I was born and raised around Portland, only having moved across the country 2 years ago after 35 years there... especially knowing you just moved there, on the front of one apartment complex next to the Willow Creek/W 185th MAX station, during much the 2000s and at least early 2010s, they hung a banner that said this in bold letters: "Why Park and Ride... When you can JUST RIDE?" Truer words about this phenomenon have possibly never been spoken.
I lived for a short while in a tower next door to a frequent (trains every 2 minutes) rapid transit stop and I could be on a moving train faster than it took me to get my car out of the parkade. I could go from my couch to the largest shopping mall in the city in 10 minutes, downtown in 15. It's a complete shift when taking your car somewhere is the slow part of your day.
@TomPVideo The issue though is how do you get to the closest metro station when it's 10 miles away? Even if that station is surrounded by good density, bike lockers, and bike lanes, the average person is not going to ride a bike for 10 miles one-way. The obvious answer seems to be to take a bus, but then you get into the comparison issue of the bus taking much longer to go the 10 miles than driving your car to the station.
In the case of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, the HBLR has park-and-rides too, but they built them in places where they make sense. Tonnelle Ave station is right by the busy US Route 1/9. Liberty State Park station is by the NJ Turnpike extension, and TOD has been built next to the lot. The Bayonne stations of the HBLR are right next to NJ Route 440. This is because much of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail uses old right-of-way that was already established for rail that came before the highway. In the case of the Bayonne stations, that portion uses the former six-track CNJ mainline, so Route 440 in Hudson County was built over the CNJ mainline while Conrail freight trains and the HBLR run alongside the highway. While alongside a highway, the stations aren't that bad, as they're built in approximately the same locations as former CNJ stations, as the former CNJ stations served neighborhoods on the west side of the line that are still around. So not only do the stations act as park-and-rides encouraging those on Route 440 on the east side of the HBLR line to park at the HBLR stations, but those living on the west side of the HBLR line can walk right to the stations. 45th St has no parking lot, it has an elevator that reaches street level to the Avenue E and East Centre Street junction, helping make the stop accessible. 8th Street station was supposed to be a 50-spot park and ride, but they drastically changed it to just 10, and 8th Street's building was inspired by the old CNJ station there. 34th Street on the other hand has a huge lot with over 400 spaces but has been the NJ terminus of the MTA's S89 bus which goes between Bayonne and Eltingville on Staten Island during rush-hour. Yes, an MTA bus that terminates in NJ. The route began in 2007 after the NYS legislature passed a bill in 2006 to allow NYCT interstate service, after Red & Tan stopped services between Hudson County and Staten Island and Staten Island officials begged the MTA to start its own NJ route. When the MTA has recently looked into transit alternatives for Staten Island's West Shore, it suggested a BRT route (that could be converted into LRT) between Tottenville and 8th Street HBLR, answering to the demand for more bus service between Bayonne and SI. In Q1 24, the HBLR had the second-highest ridership per mile of any US light-rail system, 2,964 riders per mile, on a system that's 17 miles! Quite impressive considering it's behind Seattle's Link which was 3,461. And if you're wondering, third place was the Newark Light Rail at 2,643. Yes, two of the top three are in NJ! It doesn't take long to see why. It helps that the HBLR has many connections. Besides the MTA bus service in Bayonne already mentioned, it goes to Hoboken Terminal (connections to ferries, PATH, NJT commuter rail, and NJT buses), Exchange Place (connections to ferries, PATH, and NJT buses), Newport (connection to jitneys, NJT buses, and PATH), Bergenline Ave (a hub for NJT buses and also serves jitneys), Port Imperial (serves ferries and 4 NJT routes), Lincoln Harbor (connection to ferries), Essex Street (connection to Liberty Landing Ferry), and Marin Blvd (connection to weekday peak ferry). Among its points of interest, Newport station serves the Newport Centre shopping mall, Exchange Place station serves Jersey City's Wall Street West, Liberty State Park serves the park and Liberty Science Center, West Side Ave serves New Jersey City University, Jersey City's social security office, and the Jersey City Board of Education, and 34th Street serves the Cape Liberty cruise port. The HBLR has revitalized the NJ Hudson waterfront through tons of TOD. TOD has played a key role in Jersey City's housing boom, and its housing boom is Austin-level, in a city much smaller than Austin, Texas. In addition, Jersey City and Hoboken have both built miles of protected bike lanes and have bikeshare, with bikeshare stations placed at HBLR and PATH stations. In Jersey City, like neighboring NYC, Jersey City has a network of Oonee secure bike parking, placed across the city like at HBLR and PATH stations. Both Jersey City and Hoboken have contributed to Vision Zero. Jersey City achieved zero traffic-related fatalities on city-owned streets in 2022, the first city of its size in the country to achieve this, while Hoboken hasn't had a single traffic fatality since 2017, thanks to practices like daylighting and rain gardens. In 2023, Hoboken installed 78 daylighted intersections, 61 high visibility crosswalks, one raised crosswalk, 9 curb extensions, and 14 multi-way stops.
As others have stated, the irony of highlighting Metra's Route 59 station at 6:51 is that it's the busiest non-downtown station on the Metra network. I'm fine with park-and-rides in the more suburban areas if it means encouraging suburbanites to take the train and ditch traffic. When Ronkonkoma was electrified in 1987, they built expanded parking facilities in anticipation of people switching from the diesel Port Jefferson and Montauk Branches as it became the easternmost LIRR station with direct electrified service to Manhattan, and in April 1988, found that 42 percent of the branch's passengers were new to the line, with 34 percent switching from Port Jeff and Montauk Branches, 6 percent were new to the LIRR as a whole and 2 percent recently returned to the LIRR. By September 1988, over 2,000 new riders during the morning rush hour had switched to the Ronkonkoma Branch, much of which occurred in the first month after electrification, faster than the LIRR expected. In 2023, Ronkonkoma was the busiest station in Suffolk County, with 3,233,325 passengers. But even in Ronkonkoma, they've been building TOD, as Suffolk County and the NY government aimed to revitalize the area by integrating housing, office and retail spaces, turning the area from vacant storefronts and industrial properties to a dynamic sustainable urban center that caters to modern living and working needs. Besides the residential Station Yards development north of the station, they're redeveloping the station's huge southern lot with a hotel, convention center, a life sciences hub, daily services and destination retail, and relocating MacArthur Airport's terminal to the north so it can connect with a pedestrianized corridor to the station! No need for a taxi or peoplemover, you can just walk right to the airport! With the LIRR aiming to electrify to Yaphank, this will help alleviate Ronkonkoma by encouraging drivers to drive less by redirecting them to Medford and Yaphank stations, and with a relocated Yaphank station at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, it'll better serve a nationally important laboratory along with The Boulevard TOD built in advance. Ronkonkoma isn't the only place on the LIRR building TOD as well. Hicksville, Mineola, Speonk, Babylon, Patchogue (the LIRR station is a bus hub for SCT), Copiague, Wyandanch, and Riverhead (its LIRR station is another SCT bus hub) have been as well. The latter six are in Suffolk County like Ronkonkoma and Yaphank and have been a part of former Suffolk County executive Democrat Steve Bellone's Connect Long Island which not only includes TOD but also bikeshare in 2019 (which Patchogue, Babylon, Gilgo Beach, Lindenhurst, Huntington, the Hamptons, and Riverhead all participate in bikeshare), a continuous double track between Farmingdale and Ronkonkoma for East Side Access, expanding Ronkonkoma's yard as Mid-Suffolk Yard with 23 tracks, redesigning the bus network, making many new routes with most routes having 30-minute headways and timed connections, BRT with enhanced north-south corridors, and improving hiking and biking networks. Steve created the plan to address a lack of quality affordable rental housing, a lack of that type of housing in environments in which young people want to live (like walkable downtowns), high costs of living, auto-centric transportation system with limited north-south mobility, and a scarcity of high paying jobs. Bellone engaged with the youth and understood that people wanted affordable, walkable, bike-friendly communities with easy access to transit, that LI's car dependency was bad for the local environment, and the youth were leaving LI in droves because it's too expensive to live on the island, and something needed to change.
