urbanSTL

ldai_phs wrote: ↑

Aug 29, 2021

symphonicpoet wrote:When Haversham shared NIMBY rails on here a few months back I bought a copy but got distracted. Now I'm on a proper quest:

How does this game work?

It's pretty simple, really. Not much more than drawing lines on a map with a few a little programming baked in to tell you if people ride trains on those lines. It has algorithms for line costs and geometry, some very simple signaling, maintenance, and ridership. It uses real world maps and population densities and constrains the routes around roads and water. You can, of course, play on an infinite money setting. (Which is what I'm doing since I really just want to run trains.) But it's kind of cool since people will take long multi-modal trips requiring transfers. It was designed to simulate mostly Asian and European systems, so most everyone will ride the train if you put it there. (And the building costs are probably too low for the US.) And initially it had high speed intercity passenger options and some urban transit sorts of stuff. They've since added busses and ferries and some additional rail options. So what you're seeing is a theoretical urban commuter fantasy: 200+ mph commuter service to Jefferson City and Columbia, for instance. I figure I'll add busses eventually. After all, they might help feed more people onto the trains.

MoDOT budget for major and minor roads is about to explode, almost triple over their 2022-2026 construct plan $4.9billon vs $1.75billion (2016-2020)

New gas tax, fed stimulus package $, infrastructure money

Nice to hear that someone was trying to stop these things.

StlToday - A Look Back • 1950s expressway gave a taste of a bigger system to come

https://www.stltoday.com/news/archives/ ... 58e35.html

Next week East West Gateway board will vote to approve these projects. Some notes

This category is for projects that improve air quality, in any given year there is more projects then $ available and this year is a little different because all the projects that applied got funded. So if any project for whatever reason is pulled (more on that later) we would just lose that fed $

Projects of note;
Metro always cleans up on Buses because replacing gas guzzler buses scores high, so metro capped at asking for 20 buses total each year, they’ve literally replaced 100s in the last 10 years.

Brickline from Sarah to Grand

Cycle track on Broadway from Dover to River City

And finally the loop trolley, as I mentioned above, it’s funded because all the projects got funded by default- If the Board pulls out this line idea we’d just lose that $1.26m

There were some interesting tidbits in a Bloomberg boardroom story: CN Rail CEO Ruest to Quit as Hohn Heaps Pressure on Board

So it sounds like the KCS/CN deal is dead, but the KSC/CP deal will go forward. I've been meaning to look into this. Short version: CN CEO Jean-Jacques Ruest is stepping down under pressure from activist investors led by TCI hedgefund manager Chris Hohn over the deal, which appears to be dead.

[Robert] Pace [CN's chairman] said Ruest had deferred discussions on his retirement plans in order to see the company through the potential merger with Kansas City Southern and the introduction of its new strategic plan in September.

But it was the $30 billion takeover offer for Kansas City Southern that ultimately led to TCI's decision to begin a campaign to drop Ruest and change the board. The investment firm said the bid was doomed to fail and exposed Canadian National to unacceptable financial risk.

The merger collapsed when U.S. regulators blocked a key provision in the deal. Kansas City Southern has agreed to be acquired by Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., CN's smaller rival, in a deal that still must undergo antitrust review.

Nine years ago, Boulevard Anspach in #Brussels was still a car sewer. On July 1, 2012, activists turned it into an impromptu car-free street. In the end, the #PicnictheStreets protests would transform the center of Brussels into one of the largest pedestrian zones in Europe.

https://twitter.com/HeroesforZero/status/1410615861929381894

^I've been thinking about road diets a lot as I've begun to really delve into transit routes in Nimby. There are so many roads that are just way too wide . . . and putting transit right down the middle of them would help quite a lot of them. Permanent, unavoidable, car-impermeable transit. Imagine if the loop trolley ran from Soulard Market to Union Station instead of the U. City Library to the history museum.  It's about the same distance. Just let that one sink in for a sec. I'll wait.

I could get behind that more than the Loop Trolley. What's your proposed route?

