t expect everyone is going to have a one-seat ride,” he says. “But as long as the connections are very convenient and in a comfortable place, we’ll be able to keep expanding.”

Package On Roads, Light Rail Adopted But Pelz Says The Sound Transit Board Will Shoot It Down

THE SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER April 30, 2004 A multibillion-dollar package of taxes and transportation projects adopted yesterday by a three-county transportation district heads now to the Sound Transit board, where King County Councilman Dwight Pelz said it faces almost certain defeat. The Regional Transportation Investment District seeks Sound Transit participation in the belief that voters — particularly Seattle’s more tax-tolerant voters — will find in November��a package with both light rail and roads more attractive than a roads-only proposal. The district’s executive committee adopted yesterday a $7.3 billion proposal for King County put forth by King County Council members Rob McKenna and Julia Patterson and rejected the $6.7 billion package proposed by Pelz, which��provided more for light rail and less for widening Interstate 405 and state Route167. The vote was 6-1, with Pelz dissenting and saying that the adopted package would be “completely unacceptable” to Seattle voters and elected officials. The plan calls for a 0.3 cent motor vehicle excise tax, a 0.3 cent sales tax increase, a vehicle license fee of $75, and an added 2.8 cent three-county gas tax. Refusal by Sound Transit to join in on the package would doom it to failure at the polls in November, state Secretary of Transportation Doug MacDonald said after the meeting. But MacDonald said that despite yesterday’s adoption of a plan, negotiations are likely not over. The competing Pelz and Patterson-McKenna packages put forth yesterday were much closer than they have been in the past, he said. The Sound Transit board is scheduled to vote May 20. The draft plan adopted yesterday would provide $1 billion each toward replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the Evergreen Point Bridge and $875 million for extending light rail to Sea-Tac Airport and to Husky Stadium. It would also spend $1.9 billion for adding two lanes in each direction on I-405 from Renton to Bellevue and one lane in each direction between Bellevue and Bothell. State Route 167 would get $500 million for building new high-occupancy vehicle lanes at places and adding one general purpose lane in each direction. An additional $820 million would go to overhaul the interchange that joins 405 and 167. The package includes $900 million to extend state Route 509 to Interstate 5. State Route 518 and its interchange with I-5 would get $135 million. Pelz’s package would provide $1.1 billion for light rail, enough to get it to Northeast 45th Street and Brooklyn Avenue Northeast — one stop beyond Husky Stadium — and also to the airport. A parade of Eastside city council members spoke at the meeting to urge the transportation district to keep moving toward the November ballot and to keep the funding level high enough to pay for needed highway projects in their areas. David Hopkins, a transportation manager representing King County Executive Ron Sims, complained about a lack of money for buses. “A plan with only light rail isn’t balanced,” he said. Snohomish County Councilman Dave Gossett, a Mountlake Terrace Democrat, criticized Pelz for failure to compromise by submitting a plan that still had all of his preferred Seattle projects in it, while cutting suburban projects. But Pelz said his package was a compromise, because he and Seattle leaders included considerably more than they were comfortable with for new roads and agreed to use of the sales tax for roads. His plan provides $5.5 billion for new roads in King County, he said. That would be the equivalent of the Legislature passing an 11 cent statewide gas tax increase and funneling all the money to King County, Pelz said. “Yet we are told that is not enough.” Patterson, a South King County Democrat, said that if sufficient new roads aren’t provided inside the growth management boundary, the pressure will be “extreme” to move the boundaries. Economic growth and jobs will also suffer, she said, because companies can’t get their goods to market. The state’s investment in roads has been stagnant for 12 years, she said. Patterson, like Pelz, a member of Sound Transit’s board, said the package’s prospects at that board are “not clear.” A decision to participate will require approval by two-thirds of the board’s 18 members. Pelz said that without Seattle’s five votes, approval is not close. The three-county package adopted yesterday included $2.8 billion of projects for Pierce County and $2.2 billion for Snohomish County.