An agency that is making decent (if still too slow-moving) progress towards reducing this problem is WMATA in DC. In recent years, as a frequent red line rider, there has been a lot of fairly high density mixed-use development going up towards both ends of the line. The DC suburbs are still criminally car-dependent, but there are increasingly large pockets of walkability and density scattered throughout them. Edit: Capitol Bikeshare (CaBi) has made many previously inaccessible parts of the region reachable through transit + (e)bikes in a way that makes the region feel far smaller than it used to.
It's interesting that you say this because from my perspective as a Virginian, most of the state's investment in Metro has been squandered. The arc from King St. to Ballston is pretty good. After that? Maybe one or two stations that I would consider above average.
@jyutzler well, the Orange Line in Virginia, past Ballston, was pretty much doomed to be park-and-ride based and unfriendly to other modes 45 years ago, when they built it down the median of Interstate 66, rather than securing a separate right of way
@@chuckbrotton2449 It's not just the Orange. The Blue (Van Dorn St. and Franconia-Springfield), Yellow (Eisenhower and Huntington), and Silver (basically the whole thing) are problems too.
I wouldn’t mind seeing transit agencies commercialize underperforming park and ride lots. Charging rent to raise money for better transit is commonplace in much of the rest of the world
Depending on structure that land could be owned the by the city so the transit agency could be giving that up to a municipality and *hope* they act code to support the transit but in many sunbelt cities political will is against that
Leasing out the land for cheap also means that lower rent apartments/businesses are viable in new developments while still providing new income for the transit agency!
My understanding is that transportation is rarely profitable on its own. The real money is in homes, businesses, etc. made desirable by proximity to the train. The giant American passenger rail companies of the were arguably real estate companies. If people don't want to park and ride, make a cute little town center on that empty parking lot instead.
I live in Denver and our transit system RTD is called "reason to drive" for a reason. It's slow, infrequent and doesn't go anywhere most people want to actually go with the sole exception of the A line (by far the best way to get to the airport). They have bunches of park and rides that could act as local transit hubs and TODs, but don't because RTD is still singularly focused on peak time commuter traffic into the center of Denver. At a time when Downtown Denver is a ghost down due to WFH. They blew a ton of money on light rail expansions that nobody uses, when the core of Denver has less traffic issues than the I-25 corridor north and south of the city do, regional rail to Ft Collins and Co Springs would be more useful than the light rail expansions they did build.
Why there isn’t any rail connection between Denver and The Springs is just baffling! Especially since so many people who live in or are traveling to the Springs use DIA. There should be some sort of rail connection between Cheyenne and Pueblo, imho. (Maybe even as far north as Casper)
Best "Last Mile Solution" is a Brompton. Front door to and between transit, or quick errands when driving isn't feasible. Plus they're handy at touristy spots while on my hols.
@@Desmaad eh, brompton really are the best at small, quick-folding cycling. I wouldn't consider a Tern Vektron in the same category. A small folding bike is more convenient for quick bus boost but a heavier folding bike might be better for cross-country travel where you might ride a lot and sometimes jump on a train to skip a boring geography like Saskatchewan.
I've used most of the urban rail transit systems in the USA and have NEVER seen a park & ride that didn't also provide bus bays and/or shelters. That being said, allow me to point out the positive aspects of park & rides without advocating for them: 1) Land banks for future TOD, 2) Keeps some CBD-bound cars off the roads, 3) Reduces the need for dedicated parking in the CBD, and 4) Simplifies navigation for out-of-towners/tourists. EDIT: I see you mentioned #1.
"American public transit agencies often don't see quite the same ridership that agencies in other parts of the world do" That's the understatement of the year! The circular tramway "double line" I often use carries more passengers daily than LA Metro and the Chicago L combined... Sure, land use, poor park and ride locations, last mile and walkability are really a problem, but there's also another issue : there are neither the carrot nor the stick to encourage switching from cars to transit. One could say that all that was talked about in the video is the carrot, what about the stick? Car culture is so deeply ingrained that I think all the carrots in the world won't suffice if there's not a pretty convincingly stick.
if your actually building all the carrots correctly they themselves are the stick. walkable transit focused areas that dont provide unnecessary things like parking would be the thing that forces people out of their cars.
MBTA has the advantage of being in an old northeastern city that was built up prior to the automobile. Boston is a relatively compact city so MBTA's existing metro system is mostly sufficient if a bit disjointed for serving the urban core of Boston and their commuter rail system is transitioning into a regional rail system to connect the surrounding smaller cities to Boston and maybe if they can scrounge up funding provide a comprehensive rail system connecting all of eastern MA and RI.
Love your videos..they keep me informed on the planning side of transit and actually confirm some of my thoughts when I’m on the operational side of things.
We get it! Urbanists hate Park and Rides! But seriously, if done right they can be pretty effective. Placing them on the edges of cities would work and strengthening bus connections would also work as well,
Honestly I think the focus should be on metro stations, commuter rail park and ride can be ok but you have to have your commuter rail well linked up with your metro network (which admittedly isnt really possible if there isnt an extensive metro network like in seattles case). A pragmatic way of getting suburbanites to use transit more would be to have park and ride at the commuter stations, but then have those lines directly intersect and connect with metro lines at as many points as possible, so that the metro network takes the burden of last mile connectivity in the city core.
One of our commuter rail lines has almost every stop directly in the downtown area of a small city, we really need this line to run all day everyday and to have better land use, it has the potential to transcend commuter rail
Thanks for addressing the first/last mile. I live 55 miles from downtown where my work is. Last mile is covered by the subway and sorry walk (even though it's not a good experience) but home to commuter rail is and will foreseeably be a drive. A walk from home to the bus stop is 15 min. Add the bus ride and what is a 18-22 min drive to the station becomes a less pleasant 45 min journey ... Before I even take the 1 hr commuter rail trip.
