Getting people out of their car: a new rule of thumb

Around Australia, each state Department of Transport or equivalent conducts regular household activity and travel surveys. These are massive affairs surveying thousands of households to understand their travel behaviour. In part the huge amounts of data are needed to calibrate the equally massive strategic transport models that (more or less) predict future travel demands.

Mostly, the data from these surveys is kept confidential which means it is not available to outsiders without special permission. An exception to this is the NSW Transport Data Centre which is brilliant in that lots of the data is released, so you can examine behaviour by local government area. (The outputs of the travel models are, of course, terribly commercially sensitive and almost never shared with anyone)

Not long ago I downloaded a batch of their Sydney data and whacked it into Excel to see what I could do with it.

One of the first things I did with it was to take the figure which showed the average mode share for car driver by LGA (1997-2001 average) and did a simple linear regression against the 1996 'transit access' figures that I had previously calculated for my thesis in 2005.

Transit Access (a percentage) is defined as the proportion of an area that is within 800m of a train station or 400m of a bus route that runs at least every 15 minutes during the day and at least every 30 minute at night and on Sundays. (I had previously developed this measure and found that it was about the minimum public transport level needed to generate a reduction in private vehicle VKT).

This time I was more interested in overall number of car trips, because this can be very important in understanding traffic impacts (and hence infrastructure requirements) of a urban development.

The result of this regression is shown below (my apologies if the graph is a bit blurry)

In short, it shows a 70% correlation between increase in 'full time' public transport coverage and decrease in car driving. I am so happy with this, I am now using it as a convenient 'rule of thumb':

Each 1 percentage point coverage in full time public transport generates a 0.25 percentage point drop in car driver use.

It's not perfect, but it's a start.

SEQIPP 2008 - Exciting times ahead

The South East Queensland Infrastructure Plan and Program (SEQIPP) for 2008 was released yesterday (June 3).

For the past few months various rumours have been floating around suggesting that major transport projects would be pushed back or dropped altogether. It seemed the government wanted to dampen expectations with regards to major projects.

Well, it turns out the rumours were wrong.

I have had a quick look through the SEQIPP document, and in particular the summary tables of works. There is a lot of motorway work, but there is also an incredible amount of infrastructure work now scheduled and budgeted for PT. Most of these are new for 2008.


Rail

$872 million for Darra - Springfield Rail (delivery by 2019)
$1.4 billion for Ipswich to Springfield Rail (commencing 2012)
$1.3 billion for Gowrie to Granchester Rail (Toowoomba Range freight bypass I presume) (commencing 2019)
$550 million for Petrie to Redcliffe (commencing 2019)
$1.1 billion for Robina to Elanora (underway)
$650 million for Elanora to Coolangatta (commencing 2019)
$650 million for Caboolture to Landsborough duplication (underway)
$800 million for Landsborough to Nambour duplication (planning to start now)

and of course the biggie:

$7.3 billion for Inner City Rail Capacity (commencing now)

Bus

$310 million for Centenary Highway bus lanes Ipswich Motorway - Toowong (commencing now)
$2.5 billion for Northern Busway - RCH to Kedron - Bracken Ridge (underway and continues over 20 years)
$3.1 billion for Eastern Busway - Buranda to Capalaba (commencing now)
$365 million for SE Busway extension to Springwood (commencing 2011)

$420 million for a mysterious Brisbane Cross River Bus Access (commencing 2012)
$750 for an HOV network program (commencing now)

and then there is the strangely named

'Public Transport'

$1.7 billion for Gold Coast Rapid Transit (commencing now)
$3.1 billion for CAMCOS - Beerwah - Caloundra - Maroochydore (commencing 2012)
(CAMCOS is supposed to be a suburban rail extension, so I don't know what it is doing here with GCRT that will probably be LRT)

Exciting times ahead!

Busway blues

Brisbane's new Inner Northern Busway opened on May 19th. My bus route was one of those changed to use it.

The new cross-platform arrangement with trains at Roma Street is pretty neat (although the platform is the used once-a-day standard gauge platform).

Apart from that, I must say I am particularly underwhelmed by the changes.

Under the old system, my bus came down Countess Street, turned left at the lights onto Roma Street, stopped outside the station, continued along Roma Street, turned left at Turbot Street, right at Edward Street, stopping outside Central Station then left into Queen Street to a terminus outside the GPO.




Under the new route the bus runs down Countess Street, turns sharp left at Roma Street onto the busway on ramp (stop at lights) then up to the busway through route (stop at lights), turn right, stops at the Roma Street station, along the busway, into the left lane just short of King George Square station (stop at lights), turn right and out of busway onto Roma Street again, turn right (no signals) onto Roma Street slip road, left at Turbot Street and then as before to Central and the GPO.



