Showing posts with label Urban Transportation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Urban Transportation. Show all posts
Urban Goods Movement and Urban Form
Until World War II, raw materials entering urban transportation areas
were usually carried by railroad to near-in factories. Finished products not
consumed locally then left by rail. Goods for local consumption also came by
rail to warehouses near the downtown area. Distribution was at first by
horse-drawn vehicles and later by small truck to nearby retail outlets. Now the
outward explosion of cities and the motor truck have changed all this. Far fewer
rail deliveries go to close-in factories or warehouses. In fact, in some
cities rail lines and their downtown terminals have been abandoned. Instead,
rail roads and, increasingly, heavy trucks deliver goods originating elsewhere
to factories or terminals located in outlying areas. Such products as now enter
the close-in areas are first transferred to smaller, more easily maneuverable
vans and trucks for delivery. But this is often difficult. At the same time, outlying shopping centers have
become more competitive as costs of serving them with goods from other areas or
outlying warehouses are lowered. In sum, change in the costs of moving freight
and other goods in urban areas has been a strong force in suburbanizing.
cities. And this may be a major obstacle to efforts to make the cities more
compact.
Public Transportation and Urban Form - Part 2
Furthermore,
in the San Francisco case, proximity to stations had an adverse effect on
rehabilitation in and improvements to older neighborhoods. And, although
proximity to the system stimulated a net increase in new housing, much of this
was for single families in areas that earlier had been beyond reasonable
commuting distance to the two principal central business districts. The net
effect at these locations was dispersal and lower density land use. Also,
transit use has been disappointing; to date it accommodates only 5% of the peak
hour trips. This is not to say that transportation engineering systems cannot
be employed to affect urban form, but that to date knowledge of the many
influences and their effects are lacking so that outcomes cannot be predicted.
Substantially
reducing automobile use in favourite of transit will be a slow process, although it
may be hastened by energy and environmental concerns. Among useful steps that
can be taken is to preserve land corridors for projected transportationfacilities. This and similar actions calls for a high degree of cooperation
among governmental ogencies or their restructuring to get a unified approach to
decision making. To date this cooperation or restructuring is happening very
slowly. Furthermore, the planning scope must reach travel problems beyond the
close-in urban area. For example, the land-side movements to and from airports
have extremely high volumes and yet today are often poorly served by local
transportation. Finally, the influence of telecommunications,
which can drastically reduce the need for central-city travel, must be
carefully considered.
Public Transportation and Urban Form - Part 1
Added
to the confusion over the relative desirability of different urban forms is the
role of transportation engineering in influencing them. Many planners and public officials
believe that urban congestion can be reduced and other desirable public
purposes achieved by a combination of transportation-related strategies. One is
to make cities more compact, thereby reducing the need to travel by a conveyance
of any kind; another is to make transit more effective; a third is to restrict
the use ot the private automobile. The thrusts here would be first to improve
public transit facilities and service; and second, to favor transit by using
such strategies as
(1) giving priority in traffic,
(2) restructuring subsidies and using other pricing to make transit use financially attractive,
(3) setting high parking and other automobile fees,
(4) establishing automobile-free zones accessible only by transit or walking, and
(5) aggressively marketing transit.
(1) giving priority in traffic,
(2) restructuring subsidies and using other pricing to make transit use financially attractive,
(3) setting high parking and other automobile fees,
(4) establishing automobile-free zones accessible only by transit or walking, and
(5) aggressively marketing transit.
There
are those who are skeptical that approaches like these can reduce urban
congestion or make our cities denser. They point out that efforts to date have
been instituted primarily for political or prestige reasons, have taken a long
time to carry out,-' and may be ineffective if not counter productive, because
their effects are not understood. For example, a recent studv by the Transportation Engineering and Road Research Laboratory found that travel times to work in cities in
Europe had remained almost constant for 200 vr. This might be interpreted to
mean that, because of .the way people respond, better transportation by whatever
means will result in dispersion. Does this mean that congestion must be
maintained if cities are to remain compact? Furthermore, the notion that consequences
will be the same in different cities has been challenged. For example, it was
assumed that the effects of improved rail transit in Toronto would also apply
in the San Francisco Bay Area. In Toronto, heavy business activities and denser
residential development occurred in the zones of influence of the transit
stations. Because of many differences, including growth patterns, climate, governmental
structure, and greater competition from the private automobile on freeways,
these changes, when they occurred at all in San Francisco, were less marked.
Operating Urban Transportation Engineering - Part 7
In
England, 33 new towns had been authorized by 1973. An example is Milton
Keynes, a community some 40 miles northwest of London. It is designed for an
ultimate population of 200,000 on 22,000 acres. Stations for a work force of
120,000 will be partially near the town center and partially on the perimeter;
90% of the families will own at least one car; total passenger journeys will be
80% by automobile and 20% by public carriers, but many short trips will be by
walking on fully separated pedestrian ways Provisions for transportation engineering will
use 11% of the total land area, as contrasted to 25 to 30% with the traditional
grid street pattern. Housing will be in clusters of row cottages, 10 to 15 per
acre, with common playgrounds; the areas between clusters will be open space.
To
plan new communities effectively, there should be a reasonable expectation
that the proposed plan will atuact residents of the intended income and racial
groups and mixes. To date, too little is known to predict such outcomes. And
predicting them from past experience in the United States or Europe is dangerous.
In the United States, it has already been demonstr£ted that some schemes for
the disadvantaged, whether in new towns or by redevelopment, were not
successful because they did not match the resident's expectations and modes of
living. Transportation Engineering successes that have been claimed, particularly those involving very
small living units, may reflect the critical need for living space; they may
become less acceptable as supply approaches demand.