Accessibility is important. Some viewers might be interested in reading, “When Driving Is Not An Option: Steering Away From Car Dependency” by Anna Letitia Zivarts.
Dense apartments and mixed-use developments should be zoned around stations instead of parking lots. A pedestrian-friendly environment encourages transit use and makes riders to rely on transit. The US now have too many single-family houses, and its time to build dense condos. The best place to place them are within walking distance of transit stations.
I can't help but chuckle that this exact topic was covered twice in the same week (first by RMTransit, and now you). Not that I'm complaining. We should be screaming about this from the rooftops!
Well, here’s some news from BART, a couple months ago they announced a multi million dollar recieval grant to rebuild North Berkeley station on the Richmond branch, as I’ve often seen the parking lot there go underused.
I ride TriMet a lot and must say Hillboro is a small community and trams are the only method of transit we have. PDX is not a high tech place but most in person workers still use the MAX train. Portland Oregon area is more of a retail and small business area. If you want to see low ridership take the PDX Streetcar in the Pearl district. Boring AF if you go past Powell's books. Full of work from home people and property managers who are struggling to get people to live in their apartments. Travelshed is a common thing in computer games about public transport or city planning. Do it right you get a lot of people riding the bus or tram. Do it wrong you get empty stations. It's also important for transit to be intermodel otherwise getting to places will be hard. Unitrans is also a cool bus system. Does a good job of operating and tries to connect students with heavy traffic areas. They are one of the public transport systems known for double deck buses. SDMTS 9 bus is a good bus line if you are going to Seaworld. I know because I was a former season pass holder from 2011-2014. Sorry PETA. Bike rental services are not as reliable as they seem and it's very evident in large cities such as London and SF.
Yah, try biking in the miserable January weather in Seattle! Then hop on the bum express calmed busses or light rail! And then get home wet and hangry, 3 joust after you ended work at 6!
That's a really valid point. Commuting with public transit should get more reliable in all types of situations. I know many people that take their car on a day with bad weather. Delays with buses are so common then and it makes the journey generally PAINFUL
While the Chapel Hill-Durham light rail plan got derailed, one thing I appreciated about that proposal was that they planned to do a lot of what you were talking about here. If it got built, it would’ve come with significant improvements to walk and bike infrastructure, particularly in more suburban areas.
Park and ride stations at the end of lines is fine, especially on heavy rail/rapid transit but most other stations should have lots of housing and commercial nearby. Some P&R stations contribute a ton to ridership, especially to big cities like NYC and Chicago. Route 59 station in Chicagoland is a massive P&R far from the city and its the busiest Metra station outside of downtown!
A solution to the last mile issue for heavy rail is to simply better connect it with light rail. If you look at metra in Chicago for example, you can see that its actually poorly connected with CTA lines, everything is radial with few to no connecting points, and even the downtown stations are blocks away from CTA stations. If they even built a single circumferential CTA line outside of the city center crossing these radial lines with the aim of linking metra stations with existing CTA lines, I think Metra becomes substantially more useful to commuters because way more of the city suddenly becomes easily accessible through it.
When it comes to park and rides in my city: The park and ride at the southern end of the silver line BRT lite gets very little use, and it’s easy to see why. It’s probably meant for people who live in the unincorporated areas past the end where there’s no subsidy to pay for transit. Land use by itself doesn’t really help, and the silver line runs pretty close to a controlled access highway that is guaranteed to be faster. The Laker line’s slightly heavier BRT also has one, and it seems to fare better since it is a bit more centrally located and doesn’t have the highway to compete with, but the speed advantage is still absent.
These stops should be more like "Live and Rides" rather than park and rides. Housing, not parking. And I've also noticed that the Portland MAX connects a lot of shopping centers as opposed to neighborhoods.
California native. My local Bart station is the blue line spur terminus, which has a parking lot so big on the south side that you can't even see the station from the far end of it, although you also can't because it's in the median of the 580. All of the other Blue Line spur stations are also in the 580 median and surrounded by parking past that. There is bus service... sometimes. I am grateful that it's there. I would be unable to get to Oakland or SF in any reasonable time otherwise, and they literally this week opened a multi-use path bridge over Dublin Boulevard directly to it, allowing people to bypass the frankly insultingly long pedestrian wait at Dublin and Sterling. But for fuck's sake, why the middle of the 580?? Was it that hard to put it in a location where its very existence wouldn't be an uphill battle??
1:27 yeah, if you are in Asia, those amounts of space for parking lot already full of medium rise apartment buildings and surrounded by multiple retail stores, not a parking lot😅
Hearing a lot of DC videos, a lot of stations are lucky to be at 33% of the capacity. Many park and rides you could easily redevelop 50% into mixed use. If one set of bus bays is abandoned (except for West Falls Church), deviate all the busses there then you can sacrifice a bit more to either new infrastructure or public parking. Also if you have multiple garages, demolish 1-2 and just make the third public so anyone can park there
@@sammymarrco2realistically though light rail is meant to average like 20 mph. You want stops because they should be getting people within walking distance of their destinations. The issue comes because American cities are so sprawled out that light rail is made to cover distances of like 20 miles or greater to city centers, at which point it starts taking over an hour to get there. I think what american cities need is light rail that is very well integrated with commuter rail, with tons of connecting stations, so suburbanites can commute in on the heavy rail and then immediately get on light rail to their destination. In the case of Chicago for example, you have tons of commuter rail but they're all directed to like 2 downtown stations that don't even have connectivity with metro lines, which is a massive misuse of the infrastructure.
A couple years ago, a new housing development was built next-door to the park-n-ride at the end of the line on one of my city's light rail lines. Even though the development was literally next door and proximity to the park-n-ride was heavily advertised to attract homebuyers, residents would still have 10-30 minutes of walking to get to the platform from their home (and have to walk along a dangerous road with no sidewalk), so I'm sure that few people who live there take the train and that anyone actually does still drives from their home.
Park and rides are awesome if you live in the burbs- and this is coming from a guy who lives in the city who has ample amount of public transit options nearby.
Even if what you say is true, it doesn't negate the fact that some people simply live too far from the closest metro station to either walk or bike to it even if they want to use the Metro. The obvious answer seems to be to take a bus to the station, but then the calculation switches to one of how quickly you can get to the station. Then the choice comes down to either taking the bus or driving your car to the station parking lot. A 10 mile distance one-way to the nearest station would take about 10 minutes in a car. On the bus, it would probably take 30 minutes. That's either a 20-minute or 60-minute round trip. In that scenario, taking the bus is a deal breaker. But the video is also shortsighted in its observation about the usefulness of park and ride stations. Park and ride stations are critical, especially for metro systems that are not comprehensive enough to easily serve the given transit area they're responsible for. You don't need park and ride on more comprehensive metro systems. So the greater long-term practical answer is to build out the metro system as fast as possible to reach more people so they don't need to drive to the stations. Short of that, park and ride stations serve to entice people who regularly drive to more often take the metro. The short-term goal could be one of people, not necessarily stop driving altogether, but to drive a lot less. That would be a huge change in commuting traffic patterns. If people only drove a total of 20 minutes a day, to and from a station, imagine how significant that impact could be in a city like Los Angeles where drivers are stuck in traffic for 3 hours a day going to and from work?
