A Website To Cause The Anti-Rail Crowd Bed Wetting And Nightmares

Hello General Motors, remember us? You last saw us on that rainy December day back in 1936, then you warmed your hands as our streetcars burned. Well guess what America? We're Back!

see the site at: http://www.freewebs.com/lightrailjacksonville/

We have created a WEBSITE as a bi-product of the JACKSONVILLE TRANSIT BLOG that ought to keep the BRT "Just Like Rail Only Cheaper", crowd up with some high voltage bad dreams. In fact we think the articles we have created, borrowed, stolen, begged and otherwise obtained for publication will make the Anti-Rail crowd sit down and cry.

Good. This was designed to get the attention of a brain dead City leadership and shake the grates on the hard core fossil fuel hogs. It might even be a one stop shop for many of the facts and figures you can use in your own local battles.

The site contains: Streetcar Facts, Light Rail Facts, BRT Facts, Jacksonville Streetcar History, Monorail Facts (positive), Video, Charts, and tons of photos, many created with the help of cyber-savvy photoshop boys at the Metro-Jacksonville site. So come on over and warm up by the fire. The warm glow of burning highway tires can be felt around the world. Comments and contributions are welcome, just drop me a note.
Bob at : lightrailjax@gmail.com

Commuter Rail
Bus Rapid Transit
Light Rail
transit

JACKSONVILLE STREETCAR IS POSSIBLE!

Two fantastic "HOW TO" articles appear today in the Jacksonville Transit Blog. The first is from Michigan, and the "Overhead Wire" news. This gives us a step by step way to build or rebuild our streetcar system using public private partnerships. The only missing element is the old rule that utility companies can't also own the streetcar network. In todays world, this law is long outdated and even though it is/or once was federal, it needs to be dumped. We need all the electric transit we can get. So think JACKSONVILLE TRACTION and think, we CAN!

Friday, October 3, 2008

Street Railway Resurrection
Michigan lawmakers are looking at a bill that would allow street railway companies to form in the state and use recently passed tax increment financing laws and other mechanisms to fund new lines. I don't imagine the line is completely private, but its an interesting step away from the public transit agency model. It seems similar to Portland Streetcar Inc, but I haven't looked deep enough yet to see the similarities. There are some interesting provisions though:
As envisioned in one set of bill drafts, for which state Rep. Bert Johnson, D-Detroit, is the lead sponsor, the street railway company could build, own and operate the system. The company could acquire property, including through gift, purchase or condemnation, and could borrow money and issue bonds.It's a fascinating idea and the point is to have it replicated all over the state, from Grand Rapids, to Ann Arbor, to Detroit.

Allen also said a goal is “to come up with a replicable plan, which means that we can work it in Detroit, or Grand Rapids. We’re open to input from anyone. If this tool can work in a variety of communities in the state, that is one of our objectives.”

THE OVERHEAD WIRE

Transit Wisdom? ...and Toledo Too?

Neil Reid, director of the University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center, warned transit officials to consider the American comfort level with buses.

Along for the ride? Wisdom from Ohio...

