OTTAWA, Canada--A five-mile ride on a commuter train in Canada's capital Friday was enough to fire the enthusiasm of Triangle rail supporters, but not enough to win over skeptics.
About 100 Triangle business people and government officials, in town for a three-day conference sponsored by the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, boarded Ottawa's O-Train to get a taste of the system planned for the Triangle.
The shiny, red, diesel-powered trains, with tinted windows and pointed noses at both ends, are similar to the trains the Triangle Transit Authority plans to run between Durham and Raleigh. Last fall, Ottawa became the first city in North America to put the trains in service.
Some in the Triangle delegation posed for photos in front of the train when it came into Ottawa's Greensboro station, about five miles south of downtown. Later, as the O-Train crossed the Rideau River and cut through the campus of Carleton University in Ottawa, they described the roominess of the cars and the quiet ride.
But the 20-minute trip didn't convince Raleigh City Council member John Odom that the Triangle is ready for commuter trains.
"I think it's going to be a while before we need it," Odom said. "I'd like to see us invest more in buses first."
That's what Ottawa did. Buses are the backbone of OC Transpo, the transit system that serves Ottawa and the city of Gatineau, across the Ottawa River in Quebec. OC Transpo puts about 720 buses on the road each day. They creep in the city traffic, but after leaving downtown they zip along bus-only lanes or enter one of two transitways — roadways for buses with stations similar to a train line.
By U.S. standards, the system is tremendously successful. In the city of Ottawa, with about 800,000 residents, about 16 percent of all trips are made on mass transit, compared with less than 3 percent in the Triangle, said Gordon Diamond, executive director of OC Transpo. Sixty percent of downtown workers take transit to work, Diamond said, and as many as 30 percent of shoppers at large suburban shopping centers arrive by bus.
Despite the success with buses, Ottawa wants to continue to add rail. Diamond said trains can carry far more people for less money in the long run.
"When you get to a certain critical mass, and you want to start moving larger numbers of people, you start to look at rail," he said.
Ottawa has started slowly, with a $15 million pilot program to give politicians and the public a chance to see whether rail will work.
To keep costs low, the initial five-mile section was put on a seldom-used freight track. The five stations are simple platforms with benches and shelters.
By contrast, TTA plans to build two sets of 35-mile tracks and 16 enclosed stations, with coffee stands and kiosks, for the system it plans to open in late 2007.
The Ottawa trains, capable of reaching 80 mph under ideal conditions, shimmy on the freight tracks at no more than 40 mph.
"Our train will have new tracks and move much faster," said Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker. "But it's very nice," he said of the Ottawa system.
Mike Golder, president of Barrington Homes in Cary, said the TTA's trains will have to save people time to attract riders. The Ottawa train didn't demonstrate that it would, Golder said.
"I was wondering what the hubbub was about," he said.
Bombardier, the Canadian-based company that built the three-car trains used by OC Transpo, has agreed to take them back within two years if the OC Transpo decides not to continue with rail.
That's not likely to happen, said Dennis Jacobs, director of planning and infrastructure for the city of Ottawa."It is being well-received, and we're looking at how to extend it to the airport and downtown," Jacobs said.
The O-Train provides a shortcut between two parts of the busway system, and most of the initial riders are people who already rode the bus, Diamond said. About 5,000 people ride the train each day, though that number recently dropped when Carleton University let out for the summer.
Kris Banfield said the O-Train has shaved 15 to 20 minutes off his commute from home to Algonquin College, where he is studying computer science. Banfield, 28, also likes that his laptop doesn't get as jostled as it does on the bus."It's a lot more comfortable. I get to do some reading," he said, sitting on the platform at Greensboro station. "For some reason, my motion sickness doesn't affect me that much on the train."
Others are indifferent about the train, given its limitations. Lyn Donaldson said that because the train doesn't go downtown, where she works for the Canadian defense department, she continues to take the bus.
"Presently, the train's not very convenient," said Donaldson, 55.
"But I would definitely ride it if it were going where I needed to go."
Despite the high ridership, OC Transpo's system of buses and trains doesn't pay for itself. Fares from riders account for about 60 percent of OC Transpo's annual budget; the rest comes from local real estate taxes.
Wake County Commissioner Betty Mangum doesn't think Triangle taxpayers would be willing to support a transit system.
"It needs to pay for itself," Mangum said. "I've heard loud and clear from the citizenry, they want their taxes lower."
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 05/04/2002
Construction on central Arkansas' River Rail streetcar project will begin by summer now that the trolley line has gained clearance to rumble across the Main Street bridge.
The Central Arkansas Transit Authority Board of Directors approved an eight-page agreement Friday morning with the state Highway and Transportation Department that outlines uses and rights for modifying the bridge for the electric streetcars.
The board voted 8-0 in a special meeting to approve the contract, signaling the $18.35 million project's movement toward completion in 2004. Local officials promote the project as the forerunner to a regional light-rail system.
"We are on track here pun intended," board Chairman Bob Major said after the vote. "Definitely, this is a monumental decision made here today to get the project started."
No construction could begin without the bridge agreement, delayed nearly a year as negotiations dragged on. Modifying the bridge is critical because the Arkansas River crossing will link a 2.2-mile route through downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock.
With the bridge agreement in hand, the board also voted 8-0 to prepare invitations for contractors to bid on the project's first construction phase, a $900,000 trolley maintenance barn in North Little Rock. Construction at Seventh and Main streets is expected to begin in July.
"There is no holdup for the trolley barn," said Keith Jones, the authority's executive director.
A U.S. Coast Guard permit and final approval of the agreement by the Federal Transit Administration are still needed, but no delays are foreseen, Jones added.
State Highway Department administrators were "very cooperative," Jones told his board, in changing earlier, more stringent wording concerning requirements over the use of the bridge and necessary modifications.
The authority needs to add tracks on the east side of the bridge, remove a concrete barrier and reduce lane width for the two northbound traffic lanes from 12 feet to 11 feet.
The bridge work is projected to take 12 of the 18 months needed for the project. Construction to modify the bridge should begin in August if bids are accepted in June, project manager Paul Pool said. Separate bid packages for the track and the overhead power supply will come this fall, he added.
Changes in the agreement with the Highway Department streamline the approval process of work done, remove a requirement that the authority add a handicapped access ramp to the sidewalk opposite the new tracks and secure the rights to the bridge for the life of the trolley cars, estimated at 40-50 years, instead of an earlier 25-year restriction.
The agreement isn't without problems, though, authority attorney Hal Kemp told the board. Kemp warned the board at its last meeting April 16 that draft language threatened the viability of the entire project.
Kemp called the agreement a "conceptual meeting of the minds" between Jones and Highway Department Director Dan Flowers. But he said wording about the authority's accepting liability for personal injury or property damage could imply the authority would waive tort immunity. As a government entity, the authority is immune from civil lawsuits.
"I don't think you can or should waive statutory immunity," Kemp said.
The board included a statement in its meeting minutes that it doesn't intend to waive any immunity by accepting the bridge agreement.
State highway officials did not attend the meeting.
The lengthy negotiations over the bridge had been stalled since last summer.
"We kind of wore each other down," Jones told his board.
The electric streetcars will run alongside automobile traffic on the bridge. The bridge is to remain open during construction.
Later that day, Jones laid out the project's plans and its progress as the guest speaker at a North Little Rock Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
"We're excited about (the project)," said Randy Herlocker, chairman of the chamber's board of directors, after the luncheon. "It's going to put together all the things we see happening in the Argenta area of downtown North Little Rock and in the River Market area of Little Rock."
The Dallas Morning News
05/05/2002
The commutes of hundreds of North Texas residents beginning Monday will mix with raccoons, Virginia possums and swamp rabbits along with the usual four-wheeled Beetles, Impalas and Rams.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit's LBJ/Skillman station opens Monday, marking the first time light-rail trains will reach beyond Dallas' major highway loop toward a suburban ridership. About a third of the new 3.5-mile rail segment runs on the west side of Dallas' White Rock Lake Park, home to a plethora of furry and feathered creatures.
"It's a beautiful ride through there," said Gary Thomas, DART's president and executive director, who until taking over the agency last year shepherded rail construction through the wetlands and creeks of White Rock.
Trains making practice runs last week moved quickly through the more than one-mile stretch of parkland but made little noise as skaters and cyclists followed the White Rock Trail under the train tracks.
Rabbits, hawks, barred owls and Virginia possums all call White Rock home. The area also has towering examples of at least three types of elm trees and several species of oaks.
Construction over the last four years disrupted some areas of the park, and the agency spent $300,000 to restore ponds and vegetation adjacent to the tracks.
"It was fairly costly, but it was a good investment," said Tim McKay, DART's senior vice president for project management.
"Fortunately, there was enough area outside of our work zone for the wildlife to retreat to. Once it gets quiet again, they'll take over where we were."
The effort makes a difference to some commuters, with the choice of driving to the White Rock station for a shorter trip or the LBJ/Skillman station to enjoy a touch of scenery.
"If I worked downtown, I'd probably save a few minutes," said Sahar Abussaad, out for her first train ride with her sister, Dalal. "But for us, we'd prefer the scenery."
Part of the scenery includes a ride along the second-longest section of elevated track in the DART system. The bridge through White Rock Lake Park is 4,695 feet long, a scant 53 feet shorter than the bridge over the Trinity River into Oak Cliff.
The bridge segment makes up the largest part of the brief glimpse of White Rock's scenery, which rail passengers should see for a minute or two while traveling at a top speed of 60 mph.
Nature themes also abound at the new LBJ/Skillman station, which has native plants, spring wildflowers and a picnic area similar to those found in Texas roadside rest stops. The station also features artwork with quotes from President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird Johnson. The former first lady ushered in an era of roadside beautification still seen along Texas highways.
"How I wish it were possible to see your imaginative re-creation of a covered roadside rest stop," Mrs. Johnson wrote in a letter to DART. "What makes my heart really sing is learning you are landscaping the area with native plants and wildflowers!
"Lyndon would have joined me in feeling very proud that you are honoring us for our efforts toward the environment and conservation with the Highway Beautification Act."
With the $85.1 million extension, light-rail trains will operate within a mile of Garland. Trains should reach downtown Garland in November, and a track to Richardson is scheduled to open July 1. Most important, DART officials said, the new station has broken the LBJ Freeway barrier.
"We'll get a whole new set of customers with this station," said Doug Allen, DART's executive vice president for program development. "LBJ Freeway has been both an actual barrier and a psychological barrier. And there's not a real good way to get from that part of town to downtown."
Bridging the barrier also involved building a new train trestle over LBJ Freeway the only DART rail line that will go over traffic on Dallas' busiest highway. That portion of the project required DART, the city and the state to shut down portions of LBJ Freeway during weekends.
Trains will travel over LBJ Freeway and reach the north edge of downtown in 18 minutes; trains will stop at the West End light-rail station in about 24 minutes. The trip means that the LBJ/Skillman station may be full of commuters' cars while not alleviating much of the parking lot crowding at other stations including White Rock, Mr. Allen said.
Trains will consist of at least two and often three cars at a time, and will leave every 10 minutes during peak commute times and every 15 minutes during off-peak hours. Between 1,500 and 2,000 passengers a day will use the LBJ/Skillman station.
"It's a pretty quick trip, and it's scenic, and it's quiet," Mr. McKay said.
The Daily News of Los Angeles
05/05/2002
Job-related injuries and illness cost the MTA $6,500 annually per employee — the highest average in the nation — prompting the District Attorney's Office to beef up investigation of workers' compensation fraud at the agency, officials say.
Tom Higgins, head deputy in the district attorney's Workers' Compensation Fraud Bureau, said his office has assigned two prosecutors to oversee fraud investigations at the MTA, where workers' compensation costs are 15 times higher than in Washington, D.C., 11 times more than Atlanta, seven times higher than New York City — and twice the average of other transit agencies in California.
"The statistics suggest there is some pretty significant fraud going on," Higgins said. "We are going to engage in aggressive prosecution of provable cases, combined with a very vigorous outreach program of deputy district attorneys talking to employees."
If the program is successful in reducing fraud, the model is expected to be used in other government bodies, including the city, Los Angeles County and the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Metropolitan Transportation Authority Chairman John Fasana said the organization expects to spend $60 million this fiscal year, almost double the $35 million it spent five years ago.
"The cost is huge," Fasana said. "We have a tremendous need for improved transportation here, and the costs are unacceptable.
"Fraud is a big part of the costs, and we have to discourage a system that makes it easy for normally law-abiding citizens to cheat the system."
MTA workers' compensation costs have increased an average of 14 percent in each of the past 10 years, while the number of employees has remained relatively stable, Principal Deputy County Counsel Rosanne Wong said.
In 2001-02, the MTA estimates it will spend $60 million on workers' compensation costs for its 9,000 employees, or $6,500 per employee.
"New York's workers' compensation laws are much more conservative than California," Wong said. "You can actually win (fraud) cases there. It's hard to compare another state to California because California is the most liberal state as far as workers' compensation laws go."
In response to the ballooning costs, the MTA dropped its contract last fall with a private company that reviewed claims and is now having its own security personnel coordinate with investigative firms in the hopes of uncovering fraud.
The MTA's workers have filed more than 12,000 injury claims since 1998, but only 16 cases were referred to the District Attorney's Office for criminal prosecution as of January. Two were rejected, five were prosecuted and the rest are pending.
But since January, Higgins said 16 more cases have been referred to him.
Higgins hopes a program to educate MTA employees about what constitutes fraud and how prosecuting those who commit fraud will help bring down the costs.
"I think this area of workers' compensation fraud may be susceptible to prevention efforts because the overwhelming majority of people who are referred to my office don't have previous criminal records," Higgins said.
"If people are aware the district attorney is looking at fraud, we can educate them about some of the more common problems that can get them into trouble and lead to prosecution."
For example, Higgins said some employees might be injured in a football game over the weekend and then claim the injury occurred at work. Or employees may stay out on workers' compensation leave longer than the injury warrants.
"In an environment where the crime of workers' compensation fraud is viewed as a situation where everybody else is doing it, for that kind of person, prevention efforts work," Higgins said.
United Transportation Union spokesman Goldy Norton said the union has met with Higgins and is well aware of his plans.
"We certainly don't condone workers' compensation fraud and if they find someone who has filed a false claim, they are supposed to do their job," Norton said. "That also applies to the management if they are involved in any hanky-panky. It's not just for workers."
David Guthman, director of the district attorney's Bureau of Fraud and Corruption, which oversees Higgins' bureau, said he directed Higgins to go forward with the plan, but he had questions whether it was an appropriate program for the District Attorney's Office to be involved in.
"One question I asked him to research is if there is any indication that MTA's increased costs are because of fraud, or because of other economic factors, medical costs, state legislative changes, and in part because there has been very little reported to us in terms of suspected fraud by employees of the MTA," Guthman said.
"I think crime prevention activities are great, but there is a point where you say: Is it the responsibility of the district attorney to engage in crime prevention, or would the MTA or employee groups be responsible?"
Although officials suspect fraud has helped drive up the MTA's costs, Higgins said the tremendous increase in medical costs, deregulation of the workers' compensation system in the mid-1990s and state legislation that makes it easier to obtain benefits have been behind the greatest increase in costs.
As part of its effort to bring costs down, the MTA signed a five-year contract with DuPont Safety Resources, based in Newark, Del., to focus on creating a safer work environment. DuPont hopes to reduce worker injuries by 50 percent in the next five years.
"By reducing the amount of injuries and accidents, you are going to reduce that $6,500 cost per employee," said Roseanne Danner, vice president of DuPont Safety Resources. "What we're trying to do is to help the MTA make a culture change."
The program focuses on training employees on safer work practices and putting in a management system that focuses on reducing and preventing injuries. The program was successful in reducing New York Transit's accidents by 50 percent in five years.
MTA Chief Financial Officer Dick Brumbaugh said the agency is optimistic Higgins' approach will bring costs down and the MTA has already seen the number of accidents and injuries stabilize since DuPont began its work.
"What we hope to do is correct the root causes and keep people at work and safe from injury," Brumbaugh said.
Fasana said state lawmakers need to get a handle on the costs statewide because it's a bad system.
"The costs are unacceptably high, but I do think we are taking aggressive actions to manage the system we have," Fasana said. "We want to catch fraud that is out there and minimize injuries. But somebody at the state level needs to take a look at the system because it's broken."
Toronto Star
05/05/2002
THE CHIME warns that the train is about to leave the platform and, as the doors draw to a close, a final surge of bodies is hurled into the crowded carriage.
Suddenly, the clearly irritated conductor's voice booms on the speaker: "Do not throw yourselves against the closing doors like half-crazed suicidal lemmings!"
Everyone inside the carriage laughs, but there is still some grumbling.
No one wants to wait 10 minutes for the next train. It's rush hour, the station is crowded with tired commuters desperate to get out of the city and, once again, the Tube is running late.
The world-famous London Underground moves 3 million passengers a day, making it an essential public service in one of the world's largest and most congested cities.
But despite being a symbol of London and once a worldwide model for mass transit, the Tube — indeed, Britain's entire public transportation system — is at a crisis point.
And commuters are fed up.
"Taking the London Tube is like a survival course," says Steven Hope-Wynn, 39, outside the Canary Wharf station in southeast London. "I don't know why we've put up with it for so long. There is an atmosphere of accepted negligence."
The London Underground is among the dirtiest and least reliable transit systems in Europe. And everyone, from government policy wonks to commuters, blames years of underinvestment.
Since the 1970s, a steady stream of governments, Labour as well as Conservatives, withdrew funding, says David Beynon of the Rail Passengers Council, which represents the interests of commuters.
"It is safe to say, because we have been living with such a bad system for so long, people have resigned themselves to the fact that nothing can be done."
If Toronto is looking for new ways to cope with traffic congestion and expand its public-transport system to tightly link the suburbs, it may wish to look at the British experience.
Part of the problem here is that national and municipal governments have "a clash of mandates" on how to improve the system, says Tony Grayling, a transportation expert at London's Institute for Public Policy Research.
It's a battle between those who want to keep the system in public hands and those who want private-sector involvement.
The London Underground is publicly owned. But for the past four years, the Labour government has been fighting with the mayor of London to introduce a $36.6 billion public-private partnership (PPP) to improve the antiquated infrastructure.
The scheme involves giving 30-year contracts to three consortiums of private companies that would upgrade, renew and maintain the stations and rail lines at the 275 stations. However, the physical assets would remain in public hands as London Underground Ltd.
The London Underground itself supports the plan and is busily promoting it as "Publicly Run — Privately Built."
But there is a great deal of opposition from several fronts, including the unions and, most notably, London's popular and outspoken mayor, Ken Livingstone, who has threatened to sue if the city is forced to undertake the scheme.
"The plan is not good value for money," Grayling says. "The mayor also knows that it is basically a low-risk initiative for the private companies. The contracts call for taxpayers to pay any over-costs. No one knows precisely how much that is, but over a 30-year period it could run into hundreds of millions of pounds."
Part of the reason no one can truly assess the contract's implications is that not all of it has been made publicly available, he adds.
"PPPs have traditionally been as such because private companies want to maintain the commercial confidentiality."