Hey Millikan Way, I live like 15 minutes away from there. I used that trimet stop for 2 years to commute to and from school until I switched to driving directly to PSU. there needs to be some changes
What really bothers me about the MAX Green line is that they put it along the freeway, a terrible location to be in, that also doesn't have any destinations, instead of putting it along 82nd Ave in a configuration similar to Interstate Ave. 82nd already has the highest ridership bus line in Portland, and has tons of businesses along it. There are also tons and tons of massive parking lots that could be converted into new density if served by a MAX line. I'm aware that Portland didn't own 82nd until quite recently, but that doesn't make the green line's alignment any less infurating.
People should be bringing their bikes on board with them on the transit. I would do this more often myself if bike capacity on transit wasn't so ridiculously limited.
I think park and ride is a lesser evil because it keeps cars out of the core city, but we should still try to get to the point when you don’t need to drive to get to the train.
This video mentions, but misses the #1 issue. Rail ONLY works when you have a Central Business District commute pattern. Park And Ride is important, and doesn't affect this #1 statement. Please go to Ronkonkoma Station in Long Island --- 6100 parking spaces. It explains everything. [Cars are the last mile connection that works without standing in the rain, sleet, snow, hail, or gloom of night, on-time, and don't require BILLION dollar budgets.]
Exactly. Park and rides are perfect for people committing *from* nowhere to somewhere-usually downtown for work or entertainment. Removing that parking will only sharpen the us-versus-them divide.
Maybe seattle is just different but our park and ride lots for Link are generally packed and the lots for Sound Transit Express are generally decently full, weekend and weekday. (This is on top of the feeder bus ridership) I think last mile transit is important but, it is impossible to ignore the fact that park and rides do bring in ridership from bus-averse people so park and rides should be seen as a deal with the devil and should be built as structures on a small footprint
They need to turn those useless parking lots into apartment complexes. And a lot of those stations are so long and empty that there's more than enough space for plenty of bike lockers.
also it is often really hard to go from a few miles one side of r thelocal rapid transit station to just a few miles the other side of the station a small amout of the new buses should be on n new thur rapid transit li station because it is just easierto drive that short distance then even wait 5 or ten minetes at the bus termiinal. because it is tolarge a piecer of time in the total short trip time.
This is dumb. When the light rail systems were first installed they needed suburban stations. Some passengers drove private cars to the stations, some passengers walked and others might take a bus. Now that rail traffic has not met demand, the failure of the strategy is that some stations have park and ride lots? Nonsense. I don't have a problem with a developer offering to swap station parking land to build for other nearby land. The park and ride people can walk an extra five minutes. It only seems fair that the new development next to the station not have free parking for their residents.
Oftentimes I see people try to justify park and rides as a necessary evil because otherwise the suburbanites can't take advantage of the transit paid for through their tax dollars. But this ignores the fact that they benefit from TOD regardless of whether they personally use the public transit. Because cities grow over time regardless of land use. So by building high density housing and businesses near transit, that ensures the suburbanites' housing costs remain affordable while also moderating the increase in car congestion if they do need to drive.
Even if what you say is true, it doesn't negate rhe fact that some people simply live too far from the closest metro station to either walk or bike to it even if they want to use the Metro. The obvious answer seems to be to take a bus to the station, but then the calculation switches to one of how quickly you can get to the station. Then the choice comes down to either taking the bus or driving your car to the station parking lot. A 10 mile distance one-way to the nearest station would take about 10 minutes. On the bus, it would probably take 30 minutes. That's either a 20-minute or 60-minute round trip. In that scenario, taking the bus is a deal breaker.
It is not just the non productive use of land that is the issue. The idea is to reduce car use and encourage micromobility and busses to transit stations.
@ removing park and rides would increase car dependence because people who use them will choose instead to drive the entire way rather than park near the station, and certainly there can’t be any harm in creating underground park and rides
@@benjaminchandler7919Unfortunately, cars do create harm. The channel’s name is literally Climate and Transit. Yes, sometimes people make bad decisions about travel choices. Remember, the video suggests that park and ride makes sense where there is not enough population density to create frequent buss connections.
@@barryrobbins7694But the video is also shortsighted in its observation about the usefulness of park and ride stations. What about the people who really want to use the Metro, but live too far to either bike or walk to their closest metro station? Taking the bus seems to be the logical choice until you factor in the issue of time. If a station is 10 miles away, it would take you 3x longer to get to it on the bus vs driving tour car. And that's not including the time to walk to the bus stop that might not be that close to your house either. Park and ride stations are critical, especially for metro systems that are not comprehensive enough to easily serve the given transit area they're responsible for. You don't need park and ride on more comprehensive metro systems. So the greater long-term practical answer is to build out the metro system as fast as possible to reach more people so they don't need to drive to the stations.
@@mrxman581 There are a lot of variables at play. To really determine what is needed for a particular system or location within a system would take some specific analysis. As stated in the video, he is not entirely against park and ride. It has to do with population density. In less populated areas that are typically at the end of a line, park and ride makes sense. Areas with more density can have frequent buss service that is timed with train departure times. Parking lots can help create more density with housing. Housing is needed anyway and is a more productive use of the land. For every parking space, an apartment in a 5 story building could be created. So, there could easily be more ridership than might be lost. Keep in mind that 1/3 of the U.S. population doesn’t have a drivers license; many people with a license can’t afford a car.
A few of his suggestions will improve things when taken. There is no one panacea for a complex system like a city. It’s like new habits in your life. A few small changes over time can make a big difference.
I was born and raised around Portland, only having moved across the country 2 years ago after 35 years there... especially knowing you just moved there, on the front of one apartment complex next to the Willow Creek/W 185th MAX station, during much the 2000s and at least early 2010s, they hung a banner that said this in bold letters:
"Why Park and Ride...
When you can JUST RIDE?"
Truer words about this phenomenon have possibly never been spoken.
I lived for a short while in a tower next door to a frequent (trains every 2 minutes) rapid transit stop and I could be on a moving train faster than it took me to get my car out of the parkade. I could go from my couch to the largest shopping mall in the city in 10 minutes, downtown in 15.
It's a complete shift when taking your car somewhere is the slow part of your day.
@TomPVideo The issue though is how do you get to the closest metro station when it's 10 miles away? Even if that station is surrounded by good density, bike lockers, and bike lanes, the average person is not going to ride a bike for 10 miles one-way.
The obvious answer seems to be to take a bus, but then you get into the comparison issue of the bus taking much longer to go the 10 miles than driving your car to the station.