While bus ridership in both Toledo and Cleveland has grown in recent months, diesel costs have ballooned. And those fuel bills threaten the revenue and viability of busing systems across the country. “Many systems around the state, instead of adding service when demand is at an all-time high, are probably going to be cutting service,” Mr. Calabrese said.“My diesel bill went from $5 million in 2003, to $12 million last year, to $21 million this year, and it should be about $24 million next year.”In Toledo, TARTA will cut its bus service by 7 percent on Aug. 24, a decision that has caused outcries from local riders.Aside from rising fuel prices affecting expansion possibilities, Neil Reid, director of the University of Toledo Urban Affairs Center, warned transit officials to consider the American comfort level with buses.“Most people in Toledo, people say under 50, probably have never ridden a bus before or only on sporadic occasion,” he said. “People probably just don’t consider that an option.”The issues may cut deeper than simple unfamiliarity.Busing systems in many cities have been painted as ferries for the poor. Alan Plattus, director of the Yale Urban Design Center in New Haven, Conn., said dismantling a classist attitude — as has been done in many European countries — may be as important to the success of buses in America as the routes they follow.“The bus system has gotten to be a class system,” he said. “Middle class people who might use the bus instead of taking a car trip don’t do it.”For many urban planners, busing systems also have become the figurative poor man’s light rail, a shot below the mark for cities focusing on asphalt instead of track and relying on tenuous data promising real estate development around buses.John Norquist, president of the Congress for the New Urbanism in Chicago, agreed developers are more likely to be attracted to areas along rail stations or lines where the city has signaled its intention to make large, nearly indelible investments.“Light rail is good because it’s permanent,” he said. “People say with buses they’re good because they’re flexible, but they could disappear at any moment.”Light rail — the term applied to streetcar systems such as trolleys — is nothing new.The Richmond Union Passenger Railway came online as the first large electric street railway system in 1888, displacing horse drawn buggies. Many cities, including Toledo, decommissioned their streetcar systems in the 1950s as the country began its migration to the suburbs and the automobile industry flourished.Finding the right pathJames Seney, former executive director of the Ohio Rail Development Commission, said old streetcar lines in Toledo fit the layout of the community and may be a guide for rail revampment.“What makes urban rail work is when you create transit routes that have clusters of neighborhoods on them,” said Mr. Seney, the former mayor of Sylvania. “You should design [routes] based on your existing neighborhoods and tie that into the growth of downtown businesses, rather than trying to capture a larger area.”Though Mr. Seney said new tracks would be needed if Toledo decided to move forward with a rail plan, he admitted “the old guys logistically were correct.” The push toward rail is being seen in other U.S. cities.About 100 years after its invention, light rail experienced a heavy resurgence. Most of the United States’ busiest light rail systems today were built or intensely renovated in the last two decades, including lines in Los Angeles; Portland, Ore.; St. Louis; Denver, and Dallas. Even smaller cities such as Little Rock, Tacoma, and Galveston, Texas, have invested in light rail systems since the turn of the century.The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority in Boston shuttles over a quarter million people per day on its green and red lines, making it by far the largest light-rail operation in the country.

THE ORANGUTAN GANG STRIKES BACK - Embrace You Asphalt!

From "The Overhead Wire"

Monday, September 8, 2008
Opposition Pundits on Parade

Ron Utt of the Heritage Foundation is worried. So are all the other anti-transit pundits out there. The newly minted interest in transit is encroaching on their road loving ways. A recent AP article on rising transit ridership captures Utt's opinion, proving that balanced transportation and oil independence means nothing to the conservative crowd.

Ron Utt, of the conservative Heritage Foundation, said transit is "inconsequential in terms of reducing congestion or greenhouse gases" and that people who want to use transit should simply pay more. Citing the example of a Washington-area commuter rail, Utt said: "If more people want to use that and more people have to stand, I don't know why that should place a financial burden on people in Iowa."
Sure Ron, that's why almost a million people per day take Metro in DC. I have a really great idea, how about people pay the true cost of gasoline or roads or airlines. Let's also make people pay directly for air traffic controllers and the highway patrol. And why should I pay for a rural road in Iowa? All transportation is subsidized, let's stop the favoritism towards one mode and pretending that cars pay for themselves.

Typewriter Typewriter Typewriter!

Then there is our favorite cipher, Randal O'Toole. His most recent call is to cancel the Denver Fastracks program claiming it's bad for the environment and social engineering. You know, the usual junk.

Environmentally, light rail is a disaster for the region. For every passenger mile carried, light rail consumes four times as much land as Denver-area freeways. It also uses more energy and emits more greenhouse gases, per passenger mile, than the average SUV.
I don't know where he gets this one. But as Mr. Setty at PublicTransit.us reminds us, transit actually reduces passenger miles overall. Randal's twisted logic lumps in the construction of the line when he never talks about the construction losses of highways and the vehicles that drive on them. What about the construction of all those parking garages?