The London Underground disagrees, saying the PPP has been subjected to intense scrutiny throughout its development and represents the "biggest improvement and investment program the Tube has ever seen."
Grayling says another reason Tony Blair's "New Labour" government wants to push through the private-sector deal is that the public sector has not done a better job. For example, the last major improvement on the Jubilee line, which links the north of London to the southeast, was built by the public sector and cost $6.9 billion more than it should have.
But the Rail Passengers Council says the public is skeptical of the PPP largely because of the disastrous track record of Britain's privatized rail network, Railtrack.
Three fatal crashes occurred on Railtrack's watch, including the 1999 Paddington disaster that killed 31 people.
The crash that pushed public opinion over the edge was the Hatfield crash in 2000, when a high-speed train skidded off the tracks and killed four people. It was caused by a broken rail.
"The Hatfield crash brought Railtrack down because it was exposed that the company did not know anything about the state of its own rails," Grayling says.
"Ultimately, it was a disaster because, as a shareholder company, it was beholden to them and not passengers. It was poorly managed."
There was also a noticeable decline in punctual service and bizarre disruptions.
The "tomatoes-on-the-line" fiasco last year caused delays for days when two-foot-high tomato plants mysteriously began sprouting on the rail lines.
Exterminators had to be dispatched to kill them so the rails would not destabilize.
The cause? Passengers flushing toilets on the trains, depositing tomato seeds with their fecal matter.
Last fall, with Railtrack's debt at $7.5 billion and climbing, the government finally took the network "under administration," effectively renationalizing it.
It is now being run as a hybrid private company and profits are to be plowed back into the network.
That arrangement did not endear Labour to the financial district, of course, so the government gave $686 million to shareholders left in the cold when the value of the company went through the floor.
"Hell hath no fury like a banker scorned," Grayling says.
"It was a peace offering, basically, because there are a number of public-private schemes in the country and the government does not want to lose their confidence."
While the fighting continues, commuters soldier on.
As Ally Cam, 26, who regularly takes the train and Tube to work, says with a shrug: "The governments, they've got their priorities but this doesn't seem like one of them. They say it'll get better but I don't believe it. It's been going on too long."
Hamida Ghafour is a Canadian reporter based in London.
Insight on the News
05/06/2002
Is costly maglev just a boondoggle? Enthusiasts claim maglev trains travelling at 250 mph might cure congestion woes, but analysts say this hugely expensive technology is not cost-effective.
The Crestwood Improvement Association's April 2 meeting would have passed without much attention under other circumstances. Crestwood is a suburban enclave of 297 middle-class homes in the congested corridor connecting Baltimore and Washington. During the first half-hour of the meeting residents discussed a yard sale and a car break-in. But the 50 people on hand — an enormous turnout in Crestwood — soon dispensed with business as usual and turned their attention to a question that has gripped their sleepy community: how to stop plans for a $4 billion, 250 mph, magnetic-levitation (maglev) train scheduled to start barreling through Crestwood by 2010.
Welcome to the high-stakes world of federal transportation policy. In 1998, President Bill Clinton signed the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), a $218 billion blueprint for America's transit systems, highways and bridges. It included $60 million from the Highway Trust Fund for the Magnetic Levitation Transportation Technology Deployment Program, and the possibility of $950 million more for construction in 2003. Seven states dipped into the money to develop their own maglev plans.
Just days before leaving office last January, Clinton secretary of transportation Rodney Slater narrowed the competition down to two potential maglev projects. One would connect Baltimore and Washington in 17 minutes, with one stop at Baltimore-Washington International (BWI) Airport. The other would connect downtown Pittsburgh and outlying suburbs to that city's growing airport. The projects would cost approximately $4 billion and $3 billion, respectively, with state and private sources providing the balance not covered by the $950 million federal grant. Congress would have to approve the funds once the Department of Transportation (DOT) picks a winner next year.
Elected officials are lobbying hard for their hometown proposals. Both senators from Maryland, the mayors of Baltimore and Washington, assorted Maryland congressmen and both candidates for governor have expressed strong support. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) thinks maglev is so impressive he has suggested funding both projects, and other members of the Pennsylvania delegation are falling in line. But not everyone thinks this pricey system is worth it. That 40-mile Baltimore-Washington link, for instance, would cost $100 million per mile.
Certainly the technology is fascinating: Powerful electromagnets lift an aerodynamic vehicle to propel it forward on raised guideways at up to 310 mph. There is no metal-to-metal contact between wheels and rails, so the maglev vehicles operate quietly and promise low maintenance costs. Proponents claim that maglev can compete with airplanes for short and midrange routes, connecting cities downtown to downtown.
Suhair Alkhatib, who heads the Maryland Mass Transit Administration's (MTA's) maglev project, claims studies show that upon opening in 2010 the system would carry approximately 35,000 passengers every day, saving as many as 30,000 car trips along the congested Baltimore-Washington corridor. At $26 for a one-way trip between Washington and Baltimore, Alkhatib says, the system would generate enough revenue to cover costs and interest on the privately invested funds. Advocates of the Pittsburgh project also claim that more than 30,000 people would ride their system every day, and that revenue from the fare box would support it.
Wendell Cox, a frequent critic of transit projects, disagrees. An independent transportation consultant who serves on the Amtrak Reform Council, Cox calls these rider projections "laughable." He says maglev proponents are interested primarily in securing federal support. "These are used-car salesmen with graduate degrees," he tells Insight. "You are talking about people who will say anything to get money." Other transportation consultants with whom Insight spoke about these projections used terms like "ludicrous" and "ridiculous."
J. Christopher Brady, president of Transrapid International-USA Inc., disputes those allegations. His company is a subsidiary of a German consortium that produces the maglev technology both proposed projects would employ. Brady assures that the estimates "are probably in the conservative-reasonable range." He argues that professional analysts who create these projections do not cook the numbers to please their employers, but exercise "internal discipline" because their reputations and future "bankability" are on the line. Alkhatib says the numbers are undergoing peer review and that federal rail officials will be the judge of their accuracy.
So who would ride maglev? If commuters are the target, projections for 35,000 daily riders in Maryland seem optimistic. The Maryland Rail Commuter system (MARC) operates 43 stations and 187 miles of track in the Baltimore-Washington area. A ticket between the two cities costs $5.75 one way or $10.25 round-trip — substantially less than the $26 one-way fare proposed for maglev. According to Frank Fulton, a spokesman for MTA, the whole MARC system currently carries slightly more than 22,000 passengers every day as compared with the 35,000 maglev projection.
On the other hand, frequent stops make for slow going on MARC. The trip from Baltimore to Washington takes 57 minutes. Amtrak's Acela Express is faster. Spokeswoman Karen Dunne says customers can make the $38 trip from Baltimore to Washington on the Acela Express in 34 minutes. The service was available for 10 months of fiscal year 2001, during which time just 3,166 customers rode the route. Acela regional service takes 44 minutes, but costs only $25. In all of fiscal 2001, Dunne says, just 107,897 customers rode it between Baltimore and Washington.
Phyllis Wilkins, executive director of Maglev Maryland (an outgrowth of the Baltimore Development Corp.), says the maglev-ridership projections rely on the region's rapid growth. She predicts the system will create its own demand, drawing business people, shoppers and tourists who would not otherwise travel between the two cities. MTA estimates that only about 20 percent of the projected daily ridership would be commuters.
In other venues, officials selling the system are not so quick to discount commuter interest in maglev. The first line of a glossy MTA brochure offers this alluring pitch: "Imagine replacing your rush-hour commute with a 17-minute ride in a vehicle traveling 240 miles per hour — without losing a drop of your morning coffee." Advocates of the Pittsburgh project say the system is perfect for commuters. According to a Website maintained by Maglev Inc., a consortium of Pennsylvania business, labor and academic interests funded primarily by federal grant money, "the Pennsylvania Project will really be a commuter-type operation that will become an intercity operation as the system is extended."
Vukan Vuchic, a planning consultant and professor of transportation engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, argues that in their rush to study how many people might ride maglev, planners have ignored a more important question. An advocate of high-speed rail, Vuchic concedes that maglev technology works, but argues that TEA-21 does not consider cheaper alternatives. In a report Vuchic compiled for the Citizen Planning and Housing Association of Baltimore in January 2001, he argues that traditional high-speed rail systems soon will be able to cruise at speeds approaching 200 mph, cutting into maglev's speed advantage. He also says that short systems such as the ones being proposed make little sense because the maglev train barely will have a chance to get up to speed covering such distances.
Vuchic tells Insight that a maglev train from Boston to Charlotte, N.C., would require all new stations, guide rails and tunnels, including pathways around, over or underneath obstacles such as Manhattan. He suggests it makes more sense to upgrade existing tracks or build a separate but more traditional high-speed rail system. According to Vuchic, such systems could operate at high speed in the open, then use existing tracks, tunnels and stations as they approach cities. "You would sacrifice a few minutes," Vuchic says, "but it would save you many billions (of dollars) and many years" in development and construction.
Kevin Coates, who handles communications for Transrapid International-USA, stresses that upgrading existing lines to carry faster trains is not an easy process. He also notes that Amtrak's effort to implement upgraded service has seen mixed results.
Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP), tells Insight that his organization has not taken a formal position on maglev, but adds of Vuchic: "If we had to take a position, we certainly hold his in high regard." NARP does advocate stronger support for Amtrak. Capon poses an interesting question: "If maglev is so great, how come this hasn't happened in Germany, where it has gone a lot further?" Despite billions spent on research and development and a history of support for ambitious rail projects, Germany has not yet tested maglev in a commercial setting. In 1994 officials unveiled their plans to connect Hamburg and Berlin with a maglev system, but those plans were shelved in early 2000, in part because of rising costs.
Brady says that the lengthy route "was seen as perhaps an overly ambitious first test for maglev implementation." He argues that a change in government and unexpected costs associated with Germany's reunification also factored into making implementation difficult. He adds that two smaller projects — a commuter service around Dusseldorf and an airport connector in Munich — now are on the drawing board. Brady also reports that China plans to open a short Transrapid maglev system linking Shanghai and its airport by early 2003. BBC News and the International Railway Journal report that the German government is helping to finance the Chinese project, although the details are unclear. A representative from the Embassy of China in Washington tells Insight that the German government has granted 100 million deutsche marks to the project
Federal financing for the U.S. maglev system still is far from certain, but support remains strong on Capitol Hill. Maryland General Assembly Delegates Don Murphy and Jim Rzepkowski, both Republicans who oppose maglev, visited Washington in March to talk to national leaders. The delegates say staffers were shocked to hear that anyone was opposed at the local level. Murphy says he expects that support will grow as the time to appropriate the $950 million approaches. Both Murphy and Rzepkowski note that the Maryland maglev proposal counts on $500 million from state coffers.
Ironically, Murphy and Rzepkowski say the strongest support for their side has come from Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), a maglev enthusiast and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Young is distressed that both finalists for the maglev money are East Coast projects. He has voiced strong support for a project linking Las Vegas with southern California, one of the proposals rejected last January. The chairman did not provide a statement which Insight requested for this article, but media sources indicate that he still is lobbying for the Las Vegas project. On Jan. 22 the as Vegas Review-Journal and the Associated Press reported that Young said at a Nevada transportation summit, "I can stop the Baltimore-Washington project."
On the other hand, Murphy and Rzepkowski might be in for a lesson in Beltway politics. Congressional aides who asked not to be identified indicate that Young's move actually might be a ploy to secure funding for two projects — one in the East and one in the West. The Maryland lawmakers also must deal with Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who traveled to Washington in the last days of the Clinton administration to lobby Slater to select the Maryland project as a finalist before leaving office. Townsend now widely is considered the front-runner in Maryland's gubernatorial race.
The Bush administration's position still is unclear. President George W. Bush's security-minded budget proposal for the DOT would slash billions from the highway trust — the primary source for maglev money. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has indicated support for high-tech projects such as maglev in the past, and both he and Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson once were high-ranking executives at Lockheed Martin Corp. In October 2000, that company announced a partnership agreement with Transrapid "to pursue maglev opportunities, including a project to build a federally supported, high-speed maglev line in a heavily traveled U.S. corridor."
Warren Flatau, a spokesman for the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), tells Insight that both Mineta and Jackson have recused themselves from maglev decisions. The decision on whether to choose the Baltimore or the Pittsburgh project will rest with the FRA administrator. That position currently belongs to Allan Rutter, who was deputy executive director of the Texas High-Speed Rail Authority before joining then-governor Bush's administration at Austin in 1995. Flatau says officials still are formulating an administration position on maglev.
For now it is unclear when, where or whether maglev will proceed. Activists from Crestwood and state officials such as Murphy and Rzepkowski have vowed to resist it despite the system's impressive political and corporate support. On March 13, more than 100 protesters picketed an MTA-sponsored community meeting about maglev at a middle school near BWI.
Some observers suggest that antimaglev forces would be better off minimizing the project's impact instead of opposing it. They advise that residents should consider accepting maglev in exchange for a host of goodies such as parks and road projects. Rzepkowski rejects those notions, citing the intrusions and congestion from BWI, Interstate 95, the Baltimore beltway, a light-rail system and other transportation projects that already burden his part of the state. "I think my community has given enough blood to the MTA," he says.
05/06/2002
MTA will spend $126 million less in the next fiscal year than the current year's budget yet deliver more bus and rail service with no fare increase and be more responsive to local communities. That's the upshot of the draft Fiscal Year 03 budget prepared by MTA CEO Roger Snoble.
The proposed spending plan is for the fiscal year that starts July 1, 2002. The public can view the draft budget on MTA's Internet web site at www.mta.net or request a copy by calling Charlene Aguayo in MTA Records Management at (213) 922-2342.
The MTA Board of Directors will hold a public hearing on the budget at 9:30 a.m. Thursday, May 16, in the third floor Board room at MTA Headquarters next to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. The Board also will hold a budget workshop at 1:30 p.m. May 13 and will consider adopting the FY03 budget at its regular Thursday, May 23, Board meeting that starts at 9:30 a.m. All meetings will be held in the MTA Board room.
The $2.6 billion budget is balanced. It is $126 million less than this year's budget. Snoble said the reduction was achieved by reducing administrative overhead, driving down Metro Bus and Rail operating costs, and reducing worker's compensation expenses with an aggressive safety management plan.
"By controlling costs, we will be able to deliver a record amount of bus and rail service next year as well as fund new street and highway and other regional programs," Snoble noted.
"We also will decentralize Metro Bus operations into five service sectors in an effort to provide better customer service and be more responsive to local communities," Snoble added.
Decentralize Bus Operations
For decades, MTA has run a bus operation serving all Los Angeles County from its downtown Los Angeles headquarters. That operation will be split into five geographical operating units by Jan. 1, 2003. Each sector will have its own budget and be headed by a general manager with support staff based in the communities they serve.
They will have intimate knowledge of the local operations, the service area and their customers so they can better tailor service to meet demand. This structure also will give the public easier access to MTA managers and more input in guiding MTA planning decisions. Snoble expects the sectors to save money in the future as MTA continues to make its operations more efficient.
Sectors are planned for the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys, which will be underway July 1. The other three service sectors in the South Bay, Central/Westside areas, and the Gateway Cities in Southeast Los Angeles County will be in place by the end of the year.
More than $1 billion for Buses
Bus operations will remain the highest priority in FY03. The MTA will spend 46.8 percent of its budget ($1.216 billion) on MTA bus operations and capital and municipal bus operator subsidies as well as paratransit service for the disabled who cannot use the regular fixed route transit system.
Included in next year's budget are plans for the service sectors and expanding Metro Rapid bus service on Vermont and South Broadway, the first of 23 new Metro Rapid lines that will be phased in over the next several years.
These red and white painted buses make fewer stops than local buses and are equipped with special transmitters that extend green lights by 10 seconds or turn red traffic signals green sooner.
That has resulted in about 25 percent faster travel times on the two lines where Metro Rapid operates today — Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley and Wilshire and Whittier boulevards from Santa Monica to Montebello — compared to regular Metro Bus service.
As a result, ridership has spiked on these lines, and people new to public transit also are using the faster service. By operating more efficiently, Metro Rapid also adds to the capacity of the Metro Bus system.
Construction of a 14-mile busway connecting Warner Center in the West San Fernando Valley and the North Hollywood Metro Rail station will commence next spring and should be completed two years later. The budget also includes money for bus projects in the Mid-City/Westside corridor. A new regional pass good for travel on all Metro buses and trains and 11 municipal bus lines also will debut in FY03.
The EZpass is a forerunner of an electronic universal fare system (UFS), which should be in place within three years. Funds to procure the UFS system are included in MTA's FY03 budget.
MTA will operate a record amount of Metro Bus and contract bus service in the next fiscal year. The budget calls for 7,542,000 revenue service hours, up 56,411 hours from the current year. However, the cost of Metro Bus operations is projected to drop to $98 an hour from $98.44 an hour today despite higher labor costs including rising premiums for health care.
MTA is eliminating administrative positions as one way to drive down operating costs. The agency also will seek to shave $8.3 million from this year's estimated workers compensation costs in FY03 with an aggressive Safety's 1st campaign to reduce accidents in the work place.
Paratransit Gets Increased Subsidies
MTA's FY03 draft budget also will fund an array of other transportation programs including subsidies for curb-to-curb paratransit service for the disabled who cannot access regular fixed route public transportation. The spending plan proposes $67.2 million next year, an increase of $8.6 million from this year
Funding for Street and Highway Programs
The second largest slice of the budget pie — $497 million or 19.1 percent — is for highway and other regional transportation programs such as freeway carpool lane construction, freeway sound walls, street widening, better traffic signal coordination, grade separations at railroad crossings, bikeways, ride-sharing incentives, shuttles, and other local transportation programs. It also includes funding for the Metro Freeway Service Patrol to help stranded motorists.
Metro Rail Service Expands
The next biggest portion of the draft MTA budget — $422 million or 16.2 percent — is for Metro Rail operating costs and construction. This includes funds to start construction next spring for the Eastside extension of the Metro Gold Line from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles to Atlantic and Beverly. That leg should be completed in 2008 and will connect at Union Station with the Metro Gold Line extension to Pasadena scheduled to open in mid-2003. MTA's FY03 budget includes $16 million to test the new Pasadena line next spring and hire and train operators and mechanics to run it.
The FY03 draft budget calls for 573,000 Metro Rail revenue service hours, up 29,000 hours from the current year. Metro Rail will cost $267.81 an hour to operate, down from $269.76 this year.
As Metro Rail expands, the cost per passenger mile has become cheaper than transporting bus passengers: 35 cents for rail versus 43 cents for bus.
In addition, in FY03 MTA will contribute $38 million, or 1.4 percent of the budget, to the Metrolink commuter rail operation.
Debt Service Reduced
MTA's debt service next year will be $315 million, 12.1 percent of the total budget, down from $339 million this year.
Rounding out the FY03 draft budget are expenditures for other governmental programs such as transportation planning, MTA's Customer Information service, and maintenance of regional busways. These expenditures total $111 million or 4.3 percent of the total budget.
MTA funding comes from the farebox, local, state and federal governments and other sources such as lease rentals, investment income, and advertising revenue from bus ads.