In the case of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, the HBLR has park-and-rides too, but they built them in places where they make sense. Tonnelle Ave station is right by the busy US Route 1/9. Liberty State Park station is by the NJ Turnpike extension, and TOD has been built next to the lot. The Bayonne stations of the HBLR are right next to NJ Route 440. This is because much of the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail uses old right-of-way that was already established for rail that came before the highway. In the case of the Bayonne stations, that portion uses the former six-track CNJ mainline, so Route 440 in Hudson County was built over the CNJ mainline while Conrail freight trains and the HBLR run alongside the highway. While alongside a highway, the stations aren't that bad, as they're built in approximately the same locations as former CNJ stations, as the former CNJ stations served neighborhoods on the west side of the line that are still around. So not only do the stations act as park-and-rides encouraging those on Route 440 on the east side of the HBLR line to park at the HBLR stations, but those living on the west side of the HBLR line can walk right to the stations. 45th St has no parking lot, it has an elevator that reaches street level to the Avenue E and East Centre Street junction, helping make the stop accessible. 8th Street station was supposed to be a 50-spot park and ride, but they drastically changed it to just 10, and 8th Street's building was inspired by the old CNJ station there. 34th Street on the other hand has a huge lot with over 400 spaces but has been the NJ terminus of the MTA's S89 bus which goes between Bayonne and Eltingville on Staten Island during rush-hour. Yes, an MTA bus that terminates in NJ. The route began in 2007 after the NYS legislature passed a bill in 2006 to allow NYCT interstate service, after Red & Tan stopped services between Hudson County and Staten Island and Staten Island officials begged the MTA to start its own NJ route. When the MTA has recently looked into transit alternatives for Staten Island's West Shore, it suggested a BRT route (that could be converted into LRT) between Tottenville and 8th Street HBLR, answering to the demand for more bus service between Bayonne and SI.
In Q1 24, the HBLR had the second-highest ridership per mile of any US light-rail system, 2,964 riders per mile, on a system that's 17 miles! Quite impressive considering it's behind Seattle's Link which was 3,461. And if you're wondering, third place was the Newark Light Rail at 2,643. Yes, two of the top three are in NJ! It doesn't take long to see why. It helps that the HBLR has many connections. Besides the MTA bus service in Bayonne already mentioned, it goes to Hoboken Terminal (connections to ferries, PATH, NJT commuter rail, and NJT buses), Exchange Place (connections to ferries, PATH, and NJT buses), Newport (connection to jitneys, NJT buses, and PATH), Bergenline Ave (a hub for NJT buses and also serves jitneys), Port Imperial (serves ferries and 4 NJT routes), Lincoln Harbor (connection to ferries), Essex Street (connection to Liberty Landing Ferry), and Marin Blvd (connection to weekday peak ferry). Among its points of interest, Newport station serves the Newport Centre shopping mall, Exchange Place station serves Jersey City's Wall Street West, Liberty State Park serves the park and Liberty Science Center, West Side Ave serves New Jersey City University, Jersey City's social security office, and the Jersey City Board of Education, and 34th Street serves the Cape Liberty cruise port. The HBLR has revitalized the NJ Hudson waterfront through tons of TOD. TOD has played a key role in Jersey City's housing boom, and its housing boom is Austin-level, in a city much smaller than Austin, Texas. In addition, Jersey City and Hoboken have both built miles of protected bike lanes and have bikeshare, with bikeshare stations placed at HBLR and PATH stations. In Jersey City, like neighboring NYC, Jersey City has a network of Oonee secure bike parking, placed across the city like at HBLR and PATH stations. Both Jersey City and Hoboken have contributed to Vision Zero. Jersey City achieved zero traffic-related fatalities on city-owned streets in 2022, the first city of its size in the country to achieve this, while Hoboken hasn't had a single traffic fatality since 2017, thanks to practices like daylighting and rain gardens. In 2023, Hoboken installed 78 daylighted intersections, 61 high visibility crosswalks, one raised crosswalk, 9 curb extensions, and 14 multi-way stops.
As others have stated, the irony of highlighting Metra's Route 59 station at 6:51 is that it's the busiest non-downtown station on the Metra network. I'm fine with park-and-rides in the more suburban areas if it means encouraging suburbanites to take the train and ditch traffic. When Ronkonkoma was electrified in 1987, they built expanded parking facilities in anticipation of people switching from the diesel Port Jefferson and Montauk Branches as it became the easternmost LIRR station with direct electrified service to Manhattan, and in April 1988, found that 42 percent of the branch's passengers were new to the line, with 34 percent switching from Port Jeff and Montauk Branches, 6 percent were new to the LIRR as a whole and 2 percent recently returned to the LIRR. By September 1988, over 2,000 new riders during the morning rush hour had switched to the Ronkonkoma Branch, much of which occurred in the first month after electrification, faster than the LIRR expected. In 2023, Ronkonkoma was the busiest station in Suffolk County, with 3,233,325 passengers. But even in Ronkonkoma, they've been building TOD, as Suffolk County and the NY government aimed to revitalize the area by integrating housing, office and retail spaces, turning the area from vacant storefronts and industrial properties to a dynamic sustainable urban center that caters to modern living and working needs. Besides the residential Station Yards development north of the station, they're redeveloping the station's huge southern lot with a hotel, convention center, a life sciences hub, daily services and destination retail, and relocating MacArthur Airport's terminal to the north so it can connect with a pedestrianized corridor to the station! No need for a taxi or peoplemover, you can just walk right to the airport! With the LIRR aiming to electrify to Yaphank, this will help alleviate Ronkonkoma by encouraging drivers to drive less by redirecting them to Medford and Yaphank stations, and with a relocated Yaphank station at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, it'll better serve a nationally important laboratory along with The Boulevard TOD built in advance.
Ronkonkoma isn't the only place on the LIRR building TOD as well. Hicksville, Mineola, Speonk, Babylon, Patchogue (the LIRR station is a bus hub for SCT), Copiague, Wyandanch, and Riverhead (its LIRR station is another SCT bus hub) have been as well. The latter six are in Suffolk County like Ronkonkoma and Yaphank and have been a part of former Suffolk County executive Democrat Steve Bellone's Connect Long Island which not only includes TOD but also bikeshare in 2019 (which Patchogue, Babylon, Gilgo Beach, Lindenhurst, Huntington, the Hamptons, and Riverhead all participate in bikeshare), a continuous double track between Farmingdale and Ronkonkoma for East Side Access, expanding Ronkonkoma's yard as Mid-Suffolk Yard with 23 tracks, redesigning the bus network, making many new routes with most routes having 30-minute headways and timed connections, BRT with enhanced north-south corridors, and improving hiking and biking networks. Steve created the plan to address a lack of quality affordable rental housing, a lack of that type of housing in environments in which young people want to live (like walkable downtowns), high costs of living, auto-centric transportation system with limited north-south mobility, and a scarcity of high paying jobs. Bellone engaged with the youth and understood that people wanted affordable, walkable, bike-friendly communities with easy access to transit, that LI's car dependency was bad for the local environment, and the youth were leaving LI in droves because it's too expensive to live on the island, and something needed to change.