O'Toole, many academics and other anti-transit activists understandably do not wish to discuss the wider, systematic impacts of transit on transportation patterns and land use. One key study estimates that for every passenger mile on transit, slightly more than two urban vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is suppressed or foregone. This study documents the connection between transit and lower vehicle usage that has also been documented in dozens of other studies. This effect is particularly significant when less than 40% of U.S. residents have easy access to transit at the present time.
But what annoys me the most is that stupid no one rides transit argument. Well no one has the option to take it! New York City has transit, people take it. Washington DC has a rather good subway system, people take it. But when the green argument for him fails, he can always fall back on social engineering. You know, the kind that took place from 1950 to the present when cities built roads only and subsidies were funneled to development related to roads.

The other support for FasTracks comes from those who want to socially engineer Colorado lifestyles. They use light rail as an excuse to build tax-subsidized high-density housing projects on properties taken from their owners by eminent domain near planned rail stations. Yet few Americans aspire to live in such dense housing, and such compact development makes little sense in a state that is 97 percent rural open space.
Hmm. No one in Colorado wants open space, just build on it. I'm sure John Denver wouldn't mind. And no one wants to live in high-density housing projects, that's why TOD commands such a low price premium with buyers. No one ever wanted to live in LoDo right? What about all those road, pipe subsidies.

Cars Cars Cars. Sprawl Sprawl Sprawl. Sounds like Drill Drill Drill.

CURITIBA'S BRT MELTDOWN!

Photos: Curitiba Brazil, LIGHT RAIL to the rescue

Photos: Curitiba Highly praised BRT

The Road to Curitiba

By ARTHUR LUBOW
Published: May 20, 2007

Today, Curitiba remains a pilgrimage destination for urbanists fascinated by its bus system, garbage-recycling program and network of parks. It is the answer to what might otherwise be a hypothetical question: How would cities look if urban planners, not politicians, took control?

Although the children who paint on Saturday mornings are no longer needed to protect the downtown shopping street from cars, the battle to keep Curitiba green is never-ending. Indeed, some say it is going badly these days. The rivers, once crystalline, reek of untreated sewage. The bus system that has won admirers throughout the world appears to be nearing capacity; what’s more, Curitiba, by some measures, has a higher per capita ownership of private cars than any city in Brazil — even exceeding BrasÃlia, a city that was designed for cars. Curitiba’s garbage-recycling rate has been declining over the last six or seven years, and the only landfill in the municipal region will be full by the end of 2008. Jorge Wilheim, the São Paulo architect who drafted Curitiba’s master plan in 1965, says: “When we made the plan, the population was 350,000. We thought in a few years it would reach 500,000. But it has grown much bigger.” The municipality of Curitiba today has 1.8 million people, and the population of the metropolitan region is 3.2 million. “I know the plan of Curitiba is very famous, and I am the first to enjoy it, but that was in ’65,” Wilheim continues. “The metropolitan region must have a new vision.”

It is often said of Curitiba that it doesn’t feel like Brazil. Depending on who’s speaking, that can be intended as a compliment or a criticism. Populated by European immigrants in the 19th century, Curitiba has a demographic makeup that is largely more fair-skinned and well educated than that of Brazil’s tropical north. It is also unusually affluent. Unlike São Paulo, with its startling extremes of wealth and poverty, much of Curitiba to an American eye looks familiarly middle class. Even the scruffy used-car lots have a seediness reminiscent of Los Angeles, not the Rio de Janeiro of “City of God.” The city, especially the large downtown, is very clean, thanks to municipal sanitation trucks and the freelance carrinheiros, or cart people, who pick up trash to sell at recycling centers.

Curitiba’s rapid-transit buses can move 36,000 passengers an hour, a cheap alternative to a subway system.

Despite its development as a city for public transportation, Curitiba is said to have more cars per capita than any other city in Brazil.

