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Maryland approves plan for light rail transit public-private partnership
Private-Public partnerships seem to be the future (like rail transit in Detroit) and its not a bad way to raise money for transport improvements.
Chicago has a train to the airport and my dad was very impressed on how easy it was to get around.
Dear Guse,
We have lots of cornfields and swamps out east here in New York State too. We also have hills, valleys, and mountains. And as for New York City its famous for being built on a grid north of downtown… that’s why the streets and avenues have numbers. The island of Manhattan was actually flatten to make way for real estate developers.
But I have to admit, we don’t come close to topping your state for political corruption… we have yet to have a governor go to prison… where out there in Illinois its a bipartisan sport!
If any city needed an alternative to the clogged traffic of automobiles DC has to be in the top ten…and now if Chicago would only see the light. New York at least has the subway system that covers more stops…What a shame everything has to be learned the hard way as most cities once had what they willingly removed only to start again at square one.
Corruption can be physical as well as we look at the ruins porn of Detroit and there’s no doubt mismanagement was at it’s apex when the head of the transit agency threw himself in front of one of his own trains…you just cannot make that sort of thing up…
On the other hand, METRA has pulled some 83 million folks off the highway annually and having grown up in that area I saw my life pass by more than once on I-94 while sitting in that parking lot to nowhere. I grant you your curmudgeon’s approach as having a real basis in terms of flat lander politics, but there is a need to expand public transit unless you think every major city outside of Chicago has it wrong…then thats just plain old sour apples.
“BRUCE DUENSING from NORTH CAROLINA said:
If any city needed an alternative to the clogged traffic of automobiles DC has to be in the top ten…and now if Chicago would only see the light. New York at least has the subway system that covers more stops…What a shame everything has to be learned the hard way as most cities once had what they willingly removed only to start again at square one.”
Chicago already has all the corruption it needs in its taxpayer paid for Metra and CTA. Don’t give them any more ideas for excuses to fleece the taxpayers. As for traffic, just because some out of state and downstate drivers can’t handle paying tolls on the Tri-State at tollway speed and receiving the discount, doens’t mean that you still have to take a tour of the Loop just to get through Chicago. There are plenty of alternates, including the 39/74 cornfield route and the Badger in summer. In some cases, even the alternates have alternates. Here is the dirty secret on how to do it. Turn on the radio and listen to the traffic report. It is broadcast every 10 minutes. But there is a catch. You have to be able to translate highway route numbers into Chicago names and back again. Something I have found to be impossible for those unable to tell the difference between real pizza and cardboard.
As for NYC, there is no hope, other than sending Caterpillar with every piece of construction equipment ever made, knocking everything down, and starting over using the Midwestern grid system given to us by Thomas Jefferson. Trouble with that is, everybody east of Ohio would have to re-educated because I noticed they tend to get lost in cornfields, cow pastures, and prime swampland in most any Midwestern state. I speak from first hand observation of east coast license plate carrying vehicles ending up in cornfields, cow pastures, and prime swampland.
Feasibility of reactivating Glen Echo trolley line.
Unfortunately, using a light rail line versus the heavy rail Metro system means the two systems will forever be incompatible - so you couldn’t have a train start at a purple line station somewhere, then finish at, say, Metro Center; i.e., the incompatibility reduces flexibility in running trains, and I bet the hassle of a transfer reduces the number of people that would use public transportation. A rail line along this stretch is a good idea…but I’m afraid this solution might prove to be shortsighted in the decades ahead.
Mr. Guse: Use of a grid system for town/city layouts goes back 4000+ years to the Indus Valley. It was also used by the Greeks and Romans, the latter especially in areas they conquered. Even the Spanish introduced a grid pattern into the Americas. In the U.S., probably the best example of early grid use was by William Penn when he designed a grid layout for Philadelphia in approximately 1680, some years prior to the birth of Thomas Jefferson in 1743. Look at a map of central Philly. Also, Manhattan’s streets are in a grid. By the way, to be a grid layout, the blocks do not need to be squares, just rectilinear.
To Mr. Guise, sometimes you have good points to make. This time you seem to be outdoing yourself with stuff that makes nobody take you seriously.
To the rest: at least the state is recognizing the taxpayer is a little fed up with too much of their hard earned money being put into efforts they see as having little return (regardless of if they do or not.)
More to the issues in this article, yes, making it metro compatible would increase route flexibility, but also dramatically increase cost. The fact that this line connects several major transit hubs and transit lines will likely reduce the number of connections people need to make to get to their final destination. Having Metro trains make all those connections to give everyone a one seat ride would result with fairly empty trains. The high volume trains need to be headed downtown where most of the people are headed, and most likely can get where they’re going downtown without a car. If population density and travel patterns warranted a Metro capacity route on this route, perhaps one would be built, but it appears as though that’s not only not the case but it will be a very long time until it is.
I am well aware that Bethesda and Silver spring are fairly high density areas, but also relatively small. Will the attraction of the connection with Amtrak and MARC at Carrollton, plus all the other little stops in between be enough to drive enough traffic to justify this line? Maybe there is more traffic than I’m aware of, but with all the wiggles and stops, I don’t imagine this line being particularly fast either. And speed makes a difference.