http://cincystreetcar.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/new-streetcar-route-map/

i’ve got plenty of others, but this one is the most complete. it grew out of an “alternative histories” thought experiment, presupposing that Indy’s original streetcar system was never dismantled but maintained and expanded as the primary mode of public transit in the city. as such, this map uses several “streets” that don’t really exist anymore, having been paved over with highways or development. this map is pure fantasy, but i’ve also developed several i think could work in real life, using Light Rail:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=110174405593587366087.0004469ce76fe7261eb7e&t=k&z=10

enjoy

- The city had reserved rights of way for future expansion in the 1960s, before it even knew it was going to build light rail. Once it chose light rail over BRT and freeways, it was easy to build the system.

- The city upzoned near stations and reconfigured the bus system to act as light rail feeders. It avoided building freeways to compete with light rail, and restricted the availability of parking downtown instead of mandating free parking as US Sunbelt cities do.

- To minimize construction cost, the C-Train is as at-grade as possible, and runs in a transit mall downtown instead of underground (though there are now plans for undergrounding because of the high ridership).

In addition, they don’t say so, but I think one of the key factors for high ridership is the compact nature of the C-Train. The system doesn’t extend very far into the suburbs, instead serving the closer urban neighborhoods, where TOD is more feasible. You can see the difference on Radical Cartography.

I was intrigued by Alon’s comments about how ridership was high in some cities without compactness; citing Calgary among others.

Perhaps sometime we can have a more focused discussion of this as it strikes me as a strategic issue for getting out from under transit’s present pile of rocks: government’s are broke, their monopoly has made capital improvements astronomically expensive and the private sector has high obstacles from entering.

What does Calgary or some other low-density success story do that can be specific next-steps to increase ridership ?

But as a key lesson for every major Midwestern city…. The CTA is an excellent example of how difficult it is to update a system after it has been built; especially so when government lets its planning lapse.

The CTA has been trying to modify the hub-and-spoke for over a decade with an Ashland corridor that could connect 4 METRA lines and 4 CTA lines. Because of local politics (a weak planning authority), CTA’s poor management (fiscal and marketing) and the larger economic forces that mitigate against transit, progress on achieving inter-connectivity on the Ashland corridor is embarrassingly slow.

If this corridor had been part of the CTA’s early post-war priorities and we have paid less homage to expressways, we today would have the benefits of an excellent Ashland corridor and Chicago’s inner-city would not have declined as much and its current rebound would have been more efficient.

We are attempting not to repeat history with CMAP’s 2040 Plan and I encourage all Chicagoland citizens to add their comments. To catch up on the Plan’s process, go to the home page of http://www.cmap.illinois.gov and click on one of its top stories “The Preferred Scenario.” This is a draft of the second-to-last phase before the 30 year Plan is approved in 2010. I am on its Citizen Advisory Committee, so feel free to send me your comments. (robertmunson@earthlink.net). A revision for public comment on the web should be available in January. So beat the holiday rush and send me your comments now.