Archinect - News

New York City has a $54 billion blueprint for fixing the subways

2019-09-18T08:00:00-04:00

New York's public transportation system isn't perfect, but its proper, punctual functioning is critical to the city's existence. Flaws and all, millions of New York natives and visitors log over 1 billion trips on the subway and bus systems each year.

On Monday, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority announced a $54 billion plan to renovate "the city's floundering transit network," according to Emma G. Fitzsimmons of the New York Times. The MTA's proposal announcement presents a detailed "wish list" of improvement projects to undertake over the next five years.

Plans include: modernizing subway signals along the Lexington Ave. Line, adding elevators to 70 stations to improve wheelchair accessibility, and extending the Second Ave. Subway north towards East Harlem.

In a recent news statement, MTA chairman Patrick J. Foye said, "At the end of this five-year period, New Yorkers will see a revitalized and modern system for the 21st century and beyond." While the idea of fixing the ...

Michael Kimmelman reflects on NYC's old Penn Station: 'The gateway it deserved'

2019-04-29T14:49:00-04:00

Conceived to handle fewer than 200,000 passengers, the replacement Penn Station is today the busiest transit hub in the Western Hemisphere, through which more than 600,000 commuters pass each day — an experience as humiliating and bewildering as Grand Central remains inspiring and exalted.

NYT architecture critic Michael Kimmelman takes a look back at the triumphal arrival of the former Pennsylvania Station by McKim, Mead & White in 1910, its steady decline in the following decades, the consequential replacement with the current solution—a disappointing product of mid-century modernist pragmatism—followed by a call for a better gateway.

Aerial view of the former Pennsylvania Station shortly after it opened in 1910.

"When Penn Station became during the mid-1960s a subterranean rat’s maze, the city seemed to be heading very definitely south," Kimmelman writes. "The historic preservation movement, which rose from the vandalized station’s ashes, was born of a new pessimism."

America’s Sorriest Bus Stop: Vancouver 'wins' this year's contest

2018-09-19T14:48:00-04:00

It’s official! The sorriest bus stop in America is in … Canada! The horrendous bus stop on the Lougheed Highway in Pitt Meadows, just outside of Vancouver, has won our annual contest, trouncing Cincinnati in a 58%-42% landslide.

Streetsblog has announced the 'winner' of its annual America’s Sorriest Bus Stop tournament, and it's an impressively desolate and pedestrian-inadequate spot on a highway outside of Vancouver, BC that gets to take home the crown this year.

Congrats on the 2nd place: Daly Road in Springfield Township, near Cincinnati. Image via streetsblog.com.

The competition was fierce, and many other contenders across North America stunned with glaringly unsafe conditions right along busy roads, omission of sidewalks, lack of benches and shelter from the elements, and absence of traffic lights or pedestrian crosswalk to reach these bus spots.

This bus stop at 9907 Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills sits in one of the nation's wealthiest ZIP codes, yet the domestic workers taking the bus from here have to run for their lives to reach it. Image via streetsblog.com.

Explore the full list of Sorriest Bus Stop contenders here.

Perkins Eastman reimagines NYC grid for increased pedestrian and shared space

2018-08-31T13:29:00-04:00

The city grid, which once served to organize the development of private real estate by providing access to land parcels, now has a more pressing role to play in making cities livable. Our reimagining of the grid starts from the premise that how we use public rights of way no longer meets the city’s needs, so we should transform the streets radically, dedicating them to pedestrians.

Jonathan Cohn and Yunyue Chen propose a new pedestrian plan for Manhattan's grid grouping blocks into larger neighborhoods and organizing streets into either thoroughfares or local streets. Cohn leads the transportation and public infrastructure studio of Perkins Eastman, while Chen received the 2017 Perkins Eastman’s Architectural Fellowship for the Public Realm.

Manhattan grid divided into thoroughfare and local streets. Image: Perkins Eastman.

Their plan is a combination of the Dutch shared street idea of woonerf and the Barcelona “superblocks”. Shared, local streets would include continuous, curbless, and textured surfaces with cues that conform drivers to speeds of about 6 miles per hour.

Example of a shared street with less vehicle access and more pedestrian space. Image: Perkins Eastman.

"Superblocks" are limited to local traffic inside and would be sectioned off by thoroughfare streets with local streets in between. Local streets would always be within a 5 minute walk of any...

HASSELL, Rogers Stirk Harbour, Weston Williamson design five new Melbourne metro stations

2018-05-31T15:54:00-04:00

Melbourne has consistently been ranked the world's #1 most livable city (often sharing the top spot with rival Vienna), and city planners hope to strengthen this position with a new metro tunnel set to open in 2025.

