20th anniversary of the blog| Urban revitalization systems thinking's greatest hits: Part three -- transportation

This entry became very long, so I broke it up.

"20th anniversary of the blog|  Urban revitalization systems thinking's greatest hits: Part one -- my influences"
-- "20th anniversary of the blog| Urban revitalization systems thinking's greatest hits: Part two -- not transportation," (2025)
-- "20th anniversary of the blog| Urban revitalization systems thinking's greatest hits: Part three -- transportation," (2025)

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Bicycle Planning

I started bicycling for transportation in 1990, so biking as an element of transportation planning was always something I thought about but not always systematically.  This is a great explication of the  network concept applied to biking.  

From the c. 2000 National Bicycle Plan for Germany

But in a socio-economy designed to privilege the car ("Should law subsidize driving?," NYU Law Review, accessible from scholar.google.com), people need to be provided assistance in making the transition from car to bike.

-- "Revisiting assistance programs to get people biking: 26 programs," (2024)

In 2008, the DC Bicycle Advisory Committee asked me to write a paper in response to a Rails to Trails Conservancy funding project directed toward Congress.  I made the point that city biking has different issues from a suburban or rural trail.  That paper was distributed within Maryland State Highway Administration a few years later and helped shape the development of a parallel bike trail for the Purple Line light rail in Suburban Maryland.

-- "Making cycling irresistable in DC," (2008)

Then I got a short term job as a bicycle planner for Baltimore County and I realized that suburban bicycling issues could be different from the city, but were pretty much similar.  What differs the most are the spatial conditions.

-- "Best practice bicycle planning for suburban settings using the "action planning" method," (2010). 

My work in Baltimore County also led to the development of my "Signature Streets" concept, as a way of unifying thinking about streets, mobility, and aesthetics, not just in counties but in cities too.  I mention it because it lists the spatial typology I laid out for integrating bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in communities, which isn't mentioned in the 2010 piece.

-- "Extending the "Signature Streets" concept to "Signature Streets and Spaces," (2020, originally 2015)

These pieces build on the concepts laid out in the entries above.

-- "Bike to Work Day as an opportunity to assess the state of bicycle planning: Part 1," (2017)

-- "Bike to Work Day as an opportunity to assess the state of bicycle planning: Part 2, building a network of bike facilities at the regional scale," (2017)

-- "Why not a bicycle hub at National Airport?, focused on capturing worker trips but open to all," (2017)

-- "Revisiting assistance programs to get people biking: 26 programs," (2024, original 2015, updated 2020)
-- "Repeating b.s. about everything being about race and class: bike infrastructure in Washington, DC," (2024, earlier entries cited within)

This is on what I think are more complete treatments for trails.

-- "Denver and Rio Grande Rail Trail in Davis County, Utah: a great foundation, full of (missed) opportunity," (2022)

Evaluation of transit centers

-- "Takoma Langley Crossroads Transit Center: A Critical Evaluation," (2016)

-- "Updating my review of the Silver Spring Transit Center: a few things I missed in 2015," (2018)

-- "Multiple missed opportunities in the creation of the Silver Spring Transit Center," (2015)

Mobility and Transportation/Transit

Listing key articles is hard.  I have more than 1,000 entries on this topic.  By focusing on key concepts that "I've developed" here's a list.  Railroad passenger services and the Purple Line are separated out.

1. Mobility shed/transit shed:  This builds off Robert Cervero's concept of the commutershed, which I call the transit shed, or the area served by rail transit in those communities with fixed rail transit.  Other people refer to their explication of this concept as a "mobility hub."  I think I was ahead of many of those scholars.

-- "Updating the mobilityshed / mobility shed concept," (2008, originally 2006)

2.  Transit/transportation as a set of networks operating at different scales: this extends the argument laid out in the 2006 Arlington County Master Transportation Plan, where they defined their primary and secondary transit networks.  (I see they're updating their plan.)

I extended this to the multi-state, regional, metropolitan, and sub-city scales.