During my visit to Curitiba in March, the city was the host of an international biodiversity conference. While I hadn’t known of it when I scheduled my trip, the coincidence was about as remarkable as finding a design show to greet you in Milan or a wine festival under way in Bordeaux. Environmentalism is the heart of Curitiba’s self-identity, and the municipal government is always devising new schemes that showcase the brand. The rest of the world has caught on, if not yet caught up. Ecological awareness is architecturally trendy. This year’s winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize is Richard Rogers, a longtime proponent of mass transit, lower energy consumption and ecologically sensitive buildings. Commercially, real-estate developers from Beijing to Santa Monica are brandishing their LEED certificates (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) as they market condominiums and office suites to green-minded consumers. While it is unusually ambitious, the 25-year plan that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, proposed last month for New York is part of an international wave of recognition that cities must live more responsibly, especially when it comes to their effusions of climate-warming gases and their excretions of mountains of solid waste. Bloomberg’s most contentious idea — a “congestion tax” on cars entering traffic-clogged districts during peak hours — has been working for more than four years in London (and more than 30 years in Singapore) to increase the numbers of people using public transportation. Interestingly, Curitiba adopted an opposite approach, brandishing a carrot instead of a stick. The city planners suspected that public transportation would attract more users if it was more attractive. And that reasonable assumption turned out to be correct.

The efficient buses that zip across the Curitiba metropolitan region are the most conspicuously un-Brazilian feature of the city. Instead of descending into subway stations, Curitibanos file into ribbed glass tubes that are boarding platforms for the rapid-transit buses. (The glass tubes resemble the “fosteritos” that Norman Foster later designed for the metro in Bilbao, Spain.) Curitiba has five express-bus avenues, with a sixth in development, to allow you to traverse the city with speedy dispatch. In the early 1970s, most cities investing in public transportation were building subways or light-rail networks. Curitiba lacked the resources and the time to install a train system. Lerner says that compared with the Curitiba bus network, a light rail system would have required 20 times the financial investment; a subway would have cost 100 times as much. “We tried to understand, what is a subway?” he recalls. “It has to have speed, comfort, reliability and good frequency. But why does it have to be underground? Underground is very expensive. With dedicated lanes and not stopping on every corner, we could do it with buses.” Because widening the avenues would have required a lengthy and costly expropriation process, the planners came up with a “trinary” system that embraced three parallel thoroughfares: a large central avenue dedicated to two-way rapid-bus traffic (flanked by slow lanes for cars making short local trips) and, a block over on each side, an avenue for fast one-way automobile traffic.

When the bus system was inaugurated, it transported 54,000 passengers daily. That number has ballooned to 2.3 million, in large part because of innovations that permit passengers to board and exit rapidly. In 1992, Lerner and his team established the tubular boarding platforms with fare clerks and turnstiles, so that the mechanisms for paying and boarding are separated, as in a subway. To carry more people at a time, the city introduced flexible-hinged articulated buses that open their doors wide for rapid entry and egress; then, when the buses couldn’t cope with the demand, the Lerner team called for bi-articulated buses of 88 feet with two hinges (and a 270-passenger capacity), which Volvo manufactured at Curitiba’s request. Comparing the capacities of bus and subway systems, Lerner reels off numbers with a promoter’s panache. “A normal bus in a normal street conducts x passengers a day,” he told me. “With a dedicated lane, it can transport 2x a day. If you have an articulated bus in a dedicated lane, 2.7x passengers. If you add a boarding tube, you can achieve 3.4x passengers, and if you add double articulated buses, you can have four times as many passengers as a normal bus in a normal street.” He says that with an arrival frequency of 30 seconds, you can transport 36,000 passengers every hour — which is about the same load he would have achieved with a subway.

Unfortunately, the trends of bus usage are down. While the system has expanded to cover 13 of the cities in the metropolitan region, charging a flat fare that in practice subsidizes the trips of the mostly poorer workers who live in outlying areas, bus ridership within the Curitiba municipality has been declining. “We are losing bus passengers and gaining cars,” says Luis Fragomeni, a Curitiba urban planner. He observes that, like potential users of public transport everywhere, many Curitibanos view it as noisy, crowded and unsafe. Undermining the thinking behind the master plan, even those who live alongside the high-density rapid-bus corridors are buying cars. “The licensing of cars in Curitiba is 2.5 times higher than babies being born in Curitiba,” he says. “Trouble.” Because cars are status symbols, attempts to discourage people from buying them are probably futile. “We say, ‘Have your own car, but keep it in the garage and use it only on weekends,’ ” Fragomeni remarks. And the public-transport system must be upgraded continuously to remain an appealing alternative to private vehicles. “That competition is very hard,” says Paulo Schmidt, the president of URBS, the rapid-bus system. During peak hours, buses on the main routes are already arriving at almost 30-second intervals; any more buses, and they would back up. While acknowledging his iconoclasm in questioning the sufficiency of Curitiba’s trademark bus network, Schmidt nevertheless says a light-rail system is needed to complement it.