Five new stations, along with bicycle facilities, new parks, open spaces, and public plazas, will dot the tunnel line and boast architectural design that is the result of a collaboration between Australian architects HASSELL and UK firms Rogers Stirk Harbour and Weston Williamson.

The new stations are:

North Melbourne Station

North Melbourne Station

Project description: "North Melbourne Station has an impressive large-scale brick arched entrance to reflect the area’s industrial heritage and skylights to enable natural light to filter down on the platforms and concourse."

Parkville Station

Parkville Station

Project description: "In Parkville, a glass feature roof at the Grattan Street entrance provides passengers visiting this world c...

Los Angeles keeps expanding its freeway "Autopia"

2018-02-23T17:42:00-05:00

If no one in 2018 would argue, as a young writer named David Brodsly did in 1981, that the "L.A. freeway is the cathedral of its time and place," or that it's the spot where Angelenos "spend the two calmest and most rewarding hours of their daily lives," as British architectural historian Reyner Banham put it with almost laughable enthusiasm a decade earlier, there's no doubt that both the practical and metaphorical meanings of the freeway continue to preoccupy Southern Californians.

Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne reflects on Southern California's ongoing love-hate relationship with its freeways.

Unbuilt highway schemes — and the traces they left behind

2018-01-08T15:00:00-05:00

The postwar passion for highway construction saw cities around the world carved up in the name of progress. But as communities fought back many schemes were abandoned – their half-built traces showing what might have been

Cost of the Long Island Rail Road project balloons to be the most expensive in the world

2017-12-29T15:57:00-05:00

The estimated cost of the Long Island Rail Road project, known as “East Side Access,” has ballooned to $12 billion, or nearly $3.5 billion for each new mile of track — seven times the average elsewhere in the world. The recently completed Second Avenue subway on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and the 2015 extension of the No. 7 line to Hudson Yards also cost far above average, at $2.5 billion and $1.5 billion per mile, respectively.

Against the back drop of the New York subway system's massive delays, the New York Times looks into why project costs for a 3.5-mile tunnel connecting Grand Central Terminal to the Long Island Rail Road ballooned to nearly $3.5 million for each new mile of track.

Competition for America's Sorriest Bus Stop highlights America's very sorry public transit system

2017-08-29T17:19:00-04:00

For the past few years, the site Streetsblog has been shedding light on some of America's most dreadful public transit systems with their competition for the "Sorriest Bus Stop in America." The tournament takes user submissions for uncomfortable, inaccessible, and sometimes, outright dangerous bus stops and pits them against one another for a good, and necessary, public shaming.

Bus stop in San Juan nestled between two yellow concrete bollards. Image via Google Street View.

So far, in this years tournament a precariously balanced Pittsburgh bus stop located on the side of a four-lane highway beat out a Medford stop that lacks a sidewalk and pedestrian access. A pair of stops on the side of a state highway in Chapel Hill that require crossing the highway or going on a 1/2 mile roundabout to reach won against another shelterless stop in San Juan that is nestled between parked cars and marked by two yellow concrete bollards. Two Southern California stops, one in San Diego that requires ...

Transit hubs increasingly designed to serve as desirable (and profitable) public spaces

2017-02-28T17:36:00-05:00

The notion of spending time at a subway stop or other major transit center for pleasure may strike you as odd, but many cities and transportation companies are investing heavily in building up this part of their infrastructure to create desirable public spaces (it adds a whole new dimension to "mixed-use"). In this feature by Kim Slowey for Construction Dive, the shift in investment is explored:

Architecture firm HOK designed the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodel Center (ARTIC) in California, a 21st century take on the massive transit halls of the past. Finished in 2014, using steel and ethylene tetrafluoroethylene "pillows," designers created a hangar-like, light-filled area that makes room for dining and shopping, as well as for additional future commercial development.

Skanska also completed an ultra-modern, $4 billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub last year, which connects city subway lines and PATH trains to New Jersey, to replace the one destroyed in the Sept. ...

Bollería Industrial / Factory-Baked Goods expose and disrupt the banal rituals of airport travel

2016-09-09T13:08:00-04:00

Airports can be hell, as any traveler knows. From endless check-in lines to depersonalized security checkpoints to the dull monotony of waiting rooms and transit halls, the experience of traveling has become something of a 21st century ritual. You’ll (probably) get to your destination, but first you have to go through the (securitized and regulated) motions.