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Oct 21, 2021

^I've been thinking about road diets a lot as I've begun to really delve into transit routes in Nimby. There are so many roads that are just way too wide . . . and putting transit right down the middle of them would help quite a lot of them. Permanent, unavoidable, car-impermeable transit. Imagine if the loop trolley ran from Soulard Market to Union Station instead of the U. City Library to the history museum.  It's about the same distance. Just let that one sink in for a sec. I'll wait.

I made a post a few month's ago in a thread about how the transit in STL, the MetroLink especially, does an awful job of connecting population centers to useful destinations.

Unlike Chicago or NYC where you get off at the attraction, MetroLink usually drops you about a half mile to a mile away from where you actually want to get (outside of downtown stops), for example, Maplewood doesn't put you on the strip, it leaves you along a busy road nearby car dealerships with a long walk to the actual Maplewood shopping/dining district.

Richmond Heights doesn't take you to the Galleria, it leaves you to go under I-170 and cross the ultra-wide Brentwood Blvd before getting to anything useful.

Central West End makes sense for commuting to Barnes, but again, very far away from amenities that would make people use that stop outside of work, especially for our densest neighborhood it's a shame there isn't a stop near all the restaurants and bars, with parking always at a premium there.

Grand drops you off under a bridge.

There are no stops at The Grove, Soulard, The Hill, Kingshighway, South Grand, South Hampton, anywhere inside of Forest Park, the Botanical Gardens... all pretty dense neighborhoods or premier destinations, without access to Metrolink.

I know it was built largely using right-of-way existing rails, but the result is a rail system that doesn't connect it's city population to many of the most popular destinations, and ridership will never be what it could as a result.  With more riders you can get rid of the stigma that MetroLink is dangerous or only for poor people.  Just take people where they want to go and it will get more use.

npav wrote: ↑

Oct 21, 2021

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Oct 21, 2021

^I've been thinking about road diets a lot as I've begun to really delve into transit routes in Nimby. There are so many roads that are just way too wide . . . and putting transit right down the middle of them would help quite a lot of them. Permanent, unavoidable, car-impermeable transit. Imagine if the loop trolley ran from Soulard Market to Union Station instead of the U. City Library to the history museum.  It's about the same distance. Just let that one sink in for a sec. I'll wait.

I made a post a few month's ago in a thread about how the transit in STL, the MetroLink especially, does an awful job of connecting population centers to useful destinations.

Unlike Chicago or NYC where you get off at the attraction, MetroLink usually drops you about a half mile to a mile away from where you actually want to get (outside of downtown stops), for example, Maplewood doesn't put you on the strip, it leaves you along a busy road nearby car dealerships with a long walk to the actual Maplewood shopping/dining district.

Richmond Heights doesn't take you to the Galleria, it leaves you to go under I-170 and cross the ultra-wide Brentwood Blvd before getting to anything useful.

Central West End makes sense for commuting to Barnes, but again, very far away from amenities that would make people use that stop outside of work, especially for our densest neighborhood it's a shame there isn't a stop near all the restaurants and bars, with parking always at a premium there.

Grand drops you off under a bridge.

There are no stops at The Grove, Soulard, The Hill, Kingshighway, South Grand, South Hampton, anywhere inside of Forest Park, the Botanical Gardens... all pretty dense neighborhoods or premier destinations, without access to Metrolink.

I know it was built largely using right-of-way existing rails, but the result is a rail system that doesn't connect it's city population to many of the most popular destinations, and ridership will never be what it could as a result.  With more riders you can get rid of the stigma that MetroLink is dangerous or only for poor people.  Just take people where they want to go and it will get more use.

Yeah I wouldn't disagree with this by any means but these are pretty common problems with light rail across the country including Dallas, Denver, and even Portland which all largely site light rail stops along freight rail ROW or highways. 

So why did so many systems get built like this? It was cheaper. To build rail transit that didn't require demolition or much money. 

In terms of improving transit in St. Louis though, what should be done first is making life easier for the people don't have cars and have stuck with the transit system all these years. Yes many of them are poor and couldn't afford a car, but if even the poorest people agree that transit in stl sucks and would get a car if they could, how are we ever to expect people with greater means to start using it?!

And that begins with increased bus frequency and reliability. Fortunately, that's also the easiest thing to do, as building more metrolink or altering its route would take years at the very least. 