An agency that is making decent (if still too slow-moving) progress towards reducing this problem is WMATA in DC. In recent years, as a frequent red line rider, there has been a lot of fairly high density mixed-use development going up towards both ends of the line. The DC suburbs are still criminally car-dependent, but there are increasingly large pockets of walkability and density scattered throughout them. Edit: Capitol Bikeshare (CaBi) has made many previously inaccessible parts of the region reachable through transit + (e)bikes in a way that makes the region feel far smaller than it used to.
its getting better but all the localities need to upzone 1/2 to a mile around all stations, not just certain pockets.
@@sammymarrco2 Definitely
It's interesting that you say this because from my perspective as a Virginian, most of the state's investment in Metro has been squandered. The arc from King St. to Ballston is pretty good. After that? Maybe one or two stations that I would consider above average.
@jyutzler well, the Orange Line in Virginia, past Ballston, was pretty much doomed to be park-and-ride based and unfriendly to other modes 45 years ago, when they built it down the median of Interstate 66, rather than securing a separate right of way
@@chuckbrotton2449 It's not just the Orange. The Blue (Van Dorn St. and Franconia-Springfield), Yellow (Eisenhower and Huntington), and Silver (basically the whole thing) are problems too.
I wouldn’t mind seeing transit agencies commercialize underperforming park and ride lots. Charging rent to raise money for better transit is commonplace in much of the rest of the world
Depending on structure that land could be owned the by the city so the transit agency could be giving that up to a municipality and *hope* they act code to support the transit but in many sunbelt cities political will is against that
Leasing out the land for cheap also means that lower rent apartments/businesses are viable in new developments while still providing new income for the transit agency!
Tokyo and old company towns: first time?
Also allowing shops and restaurants in train stations like in East Asia
My understanding is that transportation is rarely profitable on its own. The real money is in homes, businesses, etc. made desirable by proximity to the train. The giant American passenger rail companies of the were arguably real estate companies. If people don't want to park and ride, make a cute little town center on that empty parking lot instead.
I live in Denver and our transit system RTD is called "reason to drive" for a reason. It's slow, infrequent and doesn't go anywhere most people want to actually go with the sole exception of the A line (by far the best way to get to the airport). They have bunches of park and rides that could act as local transit hubs and TODs, but don't because RTD is still singularly focused on peak time commuter traffic into the center of Denver. At a time when Downtown Denver is a ghost down due to WFH. They blew a ton of money on light rail expansions that nobody uses, when the core of Denver has less traffic issues than the I-25 corridor north and south of the city do, regional rail to Ft Collins and Co Springs would be more useful than the light rail expansions they did build.
In LA, we used to call RTD ROUGH. TOUGH DANGEROUS
Why there isn’t any rail connection between Denver and The Springs is just baffling! Especially since so many people who live in or are traveling to the Springs use DIA.
There should be some sort of rail connection between Cheyenne and Pueblo, imho. (Maybe even as far north as Casper)
Best "Last Mile Solution" is a Brompton.
Front door to and between transit, or quick errands when driving isn't feasible.
Plus they're handy at touristy spots while on my hols.
Replace "Brompton" with any folding bike, really.
@@Desmaad eh, brompton really are the best at small, quick-folding cycling. I wouldn't consider a Tern Vektron in the same category. A small folding bike is more convenient for quick bus boost but a heavier folding bike might be better for cross-country travel where you might ride a lot and sometimes jump on a train to skip a boring geography like Saskatchewan.
@@Davmm96 Are you sure no other brand comes close? Bromptons are pretty expensive over here.
I've used most of the urban rail transit systems in the USA and have NEVER seen a park & ride that didn't also provide bus bays and/or shelters. That being said, allow me to point out the positive aspects of park & rides without advocating for them:
1) Land banks for future TOD,
2) Keeps some CBD-bound cars off the roads,
3) Reduces the need for dedicated parking in the CBD, and
4) Simplifies navigation for out-of-towners/tourists.
EDIT: I see you mentioned #1.
He mentioned #4 as well. That’s probably the biggest reason imho.
"American public transit agencies often don't see quite the same ridership that agencies in other parts of the world do"
That's the understatement of the year!
The circular tramway "double line" I often use carries more passengers daily than LA Metro and the Chicago L combined...
Sure, land use, poor park and ride locations, last mile and walkability are really a problem, but there's also another issue : there are neither the carrot nor the stick to encourage switching from cars to transit.
One could say that all that was talked about in the video is the carrot, what about the stick?
Car culture is so deeply ingrained that I think all the carrots in the world won't suffice if there's not a pretty convincingly stick.
if your actually building all the carrots correctly they themselves are the stick. walkable transit focused areas that dont provide unnecessary things like parking would be the thing that forces people out of their cars.
I’m grateful that the MBTA is trying to change this
MBTA has the advantage of being in an old northeastern city that was built up prior to the automobile. Boston is a relatively compact city so MBTA's existing metro system is mostly sufficient if a bit disjointed for serving the urban core of Boston and their commuter rail system is transitioning into a regional rail system to connect the surrounding smaller cities to Boston and maybe if they can scrounge up funding provide a comprehensive rail system connecting all of eastern MA and RI.
Love your videos..they keep me informed on the planning side of transit and actually confirm some of my thoughts when I’m on the operational side of things.
We get it! Urbanists hate Park and Rides!
But seriously, if done right they can be pretty effective. Placing them on the edges of cities would work and strengthening bus connections would also work as well,
In Seattle we’re doing really well with TOD at our metro stations, but our commuter rail needs more love.
Honestly I think the focus should be on metro stations, commuter rail park and ride can be ok but you have to have your commuter rail well linked up with your metro network (which admittedly isnt really possible if there isnt an extensive metro network like in seattles case). A pragmatic way of getting suburbanites to use transit more would be to have park and ride at the commuter stations, but then have those lines directly intersect and connect with metro lines at as many points as possible, so that the metro network takes the burden of last mile connectivity in the city core.
One of our commuter rail lines has almost every stop directly in the downtown area of a small city, we really need this line to run all day everyday and to have better land use, it has the potential to transcend commuter rail
Thanks for addressing the first/last mile. I live 55 miles from downtown where my work is. Last mile is covered by the subway and sorry walk (even though it's not a good experience) but home to commuter rail is and will foreseeably be a drive. A walk from home to the bus stop is 15 min. Add the bus ride and what is a 18-22 min drive to the station becomes a less pleasant 45 min journey ... Before I even take the 1 hr commuter rail trip.
Yes, the issue comes down to what is more efficient in many cases.
Accessibility is important. Some viewers might be interested in reading, “When Driving Is Not An Option: Steering Away From Car Dependency” by Anna Letitia Zivarts.
Dense apartments and mixed-use developments should be zoned around stations instead of parking lots. A pedestrian-friendly environment encourages transit use and makes riders to rely on transit. The US now have too many single-family houses, and its time to build dense condos. The best place to place them are within walking distance of transit stations.