Operating Urban Transportation Engineering - Part 6
Any
advanced scheme for large sell-contained urban complexes must include provision
for the movement of goods, which today account for roughly one- fourth of all weekday
traffic movements. Proposals for goods handling, in addition to trucks, have
included freight vehicles using passenger transportation rails or guideways, special
traffic tunnels, conveyers, and even large, air-actuated pipelines.
Wilfred
Owen, who refers to urban areas throughout the world as "accidental
cities" or "unmanageable metropolises," proposes "regional
cities" which are in the middle ground. They would be made up of
interconnected high-density clusters surrounded by low-density land uses such
as new towns (see below). Transportation in high-density areas would combine
walking with people movers, elevators, and escalators; in Iow-density areas
the automobile and bus would predominate.
The
new town concept which was implemented in Great Britain before World War II has
urban satellite communities near to and associated with large urban centers.
They are usually planned to be largeiy self-contained, with employment and all
community services provided, bu! with easy access to the central citv by rail
or expressway bus. A number of such communities have been constructed with
limited acceptance in the United States; successful ones include Reston, Va.,
and Columbia, Md., near Washington, D.C. In Europe much of the
population growth for such cities as Stockholm. Rome, and Belgrade among
others is being cared for in such satellite communities. Canberra and Brasilia,
capitals of Australia and Brazil, respectively, are other examples. Egypt has
undertaken Sadat City, with a population of more than one million.
Operating Urban Transportation Engineering - Part 5
There
is no agreement among transportation planners, politicians, or the public in general as to
what new or modified urban forms would be most satisfactory. Concepts for them
have been classed as strong-core, satellite, lineal or radial, and multi-' pie
center.-’ Strong-core schemes might even concentrate large populations in
single structures in which they would live, work, and xind educational, recreational,
and cultural activities. One such scheme'" envisions
"arcologies," each of which could accommodate a population of several
million. A firs; stage is to accommodate 5000 people on 15 acres under a single
glass roof. For the ultimate plan, buildings would be several times higher
than any in the world todav with transportation by elevators, escalators, and
moving walkways. Automobiles would be stored and used only for travel in the
open space between arcologies or for vacations'or similar purposes. Another
proposal*' employs the systems approach to urban design based on more
effectively employing the third dimension (up and down) and the time dimension
(around the clock) use of facilities. Each settlement would provide building
space on eight circular platforms 8840 ft in diameter, spaced 30 ft
vertically. Homes or apartments, including gardens, and facilities for
industrial and commercial enterprises and for recreation could be built on the
platforms. Vertical movement, would be ■by- ramps or elevators; horizontal
travel could be on foot, bicycle, or in a small vehicle. All vehicle and
pedestrian movements would be separated. Proponents argue for such proposals on
economic grounds; they insist that savings in combined land, buiiaing. and
transportation costs would more than offset the cost of the structure.
Operating Urban Transportation Engineering - Part 2
As
indicated, the shift to the private auto mobile began after World War II. This
shin was not very great in the established, large, older cities, but was particulary
strong in urban areas with populations under 500,000. Once started, the shift
became a vicious circle. Comparing 1950 to 1972, the low in transit ridership,
patronage dropped 62% in spite of a 37% population increase. There has been a
14% increase from 1972 through 1978 in comparison to a 7% population increase,
but transit patronage is still far down from early levels. Over the last three
decades, then, reduced patronage has led transit agencies to cut services. A
second difficulty has been that transit transportation engineering operations suffered financially from
tripled labour and equipment costs but recouped only 55% of them through fare
increases, which were held down by both public and market pressures. These cost increases resulted in part from inflation, in part because capacity
had to be provided to accommodate the costly peak hour home-to-work movements
while off-peak use fell substantially, and in part because of demands that
service be provided at a loss to a dispersed suburbia and to the disadvantaged.
Also, patronage fell because of the five-day and even four-day work week,
suburban rather than downtown shopping, and the loss of night business
attributable, at least in part, to television.
Operating Urban Transportation Engineering - Part 1
Generalizations
based on average statistics transportation engineering such as those given above, although they portray
the overall situation, must be viewed with caution in evaluating individual
situations. For example, in the United States as a whole, motor vehicle
ownership, averaging about 1 for every 1.8 persons, ranges from about 1 for
every 1.3 in predominately rural states to 1 for every 2.8 in the District oi
Columbia, which is almost wholly urban. In major European cities these ratio?
range from 1 to 3.2 in Munich to 1 in 5.2 for Copenhagen. London is 1 to -4.7.
Certainly
availability of an automobile affects transit use. Again, 70% o; the nationwide
work trips are by auto; but for the larger, older, and denser urban areas,
transit work trips are far more numerous. The 1970 census shows work trips by transportation transit as follows: New York, 61%; Boston, 38%; Philadelphia, 37%; and Chicago,
36%. These cities all have rail as part of their system. At the other extreme,
work trips by transit were 18% in Detroit, 9% in Los Angeles, and 8% in Houston.
Data for the San Francisco Bay area taken soon before the 1979 gasoline
shortages and price increases show rail rapid transit (BART) carrying 5% of
the to-and-from-work movements, buses and street cars 18%, and motor vehicles
77%. Transit use in the 14 largest metropolitan areas accounts for 70% of the
nation's transit passengers, and New York alone accounts for 38%. These
percentages are much lower for the more than 400 all-bus svstems operating in
the urban transportation areas which have populations over 500,000 and the more than 500
systems in smaller communities.
