DENVER | Transportation Thread

[TakeFive]

Originally Posted by RyanD

Here are some pictures of the KC streetcar! Which, by the way, is free to ride. Pretty awesome.

We took it from River Market to Union Station which was its longest stretch. Ridership was good and it was actually pretty fast with 10-15 min headways.

Kansas City really surprised me. It's fairly urban in the core but is also very spread out; lots and lots of (nice) highways. They have kept a lot of their historic warehouses and are diligently converting them into offices and condos. A wet dream for Denver since we don't have much stock of those buildings (thanks 1960s DURA).

As far as transit goes, it really sucks minus the streetcar. The bus is very infrequent. regional rail doesn't exist and failed when it was voted for back in 2008. They have a long ways to go but that city has HUGE potential.

Thanks for the great photos.

I've learned that KC is quite the interesting place. With all the adaptive reuse projects I gathered that they had a good stock of oldies. One long-time fan of urban buildings, Steve Foutch, has renovated over $300 million in such conversions.

Thanks to a David Brooks column in the NYT, Cirrus fave Joel Kotkin will appear Nov. 4 at the KCADC's (Kansas City Area Development Council) annual meeting alongside Richard Florida for a "Townhall" discussion at the Kansas City Convention Center. In an article by Brian Kaberline, editor
Kansas City Business Journal on Aug. 2nd:

The debate about which approach is superior rages internationally, and in the Kansas City region. Kansas City's Downtown and Crossroads Arts District is seeing a resurgence as young workers are drawn to a mix of apartments and the arts, by creative redevelopment and craft brewers.

How will this work?

Martin Mini, the KCADC's chief marketing officer, said having both Florida and Kotkin on one stage will give local governmental, civic and business leaders a chance to weigh both men's arguments — and to discover areas where they agree. Each will be given a chance to do a short presentation, then will participate in a moderated discussion, he said.

Are people looking forward to this?

Mini and Cowden said the discussion has generated a lot of excitement, and KCADC officials are looking for ways to accommodate, both by seeing how to increase capacity for the luncheon and exploring ways of allowing others to view it online.

I really think that Cirrus should get out of DC and on assignment, provide a first hand, live report for this Hot Topic showdown.

[Sam Hill]

I'm surprised I didn't see this posted here. Interesting and somewhat thorough article about denver's inadequate intracity transit system and about how Denver may need to create its own transit authority in order to address the problem. Much of it reads like a conversation straight out of this thread.

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/07/31...m-denver-gaps/

[PLANSIT]

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

I'm surprised I didn't see this posted here. Interesting and somewhat thorough article about denver's inadequate intracity transit system and about how Denver may need to create its own transit authority in order to address the problem. Much of it reads like a conversation straight out of this thread.

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/07/31...m-denver-gaps/

^The article is directly related to the start of Denver Moves: Transit. A few folks on here have mentioned that they are on the Denveright (overarching planning brand for 4 citywide plans currently underway, including the transit plan) Think Tank. For those who are not, the below link is a simple way of getting involved.

Denver Moves: Transit

[TakeFive]

Originally Posted by Sam Hill

I'm surprised I didn't see this posted here. Interesting and somewhat thorough article about denver's inadequate intracity transit system and about how Denver may need to create its own transit authority in order to address the problem. Much of it reads like a conversation straight out of this thread.

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/07/31...m-denver-gaps/

Originally Posted by PLANSIT

^The article is directly related to the start of Denver Moves: Transit. A few folks on here have mentioned that they are on the Denveright (overarching planning brand for 4 citywide plans currently underway, including the transit plan) Think Tank. For those who are not, the below link is a simple way of getting involved.

Denver Moves: Transit

"Pushing for new rail, Miami-Dade planners eye property taxes"
AUGUST 1, 2016 BY DOUGLAS HANKS - Miami Herald

Rates wouldn’t go up, but the strategy involves creating special districts along expanded transit routes to capture some of the tax revenue paid from nearby real estate. A portion of new tax dollars — those generated by higher property values — would be dedicated to transit expenses within the district.