P.S. How would Metrolink better serve Forest Park? I actually think Metro does a pretty good job of this, there's CWE, Forest Park-Debaliviere and Skinker stations. I guess a stop could be added at Union but even in New York the subway doesn't stop inside Central Park. A (free) frequent shuttle around the park could be nice though.

npav wrote: ↑

Oct 21, 2021

I made a post a few month's ago in a thread about how the transit in STL, the MetroLink especially, does an awful job of connecting population centers to useful destinations.

And I believe I responded that one transfer gets you to the destination. No, it doesn't take you to the Fox, but get off and get on the no. 70 and you're at the door. None of the transit systems you cite as alternatives generally get you from your origin to your destination without a transfer. Metrolink is the spine, not the only bone in the skeleton. And frankly, the system will get you from most things in the city to most other things with at most two transfers and that's actually pretty danged good. New York and Chicago don't actually do any better. They just do it all with rails. (And I'm altogether in favor of replacing the busses with streetcars or subways. But everyone here is afraid of the cost.)

I guess the northbound and southbound tracks would need to split between 4th and Broadway?

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

^That's the way I did it in NIMBY, yeah. And by "Broadway Corridor" I mean you stick to the main drag at all the stupid jogs, so 7th in the heart of Soulard to 4th/5th as you cross into the fringes of downtown.

The issue is not the transfer, it is that bus frequency is so low that you might have to wait quite some time to catch that transfer, and most people are not going to want to wait on the curb of our region's major stroads in all kinds of weather when they can just drive.

You can't even count on the buses that are scheduled to arrive these days, what with all the canceled trips.

I ended up just walking back downtown from Soulard the other day because the scheduled bus (right in rush hour, even) never showed up.

If you're only going a couple miles, odds are it'll be just as fast to walk unless you happen to time the bus just right rather than wait 30 minutes for a bus that may or may not arrive.

npav wrote: ↑

Oct 21, 2021

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Oct 21, 2021

^I've been thinking about road diets a lot as I've begun to really delve into transit routes in Nimby. There are so many roads that are just way too wide . . . and putting transit right down the middle of them would help quite a lot of them. Permanent, unavoidable, car-impermeable transit. Imagine if the loop trolley ran from Soulard Market to Union Station instead of the U. City Library to the history museum.  It's about the same distance. Just let that one sink in for a sec. I'll wait.

I know it was built largely using right-of-way existing rails, but the result is a rail system that doesn't connect it's city population to many of the most popular destinations, and ridership will never be what it could as a result.  With more riders you can get rid of the stigma that MetroLink is dangerous or only for poor people.  Just take people where they want to go and it will get more use.

While it'd be great to see the system expand into dense residential areas, it's good to see dense residential areas develop - 1,400+ units under construction/in the pipeline right now - around the system. 

Has there ever been any discussion of connecting Hampton and DeBaliviere through Forest Park? I love the park. It's a major gem of the city and region, but it really divides the north and south sides. I know you can take some winding roads through the park, but it's easy to get lost, you have to be very mindful of pedestrians, traffic can be horrendous during certain events, and the roads really should just be used for park goers, IMO. A pipedream of mine is a tunnel that cuts underneath close to 64 and pops back up near the History Museum. That way we can still preserve green space and prevent a FPP-like divider. I know this will never happen, but I'm curious what other people on this board think.

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

With Kingshighway and Skinker bookending FP, there's really no need for another major N/S artery directly through. There wouldn't be any huge benefit for such an expense.

Sounds like a monumentally bad idea. St. Louis has a lot of problems, but too few big roads is not one of them. It's bad enough that Forest Park is already sliced up by Forest Park Parkway and I-64 and is surrounded by excessively wide roads on two sides (Skinker & Kingshighway). 

Just noticed City is procuring a micro-transit option for Downtown & Old North.

Not sure of results but three providers responded under budget. None of them are well known transit providers. A pilot indeed.

The Middle Of The United States Is An EV Charging Wasteland
Not only do important routes need more chargers, but they need to be higher quality and better maintained
https://jalopnik.com/the-middle-of-the-united-states-is-an-ev-charging-waste-1848014807

We recently got an EV and it's great for commuting around town, but we are not using it for medium-range trips due to poor infrastructure (we opted for our ICE vehicle on recent trips to Indy and KC).