I can't help but chuckle that this exact topic was covered twice in the same week (first by RMTransit, and now you). Not that I'm complaining. We should be screaming about this from the rooftops!
1:25 I like how the awful city I live in is used as the first example for "car-dependent sprawl" very accurate for it too.
Well, here’s some news from BART, a couple months ago they announced a multi million dollar recieval grant to rebuild North Berkeley station on the Richmond branch, as I’ve often seen the parking lot there go underused.
I ride TriMet a lot and must say Hillboro is a small community and trams are the only method of transit we have. PDX is not a high tech place but most in person workers still use the MAX train. Portland Oregon area is more of a retail and small business area. If you want to see low ridership take the PDX Streetcar in the Pearl district. Boring AF if you go past Powell's books. Full of work from home people and property managers who are struggling to get people to live in their apartments. Travelshed is a common thing in computer games about public transport or city planning. Do it right you get a lot of people riding the bus or tram. Do it wrong you get empty stations. It's also important for transit to be intermodel otherwise getting to places will be hard. Unitrans is also a cool bus system. Does a good job of operating and tries to connect students with heavy traffic areas. They are one of the public transport systems known for double deck buses. SDMTS 9 bus is a good bus line if you are going to Seaworld. I know because I was a former season pass holder from 2011-2014. Sorry PETA. Bike rental services are not as reliable as they seem and it's very evident in large cities such as London and SF.
Yah, try biking in the miserable January weather in Seattle! Then hop on the bum express calmed busses or light rail! And then get home wet and hangry, 3 joust after you ended work at 6!
That's a really valid point. Commuting with public transit should get more reliable in all types of situations. I know many people that take their car on a day with bad weather. Delays with buses are so common then and it makes the journey generally PAINFUL
While the Chapel Hill-Durham light rail plan got derailed, one thing I appreciated about that proposal was that they planned to do a lot of what you were talking about here. If it got built, it would’ve come with significant improvements to walk and bike infrastructure, particularly in more suburban areas.
Babe wake up new climate and transit vid just dropped
Park and ride stations at the end of lines is fine, especially on heavy rail/rapid transit but most other stations should have lots of housing and commercial nearby. Some P&R stations contribute a ton to ridership, especially to big cities like NYC and Chicago. Route 59 station in Chicagoland is a massive P&R far from the city and its the busiest Metra station outside of downtown!
A solution to the last mile issue for heavy rail is to simply better connect it with light rail. If you look at metra in Chicago for example, you can see that its actually poorly connected with CTA lines, everything is radial with few to no connecting points, and even the downtown stations are blocks away from CTA stations. If they even built a single circumferential CTA line outside of the city center crossing these radial lines with the aim of linking metra stations with existing CTA lines, I think Metra becomes substantially more useful to commuters because way more of the city suddenly becomes easily accessible through it.
When it comes to park and rides in my city:
The park and ride at the southern end of the silver line BRT lite gets very little use, and it’s easy to see why. It’s probably meant for people who live in the unincorporated areas past the end where there’s no subsidy to pay for transit. Land use by itself doesn’t really help, and the silver line runs pretty close to a controlled access highway that is guaranteed to be faster.
The Laker line’s slightly heavier BRT also has one, and it seems to fare better since it is a bit more centrally located and doesn’t have the highway to compete with, but the speed advantage is still absent.
These stops should be more like "Live and Rides" rather than park and rides. Housing, not parking. And I've also noticed that the Portland MAX connects a lot of shopping centers as opposed to neighborhoods.
California native. My local Bart station is the blue line spur terminus, which has a parking lot so big on the south side that you can't even see the station from the far end of it, although you also can't because it's in the median of the 580. All of the other Blue Line spur stations are also in the 580 median and surrounded by parking past that. There is bus service... sometimes.
I am grateful that it's there. I would be unable to get to Oakland or SF in any reasonable time otherwise, and they literally this week opened a multi-use path bridge over Dublin Boulevard directly to it, allowing people to bypass the frankly insultingly long pedestrian wait at Dublin and Sterling. But for fuck's sake, why the middle of the 580?? Was it that hard to put it in a location where its very existence wouldn't be an uphill battle??
Hey Portland Trimet on the teaser image!
1:27 yeah, if you are in Asia, those amounts of space for parking lot already full of medium rise apartment buildings and surrounded by multiple retail stores, not a parking lot😅
Hearing a lot of DC videos, a lot of stations are lucky to be at 33% of the capacity. Many park and rides you could easily redevelop 50% into mixed use. If one set of bus bays is abandoned (except for West Falls Church), deviate all the busses there then you can sacrifice a bit more to either new infrastructure or public parking. Also if you have multiple garages, demolish 1-2 and just make the third public so anyone can park there
the siemens s700 can top out at 65mph and have fast acceleration being faster on avg then some subways if infrastructure allows.
yeah the problem is some lines are built at grade with too many stops that kneecap the speed
@@sammymarrco2realistically though light rail is meant to average like 20 mph. You want stops because they should be getting people within walking distance of their destinations. The issue comes because American cities are so sprawled out that light rail is made to cover distances of like 20 miles or greater to city centers, at which point it starts taking over an hour to get there. I think what american cities need is light rail that is very well integrated with commuter rail, with tons of connecting stations, so suburbanites can commute in on the heavy rail and then immediately get on light rail to their destination. In the case of Chicago for example, you have tons of commuter rail but they're all directed to like 2 downtown stations that don't even have connectivity with metro lines, which is a massive misuse of the infrastructure.
A couple years ago, a new housing development was built next-door to the park-n-ride at the end of the line on one of my city's light rail lines.
Even though the development was literally next door and proximity to the park-n-ride was heavily advertised to attract homebuyers, residents would still have 10-30 minutes of walking to get to the platform from their home (and have to walk along a dangerous road with no sidewalk), so I'm sure that few people who live there take the train and that anyone actually does still drives from their home.
Lemme guess, it's Denver.
@@jetfan925 Nope.
@@TheRealE.B. Dallas? LA? San Jose? Even Charlotte?
Park and rides are awesome if you live in the burbs- and this is coming from a guy who lives in the city who has ample amount of public transit options nearby.
Even if what you say is true, it doesn't negate the fact that some people simply live too far from the closest metro station to either walk or bike to it even if they want to use the Metro. The obvious answer seems to be to take a bus to the station, but then the calculation switches to one of how quickly you can get to the station. Then the choice comes down to either taking the bus or driving your car to the station parking lot. A 10 mile distance one-way to the nearest station would take about 10 minutes in a car. On the bus, it would probably take 30 minutes. That's either a 20-minute or 60-minute round trip. In that scenario, taking the bus is a deal breaker.
But the video is also shortsighted in its observation about the usefulness of park and ride stations.
Park and ride stations are critical, especially for metro systems that are not comprehensive enough to easily serve the given transit area they're responsible for.