A new study that examines workforce issues facing the transit industry in the new millennium was released today by the Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP), providing transit general managers and human resources personnel with the latest information about this critical issue. The study provides insight into the rate of workforce change in the past 20 years and describes the techniques used to attract and retain transit workers so the industry can meet increasingly high consumer expectations.
"Often transit agencies find themselves unable to fill positions due to lack of interest," said the study, released during the American Public Transportation Association's Bus & Paratransit Conference in Minneapolis. "In addition, retention of employees, especially in the recent period of near full-employment nationwide, has become a growing concern," according to the report, titled Managing Transit's Workforce in the New Millennium.
The study found that the most difficult positions to recruit and retain are bus operators and mechanics, followed by information technology professionals, engineers and customer relations representatives.
The research for Managing Transit's Workforce in the New Millennium was conducted by McGlothin Davis Inc., of Denver, under the direction of Mary J. Davis, Ph.D, president and CEO. Working with McGlothin Davis as subcontractor on TCRP Report No. F-09 was Corporate Strategies Inc., Scottsdale, Ariz.
The project had three main objectives: to assess the transit industry's workforce needs and prospects for the 21st Century; develop strategies to attract, develop and retain a qualified workforce; and develop a tool and guidelines to enable employers to assess their workforces and to continually monitor their workforce needs.
"This study not only reports on the problem and current status of the difficult-to-recruit and retain positions, but it includes strategies and real-life examples of how to correct the problem," said Dr. Davis. "The study also focuses on identifying ways to enhance or establish partnerships between management and organized labor, one of the solutions to attracting, training and maintaining a qualified workforce."
The report includes 13 best practices case studies that reveal commonalities and differences in how transit agencies across the U.S. respond to challenges in maintaining a qualified workforce, especially in the difficult-to-recruit and retain positions.
Agencies profiled in the case study section were: City of Annapolis (Md.) Department of Transportation; Berkshire Regional Transportation Authority in Massachusetts; Duluth (Minn.) Transit Authority; Sunline Transit Agency, Thousand Palms, Calif.; Pierce Transit, Tacoma, Wash.; RTC/Citifare, Washoe County, Nev.; Professional Transit Management/Sun Tran, Tucson, Ariz.; Maryland Transit Administration, Baltimore, Md.; ATC Phoenix, Phoenix, Ariz.; Regional Transportation District, Denver; Santa Clara (Calif.) Valley Transportation Authority; Utah Transit Authority, Salt Lake City; and Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority.
Managing Transit's Workforce in the New Millennium is available free of charge through TCRP. The report can be ordered online at TCRP Online or by calling Lynn Vargas at 202-496-4818.
Summary: The new hybrid vehicle, which is 90 percent cleaner than old buses, will begin life on the No. 17 line
The future of public transportation will take to the streets of Portland this month when Tri-Met puts its new diesel-electric hybrid bus into service on the No. 17 line.
If things work out as hoped, it will be first of a fleet of the clean-burning, fuel-efficient, low-floor buses that will be phased in as older buses are replaced.
Hybrid power is nothing new. It has been the mainstay power of choice for railroads for more than half a century. In the past two years it has gained public acceptance via cars such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight.
Consider the new Tri-Met cruiser a bulked-up Prius with attitude.
It weighs more than a dozen of them. It costs more than 18 of the four-door Toyotas. It is expected to last 15 years and cover nearly 1 million miles before it is retired.
Passenger car hybrids use both the electric motors and gasoline engine for power, switching between them or using both when needed.
The hybrid bus uses a 5.9-liter diesel-powered, turbocharged six-cylinder engine (the same Cummins diesel found on the Dodge Ram pickup) to turn a generator that feeds power into a bank of roof-mounted batteries. The batteries provide the electric power to move the bus. The diesel engine is not mechanically linked to the axles.
A typical diesel-only bus would need an engine of about 8.3 liters, so some of the fuel savings is in the size and weight of the engine alone. While the bus isn't appreciably quieter than a conventional diesel-powered bus, it is cleaner by up to 90 percent.
A typical bus runs under heavy loads that create the familiar dark exhaust, says Josh Freeman, an engineer with Allison Electric who is assigned to Tri-Met for the next year to watch over this bus and another expected to arrive soon.
Freeman said that because the diesel in the hybrid bus runs in a very small range of engine revolutions, it is cleaner and more efficient. The bus is also equipped with an exhaust system that traps the particulate matter that is so offensive to drivers following a bus that is accelerating or going uphill.
The electric motor that powers the bus also helps slow it down when it is time to stop, at which time the motor turns into a generator and recharges the batteries. In traffic, under normal circumstances, the brake pedal is used to hold the bus at a stop, but not for much more.
Ted Downs, Tri-Met training supervisor, said that it takes drivers only 15 or 20 minutes to get used to the rate of deceleration when they lift a foot off the accelerator. The braking aspect of the electric motor is expected to drastically reduce brake work on the new buses.
Acceleration is smooth and seamless. There is no transmission to shift, so there is no lurching of passengers during gear changes.
Seats on the new bus are contoured, with individual, lumbar-supporting backs.
While Allison provides the engine/motor package, the bus is completed and sold by New Flyer of America, which has built most of Tri-Met's current fleet. The bus was purchased via credits Tri-Met had with New Flyer, accrued as the result of delivery problems with other buses.
Freeman said the buses are still in the prototype stage, with two more headed to Seattle and others assigned to Eastern and Midwestern cities. He said New Flyer hopes to offer the buses as production models late next year.
Once the units are in production, costs are expected to be 10 percent to 20 percent higher than the $350,000 to $400,000 conventional diesel buses cost. Tri-Met said reduced fuel and maintenance costs should offset the extra price.
New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority faces a $663.3 million budget gap in 2003 and could be forced to raise fares to close it, analysts warned last week. The comments came in a pair of teleconference calls held by Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings to address the MTA's upcoming sale of $2.87 billion in transportation bonds, which is scheduled to hit the market on Wednesday.
Moody's said that the state agency would have to resort to cost-cutting measures, as well as revenue-enhancing measures, to offset the expected gap. One of those measures could include a rate hike, he said, but added that such a move would be politically difficult.
"They have not yet put a lot of options on the table for closing the gap," said Moody's analyst Kathleen Holt. "Obviously, a fare increase is an option. They're not talking about that in public yet, but you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that that's a possibility."
According to Holt, the projected gap is caused by an expectation of slower growth in ridership, the region's slowing economy, and lower levels of subsidies. The MTA is a state agency that operates New York City subways and buses, as well as suburban commuter rail lines.
Fitch analysts also said they are expecting the agency to raise fares in the near future.
The MTA faced a $350 million gap in its $7.5 billion 2002 operating budget, which was approved in December. To avoid a fare hike in a year in which he is seeking reelection, Gov. George E. Pataki came through with enough direct state aid to close the deficit. The MTA, whose fiscal year begins Jan. 1, has not raised fares since 1995, when it increased the cost of a token to $1.50 from $1.25.
Fitch analyst Scott Trommer said that while the looming deficit is significant, it can be closed.
"This gap, it sounds like a large number, but it's comparable to gaps the agency has budgeted and closed in the past," Trommer said. He added that the MTA has "a number of options to adjust its fares." Those options include raising the cost of tokens, or taking other steps, such as restructuring the discounts the MTA offers customers who use its MetroCard.
The MTA did not return a telephone call seeking comment on Friday. Pataki's office declined comment.
The authority's $2.87 billion sale on Wednesday, which is being underwritten by a Bear, Stearns & Co.-led syndicate, is the largest single sale ever by the MTA and the third-largest sale in market history. The deal is the first offering of roughly $4.75 billion in refundings under the newly created transportation credit. Another $820 million in variable-rate transportation bonds will be refunded on May 28.
The transportation refundings are only one part of the agency's larger refinancing, which totals $14 billion and is expected to be the largest refinancing in the history of the municipal market. In addition to the transportation credit, three other MTA credits will be used in the refunding.
The agency created the new transportation credit earlier this year, when it consolidated its transit and commuter facilities bonds. Analysts last week said that the new structure provides more bondholder security than the previous systems, and that it gives the MTA more flexibility. The consolidation of credits was part of a sweeping effort by the MTA to reform its debt profile. In addition to consolidating the transit and commuter credits to form the transportation credit, the agency consolidated 11 other credits into three credits.
The transportation bonds are rated A2 by Moody's, and A by Standard & Poor's and Fitch. The ratings are slightly higher than the ratings on the transit and commuter credits, which were rated Baa1 by Moody's, BBB-plus by Standard & Poor's, and A-minus by Fitch.
MTA officials now believe they can achieve roughly $4.5 billion in savings from the massive refunding. Those savings are expected to help close a $4.6 billion hole in the agency's 2000-2004 capital plan, which totals roughly $18.2 billion. Much of that hole was created by the defeat of the $3.8 billion Transportation Bond Act by voters in a statewide referendum in the fall of 2000.
Analysts warned that the agency would face continued challenges to finance its capital program past 2004, and will likely be forced to seek additional funding sources above what it currently enjoys.
The federal government is getting ready to spend another $390 million here to allow people to travel a little farther on light rail. That's good.
The bad news is that a little farther means less than a mile. The subway is going to cross under the Allegheny River and re-emerge above ground, where riders will find themselves on the celebrated North Shore, one of the few parts of the city where nobody lives.
Then the train will turn west, as if in fear of the office buildings, hospital, neighborhoods and bus interchanges that are just a little ways north.
Instead of going to established job centers, the extended line will serve stadiums. It will likely spur development of the North Shore, which would be great, but it could do that and reach many more thousands if it only continued north another half-mile.
Ask the Port Authority why that's not happening and the answer is money, or rather the lack of it. There's never enough. There's a proposed extension north, but no money for anything other than the dotted line on the map.
So unless you're a sports fan living in the South Hills, there's not much in this plan to get excited about.
This is something you might think about the next time you find yourself in gridlock Downtown, or idling on the parkway. Why doesn't light rail extend in all directions and give people more options? We have the technology to take thousands of cars and buses out of the traffic equation, to open up parking spaces and clear the air a little, not just here but in metropolitan areas across the country. But that's not a priority in Washington.
When will it be?
There is bipartisan disinterest in this. The old model, paving our way out of the mess, has never worked and never will, but it remains about the only plan on the table.
The cost of adding another 24 miles to the Mon-Fayette Expressway, a toll road, is up to $2 billion and counting? Carry on.
Saudi oil sheiks dropping hints that if the United States doesn't temper its support for Israel, they'll stop selling us hundreds of millions of barrels of oil? They're bluffing.
Thousands of cars and buses clog the roads because one bridge is out and there is only one way home? Suck it up.
We can't live like this forever, but we go on as if we can. Even as we talk loudly of ending our dependence on foreign oil, mass transit is no more a priority today than it was a year ago.
There's almost no sense railing about the paltry rail, though. That's not only because you sound like a crank, the kind of guy who'd ask them to turn the music down at Woodstock. It's because as metropolitan Pittsburgh spreads out, light rail's potential diminishes.
Mass transit needs mass. Back in 1970, some 3,095 people lived per square mile in the urbanized area of Greater Pittsburgh. By 1990, that number was down to 2,158. No more recent figures are available, but one look at the parkways will tell you it's much lower. I'd bet a tank of gas that the number is half what it was 30 years ago.
We live differently now. Light rail is successful in a walkable community like Mt. Lebanon, and would be an instant hit if it ever reached Oakland, but it wouldn't work nearly so well in Cranberry or Peters.
But there's no sense arguing about where it should or shouldn't go. Much like the traffic on the Boulevard of the Allies around 5 o'clock, it's not going anywhere anyway.
Hong Kong Imail
05/06/2002
CONGESTION in the Tsim Sha Tsui tourist and business district could be eased if the Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTRC) wins government approval to build an elevated light rail network.
The scheme is one of two light rail projects, believed to be worth about HK$5 billion, proposed by the MTRC. The second would link Chai Wan and Siu Sai Wan on Hong Kong Island.
MTRC spokesman Lam Chan confirmed that proposals for both systems had been submitted to the government by the rail company. "Light rail would enable the development of rail lines into less densely populated areas,'' he said. The Tsim Sha Tsui scheme would help serve the West Kowloon reclamation, possibly linking to the Airport Express and Tung Chung lines. An extension to Hung Hom could also be considered.
The new routes would improve access within the districts and feed passengers to the main mass transit line stations. "We are examining suitable routes for an above-ground link,'' Lam said.
If approved, the light rail networks would be faster and considerably cheaper to build than existing mass transit links.
They would also be more environmentally friendly than buses or mini- buses.
The elevated systems would cause less disruption than ground-based trams or underground lines.
Plans have been lodged with the government at a time when there are growing calls to pedestrianise part of Tsim Sha Tsui in an effort to end mounting congestion in the area.
No details of the types of system have been released, but they could be similar to either the light rail network in Tuen Mun and Yuen Long or the automated people mover at the Chek Lap Kok passenger terminal.
The Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation is building a 4.4-kilometre, mainly elevated, extension to the light rail system in Tin Shui Wai at a cost of HK$2.3 billion.
This puts the cost of developing the extension at about HK$522 million per kilometre, about 40 per cent of the cost of a conventional mass transit line.
A network based on the Chek Lap Kok people mover would be even cheaper.
The MTRC has no direct experience of building and operating a light rail system similar to the Tuen Mun-Yuen Long network, but it does have a contract to repair and maintain the Chek Lap Kok people mover.
(NOTE: another example where I suspect the general public has greater insight then policy makers)
The Herald-Sun (Durham, N.C.)
05/07/2002
The Herald-Sun's April 28 article on the Triangle Transit Authority's regional rail system ("Regional rail plans moving forward") seems considerably biased. You extensively quoted John Hood of the John Locke Foundation.
Otherwise you only quoted TTA representatives. There are plenty of us in North Carolina who support mass transit.
A well-planned transit system can serve thousands of people throughout the Triangle. Regional rail is not a complete solution. It is a vital component to a comprehensive regional plan. There are situations where building new roads or widening existing roads makes sense. However, anyone who has lived in areas like Los Angeles or Silicon Valley knows that blindly building more roads is not a solution. New roads quickly become as congested as all the other roads.
By reducing road traffic, mass transit also makes our roads safer (there were more than 1,500 fatality road accidents in North Carolina in 2000). Mass transit can contribute to cleaner air and an improved quality of life when we get away from our solo car trips and use commute time to catch up on the news, work productively, enjoy the scenery, or, God forbid, have conversations with our fellow commuters. Other elements are necessary, such as virtual offices, ride-sharing and mixed zoning. Perhaps Hood hasn't factored all of this into his ridiculous "Beemers for all" solution.
In the future, I encourage The Herald-Sun to provide more balanced coverage of this critical issue. — SCOTT BRAVARD, Clayton
Toronto Star
05/07/2002
Welcome to the world's biggest electric train set.
With 6.4 kilometres of tunnel, five stations and a $933 million price tag, the Sheppard subway line is the largest public transit project to be built in Toronto in the past two decades.
In preparation for its expected opening this fall — somewhat later than scheduled — TTC engineers have been running empty trains through the gleaming new line for more than a month now. They want to ensure all its tracks, signals, bells and whistles are functioning before passengers climb aboard.
"Yeah, I played with trains when I was a kid," says engineering consultant John Leonardo, who is in charge of testing Sheppard's signalling system.
"But I never dreamed I'd be doing something like this. It's really exciting."
Leonardo and his team of TTC and contracted specialists are running trains throughout most nights, making sure the line's 135 signals, voice communications system, 12.8 kilometres of track and more than 150 kilometres of wiring are all snag free.
"There are probably more than 10,000 individual things that have to be inspected and tested before the first revenue train comes through here," says chief project manager Andy Bertolo.
"And we don't just need to make sure they work, we need to make sure they work after some wear and tear of use so we have to do things again and again."
In some test cases, trains have been taken up to their maximum speed of about 90 km/h and run through red signals to ensue that trip arms activated by the stop beacons are working properly.
"We want to make sure that the trains can stop long before they would smash into any train that was up ahead," Leonardo says.
"And they did, everything worked fine."
With construction on two of the line's stations, Bayview and Leslie already completed and the other three — Sheppard, Bessarion and Don Mills — due to be finished in June, the line is almost done structurally, Bertolo says.
"We have about another $8 million of work left to do out of out of a $933 million budget," he says.
"And the majority of that will be completed by June, so structurally, everything should be done in the next month or so."
Still, Bertolo says, the remaining tests, inspections and staffing arrangements will almost certainly prevent the September opening envisioned since the project broke ground in 1997.
TTC chief general manager Rick Ducharme says the commission's new $70 million transit control centre, which was also due to open this year, has split some staff away from the Sheppard project and pushed back the opening of both projects.
"With both Sheppard and the control centre going on at the same time, it was a balancing act and I didn't want either project jeopardized," Ducharme says.
"There's no magic that Sheppard has to open in September. I want it to operate properly and not open it for political reasons. So if it's open by the end of the year, I'm quite happy."
Ducharme says the fact the line is expected to lose money for the foreseeable future — up to $6.3 million in its first year alone — had nothing to do with the delay, which will actually help the system's beleaguered operating budget.
"I'll swear on a stack of Bibles that (the projected operating losses) had nothing to do with the decision to delay opening," Ducharme says.
"It was based on the staffing and manpower realities of the two projects and there was no need to rush either."
What passengers will see when Sheppard does open — probably in November or December now — is a line of large, imaginatively decorated stations and bright tunnels, which provide smoother, quieter rides than riders have experienced on older segments of the subway system.
While interior design budgets were pared to the bone after provincial funding cuts hit the project early on, the stations are far more appealing that those on the Yonge, University and Bloor-Danforth lines, where the sparse decor has been compared to an extended public washroom.
True, station ceilings will be left uncovered in many places, as will the walls on the far side of the tracks.
But station platforms and concourses are finished with an eclectic mix of tiled murals and geometric designs, which often have reference points to the intersections where they are situated.
Much of the $119 million Sheppard-Yonge station, for example has been covered with a computer-generated mural of rural scenes along Highway 11 as it wends its way up to the Manitoba border north of Toronto.
The $57 million Leslie station is decorated with tiles emblazoned with the words Leslie and Sheppard in the separate hands of more some 3,500 area residents.
"In one of the tiles, Sheppard has been spelled incorrectly, but we haven't been able to find it yet," Bertolo says.
Meanwhile, tiled murals at the $98 million Don Mills station represent the geological strata through which workers had to dig down during excavation and some of the fossilized creatures found in the earth around the site.
While the Sheppard stations appear spacious in comparison to many of their TTC counterparts, the platforms are actually substantially shorter, able to accommodate only four-car trains as opposed to the six-car configurations found on the system's other lines.
The platforms, however, can be easily lengthened with the removal of some cinder block walls, should the line ever reach its intended destination at the Scarborough Town Centre — an extension that would increase expected passenger volumes substantially.
The tunnels, meanwhile, have been fitted with brighter lighting than others on the system and the tracks ride on insulated rubber "pucks" below concrete ties, which will make for a smoother, quieter ride, Bertolo says.
Whenever it officially opens, TTC driver and instructor Kevin Brown has already made some family history of his own on the Sheppard line.
