Jarrett Walker of Human Transit recently published an interesting post talking about downtowns. His argument is that we shouldn’t be planning our transit networks around the traditional notion of a single-centered city.
Here’s a snippet:
So growing a single downtown isn’t the key to becoming a great transit city. Quite the opposite, it’s best to have a pattern of many centers, all generating high demand, and supporting balanced two-way flows between them that let us move more people on less infrastructure. This is the great advantage of Paris or Los Angeles or the Dutch Randstad over Chicago or Manhattan.
Now, there are many cases where a singular economic center still dominates an urban region. See downtown Toronto. And many will argue that the current economic environment is creating more, rather than less, concentrated urban spikiness.
But at the same time it is quite clear that many of our cities have shifted away from a monocentric model to a polycentric one.
I mean, just look at all employment nodes that have developed across the Toronto region. The idea that everyone comes downtown in the morning and then leaves in the evening has become an anachronism for many. Early in my career I spent 4 years commuting from downtown to the suburbs.
So what is happening is that our cities need to start performing more like point-to-point networks. This isn’t a new thought. But it’s a lot harder to execute on compared to what many cities have been used to.
You need a critical density of both residents and employers and the right kind of connectivity to create a true “mobility hub.” In Toronto, you could argue that we really only have one of those and it’s centered around Union Station.
But I think that will change for many cities. And when we do get it right, we will be doing a lot to improve the crippling traffic congestion that so many of our cities are suffering from.
I said that because I think that multi-modal is already the new reality in terms of how we get around cities and because the line between different modalities is becoming greyer all the time.
That’s why I was interested when I stumbled upon this NextCity article talking about how Lyft is starting – it’s still early days – to collaborate with transit authorities in order to make it easier for people to switch between public transit and its peer-to-peer ridesharing marketplace.
Why might this matter? Here’s an excerpt from the article:
On Thursday afternoon the mayor of Toronto, John Tory, was in London meeting with their mayor, Boris Johnston, and talking about Toronto-London business relations, the economy, and transit.
Jarrett Walker of Human Transit recently published an interesting post talking about downtowns. His argument is that we shouldn’t be planning our transit networks around the traditional notion of a single-centered city.
Here’s a snippet:
So growing a single downtown isn’t the key to becoming a great transit city. Quite the opposite, it’s best to have a pattern of many centers, all generating high demand, and supporting balanced two-way flows between them that let us move more people on less infrastructure. This is the great advantage of Paris or Los Angeles or the Dutch Randstad over Chicago or Manhattan.
Now, there are many cases where a singular economic center still dominates an urban region. See downtown Toronto. And many will argue that the current economic environment is creating more, rather than less, concentrated urban spikiness.
But at the same time it is quite clear that many of our cities have shifted away from a monocentric model to a polycentric one.
I mean, just look at all employment nodes that have developed across the Toronto region. The idea that everyone comes downtown in the morning and then leaves in the evening has become an anachronism for many. Early in my career I spent 4 years commuting from downtown to the suburbs.
So what is happening is that our cities need to start performing more like point-to-point networks. This isn’t a new thought. But it’s a lot harder to execute on compared to what many cities have been used to.
You need a critical density of both residents and employers and the right kind of connectivity to create a true “mobility hub.” In Toronto, you could argue that we really only have one of those and it’s centered around Union Station.
But I think that will change for many cities. And when we do get it right, we will be doing a lot to improve the crippling traffic congestion that so many of our cities are suffering from.
I said that because I think that multi-modal is already the new reality in terms of how we get around cities and because the line between different modalities is becoming greyer all the time.
That’s why I was interested when I stumbled upon this NextCity article talking about how Lyft is starting – it’s still early days – to collaborate with transit authorities in order to make it easier for people to switch between public transit and its peer-to-peer ridesharing marketplace.
Why might this matter? Here’s an excerpt from the article:
On Thursday afternoon the mayor of Toronto, John Tory, was in London meeting with their mayor, Boris Johnston, and talking about Toronto-London business relations, the economy, and transit.
Here is the tweet:
Brandon Donnelly
Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly.
“According to the company’s data, 25 percent of Lyft riders say they use the service to connect to public transit. In Boston, 33 percent of those rides start or end near a T station. And transit hubs like Chicago’s Union Station, D.C.‘s Union Station and Boston’s South Station are among the most popular destinations for its users, Lyft finds. So riders already see on-demand rides as a solution to the first mile/last mile problem. Lyft thinks it can do more.”