Ours is a streetcar named development; Supporters see potential for growth in plans for loop on Portland’s east side

PORTLAND TRIBUNE 30 April 2004 The Portland Streetcar is trying to grow up. Since its 2001 opening, the streetcar has kept a low profile along its 2.4-mile path, not very big and not very fast, a little brother to light rail and an even littler brother to the big Amtrak trains. Now the streetcar is getting ambitious. It’s already building its way east to RiverPlace, and plans are in the works for a line to the South Waterfront area and Lake Oswego. But its boldest plan calls for a loop across the Broadway Bridge, through the Lloyd District, south through the central east side to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and back across the Willamette River to RiverPlace, where it will join the existing line. Portland Streetcar officials call the proposal the Ringstrasse Concept, named for the grand boulevard encircling the city center of Vienna, Austria. What originally was known as a people “circulator” could turn into a grown-up commuter service, spur new development in the Lloyd District and create stronger ties between downtown Portland and the inner east side. The loop could cost $80 million. Final routes, price tags and methods of payment are still unclear, although money from the federal government and from an urban renewal district probably would both play a part. “Everybody will get the opportunity to participate,” said Rick Gustafson, director of the Portland Streetcar. “If it’s going to be done, it will be done with a lot of different people.” Some money already may be on the way. U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said the transportation bill passed recently by the U.S. House included $1.5 million to plan for expansion of the streetcar to the east side. The bill has not passed the Senate, though, and President Bush has threatened to veto it unless Congress cuts the price tag. “Pork?” Blumenauer said. “I’m sorry, but this is how transportation money should be spent, to leverage jobs and economic development and help people.” In nearly three years of operations, the Portland Streetcar has averaged about 5,700 boardings a day, more than the 5,000 or so expected. And like light rail, Gustafson said, it’s been surprisingly popular on weekends. But in more practical terms, the streetcar has proved to be a lure to new businesses and new residential development in the Pearl District and West End. Gustafson said the streetcar already passes through $1 billion in new development in the Pearl District and West End. The developments there probably would have taken place without the streetcar, said Homer Williams of Williams and Dame Development. But it’s been a significant selling point. “People look at it as an enhancement to their urban living,” Williams said. “It’s a very important piece of the question, more so than anybody thought. It’s been a very pleasant surprise. This is one of the things that differentiates Portland from other cities.” The city, Williams said, has lost more than 700,000 square feet in office space in the economic downturn, but buildings in the new Brewery Blocks have added that much, its occupants lured in part by the streetcar. Robert Ball, a developer in the Pearl District, agreed. “If the streetcar went away we would still see downtown urban living,” Ball said. “But it’s a valuable piece. It adds to the overall picture and the increasing demands for products in the downtown core area.” East side takes a look The RiverPlace extension, six-tenths of a mile, is set to open next March. Negotiations for the extension to Southwest Gibbs Street and the planned South Waterfront development, another six-tenths of a mile south, should be done by September and could open sometime in 2006, Gustafson said. Cost estimates for that extension run about $22 million, but Gustafson hopes to see that number shrink. Most of the money would go to road construction, utility work and two new cars. The goal, he said, is to operate trains every 10 minutes. The east-side loop, though, excites supporters the most. They want to use the streetcar as a tool to attract development, much like TriMet has used light rail to lure new development to the west side. The proposed route would take the streetcar across the Broadway Bridge to Northeast Weidler Street, south on Northeast Seventh Avenue, west on Northeast Oregon Street and south to OMSI on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Trains heading north through the east side would use Grand Avenue. From OMSI, the train would cut back across the Willamette River to RiverPlace on a new rail bridge being planned for the Milwaukie light-rail line. The city hopes the line would mean new development — retail, office and residential — in the area called Lloyd Crossing, which is bounded by Northeast Seventh Avenue, Broadway, Oregon Street and Grand Avenue. A task force is studying possibilities for the area, Gustafson said. “East side has great potential,” he said. “There’s enormous support for it. There’s a lot of very strong interest in the streetcar.” A financing plan hasn’t been worked out, but one source of money could be a local improvement district. On the west-side streetcar line, local businesses formed such a district and raised $9.6 million of the $56.9 million startup costs, about 17 percent. Costs were apportioned based on the size of the business and its proximity to the line. An east-side local improvement district hasn’t been proposed, so business owners know they’ll wind up paying something but haven’t seen any numbers, said Peter Stark, president of the Central Eastside Industrial Council. In informal discussions, board members seem excited about the streetcar but are insistent that it follow the MLK-Grand Avenue alignment, the neighborhood’s main retail corridor. “If they move it east, you’re blowing out all the industrial businesses,” said Michael Bolliger, owner of the insurance company Bolliger & Sons at the east end of the Morrison Bridge. “It would be a big, big issue for us.” Anything farther east, Stark agreed, could interfere with the character of a neighborhood that has more than 1,100 businesses and 17,000 jobs. Area’s wary of change Stark said council board members see the streetcar attracting new retail and restaurants to MLK and Grand Avenue, offering amenities to employees and generally strengthening the district’s business climate. Stark said the area is wary of quick change. “We believe moving slower and allowing our district to change at a slower pace is absolutely appropriate,” he said, “especially in today’s economic climate.” Running the streetcar south to Lake Oswego, about a 4-mile trip, would offer its own complications. Many of the residential buildings south of downtown Portland in Johns Landing were built next to the tracks. And farther south, in Dunthorpe, the tracks also pass extremely close to the homes in one of the region’s most affluent neighborhoods. Gustafson is especially cautious, he said, choosing his words carefully, because the neighborhood also is home to many high-powered lawyers. “This isn’t just a passing deal,” Gustafson said. “It’s very serious to the value of their investment in their homes. It’s the whole livability issue, and it can’t be treated lightly. We need to work something out.” Two-thirds of the streetcar’s $2.4 million annual operating budget comes from TriMet, with the rest coming from fares, advertising and the new parking meters in the River District. The city paid $906,000 for this year. The RiverPlace extension is expected to boost the city’s subsidy by $200,000, and the subsidy probably will grow as the streetcar expands The streetcar is operated by a private, nonprofit company, Portland Streetcar Inc., but was built with public and private money.