"I was the first person to drive a train across the Sheppard subway and in 1954 my father (Ed Brown) opened up the Yonge subway," says Brown, who took the first train across the new line in late March.
"In fact my father opened up the University subway in '63 and the Bloor-Danforth in '66, so the Browns have opened up the subways in Toronto."
The Evening Standard (London)
05/07/2002
KEN LIVINGSTONE has already been to Paris, Berlin and New York, seeing how things are done elsewhere. Londoners cannot know just how bad the Underground is until they use a well-run metro in another city.
Moscow's underground is one of the most intriguing. Built by Stalin with both willing and forced labour, the cathedral-like stations are a glorious monument to a particular kind of public service ethos. The network is one of the public transport wonders of the world.
To stress the reliability of the system — and to assist in disciplining it — each time a train heads off down a tunnel an electronic clock starts to count the seconds until the next one arrives at the platform. During the daytime, it is rare for the indicator to reach 60 seconds.
This means 40 to 45 trains an hour at peak hours, compared with 20 to 25 on most Tube lines. Recently London Underground announced the Piccadilly line service is to be cut from 27 to 24 trains per hour.
In Moscow there are no long gaps between services and no insufferable hold-ups in tunnels.
Small wonder the Russian system carries more than three times as many passengers — more than three billion a year — as the "severely crowded" London Tube. The Moscow metro is fast, well-maintained, reliable, and strike-free. There is no litter and little graffiti. And this in a city of desperate economic problems, and appalling terrorist attacks, during the past decade.
For the time being the Government remains in sole charge of our Tube.
Despite marginal changes in performance, the overall level of service is way below that of the past. The Mayor will return shocked by the Moscow metro's quality. Luckily for the Government, few Londoners have ever used it. If they did, we might have a Russian-inspired revolution.
PRESS CTK
National News Wire
05/07/2002
Yesterday, shortly before 8:30 a.m., a woman jumped under the approaching Metro train at the Roztyly station on the C-line and put her head on the tracks, Prague police spokesman Kamila Styblikova says in today's Mlada fronta Dnes daily's Prague edition.
The woman was dead immediately.
It is already the third tragedy in Prague Metro within the last few days.
Last Friday, a 37-year old man jumped under the approaching train at the Museum station, at the very centre of Prague.
Only two days earlier, a 17-year old young man suffered fatal head injuries during a dangerous game. The police said that it was not a suicide in this case, the daily writes.
Another man was killed by an incoming train at the Andel station on the B-line at the end of March, the daily writes.
"These cases are more frequent at the turn of the winter and spring than in other periods of the year," Prague public transit company spokeswoman Zuzana Knoblochova says in the paper.
Frank McDonald, Environment Editor, The Irish Times
05/07/2002
Cabra, Dundrum, Finglas, Kimmage and even parts of Tallaght will inevitably end up on the chopping board if the next government proceeds with the plan for a metro in Dublin. This is because such a high-volume public transport system would only work in a high-density urban environment.
Low-density suburban housing with front and back gardens and, in most cases, an ageing population that is also falling steadily, could not provide the numbers to make a metro pay. So, for a kilometre on either side of the proposed lines, the housing will have to be replaced with clusters of apartments.
This is not something which the politicians who say they support a metro are crowing about (or have even considered). Far from it. That would raise too many hackles in the areas most directly affected. However, the demolition of suburbs along the route of the metro is a prerequisite for the project.
The metro would have a capacity of up to 50,000 passengers an hour, yet the highest level of travel demand on any corridor in the Dublin area is 15,000 an hour — by bus, train, bicycle, motorbike and car. In other words, the metro would be able to carry nearly four times as many, if they all travelled by public transport.
The outgoing Government is working on the assumption that the private sector would invest substantially in the EUR8 billion project, through a public-private partnership (PPP). If so, the only way it could be made to pay is by boosting demand — and, therefore, potential profits — along the entire length of the metro lines.
The Dublin Transportation Office, whose Platform for Change strategy forms the basis of the metro plan, has been reticent in highlighting its knock-on consequences in terms of urban density. However sources say it is inevitable as land values rise in areas served by the metro that developers would move in to capitalise on it.
"Look at what's happening already on Sandyford Industrial Estate," said one transport expert. "Just because Luas is coming, they are pulling down perfectly good buildings and developing the sites for six-storey office blocks. Why wouldn't the same sort of pattern be repeated in residential areas on the route of the metro?
"That band of low-density suburbs like Cabra, Crumlin and Kimmage with ageing, declining populations will have to be redeveloped. They're not attractive areas for younger people and they have no architectural value."
After the DART service began in 1984, property values rose all along the line from Howth to Bray and under-used sites were developed for apartments or offices. The difference now is that, under section 49 of the 2000 Planning Act, the public authorities would be able to recover a proportion of the increase in values.
The DTO is working with the Dublin local authorities on integrated framework plans for the metro. Digital aerial photographs of the city, with the metro lines superimposed on them, are being examined to identify under-used areas with the highest development potential — and these include low-density housing.
The inner city has been divided into 10 or 12 zones. The 90-acre Grangegorman site is a prime candidate for redevelopment as it is located right behind Broadstone, one of the key points on the proposed metro. So is the area around Heuston Station, including a large part of the 60-acre Guinness site.
A study by Iarnr d ireann and the DTO is examining alignments for the proposed tunnel between Heuston and Spencer Dock — not just the geological and engineering issues, but the potential along the line for higher-density development. "It's releasing potential we never knew existed," said John Henry, the DTO's director.
"What we're finding is that the overall transport network we have proposed in Platform for Change is bang on and in the right place," he declared.
"And that wouldn't have been the case if we had taken an incremental approach by merely putting in bus corridors, upgrading existing rail lines and adding to them here and there."
The DTO aims to create a dense public transport in the Dublin area — a "walk and ride system", as Mr Henry calls it — so that everyone would be within walking distance of the DART, Luas, a QBC (quality bus corridor) or a metro line.
But with a price-tag of EUR8 billion over 15 years, was the strategy not driven by a perceived availability of unlimited funds when it was drawn up in 2000? "We weren't restrained in our thinking because of the cost of it," he conceded. "What we wanted to find out was what was the right answer to Dublin's transport problems."
Asked whether the Department of Finance had bought into the metro plan, Mr Henry said its officials had raised issues about costings before it was adopted as Government policy in July, 2000. However, he cautioned that the Department was probably expecting more private-sector funding from a PPP than it would get.
Noting that there was now cross-party support for the metro, he said nobody has challenged the concept. "We're saying we can solve the problem of Dublin traffic if you do what we say should be done. If you don't do it, the problem will get worse and worse and then the economic life of Dublin would be at risk."
Fianna F il: Mentions DTO's Platform for Change strategy and Government approval in July 2000 for a metro system. It says "particular priority will be given to the development of an early link to Dublin Airport".
Fine Gael: No mention of metro in manifesto or programme for government, but says a Dublin transport authority would be set up "to deliver key infrastructures", without specifying particular projects.
Labour: Would "speed up improvement of rail-based services such as DART, suburban rail, Luas and the metro" but says it "will not lie idle while waiting for grand schemes with long-time horizons".
PDs: First phase of "a citywide metro system... can be delivered during the term of office of the next government" but a PPP "is essential to transfer the huge financial cost involved... to the private sector".
Green Party: Highest priorities are to upgrade the DART and suburban rail services as well as expanding the quality bus corridors and cycle lane network. Would also start construction of the metro with a line from Bray to Swords.
The Orange County Register
05/08/2002
The family of a Riverside man who died last month when a freight train slammed head-on into the Metrolink commuter train in which he was traveling filed a wrongful-death lawsuit Tuesday, accusing the train companies of failing to install technology that could have prevented the crash.
Lawrence Sorensen, 48, was one of two passengers killed aboard the Metrolink when it was struck by a freight train near Orangethorpe Avenue and Richfield Road at 8:16 a.m. April 23.
At least 168 other passengers were injured.
The suit, filed by Sorensen's parents, Lillian and Ken of Calimesa, is the second legal action brought as a result of the crash. Last week, Metrolink conductor Patrick Phillips filed suit against the train companies.
Both suits accuse Metrolink and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway of negligence in failing to implement a ''positive train control'' system that would automatically stop trains before a collision.
The National Transportation Safety Board has long recommended such a system, but the railroad industry has resisted its implementation largely because of its cost, estimated at $2 billion to $3 billion.
''Indeed, the corporate defendants in this action knew of the serious and substantial likelihood that an accident like this could occur and consciously chose to put corporate profits before passenger safety and disregarded the clear risk,'' attorney Brian J. Panish wrote in the suit.
Officials at Metrolink and Burlington Northern Santa Fe declined to comment about the suit.
Darrel Wells, the engineer of the freight train, told police he could not see a caution signal because of the sun's glare.
NTSB officials are investigating the exact cause of the crash. A final report could take up to a year.
The Dallas Morning News
05/08/2002
Voters slammed the door on DART Saturday by more than a 2-to-1 ratio, denying Murphy the chance to become the first city to join the transit authority since its original formation more than 20 years ago.
"I'm greatly disappointed; I felt very sure people were pretty much in favor of it," said Murphy Mayor Roy Bentle, who strongly supported Murphy joining Dallas Area Rapid Transit.
"I'm shocked," he said. "I think it's the wrong thing for the citizens, but it was their decision and I respect that."
"The citizens spoke loud and clear. The margin was so wide, there is absolutely no way I would ever bring it back."
City Council member Michael Ashby, who said he had remained publicly neutral on the matter, said opposition to the DART referendum was effective and well organized.
"Opponents pushed strongly to use the penny sales tax for city uses," Mr. Ashby said. "And people who were somewhat favorable wanted light rail quickly, not just bus service."
Council member Kent Bogdan opposed DART.
"Murphy is not ready for that," he said. "I'd rather see us spend the (additional 1-cent sales tax) money on things in the city."
Had the measure passed, DART would have started one bus route from Murphy that would have connected it to a rail station at the Bush Turnpike and then to the West Plano Transit Center.
The agency would also have provided immediate door-to-door service for people with disabilities to anywhere in the DART 13-city service area.
Ridership would have determined expansions of the bus service, agency officials said. And rail service, if it had happened at all, would have been about 20 years away.
"DART didn't offer much," said Lynlee Forehand, a Murphy resident.
Dallas Area Rapid Transit chairman Robert Pope said what the service offered would have met the city's needs in the short run, but voters apparently didn't like it.
"It was a decision they had to make," he said. "We were pleased that the City Council put it before the voters. That was a good sign."
PR Newswire
05/08/2002
Brandywine Realty Trust (NYSE: BDN) today announced an agreement with Amtrak to develop a parcel of land adjacent to 30th Street Station. Plans include a 28-story, state-of-the- art office center with more than 500,000-square feet of first-class office, conference and retail space. The multi-use building, with a unique prismatic design, is the creation of world-renowned architect Cesar Pelli and Philadelphia architects Bower Lewis Thrower, and will extend the city's skyline west.
The building location creates an outstanding connection between Philadelphia's traditional central business district and University City, home to the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University.
"This is an incredible opportunity. It enables us to work with one of the finest architectural firms in the world, on its first Philadelphia project, to bring a visually-spectacular office building to one of the fastest growing areas of the City and establish a new center of business and commerce in a key location," said Gerard H. Sweeney, President and Chief Executive Officer of Brandywine Realty Trust.
Architect Cesar Pelli, best known for his design of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the World Financial Center in New York and Canary Wharf in London, said he considered the skyline and location, as well as the advancement of the City's center west, in designing this office building. The crystalline, faceted structure was designed with maximum reflectivity to capture the light of the sky and changing hues as the day turns to dusk.
"This building will be the western anchor piece of the Philadelphia skyline," Pelli said.
"It is a fresh, contemporary creation that will allow those who work and do business there to feel pride in being a part of the most beautiful building in the City."
In addition to its beauty and creativity, the building was also designed with unique safety and security considerations. The office center will have fire-rated vestibules, wider stair towers, a reinforced foundation and additional security measures.
The office center is planned to have 28 stories of premium office, conference and retail space and is Brandywine Realty Trust's first development effort in the City of Philadelphia after building a market-leading portfolio primarily in suburban Philadelphia and South Jersey. The company is marketing the building to both local companies and as a convenient location for companies who conduct business regularly between New York and Washington. Business travelers will find easy access to destinations up and down the Northeast Corridor via Amtrak or the network of interstate highways within close proximity of the complex. For local employees, the office's location offers a hassle-free commute for those who drive, take SEPTA's regional rail, bus, subway or LUCY shuttle. For shorter trips or meetings within the City, taxi cabs or rental cars are easily accessible at the train station.
The office center will bring new business and new jobs to the City, as well as stimulate the local economy. Also attractive to businesses is the location of the building in a Keystone Opportunity Expansion Zone, which will allow Brandywine Realty Trust to offer tenants additional incentives to reduce their overall occupancy costs.
Pittsburgh Post — Gazette
05/08/2002
The Port Authority's chief executive officer has told the mayor that a plan to close the buses-only lane on Fifth Avenue for the next three years during hospital construction is "unacceptable" and would "make Oakland less attractive."
In a two-page letter to Mayor Tom Murphy, Paul Skoutelas also wrote he wanted to know who will pay the cash-strapped authority up to $1 million a year in lost government subsidies and higher operating expenses caused by the anticipated congestion and longer travel times.
"Transit riders and taxpayers should not be burdened with the cost and inconvenience of this construction project," Skoutelas wrote. "Is there a plan for the Port Authority to be reimbursed by the city of Pittsburgh or Children's Hospital for these costs?"
Port Authority officials last week said they were shocked to learn they may lose their buses-only, contra-flow lane on four-lane Fifth Avenue in Oakland. UPMC Health System said it needed to eliminate the lane to accommodate a $600 million expansion program, including a new $250 million Children's Hospital and other facilities along Fifth.
The inbound curb lane — that closest to the hospitals — would be used as a construction staging area for materials, equipment and supplies. UPMC and its prime contractor, Oxford Development Corp., would make up for that lost lane by converting the bus lane on the opposite side to maintain three lanes for mixed, inbound traffic.
"I am extremely concerned about this construction project and the impact it would have on riders and the Oakland community," Skoutelas wrote Murphy. "The proposed (construction) strategy is unacceptable."
He said he fears increased congestion and parking shortages and an erosion of bus ridership in addition to the loss of revenue.
"Mass transit can help solve those problems," Skoutelas said. "However, our service must be reliable and given priority over automobile traffic."
If the buses traveling Fifth Avenue in the outbound direction were to be shifted to Forbes Avenue, Forbes would see about twice as many buses and riders as today.
The special lane was set aside in 1980 for exclusive use by buses. It runs opposite the regular flow of traffic between Craft and South Bellefield avenues. The Port Authority created the bus lane in cooperation with the city as a time-saving measure for transit riders, to relieve Oakland traffic congestion and help out Forbes Avenue merchants who had complained for years about litter, crowded sidewalks and blocked doors at bus stops.
The lane is used by 412 buses carrying 37,000 riders on an average weekday.
Port Authority and city officials have scheduled a private meeting May 16 to discuss the issue. A number of options are being proposed.
Skoutelas said the Port Authority's recommendations would include provisions for keeping the bus lane, not keeping the bus lane, restricting movements at intersections and changing the direction of travel on certain streets.
He said city officials should first think about telling the contractor to look elsewhere for space to stage the hospital construction.
The Port Authority said it took years to get residents to accept the bus lane. It spent $300,000 in 1989 to paint warnings, add signs and install special railings in an effort to improve bus-related pedestrian safety, because 16 accidents and one fatality occurred over the first nine years it was used.
New York Daily News
05/08/2002
A proposal to route LIRR trains to lower Manhattan via the A and C lines is no way to run a railroad, the borough presidents of Brooklyn and Manhattan said yesterday. Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz and Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields went to Transit Authority headquarters in downtown Brooklyn to wave red flags against the proposal, which they say was included for review in the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s preliminary blueprint for rebuilding after the attack on the World Trade Center.
"Everyone is in favor of rebuilding lower Manhattan and making it stronger than ever," Markowitz said. "But the blueprint for renewal released by the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. last month proposes... a mass transit improvement that would, unfortunately, hurt Brooklyn, if adopted."
According to Markowitz, the blueprint calls for a Long Island Rail Road shuttle connecting Jamaica, Queens, to lower Manhattan using LIRR tracks and Transit Authority subway tunnels.
"The Long Island Rail Road trains, which now terminate at Atlantic Terminal, would continue into lower Manhattan via the Eighth Ave. subway tunnel now used exclusively by the A and C trains," Markowitz said.
The plan would divert C trains to the F train tunnel, Markowitz said.
"Since the C train would no longer stop in lower Manhattan, Brooklyn C train riders who are going to or coming from lower Manhattan would have to transfer at Jay St. for the A train," Markowitz said. "F train service would also be affected, and any hopes of adding a needed F express would be ended."
The proposal also calls for a new LIRR station in lower Manhattan.
Fields said the idea, which was included in the redevelopment blueprint without details, would displace roughly 110,000 mass transit riders who use the Eighth Ave. subway line daily, while serving no more than 15,000 Long Island commuters.
Financial Center link
The borough presidents said the proposal — known as the Brookfield Plan because it originally was proposed by Brookfield Properties, which owns the World Financial Center — has not been formally submitted.
"We think now is the time to talk about it and to alert people to what is being discussed," Fields said.
The borough presidents and Gene Russianoff of the Straphanger's Campaign said building the Second Ave. subway line was a much better idea.
"If the downtown real estate interests talk the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. into this proposal," said Russianoff, "it would be a case of grand theft, subway."
The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. did not return phone calls.
However, Charles Seaton, spokesman for New York City Transit, suggested that such a plan might be moot.
"We cannot comment without seeing a plan," Seaton said.
"But as it stands now, LIRR cars would not physically fit into the Eighth Ave. subway tunnel."
Los Angeles Times
05/08/2002
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has learned that federal officials have pulled $156 million intended for construction of a rail line that could one day link Los Angeles and Santa Monica, a move that could delay the project and force the creation of a much shorter railway.
The agency envisions 20,000 riders a day boarding light-rail trains that would roll through dense neighborhoods down a route along Exposition Boulevard. The so-called "Expo Line" would run past the University of Southern California campus and stop near Culver City. A later segment would send trains all the way to Santa Monica.
MTA officials say they've been operating for at least three years under the assumption that $156 million once tagged for a mid-city extension of the Red Line could be used on an alternative.
They came up with the Expo Line after studying numerous options, including a monorail running down Wilshire Boulevard. Last June, MTA planners got the go-ahead from the MTA board to proceed with engineering the Expo Line.
But the Federal Transit Administration, gatekeeper of the nation's transportation budget, surprised MTA officials by taking the $156 million off the table.
The FTA has now made that money — about 40% of the Expo Line's budget — available to new mass transit construction projects in other regions.
Officials at the federal agency claim they never made specific promises to fund the Expo Line. What's more, they finally released the money for other projects because the Expo Line's planning will not be done in time for construction to begin by the end of next year. That's when authorization for the nation's massive four-year transit package, approved by Congress, comes to a close.