-- "Reprint (with editing): The Meta-Regional Transit Network," (2009)
-- "Without the right transportation planning framework, metropolitan areas are screwed, and that includes the DC area," (2011)
-- "Transportation network service interruptions part 3: corridor/commute shed management for Northwest DC and Montgomery County, Maryland," (2016) 
-- "The answer is: Create a single multi-state/regional multi-modal transit planning, management, and operations authority association"," (2017) (how to manage a multi-network transportation system, a key element is splitting planning from operating)
-- "Manhattan Institute misses the point about the value of light rail transit connections to airports | Utility and the network effect: the transit network as a platform," (2020)
-- "More remonstration about the molasses of change: Transit planning, Baltimore County, Maryland and Towson," (2022, key earlier citations within)

3.  Including the concept of the tertiary network as intra-district transportation (it's also updated in the piece on transportation management districts), influenced by the Tempe Orbit bus service at first, but by various other shuttle type services after.  The problem is it hasn't been effectuated very much at the neighborhood scale:

-- "Intra-neighborhood (tertiary) transit revisited because of new San Diego service," (2016)

4.  Transit stations as marketing touchpoints and as a design product: i this line of inquiry started when DC let a new bus shelter contract in 2005. At a planning meeting in 2006, I made the point that bus shelters are key marketing touchpoints for the transit system, that their design and upkeep defines the system.  It's further influenced by how transit is conceptualized and operated in London, wayfinding, and in response to a blog entry that said branding is the most important element of transit:

-- "Transit, stations, and placemaking: stations as entrypoints into neighborhoods," (2013)
-- "Branding's (NOT) all you need for transit," (2018)
-- "World Usability Day," (2017)
-- "Desperate times sometimes lead to a more marketing-oriented guise: WMATA/Metrorail | Bonus: WMATA's financial crisis," (2023)
-- "Design forward trains and streetcars: Haga-Utsunomiya Light Rail and Brightline (plus bonus)," (2023)

5.  Transit station typology and TOD: this entry is in response to the belief that any rail transit station is a miraculous opportunity for transit oriented development.  That's not the case.  It depends on their location within the landscape of the "Metropolitan City."

-- "Transit oriented development station typology revisited," (2024, originally 2021)

6.  Transportation management districts: in 2006 I suggested that DC create "transportation management districts" to coordinate modes within subdistricts of the city.  Arlington and Montgomery Counties have them.  There is a sub-variant called parking management districts.  DC has a form of a TMD around parking, but they are very idiosyncratic, not much overall structure and coordination.  This recent piece tries to include everything including the kitchen sink.  But since it's focused on subdistricts, it doesn't focus on a transit system overall.  This is probably the most comprehensive proposal for a TMD ever.

-- "What should the program for a Transportation Management District look like?," (2024)

7.  Sustainable mobility platform: this builds off transit to include urban design and multiple modes.  It's due for a re-codification, as the comments are replete with additions.

-- "Further updates to the Sustainable Mobility Platform Framework," (2018)

8.  Intra-district versus inter-district mobility: the impetus for this concept is how lots of transit advocates whine about streetcars not having dedicated right of way.  I make the point that it is the difference between intra-district mobility and inter-district.  A streetcar serves a sub-district of a city, usually.  While dedicated ROW would be nice, it's not required.  And such modes are often as much about economic development as they are about transit.  The intra-district element undergirds my thinking about how to define the sustainable mobility platform.

-- "Making the case for intra-city (vs. inter-city) transit planning," (2011)
-- "The argument that streetcars are "good enough" but "imperfect transit" is flawed," (2014)
-- "DC and streetcars #4: from the standpoint of stoking real estate development, the line is incredibly successful and it isn't even in service yet, and now that development is extending eastward past 15th Street," (2015)
-- "Modern streetcars are transportation projects,not merely economic development augurs: but intra-district not inter-city services," (2017)
-- "Brief follow up to intra-district transit proposal for Tysons: Toyama City Compact City initiative (Japan)," (2020)
-- "Revisiting: a proposal for heritage streetcar service on the National Mall | adding service to the DC waterfront," (2022, original 2013)

9.  Bus service: bus service is the stepchild in transit systems with a foundation in rail transit.  But they serve millions of people, and people deserve high quality service.

-- "Making bus service sexy and more equitable," (2012)
-- "Will buses ever be cool? Boston versus the Raleigh-Durham's GoTransit Model," (2017)
-- "Exemplary bus livery design: Multiplicity, Luxembourg," (2020)
-- "Bus shelters as social spaces, as potential vectors for virus: Seoul's new anti-covid bus shelter," (2020)
-- "Pathetic not revelatory: Quality of bus stop study in San Francisco," (2021)
-- "Route 7 BRT proposal communicates the reality that the DC area doesn't adequately conduct transportation planning at the metropolitan-scale," 2016
-- "Reviving DC area bus service: and a counterpoint to the recent Washington City Paper article," 2019
-- "Bus stops as neighborhood focal points and opportunities for placemaking," (2023)

Metro (WMATA) Owner's Manual: Your Metro...How to Use It, cover. Advertising supplement to the Washington Star, 1975.  

10.  WMATA: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.  I have tons of articles about WMATA's continuing financial crises. This piece has a good set of links to past writings.