Sounds interesting and complex, frankly.

County legislation is being drafted to create the districts, on the heels of a Miami-Dade study earlier this year to see how much revenue they could produce. Some form of property-tax funding is emerging as a potential element in the brewing financial strategy behind the recent “SMART” plan for bringing rail or high-tech buses to six of the county’s busiest traffic corridors.

This appears to be for more of a Fastracks regional approach. Still, it's one idea for funding. It will be interesting to see what Denver comes up with?

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by TakeFive

TOD on Steroids?

Are we talking about this development? Townhouses are fine (great, in fact), but if it has townhouses it's not anything "on steroids."

Originally Posted by RyanD

I was gone riding streetcars in Kansas City and stuff.

Thanks for sharing. KC's streetcar seems to be doing great. It's averaging about 6,400 riders/day, which at 2,909 riders/mile is pretty darn good for a 2.2 mile line. Especially when you consider KC's current total regional bus ridership is only 49,000/day. So this one brand new line is carrying more than 11% of all KC transit riders.

Did you notice any dedicated lanes or is it all in shared traffic with cars? If you're going to do shared traffic then the median tracks are definitely way way waaaay better than curbside. Median is almost always better, but especially in a shared situation.

Originally Posted by TakeFive

I really think that Cirrus should get out of DC and on assignment

I'm going to New York, New Haven, and Providence next week. Sorry KC.

Originally Posted by Sam Hill & PLANSIT

Denver Moves: Transit

Yay! I hope you guys attend some of these meetings, make good arguments, and keep us informed. 1

[RyanD]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

Did you notice any dedicated lanes or is it all in shared traffic with cars? If you're going to do shared traffic then the median tracks are definitely way way waaaay better than curbside. Median is almost always better, but especially in a shared situation.

I forgot to mention this but it's only median boarding for a couple of stops in River Market. The rest of it is sidewalk boarding.

I didn't see any dedicated lanes, no. Once you get out of River Market, where it is still mixed with traffic, it's just up and down Main, in traffic lanes, and you board on the sidewalk each side. Even the end, Union Station, isn't anything over the top. No turnaround, the driver just transfers from one side to the other. It crosses over the street to go to the other side of Main about 100 feet from the station. With mixed traffic, it was still pretty quick even at peak traffic times. It's incredibly simple and easy; I love it!

That's great ridership. I'm sure it would still hold even if it wasn't free because it's such a great loop around the city center.

Here's the stub end stop at Union Station.



EDIT:

I wasn't a huge fan of St. Louis (we stayed Downtown and it was eeshy), but they have some cool rail tunnels. Didn't ride the rail though. Didn't know which way the free stabbings were and didn't want to take the risk.

[Cirrus]

I haven't been to Saint Louis except driving through, but its light rail line seems to be well-designed. It gets below-average ridership, but that probably has more to do with Saint Louis being an economic basket case than anything else.

One really interesting and instructive thing about it: Those subway stations, like in your photo, are great models for cities like Denver to build affordable subways. Most modern US subways have two levels: You enter onto a mezzanine level and then go down one more level to the tracks. That makes it easier to go from one side to the other since you don't have to leave the station to change directions. But it adds a lot of expense. Saint Louis doesn't have mezzanines; you enter directly from the sidewalk to the track, and if you want to switch directions you have to go back up to the surface, cross the street, and enter from opposite sidewalk. It's less convenient but it saves a lot of money.

[PLANSIT]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

I haven't been to Saint Louis except driving through, but its light rail line seems to be well-designed. It gets below-average ridership, but that probably has more to do with Saint Louis being an economic basket case than anything else.

One really interesting and instructive thing about it: Those subway stations, like in your photo, are great models for cities like Denver to build affordable subways. Most modern US subways have two levels: You enter onto a mezzanine level and then go down one more level to the tracks. That makes it easier to go from one side to the other since you don't have to leave the station to change directions. But it adds a lot of expense. Saint Louis doesn't have mezzanines; you enter directly from the sidewalk to the track, and if you want to switch directions you have to go back up to the surface, cross the street, and enter from opposite sidewalk. It's less convenient but it saves a lot of money.