"The project is not what they specified originally... and the MTA is still working on preliminary engineering out there," said FTA spokesman Bruce Frame. "They aren't going to be done for at least a year, maybe more."
The move forces MTA planners to pin their hopes on the FTA backing the project in future budget requests, particularly when Congress considers another nationwide reauthorization of transit construction in 2003. That means the Expo Line may suddenly find itself competing for congressional approval with scores of other light-rail lines and other big-ticket items across the country.
The FTA this year listed the Expo line as a "recommended" project, and experts close to the federal agency say the chances are excellent that the $156 million, and possibly even more, will once again be tagged for the MTA.
But some top MTA officials expressed doubt.
"The funding is in danger and the project, I believe, is in danger," said Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, county supervisor and an MTA board member. "I am definitely, definitely worried."
Though she has been a critic of the line's design, Burke said she will press for restoration of the money during a trip to the nation's capital this week. She said she was asked to do so by MTA Chief Executive Roger Snoble in a meeting last week.
Snoble, meantime, seemed to downplay the funding issue.
"I'm relatively sure we can get the money later," he said. "We'll see what happens in reauthorization.... We feel they owe us."
Snoble said he would like a written promise that the FTA will back funding for the project in the future. Though generally optimistic in a recent interview on the matter, in an April letter to FTA Administrator Jennifer Dorn, he was less sanguine, writing: "Now is not the appropriate time for FTA to entertain the possibility of abrogating the long-standing commitment to Los Angeles by releasing these funds for other projects."
Snoble said one solution would be to use state and local money to build shorter legs of the route than previously planned, possibly going only as far as USC. He worries that completion of the overall project could be delayed by several years.
The proposed rail line has long been controversial. Burke is representative of a faction worried about safety if the line extends past USC onto busy streets and near schools.
The proposed path of the second phase of the project, extending the line past Robertson Boulevard to Santa Monica, has been haggled over by residents in Los Angeles' Cheviot Hills neighborhood and in Culver City, many of whom want nothing to do with a commuter train zipping through their streets dozens of times daily.
Over the years, the most consistent push for construction has come from a group of citizen proponents calling themselves Friends 4 Expo Transit, who have touted the benefits of the light-rail line.
"We're sort of on pins and needles," said Darrell Clarke, head of the group. "To give up a position we have already won, when we were promised the money, it doesn't quite seem fair."
South China Morning Post
05/08/2002
Work began yesterday in Shenzhen on a subway terminal at the Lowu border checkpoint in an effort to alleviate congestion between Hong Kong and the city.
The station will have a floor area of more than 120,000 square feet and will be China's largest subway station when phase one of the system is completed in 2004, said Zhao Penglin, chief engineer of the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Urban Planning and Land Resources.
The Shenzhen subway will connect Lowu Customs checkpoint, Lowu Commercial Building, the bus station and Shenzhen Railway Station. It will help divert traffic from the Customs checkpoint to other parts of the city, according to Mr Zhao, who is in charge of the planning, design and construction of the project.
The terminal station will have three floors. On the ground floor there will be an "ecological park", according to the plan. Construction of the main structure started yesterday and the railway track will be laid in May next year.
On average, Shenzhen receives 300,000 visitors from Hong Kong every day — more than 100 million visits a year. Most of the traffic is concentrated in Lowu.
In addition to easing congestion, the authorities hope the subway will also help stimulate the economy, said Zou Lan, senior researcher of Shenzhen Comprehensive Development Research Institute.
Most travellers from Hong Kong spend their money in the Lowu area. The subway will make it easier for visitors to reach other shopping areas, such as Huaqiang North Road in Futian district, he said.
Construction of phase one of the subway project began in 1998 and was hailed as one of the city's biggest infrastructure projects. In addition to Futian, it will also link city centres with the new industrial areas in the east of the city.
The subway could also eventually make obsolete the second border line, which separates the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone from Guangdong province.
The border line was set up in the mid-1980s to control the number of people between the special zone and Guangdong. Phase two of the subway system — which straddles the second border line — is due for completion in 2008.
The San Diego Union-Tribune
05/09/2002
Leon Williams; chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Development Board.
San Diego County residents who rage against traffic congestion and the prospect of gridlock should be just as wildly enthusiastic about the state of mass transit here.
Mass transit provides county residents with 330,000 trips each weekday, without which thousands more cars would flood our freeways and major roadways. No wonder transit ridership is increasing not only locally — up 40 percent since 1995 — but across the nation, as more people choose to take their own personal responsibility for reducing gridlock.
We at the Metropolitan Transit Development Board take our responsibility just as seriously. Our philosophy reflects a consumer emphasis: buses and trolleys and trains are consumer products. We can't win consumers over without providing convenience, comfort and affordability — the three quality-of-life factors our community rates most highly.
That's why our major "Transit First" strategic plan recognizes consumers as the core of success. Transit First takes people where they want to go. It connects communities and employment centers throughout the county and benefits every resident and visitor whether they use the system or not.
San Diego suffered for 40 years without any transit infrastructure expenditure while our population exploded. Now we are paying the price for that inactivity — but we are catching up. With completion of the Mission Valley East light rail line that will pass through the heart of San Diego State University and on to La Mesa, we will have sufficient capacity to focus our next efforts on improved service, further linking our major communities and activity centers with San Diego Trolley service.
But, we are not just talking about trolley expansion in the future. Our board's plan has a vision where riders will see stylish, more comfortable vehicles, smaller vehicles for local service, higher speed buses on bus lanes and more efficient routings. Before long, riders on the MTDB and its sister agency, the North County Transit District, will be using hassle-free SmartCards to access all forms of transit with a single swipe at a card reader anywhere across our regional transit network.
Why, then, do we still hear persistent urban myths about rapid transit: that serving only a small fraction of residents makes it impractical; that is it too costly; that automobile travel and infrastructure are far cheaper?
Times have changed and, to paraphrase a legendary and very effective auto commercial, "This is not your father's transit system." It's smarter, friendlier and more effective and should dispel these myths handily.
The 2 percent myth: The 2 percent myth says that only that amount of the population uses mass transit. But that figure ignores a far more powerful reality: well-placed transit makes a major difference in our daily commute. For instance, mass transit is used for nearly 20 percent of peak-hour trips in and out of downtown. And 15 percent of the crowd at high attendance Qualcomm events arrives there via bus and trolley. Imagine another 5,000 to 10,000 cars coming in and out of the stadium, and it's easy to appreciate this statistic.
If there were no trolley in the South Bay, we would need another full freeway lane, both north and south, to make up the difference. Further, while our transit system has the capacity to move 5,000 persons per hour in each direction, the capacity of a freeway lane is about 2,200 cars per hour (or, about 2,600 people at 1.2 people per car).
Mass transit is too expensive: On average it has cost us about $22 million a mile to construct our highly regarded trolley system to this point. Fortunately, for this latest extension San Diegans pay for only 3 percent of the cost of its construction through local sales taxes. The remaining 97 percent comes from federal and state transportation budgets.
But transit delivers real value for the money spent. In this case, the trolley will serve SDSU's daytime population of 40,000 much better than automobiles do now. As with Qualcomm Stadium events, the trolley will take thousands of people to events at Cox Arena on campus. Off campus, East County residents will benefit from a direct route to Mission Valley and travel options to other destinations.
Part of the high-cost mythology is that, somehow, freeways are free. But the current cost of construction for a mile of freeway averages $35 million. This cost does not account for the significant additional resources required to support the roadways: maintenance, security costs for the California Highway Patrol and air quality costs resulting from vehicle emissions.
Consider also the land costs associated with the need for parking all those vehicles, estimated at five spaces per vehicle, based not only on workplace parking but also at shopping areas and other locations that citizens access on a daily basis. That's a lot of San Diego to pave over.
The myth of low-cost car travel: Closely aligned with the transit cost myth, this one says that travel by car is far cheaper. But the cost of automobile travel, with all factors considered, is the equivalent of paying about $3.70 per gallon for gas. With higher gas prices, the Automobile Club of Southern California estimates the cost per mile of owning and driving a motor vehicle, including gasoline, maintenance and insurance, now hovers between 26 cents and 63 cents a mile (depending upon model year and annual miles driven). If you add to that the ever-expanding list of places where drivers must pay to park, the cost for auto travel — particularly with single occupants — is no bargain.
The tab for automobile travel will continue to grow as the population does. On the other hand, the costs of mass transit construction and use will decline when amortized over a growing population that is more willing to use it.
But the transportation challenge is not a battle between the automobile and the bus (or train or trolley). The vision for transportation in San Diego is for streets and freeways that are easier to travel because we have high quality public transit.
Our aim is to make mass transit a first choice on many occasions, not replacing cars as the primary choice of the community but using transit as a comfortable and convenient alternative when it makes sense. Our plan lays out a very long road for public transportation that will require significant funding to complete. It also will take strong resolve from transportation professionals and elected leaders, and a real commitment by the community.
Business Wire
05/09/2002
The Davis Administration today announced the approval of $77 million for seven transportation improvements specifically designed to relieve traffic congestion.
"Nearly every project in Governor Gray Davis' $5.3 billion Traffic Congestion Relief Plan is approved and moving forward," said Caltrans Director Jeff Morales. "This will augment the $7 billion in projects under construction, and will further stimulate California's economy and create additional jobs throughout our state."
The funds approved by the California Transportation Commission today will finance rail and highway improvements in Los Angeles, San Diego, and the San Francisco Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley.
Among the projects approved for funding are the Altamont Commuter Express (ACE) passenger train serving the Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley, the Los Angeles Mid City/Exposition Corridor light rail system and Highway 132 in Modesto.
With this action, 140 (or 99 percent) of the 141 projects in the Governor's historic $5.3 billion Traffic Congestion Relief Program (TCRP) have now received funding.
The latest projects receiving funding include:
$1 million to build a new siding, a track auxiliary to the main track for meeting or passing trains, for the Altamont Commuter Express (ACE) in Alameda County. The new siding, to be located in Livermore, will allow ACE trains to provide more reliable service by passing slower freight trains;
$28.1 million for construction of the Los Angeles Mid-City/Exposition Corridor Light Rail system in Los Angeles County. The new light rail line will connect downtown Los Angeles to the University of Southern California and West Los Angeles;
$12 million to build the new Highway 132 expressway and interchange with Highway 99 in Modesto. This project will ease congestion on existing Highway 132 (Maze Boulevard) and improve circulation for local, commute and interregional traffic;
$1.3 million to complete environmental studies and select preferred alternatives for the Mid-Coast Light Rail in San Diego County. This project will connect the Old Town light rail system with planned improvements towards Balboa Avenue in north San Diego;
$17 million for two improvements to the San Joaquin passenger rail service. The projects would double track the line at two locations in Kings and San Joaquin counties allowing passenger trains to pass slower moving freight trains; and
$35 million to acquire the existing Union Pacific Railroad Corridor between Fremont in Alameda County and downtown San Jose for possible use as the new alignment for the extension of the Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) to San Jose.
Seattle Times
05/09/2002
Sound Transit's controversial light-rail project got some good news from the federal government yesterday.
The Federal Transit Administration notified Sound Transit that the regional agency's studies of the impact of its scaled-back, 14-mile line from downtown Seattle to Tukwila satisfy federal environmental laws.
If the federal agency had ordered more detailed studies, the project would have been delayed nine to 18 months, said Joni Earl, Sound Transit's executive director. Groundbreaking now is scheduled for summer or early fall.
King County Executive Ron Sims, who also is Sound Transit's board chairman, called the decision "a major milestone" that paves the way for Sound Transit's bid for $500 million from the Federal Transit Administration to help pay for the $2.1 billion line.
The decision also was applauded by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who heads the Senate subcommittee that must approve transportation dollars. It "shows that light rail is back on track," she said.
Sane Transit, a coalition of light-rail opponents, had argued that Sound Transit's studies fell short of what federal laws demand and had pressed the federal agency to require more.
Don Padelford, a Sane Transit officer, said the decision is "not unexpected. It's certainly disappointing. Obviously, we think it's a bad decision."
It's likely to be challenged in court, he said.
Sound Transit published a detailed environmental impact-statement on its original plan, a 21-mile light-rail line from Seattle's University District to SeaTac, in 1999. That document won the Federal Transit Administration's blessing.
But cost overruns forced Sound Transit to scale back the project to 14 miles last year.
The federal agency told the regional agency more studies were needed on the changes, including joint bus-rail use of the bus tunnel through downtown Seattle.
Sound Transit published a 50-page "environmental assessment" on its revised plan in February. That was the key document deemed adequate by the federal agency yesterday.
Light-rail foes filed a lawsuit in 2000 challenging the adequacy of Sound Transit's environmental studies on its original project. That suit has been on hold while Sound Transit revises its plans.
The Houston Chronicle
05/09/2002
Plans to convert three downtown blocks of Main Street into a plaza for pedestrians and light rail passengers are nearly ready to take to local officials for approval, backers of the project say.
The project calls for construction to begin in June and be completed in January 2004. The first Metrorail trains are scheduled to run down Main in mid-February 2004.
Privately funded, Main Street Square would extend from Walker Street on the north to Dallas on the south, with the central block, from McKinney to Lamar, closed to vehicles.
All four crossing streets would remain open and one lane of Main would stay open in the two end blocks, each of which is the site of a boarding platform for the Metropolitan Transit Authority's Lamar/McKinney light rail station.
There will be no parking spaces on Main Street Square, and although several large parking garages are in the three-block span, all their entrances and exits are on crossing streets, said Robert Eury, president of the sponsoring group, Central Houston Civic Improvement Inc.
The central, closed-off block of Main would feature a reflecting pool with fountains sending jets of water arching over the passing trains. In an emergency, the 8-inch-deep pool would be navigable by fire and police vehicles, Eury said.
Eury said the conversion is expected to cost $8.9 million, including $1 million worth of improvements by owners of properties in the three blocks.
The Main Street/Market Square Redevelopment Authority will provide $1.5 million for special paving, lighting, landscaping and other features, Eury said, with the rest of the money to be raised from private grants and donations.
Eury declined to reveal how much has been raised, but said it was enough "to give us reason to feel optimistic of meeting the goal."
Metro spokeswoman Patti Muck said transit agency staff have worked with the redevelopment authority to integrate the Metrorail project with the Main Street Square plan.
Muck said the only Metro board action needed would be to approve any Metrorail design changes that might result from the Main Street Square project, and any such enhancements would be paid for by the project's sponsors.
"This will not cost us a penny," Muck said.
However, City Council approval will be required to close the street and use city property. "We will be coming to council pretty quickly," Eury said.
He said the council's Regional Planning and Economic Development Committee, chaired by Councilman Gabriel Vasquez, "basically voted to endorse the concept" when it was presented to them in February.
Eury said he knows of no organized opposition to the plan, but Councilman Bruce Tatro said Wednesday he does not see how he can support it.
"I respect the desire of the downtown groups to create something where nothing exists now," Tatro said. "It's really a nice concept, but I think it's very much misplaced on Main Street."
Tatro said such a project might be justified farther north on Main, where residential development, along with a revival of night life and restaurants, has occurred.
"At least there you already have some foot traffic," he said, from the nearby Theater District, Astros Field and courthouse complex.
Main Street Square backers are frank about their revitalization aims and economic stake in the project. Eury said it has the support of all owners of Main Street properties in the three blocks.
Several of these are vacant, and others are under construction or being renovated. Some buildings have small businesses operating at street level, with upper floors vacant.
Eury said 1000 Main will be the site of the downtown "transit superstop," where three branches of the tunnel system converge, taking pedestrians to and from street level on escalators.
The building, scheduled to open in March 2003, will also have canopies that extend out to bus stops on the Lamar, Travis and McKinney sides, and to the rail station on the Main Street side, Eury said. "This is the absolute epicenter of downtown," Eury said.
The News Tribune
05/09/2002
It's costing more than Sound Transit hoped to build Tacoma's light rail.
Today, the three-county agency will ask its board to set aside $2.3 million — extra money that may be needed if the main contractor exhausts existing funds for the 1.6-mile line called Tacoma Link.
What Sound Transit politely terms "significant adverse cost trends" stem, in part, from delays due to disputes with private interests. Utilities have questioned the government's right to make them move buried lines out of light rail's path.
Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad is challenging plans for Tacoma Link to cross its tracks at Pacific Avenue.
Ahmad Fazel, Sound Transit's light-rail director, said the need for extra spending authority applies only to this one contract. The overall Tacoma Link project will stay within budget, he predicted.
"What I can tell you is that I have paid special attention to the Tacoma project," Fazel said Wednesday. "I have reviewed it and reviewed it. I'm confident we are going to deliver this project within the $80.4 million the board has approved."
A written staff report to the board, however, warns of "cost pressures" on that budget and suggests "it may be prudent for the board to consider proactive scope reduction." Reducing scope would mean scrapping something the agency planned to build.
Fazel said that shouldn't be necessary. But it might be. So he's providing information so the board can judge for itself well in advance.
This, he said, is the new Sound Transit. A tell-it-like-it-is approach to fiscal matters followed the disastrous December 2000 disclosure that the agency's Seattle-area light rail stood to cost $1 billion more than expected.
Now, Fazel said, Sound Transit scans for hazards far up the road. At the board's insistence, even potential hazards that seem to be mirages are called out.
Tacoma City Councilman Kevin Phelps, who heads Sound Transit's finance committee, agreed with that assessment. He agreed, too, that Tacoma Link looks as if it will come in under budget.
Still, there's pressure to come in as far below budget as possible. Phelps said he's uneasy about how that might be achieved.
He said Sound Transit staff has made a point of telling him and his committee that $1.5 million might be saved along the light-rail route by reneging on so-called additional urban improvements promised to the City of Tacoma. These include fancy sidewalks and prettied-up streets leading to the tracks.
While it's true these projects have no bearing on how well rail functions, Phelps said, "I want to be real careful before we start raiding that pot of money."
But he said it ultimately might make sense if all savings could be rolled over to expedite another project that would benefit both Sound Transit's Sounder commuter trains and the city's Tacoma Rail freight line.
Service on Tacoma Link is due to start in September 2003. Rides on the five-stop line between downtown Tacoma and the Tacoma Dome will be free.
Meanwhile, Sound Transit welcomed news Wednesday that the Federal Transit Administration has approved the agency's environmental review for its planned 14-mile light-rail line between Seattle and Tukwila. The agency heralded the federal Record of Decision, as it's known, as "clearing a major hurdle towards obtaining $500 million in federal funding for the project."
The line's overall budget is $2.1 billion.
The Houston Chronicle
05/09/2002
State project planners are pushing for a light-rail line on Houston's Northwest Freeway and measuring public interest as a study moves into its final phase.
A major U.S. 290 construction project, which would include highways improvements and possibly rail, is at least five years down the road. The earliest the project would start is 2007.
"We have done our job to show Metro that a light-rail system is viable on 290. It is now up to them to make the decision," said Roger Gonzalez, project manager for the Texas Department of Transportation's U.S. 290 study. "We are hopeful they will do something by the time road construction begins. That would be an ideal situation."
The purpose of the 290 highway study is to evaluate transportation alternatives in the Northwest Freeway corridor from Loop 610 to FM 2920. Federal requirements dictate that such a study be performed on any major road construction project.