-- "WMATA and MWCOG announce new joint transit initiative | Could a regional "transport association" be on the horizon, or just a transit bailout?," (2024)

-- "WMATA Chief says it’s time to talk about a regional tax to help fund Metro (DC area)," (2023)
-- "DC area transit commission board member thinks he has a brilliant idea on how to fund Metrorail: sales taxes," (2022)

-- "Redundancy, engineered resilience, and subway systems: Metrorail failures will increase without adding capacity in the core," (2016)

11.  Maintenance of Way: maintaining sidewalks, transit shelters, trails, etc., in all seasons.    Minneapolis' bike plan was one of the first to include maintenance as an element.  And the issue of trail maintenance in winter is ongoing.

-- "Winter snow clearance in the Walking City," (2025)

Purple Line light rail, Suburban Maryland

-- Purple Line concept.  By Sierra Club Metro DC chapter, c. 2000

While the writings on leveraging the Purple Line light rail program are about mobility, they are distinct enough to be treated as a separate entry.  The basis of inquiry was how can you use new transit infrastructure to build the transit network, to spread necessary improvements across the system, and to transform communities?  I first read about the PL concept in a Washington City Paper 1987 cover story.  It will open about 40 years later.

The broader concept in this series was spurred by Silver Spring resident Ed Drodz, in response to an entry that proposed certain streets served by the light rail to be treated as "mobility corridors."  He asked if I could flesh it out.  I spent about three months off and on doing so.

-- "Codifying the complementary transit network improvements and planning initiatives recommended in the Purple Line writingsransit-network.html," (2022) (This includes follow up recommendations not included in the original series.)

-- Setting the stage for the Purple Line light rail line to be an overwhelming success: Part 1 | simultaneously introduce improvements to other elements of the transit network (2017)
-- Part 2 |   the program (macro changes) (2017)
-- Part 3 |   influences (2017)
-- Part 4 |   Making over New Carrollton as a transit-centric urban center and Prince George's County's "New Downtown" (2017, originally 2014)
-- PL #5: Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District"
-- Part 6 |  Creating a transportation development authority in Montgomery and Prince George's County to effectuate placemaking, retail development, and housing programs in association with the Purple Line (2017)
-- Part 7 | Using the Purple Line to rebrand Montgomery and Prince George's Counties as Design Forward (2017)
-- Revisiting the Purple Line article series after one year: Part 1 | a couple of baby steps (2018)
-- Revisiting the Purple Line (series) and a more complete program of complementary improvements to the transit network (2019)

These are the articles specifically on Silver Spring.

-- PL #5: Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District"
- Part 1: Setting the stage (2017)
- Part 2: Program items 1- 9 (2017)
- Part 3: Program items 10-18  (2017)
- Part 4: Conclusion (2017)
- Map for the Silver Spring Sustainable Mobility District (2017)
- (Big Hairy) Projects Action Plan(s) as an element of Comprehensive/Master Plans
- Creating the Silver Spring/Montgomery County Arena and Recreation Center (2017)

And additional follow ups

-- "Purple Line Corridor Coalition study: Same Old, Same Old | Gentrification will result from investment in transit infrastructure," (2022)
-- "Revisiting the Purple Line light rail project in Suburban Maryland | the tunnel in Bethesda for the Capital Crescent Trail," (2022)
-- "Making "Downtown Silver Spring" a true open air shopping district by adding department stores, 2018"

Railroad passenger services (mostly in the DC region)

Around 2006, I was exposed to thinking of DC's Virginia Railway Express and Maryland Rail Commuter lines as a network by the writings of Dan Malouff in his blog, BeyondDC.  

He proposed integration and expansion, including to Pennsylvania and Delaware.  

-- "One big idea: Getting MARC and Metrorail to integrate fares, stations, and marketing systems, using London Overground as an example," (2015)
-- "DC State Rail Planning initiative, "(2015) (a primary focus on Union Station
-- "A new backbone for the regional transit system: merging the MARC Penn and VRE Fredericksburg Lines," (2017)

Other writings extend the Transformational Projects Action Planning approach to railroad services in other communities and states.

-- "A "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for a statewide passenger railroad program in Maryland," 2019

-- "Massachusetts rail planning," (2019)

-- "DC, Transformational Projects Action Planning, and the Baltimore-Washington Maglev project ," 2021

-- "Building a statewide rail passenger program for Ilinois," (2023)

The Brightline service in South Florida is interesting as transit advocates use it as an example for why there is a great future for HSR connecting pairs of cities,  They fail to recognize that both Brightline proposals rely on tourists who don't need a car at their destination.