You don't need park and ride on more comprehensive metro systems. So the greater long-term practical answer is to build out the metro system as fast as possible to reach more people so they don't need to drive to the stations. Short of that, park and ride stations serve to entice people who regularly drive to more often take the metro.
The short-term goal could be one of people, not necessarily stop driving altogether, but to drive a lot less. That would be a huge change in commuting traffic patterns. If people only drove a total of 20 minutes a day, to and from a station, imagine how significant that impact could be in a city like Los Angeles where drivers are stuck in traffic for 3 hours a day going to and from work?
Hey Millikan Way, I live like 15 minutes away from there. I used that trimet stop for 2 years to commute to and from school until I switched to driving directly to PSU. there needs to be some changes
Often parking lots and property along the rail is already in ownership of the transit agency so turning thrm in to housing should be possible
Turn the Park & Rides into Apartments and Condos!
What really bothers me about the MAX Green line is that they put it along the freeway, a terrible location to be in, that also doesn't have any destinations, instead of putting it along 82nd Ave in a configuration similar to Interstate Ave. 82nd already has the highest ridership bus line in Portland, and has tons of businesses along it. There are also tons and tons of massive parking lots that could be converted into new density if served by a MAX line. I'm aware that Portland didn't own 82nd until quite recently, but that doesn't make the green line's alignment any less infurating.
When did you visit Davis, California?
Toronto thought a “Highway 407” station was a good idea.
People should be bringing their bikes on board with them on the transit. I would do this more often myself if bike capacity on transit wasn't so ridiculously limited.
"Oh hey! You have car! Then you can drive to our station!" Sigh
I think park and ride is a lesser evil because it keeps cars out of the core city, but we should still try to get to the point when you don’t need to drive to get to the train.
NJB highligted that problem for me
This video mentions, but misses the #1 issue. Rail ONLY works when you have a Central Business District commute pattern. Park And Ride is important, and doesn't affect this #1 statement. Please go to Ronkonkoma Station in Long Island --- 6100 parking spaces. It explains everything. [Cars are the last mile connection that works without standing in the rain, sleet, snow, hail, or gloom of night, on-time, and don't require BILLION dollar budgets.]
Exactly. Park and rides are perfect for people committing *from* nowhere to somewhere-usually downtown for work or entertainment. Removing that parking will only sharpen the us-versus-them divide.
I feel like covid kind of killed the park and ride. A lot of ridership took a dive from commuters who would just drive instead.
If the goal is to give people easier access to transit, you’d think being able to literally live next to the transit would be the best option.
Maybe seattle is just different but our park and ride lots for Link are generally packed and the lots for Sound Transit Express are generally decently full, weekend and weekday. (This is on top of the feeder bus ridership)
I think last mile transit is important but, it is impossible to ignore the fact that park and rides do bring in ridership from bus-averse people so park and rides should be seen as a deal with the devil and should be built as structures on a small footprint
3:05 - 3:10 whats the app or web?
Yes please I want to know
INSERT Tampa bay The Largest slow network ever
They need to turn those useless parking lots into apartment complexes. And a lot of those stations are so long and empty that there's more than enough space for plenty of bike lockers.
also it is often really hard to go from a few miles one side of r thelocal rapid transit station to just a few miles the other side of the station a small amout of the new buses should be on n new thur rapid transit li station because it is just easierto drive that short distance then even wait 5 or ten minetes at the bus termiinal. because it is tolarge a piecer of time in the total short trip time.
This is dumb. When the light rail systems were first installed they needed suburban stations. Some passengers drove private cars to the stations, some passengers walked and others might take a bus.
Now that rail traffic has not met demand, the failure of the strategy is that some stations have park and ride lots? Nonsense.
I don't have a problem with a developer offering to swap station parking land to build for other nearby land. The park and ride people can walk an extra five minutes.
It only seems fair that the new development next to the station not have free parking for their residents.
Oftentimes I see people try to justify park and rides as a necessary evil because otherwise the suburbanites can't take advantage of the transit paid for through their tax dollars. But this ignores the fact that they benefit from TOD regardless of whether they personally use the public transit. Because cities grow over time regardless of land use. So by building high density housing and businesses near transit, that ensures the suburbanites' housing costs remain affordable while also moderating the increase in car congestion if they do need to drive.
Even if what you say is true, it doesn't negate rhe fact that some people simply live too far from the closest metro station to either walk or bike to it even if they want to use the Metro. The obvious answer seems to be to take a bus to the station, but then the calculation switches to one of how quickly you can get to the station. Then the choice comes down to either taking the bus or driving your car to the station parking lot. A 10 mile distance one-way to the nearest station would take about 10 minutes. On the bus, it would probably take 30 minutes. That's either a 20-minute or 60-minute round trip. In that scenario, taking the bus is a deal breaker.
Developer want and shilling
Are you suggesting we remove park and rides? As someone who uses UTA’s, I think we should instead reduce their footprint by building parking garages
It is not just the non productive use of land that is the issue. The idea is to reduce car use and encourage micromobility and busses to transit stations.
@ removing park and rides would increase car dependence because people who use them will choose instead to drive the entire way rather than park near the station, and certainly there can’t be any harm in creating underground park and rides
@@benjaminchandler7919Unfortunately, cars do create harm. The channel’s name is literally Climate and Transit. Yes, sometimes people make bad decisions about travel choices. Remember, the video suggests that park and ride makes sense where there is not enough population density to create frequent buss connections.
@@barryrobbins7694But the video is also shortsighted in its observation about the usefulness of park and ride stations. What about the people who really want to use the Metro, but live too far to either bike or walk to their closest metro station?
Taking the bus seems to be the logical choice until you factor in the issue of time. If a station is 10 miles away, it would take you 3x longer to get to it on the bus vs driving tour car. And that's not including the time to walk to the bus stop that might not be that close to your house either.
Park and ride stations are critical, especially for metro systems that are not comprehensive enough to easily serve the given transit area they're responsible for.
You don't need park and ride on more comprehensive metro systems. So the greater long-term practical answer is to build out the metro system as fast as possible to reach more people so they don't need to drive to the stations.
@@mrxman581 There are a lot of variables at play. To really determine what is needed for a particular system or location within a system would take some specific analysis.
As stated in the video, he is not entirely against park and ride. It has to do with population density. In less populated areas that are typically at the end of a line, park and ride makes sense.
Areas with more density can have frequent buss service that is timed with train departure times. Parking lots can help create more density with housing. Housing is needed anyway and is a more productive use of the land. For every parking space, an apartment in a 5 story building could be created. So, there could easily be more ridership than might be lost.
Keep in mind that 1/3 of the U.S. population doesn’t have a drivers license; many people with a license can’t afford a car.
I love how author assumes all of the suggested tweaks and quick fixes will instantly solve public transportation problems and increase ridership
A few of his suggestions will improve things when taken. There is no one panacea for a complex system like a city.
It’s like new habits in your life. A few small changes over time can make a big difference.
B@@PaperAirplaneFactory