The project team has narrowed construction alternatives from 11 to four. Gonzalez said light rail plays a key part in all four options.
The first alternative includes the construction of four high-occupancy-vehicle lanes in the center of U.S. 290, five general lanes in each direction from Loop 610 to Beltway 8, and four lanes in each direction from Beltway 8 to FM 2920.
A rail line is proposed to run on Hempstead Highway inside the Beltway and on U.S. 290 from the Beltway to FM 2920.
With the same rail plan, the second alternative proposes a much wider highway — six general lanes in each direction from Loop 610 to Pinemont Road, five from Pinemont to the future Grand Parkway and four from the Parkway to FM 2920.
The HOV option includes four lanes on Hempstead Highway inside Beltway 8 and four on U.S. 290 from the Beltway to the Grand Parkway.
The third option proposes four HOV lanes on U.S. 290, five lanes in each direction from the Loop to Pinemont and four from Pinemont to FM 2920, and a rail system on U.S. 290.
The fourth alternative combines elements from the other three alternatives — the same highway widening strategy and HOV pattern as the second option and the U.S. 290 light-rail suggestion in the third.
"Nine months ago, light rail was not even an option on 290, and now it is in the middle of the issue," said Earl LeBlanc, member of the U.S. 290 steering committee and aide to District A Houston City Councilman Bruce Tatro. "The city is addressing rail, and there is not a lot of love for it because everyone wants their own car. However, we need it in the future to address congestion problems."
Public meetings will be held to see what residents think about the proposals. The options will be discussed at the sessions.
"We are a little bit closer to implementation," said Terry Watson, the project's engineering consultant. "What we hope to get from the project steering committee and public meetings is a lot of discussion and input about these four viable alternatives. We'd like to be advised on how to proceed."
The first meeting is May 21 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Delmar Stadium Fieldhouse, 2020 Mangum Road. The second meeting will be from 6 to 9 p.m. on May 22 at Ault Elementary School, 21010 Maple Village Drive in Cypress. A third session is set for May 23 at Jersey Village High School, 7600 Solomon Street.
Attendance was light at the last round of public meetings, which were held more than a year ago.
After this round of public hearings, the options will be analyzed. A preferred route will be announced at the end of the summer, Watson said.
Metro's long-range plan includes studies of mass-transit options for several of the area's overcrowded freeways. The agency plans to bring a bond referendum before voters in November 2003. If approved, part of the money would be used to extend the downtown-to-Reliant Park rail along some of the crowded corridors.
New York Daily News
05/09/2002
Maybe it's a language problem.
The Transit Authority will distribute brochures to 120,000 would-be V train riders — including promotions in Spanish, Korean, Chinese and Russian — telling them of the advantages of switching to the usually little-used line.
The campaign will be part of an extensive marketing effort to increase ridership on the unpopular V, which was launched late last year to alleviate crowding on E and F express trains.
V trains usually run at a roomy 49% of capacity because they make more stops and take more time on runs between Forest Hills, Queens, and the lower East Side.
The promotional campaign will highlight that it takes only five minutes more on the V from the major transfer hub at Roosevelt Ave. in Queens to E. 53rd St. and Lexington Ave., the first Manhattan stop for westbound riders.
The TA also will give away MetroCard holders, and run ads in newspapers, including foreign-language papers, and on cable TV."Stay on the V!" posters also will appear in subway stations and on E trains. F train crowding eases Before the TA launched the line in December, E trains were running at 104% of capacity at peak travel times. By March, ridership dropped to 96%.
Crowding on F trains, which had been at 95% of capacity, also eased, to 85% in March.
Ridership on R trains, previously at 71% of capacity, was stable at 72%.
TA President Lawrence Reuter has said the V train is slowly gaining ridership and alleviating crowding.
But a lawyer for the Straphangers Campaign, part of the New York Public Interest Research Group, Gene Russianoff, called such improvements modest.
He also predicted the TA's new marketing campaign would not help. "It's good money after bad," Russianoff said. "I think it's a waste. Queens riders have voted thumbs down on the V.
"Ordering them to stay on the V, or rewarding them with MetroCard holders, isn't going to change the strong preference to take an express E train. Like the V itself, the ad campaign is destined to flop."
The service changes introduced in December included rerouting F trains through the 63rd St. subway tunnel. Critics of the plan have urged the TA to return F trains to the Lexington Ave. line because many riders need to transfer trains.
FOR THE RECORD
Los Angeles Times
05/09/2002
An 82-year-old man was killed Wednesday evening when he drove his car around a railroad crossing arm in Simi Valley and was struck by a Metrolink passenger train traveling at nearly 80 mph, authorities said.
The collision occurred at 5:24 p.m. at Los Angeles Avenue and Sycamore Drive, about four miles west of the Simi Valley train station, where several dozen passengers had debarked moments earlier.
The train, which was carrying 150 people, had originated at Los Angeles' Union Station and was headed to Moorpark before continuing on to Camarillo and Oxnard, officials said.
"This was horrendous," said Keith Futterman, 43, who was cooking dinner in his house on Galena Avenue, adjacent to the tracks.
"There was a boom and I knew something bad had happened," he said. "It shook my house."
None of the passengers on the commuter train was injured, but a 56-year-old Simi Valley woman, identified as Jean Potter, suffered minor cuts when her Ford Mustang was struck by the victim's car, authorities said.
The man who was killed was identified by authorities as Francisco Aranda of Simi Valley.
According to police and train officials, Aranda was driving a white Chevrolet Lumina north on Sycamore Drive when he attempted to drive across the tracks on Los Angeles Avenue.
"It appears he went around or under a crossing gate that was down and was struck," said Sharon Gavin, a Metrolink spokeswoman.
At the time of the collision, arms on both sides of the tracks were down, red warning lights were flashing, Gavin said.
Also, Gavin said, an operator on the train sounded the train's horn as it approached the crossing.
The impact tossed the Lumina from the middle of the track to the north side of Sycamore Drive, where the vehicle crashed into the front end of the Mustang before slamming into a crossing signal sign.Aranda was in full cardiac arrest when he was transported to Simi Valley Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival, according to authorities. The injured woman was treated and released.
The crash occurred less than two weeks after a major accident in Orange County, where a freight train failed to stop at a warning light on April 23 and collided head-on with a Metrolink commuter train. Two Amtrak passengers were killed and more than 260 were injured.
Based on initial reports of the Simi Valley crash, county fire officials dispatched nearly three dozen firefighters and a dozen pieces of equipment, preparing for what they thought could be a major disaster. American Red Cross officials also responded.
The train left the crash site at 6:44 p.m., Gavin said.Police closed the intersection for several hours to clear the wreckage.
Simi Valley police and officials with the National Transportation Safety Board will conduct investigations. The accident Wednesday was the latest of several fatal train accidents in Ventura County.
A 20-year-old Camarillo woman died April 12 when her car was struck by an Amtrak train in Somis at an unguarded railroad crossing.
A 27-year-old Ventura man died in December when he stopped to repair his bike on the tracks near Emma Wood State Beach and was struck by a freight train.
And the month before, a 65-year-old Oxnard farm worker died when an Amtrak train slammed into his tractor near Camarillo.
Los Angeles Times
05/09/2002
For the tens of thousands of commuters who grimly head to and from the Westside daily, the Santa Monica Freeway is usually a sea of red taillights. Dreams of a rail line to downtown have danced at the edge of commuters' vision, recently drawing a little closer. Now, however, federal transit officials say they may give to other projects the funds earmarked for the so-called Exposition Line. They never specifically promised to fund this line, but weary road warriors will get no comfort from that logic.
As the light rail line linking Pasadena nears a 2003 completion date, and with engineering for the Eastside line well underway, the Exposition Line still exists only on the glossy color slides that transit planners and local advocates carry around to community meetings.
First conceived more than a decade ago to run from Santa Monica to downtown, the light rail line has long been held hostage by obstructionist homeowners along the proposed Exposition Boulevard route and local politicians who believe that affluent Westsiders won't use and don't deserve mass transit. Never mind that the Westside has the highest population and employment density of any Southern California area, drawing workers who commute in daily from poorer communities to the east and south.
The political stalemate broke only last year when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority formally adopted the Exposition Line plan, largely the result of pressure from smaller cities along the route that want the project and Friends 4 Expo Transit, a group of citizen proponents. MTA approval was supposed to free up state, local and federal funds for the project, which is estimated at $429 million. Engineering and design work was to begin next year.
Now the $155-million federal share may be off the table. The news from the Federal Transit Administration came as a surprise to MTA officials, who are scrambling to line up support in Congress to make sure this money is there when they need it starting next year. That goal should be a top priority for the California delegation.
Meanwhile, the lesson for transit planners is clear: The endless equivocation of local leaders on this key rail project has already cost commuters dearly. Further delay could kill the Expo line altogether.
And anyone who simply shrugs at that prospect ought to be forced to sit behind the wheel on the Santa Monica Freeway at 5:30 every afternoon for at least the next 10 years.
Computing
05/09/2002
LU presses on with Prestige project ahead of national smartcard standard.
London Underground is pressing ahead with its smart ticketing project without using the emerging national standards for transport smartcards.
The capital's 17-year, GBP 1.2bn Prestige project will let Tube travellers pass through security gates by simply waving a pre-paid card at the reader.
But incompatible technologies could see commuters needing one card for the Underground and another for mainline rail journeys.
The Integrated Transport Smartcard Organisation (ITSO) is developing a basic framework of standards so all travel operators can offer services on the same card. But the Prestige system won't incorporate the standard when it goes live later this year.
Talks are underway between Transport for London (TfL), supplier TranSys and ITSO about how to integrate the different specifications.
TfL says the project began too early to incorporate such a recent development.
'At the moment it is unproven and uncompleted so it is difficult for us to have a compliant card,' said a TfL spokesman.
'The goalposts have been moved since we started the project but if the standard is put in place we would seek to incorporate it.'
ITSO director Jeremy Acklam says moving to the standard should not mean rebuilding the system.
'No one knows what it will take to swap the system over, but it is likely to be about the way the data is represented on the card, not about either the physical card or the reader,' he said.
ITSO members represent 85 per cent of UK transport operators.
The Evening Standard (London, England)
05/09/2002
A BITTER row escalated today after London Underground signed initial contracts to part privatise the Tube.
Critics of the controversial scheme queued to condemn the move with Mayor Ken Livingstone insisting the deal would make the Tube "unsafe" for commuters.
He has ordered his lawyers to comb over detail of the contracts and has not ruled out a further legal challenge.
Mr Livingstone is in Moscow today on a fact-finding mission to examine a range of issues from the problems of transport to concerns about people living rough on the streets.
He said Tube fares may have to increase by up to 25 per cent to pay for the public-private partnership under which large sections of the system will be hived off to private consortia on 30-year leases. Union leaders said the private sector was now "dribbling" at the prospect of huge profits.
Mr Livingstone said: "This PPP is unsafe, will postpone real improvements for decades and has a funding gap requiring fare increases of up to 25per cent in the first year."
He said government had "ignored the views of London" in bulldozing through the scheme. "We will have our lawyers look very carefully at the final contracts which we are advised may be unlawful," the Mayor added.
Signing of the contracts was revealed in final editions of the Evening Standard last night. Work to begin rebuilding the ailing system could now begin late summer.
Bob Kiley, London's transport commissioner, refused to accept that PPP is a "done deal" and described the signing of contracts as "nothing short of scandalous".
He said that there are still "substantial hurdles to overcome" before the private sector takes over.
(NOTE: follows is the official press release. Compare with preceding and following articles. Anyone care to suggest that the government is trying to put a ‘spin’ on proposal that all are in agreement?)
M2 Presswire
05/09/2002
Approval of a multibillion pound deal securing the modernisation of London's Tube was welcomed by Secretary of State for Transport Stephen Byers today.
The decision to agree to the signing of contracts between London Underground and the private sector, taken by the Board of London Transport today, followed an extensive consultation process with London's Mayor Ken Livingstone and Transport Commissioner Bob Kiley.
London Underground has made a number of improvements to the contracts in response to the views expressed during the consultation process, including the consultation since February 7. These changes have helped strengthen the contracts to ensure they deliver the best deal for the public.
In responding to the Board's announcement, Stephen Byers said: "This decision must now lead to badly needed and long awaited improvements to the network's track, trains and stations and more comfortable, faster and reliable journeys for passengers.
"This deal will also see guaranteed and focused investment worth GBP16 billion put into the Underground over the next 15 years and has been shown to offer good value for money when judged against alternative proposals.
"The Health and Safety Executive has still to reach a final judgement on London Underground's revised Railway Safety Case. The position therefore remains that the Tube modernisation plans will only proceed if the safety arrangements are accepted by the independent safety regulator.
"The Government has also confirmed its biggest ever commitment to sustained funding, averaging GBP1 billion in annual grant on offer to Transport for London, over the next eight years.
"I am satisfied that the PPP arrangements are not a privatisation.
London Underground has and will continue to be a service for and owned by the people. This is reflected in the fact that London Underground's infrastructure assets will not move off its balance sheet.
"Under the modernisation plans fares will continue to be the responsibility of the Mayor of London. The modernisation does not require fares to rise faster than inflation." Notes to Editors: The announcement today by London Transport, the parent company of London Underground, was followed by signature of the contracts by representatives of London Underground and the preferred bidding consortia Metronet and Tube Lines.
These agreements provide that the modernisation plans will come into effect when the remaining contractual 'conditions precedent' are satisfied — including those relating to competition clearances under European law and acceptance by the HSE of London Underground's revised railways safety case.
Financial Times
hursday, May 9, 2002
Tortuous negotiations over the proposed part-privatisation of the London Underground passed an important hurdle yesterday as the private sector bidders reached final agreement on the shape of their contracts.
The agreement, known as commercial close, is expected to be followed within two months by "financial close", when the banks backing the bidders give binding guarantees to make the necessary funds available.
However, the final stages of the talks will take place against a background of claims that LU has made big last-minute concessions to the bidders and the banks to get the deal signed.
LU has done its best to prevent public discussion of the confidential negotiations. But critics say the latest drafts contain a slew of important changes, including long delays in renovation schedules and a big reduction in risk transfer.
"These changes represent very substantial value to the private sector and significantly shift risk back to the public sector," says Steven Polan, a US lawyer specialising in public sector contracts hired by Ken Livingstone, the London mayor.
Under the public-private partnership deal proposed for the Tube by Gordon Brown, two private sector consortiums will take responsibility for renovating the Tube's infrastructure over 30 years while LU continues to run the trains.
LU will be handed over to Transport for London, the mayor's transport agency, and the chief opponent of the PPP, once the contracts are signed.
According to TfL officials, the papers have already gone through several drafts.
LU says this is part of the normal process of negotiating complex contracts.
The contracts are being negotiated with two consortia. Metronet, led by Balfour Beatty and Bombardier, is preferred bidder for two groups of lines, and Tube Lines, led by Bechtel of the US, is preferred bidder for the third.
The lead bankers are Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Abbey National, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and the European Investment Bank for Metronet, and Dai-Ichi Kangyo, WestLB, Halifax BoS, Societe Gene rale and the EIB for Tube Lines.
TfL officials claim that Stephen Byers, the transport secretary, mishandled the bidding process, damaging taxpayers' interests.
First, they claim, he allowed LU to select preferred bidders too early in the process, reducing LU's negotiating leverage.
Second, his decision to put Railtrack into insolvency made the banks and infrastructure companies determined to make sure they could not be victims of a similar political decision.
Third, any remaining leverage LU had has been undermined by pressure from Mr Byers to get the deal done.
TfL claims that these weaknesses have allowed the bidders to demand complex changes. TfL claims key changes include:
Big delays in infrastructure improvements. The invitation to tender specified capacity upgrades of 15 to 20 per cent for most lines in the first 7 1/2 years. In the latest version, only one line — the Jubilee — remains within the first period.
The number of stations due for upgrading in the first period has been cut to 61 from 217; and the date by which track infrastructure must be in "good health" has been pushed back from 2017 to 2025.
LU said it saw many changes as improvements.
Important decisions by infracos have been deemed "economic and efficient" — so even if projects go wrong, companies are protected from most of the risk. Examples include a new signalling system planned by Tube Lines on the Jubilee and Northern lines.
The infracos can now say they are unwilling or unable to provide fresh finance, and walk away with compensation of at least .4.6bn and possibly as much as .5.4bn, depending on circumstances.
"The infracos say that this is a remote risk," a senior TfL official noted. "But whether it is a 10 per cent risk or a 90 per cent risk, it is an enormous piece of leverage that the infracos have in terms of the price of the deal for the next period."
Agence France Presse
05/09/2002
Japanese police arrested a university student Thursday on suspicion of injuring dozens of passengers by using a pepper spray in a packed commuter train during the morning peak hour.
The Tokyo metropolitan police arrested Toshihiro Ono, 23, on injury charges as "he released the spray as another man used violence on him after having a small quarrel," a police spokesman said.
Ono had been punched by a passenger after the two bickered over whether the brim of Ono's cap touched the other man, Jiji Press and Kyodo news agencies said.
The police spokesman said Ono released "a kind of self-defence spray similar to a pepper spray used by women on assailants."
He was on a train linking Chiba prefecture, east of Tokyo, and the capital. The other passenger fled the scene.
A total of 26 passengers were treated in hospital for sore eyes and throats but none was reported to be in a serious condition.
Baltic News Service
05/09/2002
Riga's municipal public transport company Tramvaju un Trolejbusu Parvalde (TTP) has announced an open tender for supply of 150 trolley-busses, TTP director said.
TTP is planning to buy in total 100 caterpillar-type trolley cars and 50 ordinary trolley busses by 2008, said Aleksandrs Zalitis.
The applications for the tender will be accepted through July 22.
Zalitis said the trolley-busses will be bought gradually by some 30 units a year and the purchase will be financed by the Riga city council. Price of one caterpillar-type trolley bus is some 200,000 lats (EUR 349,000), said Zalitis but did not reveal approximate estimates about the total financing.
Alongside the purchase of new vehicles the old trolley cars will be written off, said Zalitis.
He said TTP today owns 311 trolley-busses, "of them some are leading their last days". Riga mainly has trolley-busses produced by Czech firm Skoda and also, in small amounts, trolleys produced in Belarus, Poland and Hungary.
The last time a tender on supply of new trolleys was announced in 2000 but Riga then wanted to buy only ten new trolley-busses.
The Irish Times
05/09/2002
Ask estate agents whether the Luas system will affect the value of property along its routes and the chances are they'll immediately refer to the DART precedent.
"It may take until a bit nearer completion stage for people to realise its impact but, like the DART, it will make houses in many areas a lot more saleable," believes Denis Beare of Lisney. "Just as the DART made property in places like Shankill easier to sell, so the Luas will have an effect, particularly in areas like Goatstown, Dundrum, Sandyford and Kilmacud where property prices are still relatively reasonable. In fact, anywhere the Luas stops will benefit."
Not everyone is aware the Luas line A from Tallaght to Abbey Street and line B from St Stephen's Green to Sandyford will be in operation by the end of next year, says Beare.
"They've been talking about it so long that a lot of people don't actually believe it is happening."