Seeing as I get off at the Central Station stop, the whole deal has probably added 2-3 minutes to my trip in the morning.

There's no improvement in reliability either because the congested part of the bus route is Musgrave Road through Red Hill before you get to the city. Roma Street was never any problem.

Woo! Go BRT!

What is a metro - and does Brisbane need one?

On Wednesday I posted a set of pictures, and asked which ones were from a so-called 'metro' and which ones weren't.

This is what they were:

1. A high end 'light rail' system, the Tyne and Wear Metro
2. High capacity electric 'heavy' railway, the Berlin U-Bahn
3. Lightweight diesel railcars ('Pacers') from the West Yorkshire Metro
4. High capacity electric 'heavy' railway, the original Paris Metro
5. High capacity electric 'heavy' railway, the District Line of the London Underground
6. A high end 'light rail' system with city centre tunnel, the Docklands Light Railway (also in London)
7. A bus from the Adelaide metro (which also features some diesel railcars on a rather run-down railway network)

The Berlin and the two London examples aren't called 'metro'. All the others are. Looks can be deceiving!

(My offer of a half-mark was for recognising that the District Line began its life as the Metropolitan District Railway! I have also noticed that the Berlin U-Bahn web page refers to it in English as "metro". I don't recall hearing the term used in Berlin myself)

Obviously I picked this list for a point, and not just because they are all systems I have ridden on. The dictionary definition that is simply 'an underground railway like the one in Paris' isn't enough on its own: West Yorkshire and Adelaide don't have underground parts to their 'metro', and in London it's always 'the Underground' or more often 'the Tube', never 'the Metro'.

As a professional transport planner, I have had to deal with various demands for a 'metro' for Brisbane. When I sat down with a rail engineer we discovered that we had very different ideas about what defined a metro. He immediately thought big and bulky like the London Underground; I thought fast and flexible like DLR or Tyne and Wear. It was just what we were used to. What we agreed on, though, were:

• It's a railway
• It serves a city
• It offers a frequent service
• It is high capacity and probably has lots of standing room on board
  
• It has closely spaced stations for maximum coverage
• It is preferably designed with lots of doors for fast loading and unloading
• It serves in part a distribution function (not just a home-work commute function)
• It is a marketing term

We agreed that it would probably be underground for at least part of its route because this was the only way it would serve the inner city area. We also agreed that the Brisbane Citytrain system already shows many characteristics of a metro, and with improved vehicle design (for faster loading and unloading) and more frequent services (especially in the off peak) it probably ought to be called one.

What we also agreed upon was that Brisbane doesn't need a totally new independent underground rail line or loop of the London Underground or Paris Metro type: it simply doesn't have the population numbers or city size and shape to make it worth while. Certainly, any attempt to curtail Citytrain's operations at the city fringes and make people transfer to a metro for their final destination ('like London') is a very bad idea - and bad history to boot.

As the inner areas of Australia's capital cities increase in population through densification and urban renewal, there will be a need for improved public transport. Except for Melbourne (where the trams still have much potential) this is going to mean new dedicated facilities. I personally feel that there is much benefit in exploring the 'lightweight' metro of the Tyne and Wear or DLR model as a complement to the existing suburban railways, rather than trying to copy London or Paris.

Which of these is not a metro?

Metro appears to be the transport buzz word of the moment:

Brisbane Courier Mail:
Designer advises Brisbane to go underground for metro rail

Sydney Morning Herald:
Bye heavy rail, now for a north-west metro

The "Eddington Report" from Melbourne:
melbourne metro -‘new generation’ rail tunnel (warning PDF)

But what is a metro anyway?

The dictionary defines it as

metro

• noun (pl. metros) an underground railway system in a city, especially Paris.

So, quickly now, which of the following is doesn't have "metro" anywhere in its name? (I'll accept two or three in the answer)

1.


2. (please excuse gratuitous picture of me)


3.


4.


5.


6.


7.


Answers next time - and with it some rational discussion on why it matters.

(for images 1, 4, and 6 I am indebted to Wikimedia Commons, and in particular photographers Chris McKenna and "Pline")

Quality control

From a conversation at work today:

Me: So you are saying it is better to be consistent than right?
Boss: Yes

Says a lot, really.

Rain

So far, 2008 has been wet.

Really really wet.

Rain nearly every day this month.

Brisbane's dams are now over 30% of capacity (up from something like 15% this time last year)

There are gullies across my back yard where the water running under the fence from my neighbour has pushed aside the gravel. The whole lower back yard is a damp mess. The vegies, especially the tomatoes have given up the ghost with the swampy ground.

Amazingly there was just a little bit of sun yesterday and this afternoon, so for the first time in 3 weeks I get to mow the lawn, which is inches high. Of course, I run out of petrol half way through.

Bet it rains tomorrow again!