To read the complete 6 page article on how this "recycle city," is fighting for it's life, click:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/magazine/20Curitiba-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ei=5087&em&en=76ecdf33645cffa5&ex=1179892800

CHANGING DOWNTOWN TO UPTOWN

Getting On the Right Track
We can learn from New Orleans, Little Rock and other cities and develop the right transit system for our city without the obstacles and negative side effects being incorporated into the massive BRT fiasco.

By Robert Mann, Based on a original report

By Jason Leach Mar. 19, 2007

A recent piece in the Toronto Star discusses the ongoing battle in Toronto over dedicated streetcar lanes and their impact on neighbourhoods.

Recent issues of Folio, The Florida Times-Union and Metro Blogs/Forums have seen many writers and bloggers come forward with plans for heritage trolleys, modern streetcars or light rail on Jacksonville's main east west corridor – Water Street, Newnan, Beaver or Duval from the Transportation Center to the Stadiums or Phillip Randolph.

I believe that the plans we've presented for JACKSONVILLE TRACTION COMPANY, INC. are affordable, efficient and most of all, will have a great impact on surrounding neighbourhoods. Here's why:

1. Cost.
A 'rapid streetcar' using heritage trolleys or a mix of heritage and modern streetcar vehicles is much cheaper to build than a full LRT system. JTA studied an LRT system, which, of course, is much cheaper than a subway.

The rapid streetcar concept takes the same features of light rail – speed, attractiveness, permanent tracks which draw large private investment and dedicated lanes – but uses slightly smaller vehicles and doesn't require massive relocation of underground services due to the lighter vehicles.

2. Dedicated lanes, but not walls, curbs and obstacles.
A streetcar plan such as the one proposed to run both ways Water Street would see streetcars in their own lane, but would still allow cars to make left turns at most streets and cross the tracks easily and safely. The raised curbs that are a feature of some streetcar lines are rather clumsy obstacles for pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles.

In Portland or most European cities with streetcars it is common to see street parking on the "other side" of the tracks against the curb as well as pedestrians crossing the tracks with their groceries or cyclists crossing the tracks as necessary.

Obviously the train has the right of way, but we aren't talking about a bullet train speeding along killing people. Streetcars are designed to fit perfectly in the urban environment, not act as obstacles.

Streetcars blend into the cityscape. Feel like jaywalking, crossing the tracks on your bike or dropping someone off? Make sure no train is coming and go for it. In fact Jacksonville Traction's own unique heritage is very similar to that of New Orleans. Streetcars operate in center medians and the track is sodded over. The addition of plantings, trees and shrubs once gained us fame as "The most beautiful streetcar line in the world."

More photos here:http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t103.html
Note – the above photos from Portland show a streetcar that uses the same lanes as cars. Regardless, a double solid yellow line and signage would allow the same design to be used with a system using dedicated lanes. So traffic lane or historic style median, No curbs required.

3. Neighbourhood/retail impact
Let's be brutally honest here. Downtown is a shell of what it used to be and what it could be. In Jacksonville, some shopkeepers feel that the senseless demolition of historic buildings, parking meters with a Gestapo-like control, and endless moonscapes of blank walls, or empty lots packed with the homeless have resulted in bad news for business in the area that always seemed to bustle with activity.

In Jacksonville, six and eight-lane freeways, sprawl, parking meters, broken or inconsistent sidewalks, one way streets and timed lights have killed once-booming retail streets. We have parking coming out of our backsides, but few customers and many less shops, restaurants, hotel rooms or clubs than there should be.

