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Originally Posted by Will O' Wisp
I have read a bit of Levy's work! He's an extremely intelligent engineer, but he lacks a core understanding of how US transit politics work. But to be fair, most people don't.
The fact is most transit in America isn't built to transport the greatest amount of people for the lowest cost. That would mean spending money on the poors, and we don't do that sort of thing here. It's a dirty little secret in infrastructure planning that even pre-COVID transit as a percentage of commutes has been declining since about 2014. This includes cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego (although SD's had a small bounce in 2019).
This decline has almost entirely been driven by decreases in bus ridership. Yes, rail ridership is up but this has been more than erased by losses in buses. Transit agencies nationwide have been neglecting their bus networks in favor of building expensive light rail projects in areas everyone makes already enough money to own a car. The only real exception has been Seattle, which has made major improvements in its bus service and has seen the largest transit usage increases in the country.
Levy always misses the forest for the trees on this. Sure we could save money by making subway stations smaller, but the whole point is to make them look like a fancy-shmancy place that the rich people living nearby will feel comfortable using.
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Levy is actually a mathematician, not an engineer.
Yep. Seattle is doing it right. Beefing up your business network will also beef up your rail network.
The main transit advantage Seattle has over San Diego is that around 12% of Seattle MSA employment is in Downtown while less than 4% of SD MSA is in Downtown. Downtown employment share, not residential population density, is the leading driver of ridership.
Fancier stations will not increase ridership, though. As an upper middle class person I'd rather have lots of spartan, frugally built stations with trains every 5 minutes than a few extravagant stations with trains every 15 minutes.
San Diego needs to build as much office TOD as you can. A million square feet of office space will hold a ton more workers than a million sq ft of condos will residents. Also, many condo residents might telework or be retirees, while with offices all occupants will be commuting there. So offices generate more ridership than residential does.
San Diego also needs to grade separate the Purple Line as much as possible to maximize speed and frequency. Frequency is even more important than speed in driving ridership, because a minute spent waiting for the train feels longer than a minute spent on board the train.
San Diego also needs to tunnel future rail lines through Mid City, Western Chula Vista, and other dense, low income neighborhoods, instead of building along the freeway or along old freight ROWs, because employment and residential density along freeways and freight ROWs is very low.
I actually think San Diego can still get great rail and bus ridership if it builds a frequent, fast transit network that attracts only the poor, students, the elderly, travelers, and the occasional yuppie millennial. Rich people taking transit would be nice but it's far from necessary for high ridership.