Although, a lot more complicated, this was always a thought for 16th Street. The inconvenience of the street level mezzanine is basically mitigated.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by RyanD

I forgot to mention this but it's only median boarding for a couple of stops in River Market. The rest of it is sidewalk boarding.

I didn't see any dedicated lanes, no. Once you get out of River Market, where it is still mixed with traffic, it's just up and down Main, in traffic lanes, and you board on the sidewalk each side. Even the end, Union Station, isn't anything over the top. No turnaround, the driver just transfers from one side to the other. It crosses over the street to go to the other side of Main about 100 feet from the station. With mixed traffic, it was still pretty quick even at peak traffic times. It's incredibly simple and easy; I love it!

That's great ridership. I'm sure it would still hold even if it wasn't free because it's such a great loop around the city center.

Here's the stub end stop at Union Station.



EDIT:

I wasn't a huge fan of St. Louis (we stayed Downtown and it was eeshy), but they have some cool rail tunnels. Didn't ride the rail though. Didn't know which way the free stabbings were and didn't want to take the risk.

if you had ridden the st louis light rail, you could have checked out the subwayed stations and underground sections on the western/southern spur, the blue line, to the clayton business district. that would not have been too stabby. downtown isnt the heart of st. louis -- forest park is -- so i hope you made it out to the central west end and other classic neighborhoods. downtown is sleepy.


explorestlouis.com


meetusinstl.com

big bend subway station:

flickr.com

skinker station from mezzanine :

flickr.com

[Centropolis]

also, did you go look at the streetcar project in st. louis?

[COtoOC]

Originally Posted by RyanD

Here are some pictures of the KC streetcar! Which, by the way, is free to ride. Pretty awesome.

We took it from River Market to Union Station which is its longest stretch. Ridership is good and it is actually pretty fast with 10-15 min headways.

River Market area with the streetcar tracks / overhead wires:


KC for SSP-1 by Ryan Dravitz, on Flickr

Contrary to what RTD thinks, medians work well:


KC for SSP-2 by Ryan Dravitz, on Flickr

Here it comes! Modern and sexy:


KC for SSP-3 by Ryan Dravitz, on Flickr

The inside is nice and open:


KC for SSP-4 by Ryan Dravitz, on Flickr

Union Station was gorgeous and huge. They have museum exhibits, a huge model train room, restaurant, art galleries, lots of little shops, etc. As far as Union Station's go, Denver would have a riot with this kind of space.


KC for SSP-5 by Ryan Dravitz, on Flickr


KC for SSP-7 by Ryan Dravitz, on Flickr


KC for SSP-8 by Ryan Dravitz, on Flickr

And here is the cute little button that Kansas City is.


KC for SSP -9 by Ryan Dravitz, on Flickr

Kansas City really surprised me. It's fairly urban in the core but is also very spread out; lots and lots of (nice) highways. They have kept a lot of their historic warehouses and are diligently converting them into offices and condos. A wet dream for Denver since we don't have much stock of those buildings (thanks 1960s DURA).

As far as transit goes, it really sucks minus the streetcar. The bus is very infrequent. regional rail doesn't exist and failed when it was voted for back in 2008. They have a long ways to go but that city has HUGE potential.

I was just there over the weekend. I liked the streetcar, but it seems like it should have gone all the way south to the Plaza. But even KC's Midtown isn't as dense as urban Denver.

They do keep up their freeways. Not much in the way of traffic, due to the overall low density of the metro area, I'd guess. Area wise, metro KC seems about the same size of metro Denver (comparing the 470 loop to the 435 loop), but metro KC has almost 50% fewer people. I grew up there and overall, very little has changed since I was a kid in the 80s. But it's affordable!

[RyanD]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

also, did you go look at the streetcar project in st. louis?