Streetcars-in-lane might slow down the vehicle traffic on Water. Parking would be retained as-is on the edge of the business core and folks could easily turn onto and off of side streets to find curbside parking.

More importantly, people and businesses would begin to show up in large numbers as a result of the streetcar line. The line shown in Portland in the photos above has seen $1.5 billion in private investment within a five minute walk of the tracks since opening.

Another or central corridor down Duval Street has many underused lots and buildings and plans for a massive courthouse complex. A streetcar along with a more pedestrian-friendly environment (think trees and benches along the entire corridor) would revitalize the uptown neighbourhoods that have been ignored for too long. In effect pulling the City both along the river and moving it inland.

LRT which JTA once studied, spaces stops apart quite far. A rapid streetcar would take a medium approach, having stops spaced out further than a typical bus route, but not as great a distance as with LRT.

4. Transportation options
Even though walking or cycling aren't directly mentioned as a benefit of a streetcar, they are natural byproducts of this project. Right now people have one realistic option for traversing our Streets – their car. Streetcars still allow for vehicle lanes, but having lights controlled for the streetcars instead of autos would make it quicker to get from downtown to Union Station-Transportation Center to the core or stadiums in the streetcar. Streetcars can discharge or pick up passengers in the median, since they have doors on both sides. The operator simply makes certain there is no oncoming car or traffic and can open doors left or right, thus there is no need to eat up curb space such as JTA'S proposed downtown transit mall.

Furthermore, balancing the transportation modes on our city streets will automatically result in more cyclists and pedestrians. Cyclists would feel safer to ride their bikes on a normal city street whereas right now downtown streets are not much different than I-95. More shops, condos, restaurants, clubs and hotels and streetcar users means more people getting on and off trains, running errands, going out for coffee or just walking the dog.

Jacksonville would start to look like a proper, urban downtown once again. Public art, benches, trees, flowers, patios and sidewalk displays would turn an empty, concrete canyon into a wonderful blend for local residents and visitors.

DALLAS RIDES DART TO GLOBAL CITY STATUS...CAN WE RIDE JTA TO THE SAME DESTINATION?

DART SYSTEM MAP
DART LRV TRAIN


DART: Helping Grow A Great Global City
By Gary Thomas
President/Executive Director
Dallas Area Rapid Transit

Tomorrow's great cities will have great transit systems, and a trip around today's 45-mile DART Rail System shows rail has the power to drive land use and urban development in exciting and environmentally friendly directions. Now, as we work to more than double the rail system, leading-edge transit-oriented projects are emerging up and down the lines. And it's clear we're making tracks toward a great future, not only for Dallas but the entire North Texas region.

The Greening of DART Rail

Between September 2009 and December 2010, DART's Red and Blue lines will be joined by the 20-station, 28-mile Green Line stretching from the South Dallas/Pleasant Grove neighborhoods, through the Dallas city center, then northwest to Farmers Branch and Carrollton.

When fully operational, the Green Line will link thriving Stemmons-area employment centers to the South Dallas/Pleasant Grove neighborhoods where residents will outnumber jobs 3 to 1 in 2025. Along the way, the line will serve Deep Ellum, Baylor University Medical Center, Fair Park, Victory Park, the Dallas Market Center, the UT Southwestern Medical District and Love Field Airport.

A 14-mile branch called the Orange Line will extend from the Green Line's Bachman Station in northwest Dallas to the Las Colinas Urban Center by 2011, and to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport by 2013.

Delivering A New Urban Lifestyle/Generating Economic Returns

While DART continues to attract new riders, it's winning the hearts of city and chamber of commerce leaders as one of the most powerful economic engines ever to come along.

"To say DART Rail's impact has been substantial for the Dallas region's economy would be an understatement," said Dr. Bernard Weinstein, director of the University of North Texas Center for Economic Development and Research. "It's a trend that's impossible to miss; the local business community certainly hasn't."

