urbanSTL

What impact could the Illinois budget crisis have on transit in the state? According to bi-state, Illinois provides $1m to the transit system, but St. Clair puts in $53m. It seems easy to imagine the $1m disappearing but can St. Clair redirect their funds elsewhere in emergency fiscal years? If so, would Transit be suspended in Metro East? What impact does the budget have on CTA?



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Whatever happened to live tracking of Metro buses? I remember you could do this with the app at one point, and then the function disappeared.

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Jul 09, 2017

Whatever happened to live tracking of Metro buses? I remember you could do this with the app at one point, and then the function disappeared.

I never used the garbage metro app for that - but real-time (live tracking) capabilities are still in Google maps. Never understood why individuals transit agencies all needed their own separate apps. Makes it a total PITA when you're traveling in multiple cities.

Track buses here

https://tripplanner.metrostlouis.org/hi ... imeDisplay

Kicking the drive-alone habit has been key to Seattle’s economic boom

“For a city to grow past a certain point, [it has] to be able to have more people in less space.” This allows a more productive city with “less time spent doing worthless things like driving.”

Couldn't help but think about St. Louis when reading this story. My experience has been that long commutes are not out of the ordinary in the region. If people could work during their commute that could really help worker productivity and/or quality of life.
Not only would this be a "nice to have" for people in the region, but would also be a selling point to companies considering a move to St. Louis. Low cost and high productivity is a killer incentive.

^ and yet "Booming Seattle is adding cars just as fast as people": https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-ne ... as-people/

^ Interesting article, thanks for posting. I don't flat out disagree with it, but I think the numbers could also support how car independent Seattle is. The first image in your post compares Seattle with just nine other cities where car-free households are generally quite high. Another way of summing the numbers up could be "Seattle is among a fairly elite group of car-free cities" (the chart below supports this fairly well).

The second chart shows car-free households appear to be growing at roughly the same rate as single car and two or more car households. My Google-Fu failed me in finding these numbers for other cities, but I'd be surprised if the average US city has the same rate of car-free household growth. And, honestly, I'm not sure how those numbers in the second chart jive with a per-capita car growth being equal to the population growth, unless average household size is really small and/or the number of cars owned by a household with 2+ cars is really large.

I did find the chart below from this article. Seattle is quite high up there. But, surprisingly, so are Baltimore, Milwaukee and Detroit. My guess with those three cities is there exists a larger lower income population who would prefer to own a car, but do not have the income to do so.

Also, as your article points out, "Seattle is an increasingly affluent city. A lot of folks can afford to own a car for convenience and weekend getaways more than out of true necessity". Big difference between car-dependency and "nice-to-have".

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I could also add that Seattle has quite probably the worst public transit system on that rather august list. Mind you, five through ten are, I would say, easily the best public transit systems in the country. And LA-Long Beach's system is now quite good and rapidly improving. I don't remember Miami's particularly, but I haven't been down that way in a while. So it's not too surprising that people still have more cars in Seattle. As their system matures that will change. As San Luis Native says, they're in good company.

It appears MetroLink will record its lowest annual ridership since 2002 according to FTA ridership numbers. 14.1 million riders if November and December report numbers similar to the rest of the year.

Through October, down 8% compared to 2016.
Down 40% compared to 2007 (peak year at 23 million)

A mix of low gas prices, negative (over blown) media attention towards safety, and declining bus ridership.

^That's really too bad. You'd think with the region's increasing employment rate you'd see higher ridership. But perhaps the stronger economy has also enabled more auto ownership, bolstered by low gas prices? Unfortunate to see, but good thing there's a new station opening next year to quell some of the decline - and some significant transit-adjacent developments that have only come online in the last few months and will be fully leased next year and contributing - even if minimally - to ridership for years to come.

Cardinal fans are a substantial source of ridership during the summer months. I suspect, that crowd is specifically impacted by negative media.

July 2017 counted 10% fewer riders than July 2016. July 2002 counted 700,000 more riders than July 2017. 700,000!!

I really believe Bi-State is doing very well with what they’re given. Metro Reimagined along with other improvements should make riding easier.

Local jurisdictions have to step up and offer full security at no cost to Bi-State. There’s no reason Bi-State should be paying for police.

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System with a 40% decline in ridership over a decade sure will complete well for system expansion monies at Federal level.

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Dec 18, 2017

System with a 40% decline in ridership over a decade sure will complete well for system expansion monies at Federal level.

No but if we can get it back up to 18million by application time metro can toot there horn about a 30% increase since 2017.

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Dec 18, 2017

System with a 40% decline in ridership over a decade sure will complete well for system expansion monies at Federal level.

The bigger question is how did Metrolink go from a model example of successful ridership to brink of failure?

With that said, we still have good light rail ridership compared to many peer cities, such as Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Although, our bus ridership is lacking. I don't know what Metro could do to increase ridership on Metrolink and Metrobus. It seems like the system was never the same after the first cuts.

goat314 wrote: ↑

Dec 18, 2017

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

Dec 18, 2017

System with a 40% decline in ridership over a decade sure will complete well for system expansion monies at Federal level.

The bigger question is how did Metrolink go from a model example of successful ridership to brink of failure?

With that said, we still have good light rail ridership compared to many peer cities, such as Pittsburgh and Cleveland. Although, our bus ridership is lacking. I don't know what Metro could do to increase ridership on Metrolink and Metrobus. It seems like the system was never the same after the first cuts.

MetroBus has held steady around 29-30Million trip a year, same as 2007

• Metro has never recovered from the severe 2009 service cuts.
• Permanent loss of riders meant less frequent service.
• Less frequent service meant that riders were/are less likely to return, makes justification to increase service to original levels impossible to justify.
• Reduction of downtown employment and continued loss of population in the city (and inside he innerbelt, in all likelihood).
• Clayton station built too far from center of downtown and by far the worst performing Blue Line station relative to original projections.

Oh how I reminisce of 5 minute MetroLink headways on the core segment.

^There are currently 6 minute headways during rush hour.

mill204 wrote: ↑

Dec 18, 2017

Clayton station built too far from center of downtown.

Really? The Clayton stop is like two or three blocks from the county buildings and the Forsyth stop is like three or four blocks from Centene. That's too far to ask the average person to walk?

mill204 wrote: ↑

Dec 18, 2017

wabash wrote: ↑

Dec 18, 2017

^There are currently 6 minute headways during rush hour.

Yes there is, but there is also less service throughout the rest of the day as well. Using the Wayback Machine, 88 trains departed Shrewsbury every weekday back in 2007; today, 77 trains/weekday. Saturday/Sunday: 67 then, 59 today.

When I worked in Clayton, the City of Clayton shared a survey about downtown connectivity. They were/are considering a frequent (maybe free) circulatory that would bounce between Forsyth and Clayton MetroLink.

Not sure where else to drop these but in this video from trailnet at about 1:16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_cont ... R7OHeHPekE

there is a nice rendering of a redesigned Tucker. Shows just how much space there is and how it could be much better used. Tucker is a nightmare to cross on foot and creates a real and also a psychic barrier between DT and DTW. Imagine if it was laid out like the second pic. These two parts of the city would be instantly knitted back together. Are these from a study or something larger that is available to view?

Also, in the video there is a quick shot of a woman riding a bike up to a beer garden Anyone know where that is (if it's even in STL or around here)?

^at :35 she’s pulling up to http://trailsmokehouse.com in defiance

moorlander wrote: ↑

Feb 09, 2018

^at :35 she’s pulling up to http://trailsmokehouse.com in defiance

ah, thanks! There's something special about biking somewhere for a beer. A certain "ich weiss nicht was."