“By means of boredom, oddly familiar scenarios, and the climate-controlled atmospheres of in-transit buffers, the spaces and technologies of the airport relax our sensory spatial apprehension to camouflage the control parameters to which passengers are submitted,” write the Madrid-based design studio Bollería Industrial / Factory-Baked Goods in the text accompanying their installation Managing Distance, one of five commissioned “intervention strategies” of the In Residence component of the 2016 Oslo Architecture Triennale.

Comprising five different physical devices placed around the sleek Oslo Airport in Gardermoen, their interven...

Here are the five teams competing to building LAX's future people-mover

2016-08-18T13:27:00-04:00

The long-awaited people-moving system at Los Angeles International Airport is actually on its way and it's enough to make any Angeleño misty-eyed. LAX, the second busiest airport in the US, is desperately lacking an adequate public transit connection. Currently, visitors must rely on shuttles that come every 20 minutes to connect to the nearest Metro line, grab an (expensive) cab, or find a saintly friend with a car willing to deal with a congested and confusing pick-up situation.

Five teams are competing for the commission:

Gateway Connectors: Kiewit Infrastructure with Skanska USA, Meridiam; design by Mott MacDonald and Gannett Fleming
LA ConnextPartners: Ferrovial Agroman, Bechtel, Cintra, John Laing and Bombardier; design by Bechtel
LAX Connecting Alliance: OHL USA, Acciona Infraestructuras and Charles Pankow Builders; design by Arup
LINXS, led by Fluor Enterprises with Balfour Beatty, Flatiron West, Hochtief, ACS and Dragados USA; design by HDR Engineering and HNTB Corporation
PWA, l...

America’s Sorriest Bus Stop tournament enters final round: it's Kansas City, MO vs. Silver Spring, MD

2016-08-05T14:28:00-04:00

Each of the 16 bus stops that competed this year — and the agencies who oversee them — deserved a thorough shaming. No transit rider should ever have to wait in the rain for a bus with no posted schedule, or walk in a ditch along an eight-lane highway after disembarking. These conditions are deplorable but all too common in American cities. The two bus stops facing off today — in Kansas City and Silver Spring [...]— had some extra dreadful quality that sets them apart in the eyes of our voters.

How Republicans and Democrats differ when it comes to infrastructure

2016-07-28T13:36:00-04:00

On issues related to the funding, mass transit, biking, and the environment, the two parties have staked out dramatically different views about how they envision the future of the nation’s transportation system. Democrats are proposing an expansive increase in federal support for transportation investment, with a focus on building access to opportunity, bolstering access to non-automobile modes, reducing the impacts of climate change, and maintaining the role of unions.

Republicans, on the other hand, propose no increase in federal spending (though Mr. Trump may disagree), an elimination of the federal role in funding non-automotive transportation, an emphasis on pollution-spewing modes and energy sources, and a reduction in the role of unions.

For more on the state of American infrastructure, check out these links:

Google launches Waze Carpool with cost-neutral pricing

2016-05-26T18:46:00-04:00

The pilot program is limited to about 25,000 employees of companies including Walmart and Adobe Systems... Waze will match riders with drivers already heading along similar routes during the morning and evening rush hours. [...] Waze Carpool is charging riders just $0.54 a mile, which is also what the IRS recommends companies reimburse their employees per mile for business-related travel. “Waze Carpool focuses on covering costs, not generating an income,” the company explains.

Google purchased Waze, the Israeli GPS-based navigation system with real-time travel details submitted by users, in 2013 for $1.15B. With a fleet of already operating autonomous vehicles, Google stands to leverage its Waze transit data in big ways for an autonomous taxi service that could hit companies like Uber and Lyft hard.

That $0.54 rate for the Carpool rides is also significant because it won't lead to the same insurance-scrutiny that has plagued other ridesharing companies:

Waze Carpool’s $0.54 rate is also important from a regulatory standpoint. As Waze explains, car insurance policies in states including California typically cover “not for profit, share-the-expense carpooling.” By framing its operations that way, Waze Carpool may be able to avoid the scrutiny around insurance coverage that has at times sidelined Uber and Lyft.

Related on Archinect:

'Hyperloop as transportation’s new girlfriend: mysterious, unencumbered, exciting, expensive.'

2016-05-24T13:12:00-04:00

“What we’re seeing right now is what I saw in 1996,” said Mr. Lloyd, a former president of sales and development at Cisco. “We all had I.P. routers and everything was done a certain way. At Cisco, we said, ‘You can carry that over the Internet,’ and everyone said, ‘No.’ But those high-speed networks made the Internet possible.” Hyperloop, he said, “will do to the physical world what the Internet did to the digital one.”