Marie Hunt of Gunne is of a similar view. "I wouldn't think the marketing campaign has been huge and there have been so many delays in getting it off the ground, there's going to be a lot of surprise when it's actually built. The confusion over the Sandyford to Cherrywood line and whether parts of Line B are going underground or overground has meant that it's hard for people to know what's actually happening." Any impact in terms of property prices will not be fully evident until people can see the lines in situ, she believes.
"We won't see the net effect till then but I would say there's already a 5 per cent difference in prices in these areas which will rise to 20 per cent once the line is in place. If you look at what happened with the DART, all areas along its routes will benefit."
Hunt works in the commercial division of the company and says that some overseas companies intending to locate in Dublin are waiting until the Luas is up and running.
"They want to see evidence that the service is in operation before they commit. But once it is in place, areas like Smithfield are really going to be boosted, particularly in commercial terms. Once companies move in, then coffee shops and retail outlets will follow.
"From a residential point of view, outlying areas will benefit more in terms of rising values than those close to the city centre. The DART had an overnight impact on values, which have held their premium ."
Not everybody is oblivious to the potential impact of the Luas system on property prices, says Hunt.
"When the Luas plan went up in the offices of Dublin City Council, there was an influx of people coming in to assess the routes. Quite a few people bought up properties in anticipation, which was slightly dangerous, as some of the routes have changed slightly. You would be surprised at the amount of people who think that way, always looking ahead."
Forward planners will reap the benefits, believes Simon Ensor of Sherry FitzGerald. "The shrewd purchaser is going to get in now. They will be looking at the capital appreciation likely to happen as well as quality of life likely when Luas does reach maturation."
There's already some evidence of a strengthening of prices in some areas . "You have to ask whether this would be happening anyway in line with the market, but there seems to be an exaggeration in prices in areas within comfortable striking distance of the Luas," says Ensor.
Some prospective purchasers are taking a short-term view. " There are those who are put off buying close to a proposed Luas station because of the potential noise problems and increase in traffic. On the other hand, some buyers are looking to the future. The day the DART opened there was a significant strength in demand for property," says Ensor.
Ken MacDonald of Hooke & MacDonald says that while prices have not yet been affected significantly, the prospect of the Luas service has led to "brisker sales" particularly in the areas close to the proposed Collins Barracks stop. Areas tipped to benefit most in terms of property values, are Sandyford, Kilmacud and Dundrum on Line B and the more settled parts of Rialto and Drimnagh as well as Smithfield on Line A. Future extensions and additions to the Luas lines will encompass areas like Ballymun, Whitehall, Terenure, Lucan, Ballyfermot and Dolphin's Barn.
The first phase of the EUR4 billion Metro line, scheduled for 2007, is predicted to boost house prices in areas like Swords, Finglas, Blanchardstown and Cabra. According to Eamon Brady of Luas, nine trams out of a fleet of 40 have been delivered here from the tram manufacturer on the continent at a cost of around EUR1 million each. He says that experience has shown that similar light rail systems in the UK, once implemented, affect property prices by an average of 10-15 per cent.
"That is on initial implementation, but once in operation that can go up to a 25 to 30 per cent increase in values. People thought the DART was a white elephant and that it'd never work, but it has been a huge success and directly affected house prices in many areas."
The San Diego Union-Tribune
05/10/2002
No freight trains have barreled between San Diego and the Imperial Valley for 20 years, but service could resume within a couple of years under a deal reached yesterday to repair the neglected inland railroad.
Supporters say the rumble of trains along the 130-mile San Diego & Arizona Eastern Railway will herald an economic boom for both sides of the border. The track starts in San Diego, dips into Mexico and stretches across East County to Plaster City, connecting the region to eastern rail routes.
Private consultant Bill Anderson yesterday estimated the Carrizo Gorge Railway, which now operates the line east of San Ysidro, would initially spend $10 million to $15 million on repairs. He said it is likely to come from private investors who would ship freight in both directions on the rail.
Public funds are possible eventually, but they are wrapped up in some strong political opposition.
Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, repeated his long-standing opposition to the rebuilt rail yesterday, saying the slow-moving trains would be easy targets for robbers and convenient transports for drugs, illegal immigrants and terrorists.
"This project gives border enforcement agencies a new and more complex problem when their resources must be expanded to meet the terrorist threat," Hunter said through a spokesman.
Members of the Metropolitan Transit Development Board, which owns the rail, did not raise any such concerns yesterday. Their decision to award a local company a two-year contract to repair, operate and maintain the railway was unanimous.
Over the next few months, Carrizo Gorge Railway of Lakeside will assess damage to the broken rail near the Imperial County border.
Making the most pressing repairs could cost up to $20 million, according to the most recent engineering study from 1998. The heaviest damage includes two collapsed tunnels and a stretch of track buried up to 8 feet in sand.
The desert-to-San Diego rail line was completed in 1919. It operated until 1983, then was discontinued because of economics, politics and disrepair. >From the start, storms, fires and landslides damaged tunnels, bridges and track.
Modernizing the railway for faster, larger-scale freight transit could cost $100 million, according to the most recent engineering estimates.
Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego, obtained $10 million several years ago for a transit center along the rebuilt rail line. That money has never been allocated. Yesterday Filner said he thought he could free it for future tunnel and trestle renovations to handle larger freight trains.
"The reality is, (the money) is for what I say it's for," he said.
But Hunter's press secretary, Michael Harrison, indicated his boss would continue to oppose the railway, including any release of the $10 million.
Anderson said he felt confident the rail line could be restored with private financing even though no money is set aside for the project now. Carrizo Gorge Railway's contract runs through March 2004, though extensions are possible for 30 years.
A rebuilt eastern rail line would connect local trains to the rest of the United States as well as all of Mexico. It could compete with the Burlington-Northern line that heads north to Los Angeles before veering east.
Proponents say the resulting competitive rail service could lower shipping fees and costs to consumers here. They say it would keep cargo traffic from being shipped along San Diego freeways through Los Angeles, and potentially could capture cargo traffic from the port of Ensenada in Mexico.
San Diego-Imperial Valley Railroad Inc. will continue to provide freight service on part of the railway from San Diego to San Ysidro.
Carrizo Gorge Railway will control everything on the line east of San Ysidro. It has operated the 44-mile Mexican link since July.
Filner said the extended rail line would connect the "cul-de-sacs" of San Diego and Tijuana with the rest of their countries, increasing jobs for both a local maritime industry and the maquiladora industry of Mexico.
While Port District officials say the industries would grow with the need for large cargo shipments created by the railway, a government study two years ago indicated otherwise.
The San Diego Association of Governments found the port couldn't accommodate the amount of grain and containers the railroad could bring in.
Filner is more optimistic. He said if the Carrizo Gorge Railway could rebuild the railway so two trains a day could use it, more trains might be enticed onto the track through private enterprise and government assistance.
"It will show that cooperation between Mexico and the United States can increase a quality of life on both sides of the border," he said. "Not everybody is convinced of that."
(Note: the third paragraph about bankers being loath to stock noncash items says it all. After all, if usage is going down, that will reduce any waiting lines)
American Banker
05/10/2002
The two banks in New York that dispense public transportation cards through automated teller machines say their programs have proven unpopular; one program is being yanked, and another will not be expanded.
ATM manufacturers have been pushing banks to expand the number of noncash items they sell through their machines, but the experiences of HSBC Holdings PLC — which cancelled its program — and of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. — which will not introduce any more card-dispensing machines — do not augur well for such efforts.
Bankers have been loath to stock noncash items in their ATMs. They say efforts to do so tend to lose money, extend waiting lines, and divert attention from the bank's chief functions.
New York's MetroCards, which have magnetic stripes on them, are sold mainly in subway stations. They can also be used (but not bought) on city buses. Currently 51 ATMs dispense MetroCards, and about 3,100 merchants sell them.
HSBC Bank USA inherited its MetroCard-dispensing ATMs, made by Diebold Inc., from Republic National Bank of New York, which it acquired in late 1999.
"We had been monitoring that capability since those ATMs became part of the HSBC networks," said Pamela Plehn, a spokeswoman for HSBC Bank in New York. "What we observed over time was that there was very little usage of the MetroCard feature, and this usage was going down. Clearly this was not a service that our customers or other ATM users valued, so we discontinued it."
Morgan Chase has 20 Diebold ATMs that dispense MetroCards, and for the moment those machines will keep offering the cards.
"I wouldn't say that the demand is high, but those ATMs that do offer MetroCards are located close to transportation hubs," said Kristen Batteria, a company spokeswoman. "I don't believe we will expand the number of ATMs that offer MetroCards."
Only two other companies — a thrift and a drugstore chain — dispense MetroCards through ATMs.
None of this has stopped Fujitsu Transaction Solutions Inc., a subsidiary of Fujitsu Ltd. in Tokyo, from touting the fact that its new Series 8000 ATMs have been certified by the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York to dispense the cards.
Marc Moskowitz, a financial systems sales executive at Fujitsu Transaction Solutions — whose machines are not being used yet to dispense MetroCards — said poor marketing caused the lukewarm response by customers.
"The banks that are offering the added value to the consumer need to get the message out to the consumer that this service is available," he said. "We're specifically focused on New York City, but any major metropolitan city with mass transit set up would be interested in offering this service to their customers."
The MetroCard's size and shape presented a number of problems in developing the terminals, Mr. Moskowitz said.
"We had to make some modifications to our bill-dispenser unit, as well as our cassettes, in order to dispense something outside of the size of a note," he said. (The card is roughly the same size as a credit card, but thinner.) "There's not a 90-degree angle on all corners, which makes it even more challenging. There's a dog ear on one of the corners, and a hole that's punched through the card."
The cut corner is meant to help people who are visually impaired slide the card into a turnstile reader, and the hole helps the fare box on buses grab the card and pull it down to read the magnetic strip.
Fujitsu developed a separate cassette for MetroCards. The card comes out of the same dispenser as cash, but in the center of a perforated sheet, Mr. Moskowitz said.
Michael DeVitto, the MTA's head of MetroCard extended sales, said that the agency is not actively promoting ATM-dispensed MetroCards, but "anything that can increase convenience for our customers, we're all for," Mr. DeVitto said.
Business Wire
05/10/2002
Encompass Services Corporation (NYSE:ESR), the premier provider of facilities systems and solutions in the United States, today announced that it has been awarded a $54.7-million track and signal improvement project for SEPTA, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority that services Philadelphia and five surrounding areas.
About 250 commuter and freight trains travel the 6.5-mile section of track associated with this project on a daily basis from the Wayne Junction Station to the Glenside Station. The improvements will allow more trains to travel at higher speeds through this important transportation artery.
"As well as being the home of the Liberty Bell, Philadelphia is also home to American passenger railroading, with some existing lines carrying passengers over rights-of-way that are well over a century old," said SEPTA General Manager, Faye Moore. "We are pleased that Encompass will be helping us keep our system safe, efficient and reliable."
"We are proud to be awarded this important transportation project," added Joe Ivey, president and chief executive officer of Encompass. "The requirements for the transit improvements were extensive, but the depth and range of our expertise continues to bolster our reputation nationally as a key provider of infrastructure services."
The company's unit in Lititz, Pa., will begin the 42-month project later this month.
Project highlights include:
Designing, furnishing and installing the track and wayside signal system, track switches, highway crossings, and interfaces with the existing signaling system
Installing a new bi-directional signal system with both cab and wayside signals
Installing a new fiber optic communication system — Modifying and renewing the overhead catenary system at Newtown Junction, Tabor, Jenkintown and Carmel
Demolishing Logan Station and expanding Jenkintown Station In addition to this project, Encompass is currently finishing SEPTA's Girard Avenue Light Rail Infrastructure Renewal project. The project should be complete by June.
PR Newswire
05/10/2002
Public hearings will be held on May 14 on the proposed Fiscal Year 2003 SEPTA capital budget.
The proposed budget calls for spending $465.5 million on a wide range of capital improvements to rehabilitate parts of the transit system, purchase new vehicles, and expand into new services.
The budget also incorporates SEPTA efforts to continue to rebuild ridership by meeting the region's changing transportation needs.
The following projects are included in the SEPTA Fiscal Year 2003 capital plan:
The replacement of the Market-Frankford Line 69th Street Shop and rehabilitation of the rail yard.
The phased reconstruction of the Market Street portion of the Market-Frankford Line and construction of the Frankford Transportation Center.
The replacement of the Broad Street subway signal system and the construction of an automatic train control system for the Market- Frankford Line.
The rehabilitation of Suburban Station.
Station accessibility improvements on the Market-Frankford Line at 8th Street and 13th Street Stations and at the subway-surface trolley Juniper Street Station.
Engineering phases for the Schuylkill Valley MetroRail and the Cross County Metro.
Escalator/elevator replacement and modernization program.
The purchase of 100 low-floor 40-foot buses.
The acquisition of regional rail cars.
The acquisition of paratransit vehicles.
(NOTE: now the truth comes out about the recently passes Colorado transportation bill: it will be sold to the public as providing improvements to public transportation, such as additional light rail lines.)
Denver Post
05/10/2002
Gov. Bill Owens says the transportation bill passed in the final minutes of the 2002 General Assembly will pump $15 billion into roads and transit projects over the next 20 years.
It's an estimate based on long-term forecasts of the transfer of $11 billion in sales-tax revenues to the Colorado Department of Transportation over two decades, and $4 billion in new toll roads constructed in the same period.
The $11 billion in tax revenues may or may not materialize, since it's difficult to predict sales tax revenues over 20 years. But the creation of a toll-road authority could turn many motorists into pay-as-you-go commuters.
Even before the bill passed, CDOT had interest from private contractors in building toll roads along the Interstate 70 corridor from Interstate 25 to Pen(TILDE)a Boulevard, and along C-470 from Wadsworth Boulevard to I-25.
The bill was a compromise hammered out by Owens, a Republican, and Colorado Senate President Stan Matsunaka, D-Loveland.
Besides giving Owens the long-term source of highway money, the measure gave the Regional Transportation District the right to ask voters in seven-county metro Denver to raise RTD's sales tax in the area from 0.6 percent to 1 percent, or a penny on every dollar spent.
Matsunaka had championed the mass-transit provisions of the bill, including RTD's proposed tax.
The district would need the signatures of about 48,000 Denver-area voters to put it on the ballot.
With a tax increase, RTD aims to raise as much as $4.5 billion to build at least six more light-rail and commuter-rail lines in the Denver area. It calls that program FasTracks.
Cal Marsella, RTD's general manager, said he and the district board have not decided whether to put the tax increase before voters this November or next.
"We could easily get the signatures" for a vote this year, Marsella said, but RTD needs to analyze whether it would be better to wait until 2003.
"The conventional wisdom is that everybody's looking past 2002" to a vote next year, said Tamra Ward, spokeswoman for the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, which helped promote the legislative compromise.
The Transit Alliance also thinks 2003 might be a better choice.
"It will give us more time to prepare," said associate director Kelly Nordini.
Before Wednesday's vote, RTD critic and Independence Institute president Jon Caldara had warned that Owens, with his embrace of RTD's right to seek a tax increase, was in danger of violating prior pledges to fight all new taxes.
Owens spokesman Dan Hopkins said the governor's backing of the transportation bill was consistent with his opposition to new taxes.
"As a conservative, the governor has always supported the use of citizens' initiatives," Hopkins said. "That is the very heart of TABOR (the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights), allowing citizens to vote and decide."
Caldara said he hadn't decided whether to lead an active fight against the proposed tax hike.
One uncertainty is how the transportation bill will affect highway spending in Colorado over the next three years. The sluggish Colorado economy is expected to slow the flow of sales-tax proceeds to CDOT for at least three years.
Next week, the Colorado Transportation Commission is expected to decide if the state will be able to sell bonds on Wall Street in the next 30 days to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for short-term highway construction needs. If CDOT can't go to the bond market this year, it could force cuts of about $160 million in highway maintenance, road-surfacing and rest-area projects in Colorado over the next year or so, officials say.
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
05/10/2002
For months, New York officials have claimed that rebuilding the World Trade Center site and the surrounding area will be the biggest public works project in America, aimed at nothing less than creating "the world's first 21st century city. " With the last of the trade center wreckage scheduled to be gone by June 1, pressure is growing on public officials to put some meat on those claims by settling on a redevelopment plan and hiring architects and contractors to begin the work.
As a study in urban planning, the task of reweaving the ragged urban fabric of lower Manhattan ranks as one of the biggest challenges facing an American city. The project also carries a heavy burden of symbolic importance because the trade center was the site of the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history.
"History is really looking down on us," Daniel Doctoroff, New York's deputy mayor for economic development, said recently at a meeting of local business, university, and governmental agencies. "We have a responsibility to work together. We are not building lower Manhattan for the next five years but for the next 100 years. " If done properly, planning experts say, rebuilding the 16-acre site could salvage the sagging economy of Manhattan's southernmost neighborhood and repair the transportation and planning mistakes of the past, while also incorporating a memorial to the 2,800 people who were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Many details remain to be worked out by July 1, the deadline for initial plans set last week by the two government agencies overseeing the project, but at least one thing seems certain: the Twin Towers will not be rebuilt.
"It's very clear that virtually nobody wants to see two 110-story towers built in a windswept plaza," said Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, a New York metropolitan area planning group.
"There needs to be a much broader mix than what we had before, with culture, entertainment, and possibly residential development on or in the vicinity of the site. " Even before the terrorist attacks, the dense cluster of office towers in lower Manhattan faced increasing competition from midtown Manhattan and from suburban office centers in New Jersey and Long Island. After the attacks, several companies announced they were moving some or all of their operations out of lower Manhattan, the traditional center of the city's financial industry, including the New York Stock Exchange.
According to a recent report on how the area should be rebuilt, one of the most critical challenges in stanching lower Manhattan's hemorrhage of jobs is to improve the neighborhood's transportation network.
The collapse of the Twin Towers wrecked two subway stations and a commuter train station in a lower level of the trade center. The Civic Alliance to Rebuild Downtown New York, a group of about 85 business, university, government, and non-profit groups, concluded in its report that repairing those stations will give transportation agencies the chance to bring order to the tangle of rapid transit lines in lower Manhattan. Those lines are a legacy of the early 20th century, when competing subway companies built separate but overlapping services.
"In many ways, it's a 100-year-old transportation system," Yaro said.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the trade center site, has already proposed a huge underground concourse that would connect its PATH commuter service from New Jersey with the subways, creating a rival to Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station in midtown.
That could make getting to lower Manhattan easier, but another challenge facing the city is making the cramped, crowded financial district a more inviting place for workers, shoppers, and the increasingly large residential population.
To revitalize street life, the Civic Alliance study recommends reopening the five streets that were closed off in the late 1960s to create a "superblock" for the trade center. And, to tie the large residential neighborhood of Battery Park City to the financial district, a busy arterial street could become an underground thoroughfare with parks and walkways on top. In a normally fractured and argumentative city, these ideas have gained surprisingly wide acceptance.
