Commuter Rail: Fruitful or not?

Commuter Rail's False Promise is a recent op-ed in the Boston Globe, subtitled "Why more rail lines won't prod more folks to take the train - and why we should make peace with cars."

It's based on a study by a graduate student at the Rappaport Institute of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, of development patterns in the Boston region over the last 100 years. The op-ed author makes his points based on the fact that people change jobs frequently, and that the railroad system is oriented to Boston.

Click here for the original study: The Impacts of Commuter Rail in Greater Boston.

As we all know, this is a multifaceted issue. Lines and stations are one thing. Where people work is another. It's hard to look at this over a 100 year period and be able to make broad generalizations because the periods from 1900 to 1920, 1920-1930, 1930-1940, 1941-1945, 1945 to 1950, 1950-1970, 1970 to 1990, and 1990-2000 have distinctly different characteristics.

For example, during WWII, extant streetcar and other rail systems had some of their highest ridership, because of gas rationing. Once gas rationing was lifted after the war, ridership dropped significantly (also because of the increased cost of raw materials, the cost of streetcars increased significantly too).

I'd respond to his piece (and the study) by asking what questions are they ignoring?

One I'd say is intra-links between the rail lines that promote transit use in other areas of the region, not just Boston (although recentralizing commerce in a region is a good thing).

Another is what about focused transit planning and transportation demand management in what I call transit or mobility sheds. That is focused ridership development planning and marketing within the catchment area of "stations." Stations can be thought of as specific stations, be they train, heavy, or light rail, or bus transit centers, or bus lines/routes.

Index Keywords: transit