These last 2 sentences are interesting. Public transit can often suffer from what is known as the first mile/last mile problem. This is a problem where riders find it difficult to get to the nearest transit route from their departing point or to their ultimate destination once they exit transit.
Bikesharing can be used to solve this. But, clearly, so can ridesharing.
The other important aspect of this emerging collaboration is that ridesharing apps can offer a lot of incredibly valuable data to transit authorities. If 25% of users are indeed using it to connect to public transit, then all of a sudden cities are getting a more complete picture of point A to B travel. (Among many other things.)
But the question in my mind is now, who is going to and who should act as the overall steward in this multi-modal urban mobility network?
There are lots of different players involved. Some are public and some are private. But they all play a role in how we are going to continue moving around our cities.
On the topic of transit, the big item to see and discuss was The Crossrail. For those of you who might not be familiar with it, here are a few bullet points from their website:
Crossrail is Europe’s largest construction project – work started in May 2009 and there are currently over 10,000 people working across over 40 construction sites.
The Crossrail route will run over 100km from Reading and Heathrow in the west, through new tunnels under central London to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.
Crossrail will transform rail transport in London and the south east, increasing central London rail capacity by 10%, supporting regeneration and cutting journey times across the city.
Crossrail will bring an extra 1.5 million people to within 45 minutes of central London and will link London’s key employment, leisure and business districts – Heathrow, West End, the City, Docklands – enabling further economic development.
And below is a neat diagram that I found in this City of London report. I think it does a good job summarizing some of the spatial impacts of The Crossrail.
In the past I’ve been negative about John Tory’s SmartTrack proposal, which is clearly inspired by The London Crossrail. I had my reasons for that. But I want to be clear that I am not in any way negative on Regional Express Rail as a mobility solution.
Toronto would benefit greatly from RER and Metrolinx is working diligently to deliver it to the region. I can’t wait for that to happen so I can drive even less than I already do.
“According to the company’s data, 25 percent of Lyft riders say they use the service to connect to public transit. In Boston, 33 percent of those rides start or end near a T station. And transit hubs like Chicago’s Union Station, D.C.‘s Union Station and Boston’s South Station are among the most popular destinations for its users, Lyft finds. So riders already see on-demand rides as a solution to the first mile/last mile problem. Lyft thinks it can do more.”
These last 2 sentences are interesting. Public transit can often suffer from what is known as the first mile/last mile problem. This is a problem where riders find it difficult to get to the nearest transit route from their departing point or to their ultimate destination once they exit transit.
Bikesharing can be used to solve this. But, clearly, so can ridesharing.
The other important aspect of this emerging collaboration is that ridesharing apps can offer a lot of incredibly valuable data to transit authorities. If 25% of users are indeed using it to connect to public transit, then all of a sudden cities are getting a more complete picture of point A to B travel. (Among many other things.)
But the question in my mind is now, who is going to and who should act as the overall steward in this multi-modal urban mobility network?
There are lots of different players involved. Some are public and some are private. But they all play a role in how we are going to continue moving around our cities.
On the topic of transit, the big item to see and discuss was The Crossrail. For those of you who might not be familiar with it, here are a few bullet points from their website:
Crossrail is Europe’s largest construction project – work started in May 2009 and there are currently over 10,000 people working across over 40 construction sites.
The Crossrail route will run over 100km from Reading and Heathrow in the west, through new tunnels under central London to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.
Crossrail will transform rail transport in London and the south east, increasing central London rail capacity by 10%, supporting regeneration and cutting journey times across the city.
Crossrail will bring an extra 1.5 million people to within 45 minutes of central London and will link London’s key employment, leisure and business districts – Heathrow, West End, the City, Docklands – enabling further economic development.
And below is a neat diagram that I found in this City of London report. I think it does a good job summarizing some of the spatial impacts of The Crossrail.
In the past I’ve been negative about John Tory’s SmartTrack proposal, which is clearly inspired by The London Crossrail. I had my reasons for that. But I want to be clear that I am not in any way negative on Regional Express Rail as a mobility solution.
Toronto would benefit greatly from RER and Metrolinx is working diligently to deliver it to the region. I can’t wait for that to happen so I can drive even less than I already do.