Beyond the jobs and direct economic benefits generated by construction of the system, DART Rail is dramatically changing the urban landscape with more than $7 billion in current, planned and projected transit-oriented developments (TODs) springing up around station areas.

In a November 2007 study, Weinstein and colleague Dr. Terry Clower project transit-oriented development near DART Rail eventually will generate more than $46 million each year to area schools, $23.5 million to member cities, millions more to other local taxing entities.


View an Adobe PDF version of the study, Assessment of the Potential Fiscal Impacts of Existing and Proposed Transit-Oriented Development in the
Dallas Area Rapid Transit Service Area (Nov. 2007). (Opens in a new window.)

Nowhere is that trend more impressive than at Victory Park on the northern edge of downtown Dallas. The $3 billion development by Hillwood Capital flanks American Airlines Center with a new W Hotel and Victory Plaza, the forthcoming Mandarin Oriental Hotel, designer residences, office towers and shops and restaurants. DART Rail and the Trinity Railway Express currently provide special event service to Victory Station.

"Pedestrian activity and access to the rail station have been part of our thinking from the beginning," said Howard Elkus of Elkus-Manfredi Architects, urban planners for the project. "There's no doubt that transit-oriented development is exactly what everybody wants these days - and, because the DART station was there, we were able to think in those terms."

Delivering the Transit Lifestyle

With DART Rail coming soon, communities with stations on the new Green and Orange rail lines are planning mixed-use projects to capitalize on the power of transit.

In Carrollton where there is no land left for large-scale subdivisions, city planners see TOD as the key to maintaining standards and services without raising taxes.

"Citizens have embraced the concept of redevelopment around the three stations, which will create a more urban lifestyle oriented towards the pedestrian with a mixture of high density residential, office and retail places," said Peter Braster, Carrollton's transit-oriented development manager.

In Dallas, First Worthing's Cityville at Southwestern Medical District has begun first-phase leasing of 263 apartments and 43,000 square feet of retail. Described as "an urban oasis - near the energy and excitement of Downtown Dallas," Cityville residents can easily tap that energy with the opening of the Southwestern Medical District/Parkland Station in 2010.

North Irving's Las Colinas Urban Center is seeing perhaps its biggest boom since the 1980s with much of that activity envisioned around the Lake Carolyn Station opening in 2011. The Lofts at Las Colinas have already opened with 341 units near the station site, and Water Street on Lake Carolyn promises a bustling urban mix of shops and restaurants, high-end condos and apartments, a boutique hotel and office space.

Rethinking the Inner City

Existing DART Rail stations continue to attract new development. Mockingbird Station, the region's first landmark transit village, is expanding with 23,000 square feet of new shopping and dining opening in January 2008. Matthews Southwest is bringing new life to downtown Dallas' South Side with The Beat, a 10-story, 75-unit condo project under construction next to the developer's successful South Side on Lamar community at Cedars Station.

Park Lane, a $500 million project under construction at the former NorthPark East complex at Park Lane and Central Expressway, will feature more than 330,000 square feet of office space, a hotel, more than 650 residential units and 750,000 square feet of retail - all with direct access to Park Lane Station.

In the heart of downtown at Akard Station, The Mosaic is pre-leasing at a steady rate while construction continues on 440 apartments in the former 31-story Union Tower complex.

"Quite a few people who come to look at our models say, 'Oh, the DART station is right here too,' " said leasing consultant Deborah Mock. "DART is one of the tools we use every time we show the property."

DART Rail has also attracted business to existing office space near the rail lines. After moving out of the CBD in 1992, the professional services firm KPMG returned a decade later, consolidating two groups in an office tower steps from St. Paul Station.

"In the past a number of companies elected to relocate outside of downtown because of the cost of parking," said Carl Ewert, executive vice president of The Staubach Company, which arranged the move. "Today, though, things are different. One of the key ingredients for the consolidation of KPMG back downtown is DART."

Connecting people to jobs, stimulating economic growth, creating opportunities in a growing global city - that's what DART is all about.

What Did Bus Rapid Transit Do For Pittsburgh?