I was there for 16 hours and knew nothing about the city, so I didn't really go in depth. I just followed the American city standard where downtown's are pretty okay to do things. Next time I'm passing through or staying there a little longer I will keep all that in mind!

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

downtown isnt the heart of st. louis -- forest park is

Originally Posted by RyanD

I just followed the American city standard where downtown's are pretty okay to do things.

That's an interesting topic. Denver has a strong downtown but only so-so neighborhoods, but I can think of some cities where that's flipped--they have weak downtowns and strong urban neighborhoods. Miami, Columbus, Richmond...

And although I wouldn't say they have bad downtowns, it seems to be true in almost all the biggest cities that the neighborhoods are as-or-more interesting than some parts of the office-dominated downtown. I mean, if you've got an hour in San Francisco, are you going to the Financial District or to Chinatown? I'd pick the latter. Same for Boston, Philly, DC, probably LA, arguably even Chicago and New York--as strong as the Loop and Times Square are, I'm not sure I'd pick them over Lincoln Park or Greenwich Village.

Not to say it's everybody. Denver obviously has a stronger downtown than neighborhoods. So do Seattle, Charlotte, a lot of places.

It would be interesting to crowdsource a map of whether your city's best urbanity is downtown or not-downtown.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by RyanD

I was there for 16 hours and knew nothing about the city, so I didn't really go in depth. I just followed the American city standard where downtown's are pretty okay to do things. Next time I'm passing through or staying there a little longer I will keep all that in mind!

send me a pm or ask in the midwest room next time for advice. st. louis is sort of the last ohio river city, but also is kind of a great lakes hybrid. needless to say its a strange bird, with its assets strangely hidden. it's not entirely unlike trying to navigate cincinnati or pittsburgh without a map, except instead of hills/ravines theres massive chunks of great-lakes-like industrial infrastructure and other things "hiding" the best parts of the city from tourists/visitors. theres big, healthy apartment streets built circa 1900-1910 6 miles west of the riverfront. some of those underground metrolink stations are over 7 miles west, by washington university in very pre-war neighborhoods. so the city was never centralised on downtown quite like other non-coastal cities. in other words its not like kc or denver, haha.

[Darius C]

It appears that both A and B lines are not running at the moment due to power outages. Is there a common reason (=design flaw) for the outages?

I took the B line last week and it was running OK, albeit slow and not on schedule. I was surprised by the layout of the Westminster station: It's a massive station but only one track is accessible from the platform. Will they build another platform for the other track later on? There did not seem to be enough space for that.

[PLANSIT]

Our first look at the new Mall Ride buses:

RTD Free Mall Ride



Fully Electric.

[bunt_q]

Is RTD going for some sort of award for the most random unrelated transit liveries within one agency anywhere on the planet? Red? We have green/. We have the old white and orange. We have blue. If it was tied to any sort of specialized branding, that would be one thing. But I am pretty sure RTD is just drawing paint samples out of a hat.

[PLANSIT]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Is RTD going for some sort of award for the most random unrelated transit liveries within one agency anywhere on the planet? Red? We have green/. We have the old white and orange. We have blue. If it was tied to any sort of specialized branding, that would be one thing. But I am pretty sure RTD is just drawing paint samples out of a hat.

I believe it's loosely tied to CO/Denver Flags, but I agree. I would have loved to see a variation of the Metro Ride (which I think is great) with a new color and DUS graphic instead of skyline.

Overall, it's a big improvement though.

[TakeFive]

Originally Posted by PLANSIT

I believe it's loosely tied to CO/Denver Flags, but I agree. I would have loved to see a variation of the Metro Ride (which I think is great) with a new color and DUS graphic instead of skyline.

Overall, it's a big improvement though.

This, this, this.

[TakeFive]

It's not a Toomah!

Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, said he was proud of Fresno’s efforts to improve its transit system. BRT “is not a foreign concept. This is a transportation system that has met with success in Denver and many other major cities around America,” he said. “To have bus rapid transit here finally is going to make a big difference.”

Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/...#storylink=cpy

Even with BRT, Denver is everybody's 'shining city on a hill.'