-- "Florida's Brightline passenger rail as an opportunity to rearticulate and extend transit service in cities like Orlando," (2023)

-- "Brightline West should also be used to transform public transit service in Las Vegas," (2023)

And of course, Amtrak.  While the title refers to Greyhound, it's a two-part entry.  The first part suggests the US organize rail services into seven districts, modeled after the privatization and reorganization of Japan Railways and rail services in Japan.  The second part suggests integrating inter-city transit services, that is, Amtrak passenger service and inter-city bus service.  The other set of articles outlines a better marketing approach.

-- "Two train/regional transit ideas: Part 1 | Amtrak should acquire Greyhound," (2021)

-- "Two train/regional transit ideas: Part 2 | Running tourist trains from Union Station," (2021)

-- "May should be National Train Month: Rethinking promoting more comprehensively travel by train in the US," (2022)

-- "May should be National Train Month as a way to market and promote passenger rail," (2021)

-- "Megabus bankruptcy: merge inter-city bus services with Amtrak," (2024)

-- "Regional and multi-state inter city bus transportation. Thanksgiving is a time of big travel.," (2023)

*  A third "train/regional transit idea" to come is on night train and night/luxury bus proposals

Street pavements and local land use context.  Also, for a long time I've argued that street pavements should be variable, made congruent with land use context.  Instead all roads are engineered to enable fast driving.  And most cars are engineered to go fast.  Reckless driving in cities, abetted by road engineering, is the reason for many road deaths.  

First Street SE, Washington, DC

So I say use asphalt (Belgian) block and other pavement types to provide visual, aural, and physical cues to drive more slowly.  At the very least, streets around schools, parks, libraries, traditional commercial districts, and transit stations should have such paving.

-- "National Engineering Week and sustainable mobility and urban design/placemaking" (2016)
-- "Pedestrian fatalities and street redesign" (2019)

Monument Avenue in Richmond is a great example, but DC still has a number of asphalt block streets, although they are not major arterials.

Traffic safety/Vision Zero

This omnibus entry includes discussion of Safe Routes to School, Vision Zero, street design, and reckless driving with many links to past entries.

-- "The Road Not Taken | a response to a letter to the editor in the Washington Post about DC, traffic deaths and traffic safety," (2024)

Transformational Projects Action Planning applied to Transit

-- "More on Redundancy, engineered resilience, and subway systems: Metrorail failures will increase without adding capacity in the core," (2016)
-- "Codifying the complementary transit network improvements and planning initiatives recommended in the Purple Line writingsransit-network.html," (2022)
-- "Using the Silver Line as the priming event, what would a transit network improvement program look like for NoVA?," (2017)
-- "Crystal City Arlington as Amazon one-half of HQ2 | Part 4: Pie in the Sky transit improvements," (2018)
-- "Prince George's County's newly announced transit oriented development program for the Blue Line," (2022)
-- "Seattle Kraken expansion hockey team sets new standard for transit benefits in transportation demand management: free transit with ticket," (2021)
-- "A "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for the Metrorail Blue Line," (2020)

Urban design/walkable community plans at the neighborhood scale. 

A key piece starts with what I called the "Signature Streets" approach that I came up with in Baltimore County:

-- "Extending the "Signature Streets" concept to "Signature Streets and Spaces," (2020, originally 2015, concept devised, 2010)

Regardless, urban design is a key element of transportation planning.

Out of the Silver Spring Purple Line writings, I then realized that most neighborhoods need their own urban design plans, sparked by more detailed exploration of Dupont Circle, community organizing in the Bloomingdale neighborhood about decking over North Capitol Street, and the opening of the Wharf development in SW DC.

-- "Planning urban design improvements at the neighborhood scale: Dupont Circle, DC," (2019)
-- "More about making 17th Street between P and R a pedestrian space on weekends," (2019)

Later I realized it's not so much about the mode--creating a pedestrian plan--but creating broader walkable community plans.

-- "Planning for place/urban design/neighborhoods versus planning for transportation modes: new 17th Street NW bike lanes | Walkable community planning versus "pedestrian" planning," (2021)

And way before these posts, about the value of programming public spaces:

-- "Now I know why Boulder's Pearl Street Mall is the exception that proves the rule about the failures of pedestrian malls," (2005)

An early point was advocating for transportation agencies to have "Chief Thoroughfare Architects" in charge of urban design units, just as agencies have "Chief Engineers" focused on maximizing traffic throughput.

-- "DC's bad urban design as it relates to new transportation infrastructure" (2013)
-- "Lies, damn lies, and obfuscations: placemaking, place qualities, historic preservation and transportation infrastructure" (2014)

Semi-relatedly, but also more broadly, for a time, Los Angeles had a "Chief Design Officer."

-- "Christopher Hawthorne, LA Times architecture critic to become Chief Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles" (2018)