http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/02/16/nashville-considers-light-rail-but-the-citys-unfit-for-it/

CDC guy, as you’ve said, the key is to get better bus service out of the deal. More importantly, it needs to be the first and most visible improvement. That’s what I liked about Phoenix’s investment in transit. It let the buses find their ridership legs, then added in light rail once that base was established.

Commuter rail may be a cheap way to get rail, but you’ll get what you pay for. And you’ll pay for it.

Read Houston transit advocate Christof Speiler’s excellent piece, “8 Habits of Highly Successful Commuter Rail Lines.”
http://www.ctchouston.org/intermodality/2007/07/25/8-habits-of-highly-successful-commuter-rail-lines/

Indianapolis doesn’t really need commuter rail as it’s envisioned on the map. IndyConnect can accomplish the same things with an express bus network.

Otherwise, Indiana should think of intercity rail suitable for commuters. Build an all-day service, but take it beyond the commuting sphere to the university towns of Lafaeyette and Muncie.

It’s not a far-fetched idea. Utah has one commuter rail line between Salt Lake City and Ogden, but it runs 30 minutes bidirectionally weekdays, and for 20 hours!

That line would serve an already-dense area that was laid out with streetcar service, and which attracts people interested in urban living…people like me who avoid the bus because the service is so bad.

Its essential features are: upgrade bus LOS by increasing frequency to 10-20 minutes; strengthen crosstown routes away from the downtown core; add suburban express routes; add light rail and commuter rail elements; pay for it all with a 0.35-0.5% sales tax as well as reallocation of some highway dollars.

While rail is the sexy element, the real keys to success are funding and better bus service.

I think we’ve all read it here first. Glad to know that the national experts agree with thinking Hoosiers.

http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/02/10/major-transportation-plan-for-indianapolis-could-link-region-with-light-and-commuter-rail/

The rule of transfers is that they work the best with the fewest interchanges possible. Small cities have hub-and-spoke networks with a central transfer point because there are either no places to transfer elsewhere or, more likely, it’s hard to coordinate a stop at every intersection.

The few cities with high-frequency services (New York, L.A., Chicago, San Francisco) can allow for transfers anywhere on the grid because the services run so often that the transfer penalties are minimal and it becomes harder to time-transfer frequent services.

In the case of Indianapolis or David Parvo’s Austin, IndyGo and Capital Metro provide low-frequency services, so central transfer points are necessary. Grid transfers when they can’t be coordinated are particularly unpleasant for services that don’t run often.

Central does not necessarily mean the main stop downtown. Central means buses meeting at a central stop anywhere in the city. If the transit agencies can run a sustainable “crosstown” line (one that avoids downtown), then they should implement them by all means.

The population in New York isn’t very dispersed, either. Its weighted population density is much higher than this of most of its European peer cities; there are few European cities with any quarter as dense as the average census tract in Greater New York. The overall urban area population density is low because on the urban fringes people live on mansions, but if you weight density by population and not area, New York suddenly doesn’t look so dispersed.

Washington’s problem is different. It doesn’t even play at the level of second-tier European cities. Its transit mode share is lower than this of low-density Sunbelt-style cities in Canada and Australia, where gas taxes are barely higher than in the US.

WRT the NYC to small cities in Europe comparison, what matters really is the dispersion of population on a metropolitan basis. As long as you have that in North America and especially in the U.S., and not in “small cities” in France and Germany, not to mention super high fees to (1) become licensed to drive; (2) for car registrations; (3) excise taxes on car purchases; and (4) high gasoline excise taxes in Europe and not in the U.S., you are never going to have as high rates of transit ridership.

Frankly, considering all the incentives and policies that promote automobility in the U.S., that some cities hold their own in terms of transit use is really quite remarkable.

As far as DC proper goes, it’s because of the overlaying of a subway system on a relatively dense street grid and employment center at the core that mass transit works. On a metropolitan basis even so, the car is king. But for people who make decisions that leverage the spatial conditions and transit access, it works out quite well.