Metro chief thanks city for opportunity, bids Houston farewell

Houston Chronicle April 30, 2004 As I retire from the position of president and chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, I would like to thank the people of Houston for what I consider the opportunity of my lifetime. The past five years and four months have not been easy, being studded with lawsuits, personal attacks and proposals to tear up the tracks and return the streets to their original state. No, they weren’t easy, but they were rewarding. I wouldn’t have missed them. On Jan. 1, 2004, Houston’s downtown changed forever. It became a meeting place, a pedestrian way, a social setting with restaurants, night clubs, bars — all tied together by a new state-of-the-art light-rail system. This is a sight almost no one thought this community would ever see. But former Mayor Lee P. Brown had the vision of a Main Street, alive and vibrant, and of a rail mass-transit system that would be the catalyst to make his vision come to life. Suddenly, people who work in the Texas Medical Center are lunching downtown; people with loved ones in the TMC are staying at hotels downtown; and Texans’ games, the rodeo and the automobile show seem so much closer and easier to get to. That’s what light rail has done. Each day Metro carries 13,000 people to their destinations throughout the corridor: students to colleges and universities, employees to work sites, revelers to restaurants and clubs. And there will be more. The Medical Center estimates that when it expands, MetroRail will have to carry 30 percent of its employees to allow the growth expected and planned. And the seven miles of rail now in place is only the beginning, thanks to voters who last November approved expanding the system by 64 miles of light rail and eight miles of commuter rail. The voters also approved doubling the bus system to meet the demands of 2 million more people who will call Houston home in the next 20 years.