"Who could imagine that almost everyone agrees the streets should be restored? " said Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker magazine, in a speech last week to more than 500 planners, politicians, and architects. "This is an opportunity to fix something that has been broken for a long time. " The total cost of rebuilding has not been estimated, but the transportation projects alone add up to $7.3 billion. Officials say that some of the work could be paid for with the $21.5 billion that President Bush promised the city to aid in recovery efforts. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week that the state would probably ask Congress for more money.
Yaro said the study provided a template for turning an area that has long resembled a ghost town at nights and on weekends into a vibrant mixed-use neighborhood with a large residential population that coexists with big and small businesses and cultural attractions. Such a mix would constitute "the world's first 21st century city," he said.
But the recent push to finalize redevelopment plans showed that advocates will have to weather the rough and tumble of the real world to realize their grand schemes. The July 1 deadline was announced soon after New York Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo criticized Gov. George Pataki for inaction in pushing forward with rebuilding.
While plans for commercial development are being formulated with a sense of urgency, victims^ family members are saying that their wishes for creating an appropriate memorial are being overlooked. In a series of workshops with family members and other New Yorkers, some ideas for a memorial have already been put forward, including a museum, an arrangement of some of the trade center ruins, and a wall where the victim's names would be recorded.
But creating the Oklahoma City bombing memorial took five years and many family members want to see the entire trade center site preserved as a combination memorial-cemetery for their loved ones.
"My son was 9 pounds when he was born," said Diane Horning, whose son Matthew, 26, was killed at the trade center. "I've been returned less than 2 pounds. I don't have my son back. If you build a performing-arts center there, you'll be dancing on his grave. If you build homes, you'll be eating dinner on my son's grave. "
The San Francisco Chronicle
05/10/2002
A decades-old dream of Marin County officials — to open old railroad tunnels and create an unprecedented bicycle freeway — got a huge boost Thursday when the California Transportation Commission put $3 million toward the project.
The money, combined with $1.6 million already raised, almost assures that at least one of the six closed tunnels in the county will be opened for bicycles, pedestrians and, possibly, commuter rail, officials said.
The plan is to spend $6 million fixing the partially collapsed Cal Park Hill tunnel between San Rafael and Larkspur and build a paved, landscaped bicycle-pedestrian pathway. Once opened, the bicycle commute between the two cities would take five minutes instead of 20 minutes, according to bicycle advocates.
"This is a huge step forward for the idea of Marin as a national model for alternative transportation," said Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey. "The cities of Larkspur, San Rafael and the county have been on record for 27 years wanting this safe route."
The proposal would leave the old tracks inside the tunnel in the event county voters ever approve a sales tax measure to pay for commuter rail.
Golden Gate Bridge district officials are keenly interested in the project because it would improve access to the Larkspur ferry terminal, which has limited parking.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, and Senator Barbara Boxer are expecting to raise the remaining $1.4 million through federal grants and other resources.
Debbie Hubsmith, the executive director of the Marin County bicycle coalition, said opening the tunnel would benefit not only bikers, but roller bladers, scooter riders, joggers and walkers, who will have to travel only about a mile on flat ground.
"We're incredibly excited that this is going forward," Hubsmith said. "It is an incredible boost forward, and it shows that the North-South bikeway is of statewide importance."
The abandoned tunnel is a key element in a proposed trail system that would connect areas separated by hills and mountains along the old Northwestern Pacific Railroad system. Dating back to the 1860s, the railroad corridor includes six tunnels in Marin County, some paralleling Highway 101. The tunnels were closed after several cave-ins and fires, mostly caused by transients, after freight trains stopped running in the early 1970s.
Kinsey said he expected construction to begin within two years.
Friday May 10, 2002
A four-carriage passenger train from London to King's Lynn today derailed in Potters Bar in Hertfordshire.
The accident happened less than five miles from Hatfield where a GNER express came off the tracks in October 2000, claiming four lives. Eyewitnesses said the final carriage had hit hit a platform at Potters Bar station, and there are reports that part of the train had jackknifed off a bridge that spans the road, Darkes Lane, just outside the station.
Cars may have also been trapped under the train as it came off the bridge.
Hertfordshire Police said in a statement there are unconfirmed reports of fatalities.
"This is being treated as a major incident and we are responding as a matter of urgency," it said.
An eyewitness, Nicholas Anastasiou, told Sky News that the train had hit the bridge and exploded.
"There were bits of train everywhere in the carpark," he said. "People are quite badly hurt. There are loads of hurt people here. "There are people running around trying to help people but I don't think they can do much because it's quite bad. All I can see is the last carriage."
Hertfordshire Fire Brigade said there were reports that some passengers were trapped on the derailed train.
Several ambulances were sent to the scene. The Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Ambulance Service asked the neighbouring London Ambulance Service for help in coping with the emergency.
The train was the 12.45pm West Anglia Great Northern service.
The Daily Telegraph
Friday, May 10, 2002
THE part-privatisation of the Tube was yesterday branded "a licence to print money" after Amey, one of the contractors, said it expected to make an annual return of 20pc on its investment over the next 30 years.
Amey, which is part of the Tube Lines consortium alongside Jarvis and Bechtel which will maintain and modernise the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly (JNP) lines, said the three partners would each invest .60m equity. They will also raise an initial .2 billion of bank debt in the markets.
At 20pc, each of the three companies would make a .360m return on its equity over the lifetime of the contract.
This could be boosted by performance bonuses.
In addition, Amey and Jarvis will transfer a total of 30 senior staff to Tube Lines. Amey said it would receive an initial .6m a year for seconding staff, implying .400,000 per employee — well above typical market rates.
Moreover, all three companies stand to make further profits from contracts awarded by Tube Lines, with the annual maintenance bill alone worth .200m a year.
Roger Shire, spokesman for Metronet, which won the contracts for the Bakerloo, Central and Victoria Lines, as well as the sub-surface routes, such as the Circle and District, said it expected 10pc-20pc returns on its total .350m equity stake. Metronet's five members are Balfour Beatty, WS Atkins, Thames Water, Seeboard and Bombardier Transportation.
Amey shares, which fell 17pc in March to 271.5p after it restated its accounts, rose 26 to 238.5p, while Jarvis was 15 higher at 520p, Balfour Beatty 7 ahead at 268.75p and WS Atkins up 4 at 590p.
A spokesman for Transport for London (TfL), which will run the part-privatised Tube under Mayor Ken Livingstone, said: "These contracts are a licence to print money. They are far in excess of normal returns of 6pc to 8pc, while there is virtually no transfer of risk."
A spokesman for Stephen Byers' transport department countered: "If the companies miss their targets, they face big financial penalties and all their equity is at risk."
TfL sources disagreed, however. One said: "There's a .300m contingency fund on the JNP sheltering the equity, which is paid by the taxpayer." He added that, should Tube Lines not need it, it effectively received it as performance bonuses.
He added that the Government had also guaranteed to repay 95pc of any losses incurred by the lending banks.
"There is hardly any private capital at risk," he said, "while the performance targets have got progressively weaker." Over the first 7.5 years of the part-privatisation, which has so far cost more than .100m in consultancy and reorganisation fees, the taxpayer will pay about .7 billion towards running the Tube. A further .5.5 billion will come from the fare box, while .4.5 billion will be provided by the banks.
Brian Staples, Amey's chief executive, said: "The returns in this project are not excessive by any means. We are investing .60m in this and a lot of effort and people. There's this illusion going round that money doesn't cost anything, that this money's not at risk, but it is." Amey's cost of capital is 8pc-9pc. Amey expects Tube Lines' annual turnover in the early years of the contract to be around .500m-.600m, with a first-year profit before tax of .18m.
Paris Moayedi, chief executive of Jarvis, said part-privatisation provided the disciplines to ensure there would be no repeat of the .1.4 billion cost overrun on the Jubilee Line Extension. "Our return is proportionate to the risks we are taking," he said.
Evening Standard
Friday, May 10, 2002
City investors are calculating today just how many billions the private sector will make from the part-privatisation of the Tube after the first details of contracts were revealed.
The figures emerged after troubled construction and engineering group Amey, part of the Tube Lines consortium taking over the Jubilee, Northern and Piccadilly lines, broke ranks with colleagues yesterday to give the City details of just how lucrative its contract will be.
Following the disclosure, London's transport commissioner Bob Kiley branded the Underground deals signed on Wednesday by Transport Secretary Stephen Byers "obscene". The contracts rushed through by Mr Byers have been shown to be far more favourable to the consortiums than was first thought.
Figures show that Bechtel, the US project management giant, Amey, and maintenance group Jarvis, who make up Tube Lines, expect to earn at least .1.1 billion — substantially more if targets are met — over the 30-year life of their concession, a huge return in City terms on their joint investment of .180 million. It equates to basic profits of about .300 million each for the companies.
They also expect to get paid another .1 billion in "consultancy fees" for seconding key engineering staff and services to Tube Lines projects.
In addition, Tube Lines has about .7.5 billion of construction and maintenance projects up for grabs. While it says these will go out to competitive tender, Amey and Jarvis expect to land a significant proportion.
At Metronet, which will run the rest of the Underground, the returns will be even bigger. Its five partners — Canadian train maker Bombardier, construction giant Balfour Beatty, consulting engineer WS Atkins and the utilities Thames Water and Seeboard — will see returns of .420 million from their injections of .70million apiece. That means a basic profit of more than .1.7 billion between the five partners over the 30 years.
Bombardier has said it expects to get paid in excess of .3 billion for delivering nearly 1,800 new Tube train carriages. Unlike Tube Lines, however, Metronet's four other partners are guaranteed all the construction and investment contracts.
These are worth .7 billion in the first sevenanda-half years and more than double that over the life of the concession.
The lion's share — up to .6 billion — will go to Balfour Beatty which has the contracts to replace the tracks, while it and the three other companies will divide the rest of the civil engineering work.
Mr Kiley said: "It is no surprise to me the private-sector bidders for the Underground PPP are now crowing about the profits they expect to make, since this PPP's annual rates of return are truly obscene."
Transport for London thinks profits could be more than 50 per cent but Metronet says they will be between 10 and 20 per cent.
(NOTE: not just a Philadelphia problem)
Evening News (Edinburgh)
05/10/2002
A MAN has been jailed for three months for urinating on a city bus.
Passengers on the number 3 bus heading from Edinburgh towards Dalkeith were appalled to see Paul Dillon urinate on a seat.
"The other passengers were absolutely horrified," prosecutor Duncan MacNeill told Edinburgh Sheriff Court.
The bus driver stopped his vehicle and approached Dillon, 29, who was very drunk, and told him to leave. But Dillon refused and began to swear aggressively.
A second bus pulled up alongside and driver Robert Ord offered assistance. The drunk man finally left the bus but continued to threaten the bus drivers and passengers.
Defence agent Carol Gowans said Dillon was already serving a 12-month sentence for shoplifting. He had committed a series of offences last July after his partner left with their young son. He turned to drink, but now regretted his behaviour.
Today, Dillon, of Laurelbank, Dalkeith, Midlothian, pleaded guilty to urinating on the bus and causing a breach of the peace on July 7, last year.
UK Newsquest Regional Press
This is Local London
05/10/2002
A Kingston woman will be the voice of local commuters after joining a new panel set up by South West Trains (SWT) to give passengers a greater say in how the railway is running.
Vanessa Wilkins is one of eight panel members selected from around the SWT area who will meet six times a year to comment on all aspects of company's operations, including timetables, fares, tickets and general conditions.
The panel will also recommend improvements which it feels would benefit passengers. Its view will go directly to the SWT board.
Ms Wilkins, a solicitor, said she decided to join the panel because she was unhappy with the service.
"I wanted to help in some way, to improve the service in some way, for commuters in particular. I felt quite passionate about changing things."
The 29-year-old, who has lived in Kingston for two and a half years and commutes daily into Waterloo, said: "I was on crutches for a while and I found it very difficult using the trains."
The panel has met three times so far and Ms Wilkins said that she had already made suggestions about establishing links with local rail users groups to ensure that their concerns were taken seriously, and communicating more with passengers, especially when there are delays in the service.
"I find them (the meetings) extremely useful and I've been pleasantly surprised," said Ms Wilkins. "My fellow panel members are very motivated. We have very good discussions about the various issues.
"The company is putting an awful lot into the passenger panel. We are trying to come up with practical solutions."
Sir Alan Greengross, a SWT non-executive director and chairman of the passengers panel said: "The panel gives passengers an official voice in the boardroom."
Belfast Telegraph
05/10/2002
RAIL passengers in Northern Ireland were faced with disruptions to their journeys almost one day out of every four, according to statistics released by Translink today.
Last year alone 89 of the 365 days were affected due to bomb alerts and, while many turned out to be hoaxes, the disruption caused to both passengers and Translink is immeasurable.
The worst single security alert began at Lurgan on Sunday, February 25, and lasted a staggering 13 days. The alert, in which a bomb was discovered by security forces, affected 170 Enterprise services, 810 local services and 38 freight journeys.
In addition, statistics reveal that a total of 694 cross-border services were disrupted due to security alerts and bomb scares last year, with a further 2, 247 internal and local trains affected.
A majority of the alerts centred on lines in the Lurgan, Moira and Portadown areas, which had a knock-on effect for the Enterprise service.
Last week an alert on the line at Lurgan once again forced Translink to bus cross-border passengers from Belfast to Newry. Internal services were also disrupted, prompting the transport company's head of marketing, Ciaran Rogan, to call on support from local communities to ensure services keep running.
Mr Rogan said it was "impossible within the existing resources" to have buses and drivers on stand-by to deal with continued incidents.
He added: "I believe the public appreciate that security alerts are entirely outside our normal control.
"We understand and share the frustrations of our customers and hope that those responsible for causing the alerts will not hinder the commitment and resilience of our staff to ensure an effective public transport service is provided for everyone."
Reacting to the latest statistics, Maeve Bell, director of the General Consumer Council, said: "Over 3,000 local and cross-border train services were affected last year. One in every four days was disrupted.
"This is an appalling inconvenience to passengers who are trying to go about their business. Public transport has suffered enough."
by Dick Murray and Valentine Low
At least six people were killed this afternoon when a derailed passenger train smashed into a station platform and railway bridge at Potters Bar.
Commuters waiting on the platform ran for their lives as the carriages careered towards them.
The death toll was expected to rise with reports of up to 15 critically injured and 70 other casualties.
The 12.45 King's Cross to King's Lynn train was about 10 minutes out of London when the accident happened.
The last three of the train's four carriages came off the track at high speed and hit the bridge, raining debris onto traffic below. The rear carriage then scythed across the platform, demolishing the waiting room. It ended up jammed across both platforms under the canopy at the station in the Hertfordsire town. The front portion of the train ended up half a mile north of the station. There were reports that it was left pointing in the air.
It was not known how many of the dead and injured had been on the train or waiting on the platform.
One witness said "Anyone standing on the platform would certainly have been killed."
The train driver, Andy Gibson, survived and was able to give "vital assistance" to passengers.
The crash was just three stops from Hatfield where four people died in October 2000.
The "Cambridge Cruiser" is believed to have hit the platform at anything up to 80mph. The cause is not yet known.
One man described how he and other people standing on the platform fled as they saw the train hurtling at them.
Personal trainer Andy Perversi, 21, then ran back and tried to smash through carriage windows to get at trapped passengers. He said one of the victims died in his arms just minutes after the smash.
Mr Perversi was waiting to travel into Moorgate when he heard a huge bang and turned to see a train carriage careering across the platform. Still shaking with shock he said that as he tried to comfort a woman in her 20s he could feel her pulse fading.
He said: "I still have her blood on my jeans." He added: "I was on platform one. I was at the top of the ramp where you come onto the platform and I heard a loud noise and I spun round.
"There was a carriage of the train coming towards the platform scraping along the floor and heading towards other people on the platform. There was a lot of noise and smoke and I could hear people screaming. Me and other people on the platform, about 23 of us, ran away to stop the carriage hitting us. When it came to a stop I put my stuff down and ran to the end where I could see what was happening. I was one of the first on the scene along with a police officer.
"A police officer came and asked everyone to move away. Me and one other man jumped off the platform and onto the rails. The carriage was on its side so we were punching the glass of the windows to try to get people out of there.
"People were screaming for help they were terrified. I could see a body on the rail trapped under the carriage.
"There were people lying all over the rails, arms and legs were everywhere. I saw one person, a woman, I don't know how old she was who was missing the top of her head. It was the whole of the top of her head which just wasn't there. Someone came quickly and covered her up. I was running around to see if there was anyone else there I could help. I do first aid at work so I was checking people and taking people's pulses."
The crash happened where a bridge carries trains over a road. There are four lines, two fast and two slow.
Witness Sam Irving said; "There were people lying on the track and members of the public were comforting them. Some had terrible wounds. People kept calm, there were no screams. All the local shops brought water and blankets.
"I saw at least two people who were dead. There was a lady who had blood pouring from her neck."
Four or five cars and a dustcart nearby were also hit by debris.
Marion Oliver ran out of the shop where she works to be confronted by a scene of devastation. As more of the metal bridge fell onto cars and pedestrians on the road below, the shop worker spotted an old lady crushed under the debris.
She said: "We heard the crash and went rushing out. Just as we did more of the bridge collapsed. The rubble was falling onto the cars below. They had all stopped.
"It's an extremely busy road. There was an old lady caught under the bridge. By the amount of rubble her injuries must be serious."
Investigators at the scene were studying the tracks and wreckage. There had been flooding of the tracks in the immediate area.
There has also been evidence of corner gauge cracking — deterioration of the rails — which was the cause of the Hatfield derailment, according to rail sources.
An inspection of the track is understood to have been made yesterday though it is not known if any remedial work was done. Chris Underhill, an area sales manager for the Evening Standard, saw the wreckage. He said: "There is a train straddling the platform. It has mounted the platform, and is wedged between the platform and the roof.
"There are lots and lots of ambulances on the scene, and the air ambulance has arrived."
Commuters were warned to expect massive disruption tonight out of King's Cross with many thousands of suffering delays. Emergency bus services are being arranged. The East Coast main line is completely blocked.
A spokeswoman for Barnet General Hospital said; "We have sent a team of surgeons and doctors to the crash scene and a triage centre is now fully operational.
"It is impossible at this stage to know how many of those being treated will eventually require full hospital treatment. But Barnet General has been told to clear the decks and Chase Farm Hospital is also on full standby for backup assistance if required."
Another witness described the scene as "completely chaotic." He said: "The train is lying half on its side, wedged between the platform floor and roof.
"Police have closed off both sides of the road and there have been at least four or five air ambulance landings. You can see people being carried away on stretchers and people are receiving medical treatment in Sainsbury's, which is right next to the station."
A spokeswoman for Sainsbury's said: "We have closed the store and all the staff are helping in any way they can."
Two Accident and Emergency consultants and three doctors and three paramedics from the air ambulance service at the Royal London have been flown to the scene of the accident.
A spokesperson for the Royal London said: "They will treat people on the scene and they will also perform triage on the ground. They have all the equipment they need. They are all doctors experienced at dealing with people in train crashes.
"They are the teams who have been involved in the other major train crashes in and around London. They will either treat people on the scene or send them to local hospitals. There is a possibility they will send people back by air ambulance to the Royal London Hospital."
The London Ambulance Service sent a helicopter air ambulance and 11 ambulances to the scene.