Pittsburgh Bus Way and Sky Bus System

No one is saying that this is due to embracing Bus Rapid Transit, but they keep referring to mistakes made over the last 50 years. Turn back the pages and see what was the single biggest change in Pittsburgh Transportation. Granted the Steel Mills have closed or moved away. The industrial base is gone, but the new urban talk is of the successful remaking of Pittsburgh. A success? Yes, the City has held it's population better then most older "Rust Belt" industrial towns. It has remade it's image and emerged as the sparkling "new" city where the 3 Rivers meet. So in spite of the apologists theory's, I wouldn't lay this blame on population or business decline, tempting as that may be.

Finally, Pittsburgh Railways, the electric Trolley system has been reduced to rubble in those same 50 years. Once one of the most extensive electric railway systems in America, Pittsburgh started pioneering the "Sky Bus" and "bus ways" back in the early 1960's. Dozens of Trolley lines were torn out for what would become known as BUS RAPID TRANSIT or BRT. Sky Bus would go on to become a giant white elephant known as the Downtown Peoplemover. Frankly, people bailed off the system like rats from a sinking ship. When the "new trolley era started" under the banner of LRT or Light Rail Transit, Pittsburgh reluctantly Begin to cancel sky bus, the busway's, and save the remaining rail. In an attempt to convince the streetcar patrons that Pittsburgh had recreated itself with Light Rail, they decided to go with very expensive subways in the downtown. They moved the streetcars off of the surface streets, perhaps clinging to the flying bus as the technology of the future. Through all of this the fractured Super-Bus network kept on running. The new show piece for Mass Transit and darling of Detroit. Everyone predicted that the Rail Revival was just a temporary fad, a hiccup of distraction in the very few cities where it still held ground.

Here we are, 50 years into the New Trolley Era, and nearly 75 cities have returned to the rails. Very few bought into the BRT or Sky Bus like systems, a move that had to be disappointing to the bus industry. Finally the industry re-packaged it's image, copied Light Rail vehicle designs and features, and started making bus systems that were really more like a cafeteria of bus concepts. Bus Rapid Transit or BRT was born of this cafeteria, but no one can really define what "it" is. Being a collection of ideas that vary from city to city, no one is likely to nail down the definition either. Pittsburgh, is not a case of a rail beats bus argument, as that is a zero-sum gain. It is clearly a case of horrible misjudgement in what the public wants and will use.

Industry pundits will be asking "What did Bus Rapid Transit Do For Pittsburgh". The answer is likely to be very negative, and THAT will be a tragedy of monumental proportions. BRT and LRT should be complimentary, with the smaller vehicles (Bus) feeding the larger system (Rail) from the suburbs. A function of vehicle capacities, speed, flexibility and ease of capacity expansion. Forcing a bus to be a train might seem to be a great idea to some. Sadly, it didn't turn out that way in Pittsburgh, and it won't in Jacksonville either.

Pittsburgh Officials Blame Longtime Errors for Transit's Peril

Jim Ritchie, Pittsburgh Tribune Review

In a 10-year period, Port Authority of Allegheny County lost nearly 5 million riders -- yet operated 78 more buses a day. The agency's expenses climbed during the same period by 64 percent -- or nearly $130 million, according to Federal Transit Administration data from 1996-2006, the most recent available. The numbers capsulize the problems driving the mass transit agency toward turmoil, as it reaches a virtual stalemate with its drivers' union on how to cut labor costs in a contract that would start July 1।

Recent efforts to generate more fare revenue and cut costs by slashing routes and trimming management benefits were not enough. "If we keep doing for the next 10 years what we did for the last 10 years, we're going to hit the wall," said authority CEO Steve Bland, who was hired in May 2006 to help fix the agency's problems। "It would appear through the mid-1990s that service was just sort of added. It was sort of the concept of, 'If we run it, they will come.'

"That wasn't the case। We have to be more strategic."

About 9 percent of the county's 1.2 million residents, or 110,000 people, use public transit. Without the system, low-income residents lacking vehicles would be stranded and commuter routes to Downtown businesses would become congested by cars, transit advocates say.