Allison Arieff (editorial director at SPUR and former Dry Futures judge) has some questions for Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies) after a propulsion test demonstration in the Nevada desert. While the company has managed remarkably fast developments in its tube technology for such high-speeds as the Hyperloop demands, it's nowhere near reality – and Arieff clearly articulates the (many) remaining concerns of such technology, after mere feasibility.

Related on Archinect:

Germany's railway sees future in harmony with driverless cars

2016-05-13T12:46:00-04:00

Deutsche Bahn, a German-based railway and logistics company that transports about seven million train passengers every day ... plans to operate fleets of autonomous vehicles that could be ordered via an app, much people already do when they order a ride-hailing service like Uber. These driverless cars would be used to pick people up and bring them to public transit stations, solving the so-called “last mile” problem.

More news on automated vehicles and public transit:

Moscow's metro expansion moves ahead of schedule

2016-05-11T17:14:00-04:00

The already rapid expansion of the Moscow metro may be picking up steam, if a flurry of announcements in recent days is to be believed. A brand-new portion of the Butovskaya metro line, which will link the southernmost stations of the orange and gray Lines, may be open to the public by the end of this week, Deputy Mayor Marat Khusnullin said Friday, RIA Novosti reported.

"The new line will include three stations — Ulitsa Starokachalovskaya, with a transfer to the gray line station Bulvar Dmitria Donskogo, Lesoparkovaya and Bitsevsky Park, which connects to the orange line station Novoyasenevskaya."

Moscow is in the midst of a major infrastructure-overhaul, with plans to increase the number of stations by nearly 40% by 2020. And, if the reports are correct, they're way ahead of schedule.

The master plan includes some 79 new stations, radically changing the city and how people get around in it.

More Muscovite news:

Department of Transportation Secretary threatens to shut down DC Metro

2016-05-10T17:35:00-04:00

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Tuesday he seriously considered ordering a shutdown of the entire Washington Metro subway system last week and may still do that if local officials don't follow Transportation Department safety directives. "We have the ability to withhold (federal) funds from Metro. We have the ability to shut Metro down, and we're not afraid to use the authority we have," Foxx said told reporters. "This is serious business."

"Local officials have yet to identify the root cause of incidents involving electrical arcing, smoke and fire, and so have no plan for how to fix the problem, he said."

For more on the dilapidated state of American infrastructure:

Hyperloop hopefuls turn to 'passive' maglev technology

2016-05-10T13:47:00-04:00

"Utilizing a passive levitation system will eliminate the need for power stations along the Hyperloop track, which makes this system the most suitable for the application and will keep construction costs low," [...] "From a safety aspect, the system has huge advantages, levitation occurs purely through movement, therefore if any type of power failure occurs, Hyperloop pods would continue to levitate and only after reaching minimal speeds touch the ground."

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (not to be confused with Hyperloop Technologies Inc., a peer company also hoping to realize Elon Musk's hyperloop vision) published a statement yesterday announcing the company had licensed "passive magnetic levitation" technology to power their Hyperloop prototype.

Billed as "a cheaper, safer alternative" to maglev technology, the passive magnetic levitation doesn't require as much infrastructural build-out, as it doesn't need to be powered by sources along the track. The system is "passive" insofar as instead of using superconducting magnets or powered electromagnets, it uses "permanent room-temperature magnets, similar to the familiar bar magnet". You can read all about the technology here.

More Hyperloop on Archinect:

A look at the history and future of the American commute

2016-05-02T17:34:00-04:00

"The idea that you can replace the 10 trips with one autonomous car and travel less distance, that’s the biggest misconception," says Fagnant. "You can get rid of vehicles, but not vehicle miles traveled. Without ridesharing, there's an 8 to 10 percent increase in vehicle miles traveled based on simulations we've run in Austin. You’re not replacing trips [..] the vehicle has to bounce between locations, and relocate to where it’s needed. Those in-between miles will create a lot of extra travel."

Google, Uber, Lyft, Ford and Volvo join forces to lobby for autonomous vehicles

2016-04-28T12:51:00-04:00

Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, a lobbying group with the express purpose of advocating autonomous driving. [...] "Self-driving vehicle technology will make America's roadways safer and less congested," [David Strickland, a former administrator of the NHTSA] said [...] "The best path for this innovation is to have one clear set of federal standards, and the Coalition will work with policymakers to find the right solutions that will facilitate the deployment of self-driving vehicles."

Lyft has also been in talks with General Motors (which is not a part of the Self-Driving Coalition) to put out its own group of autonomous for-hire vehicles. Models for Google's vehicles include both bespoke prototypes and Lexus SUVs, and Uber is developing its own testing grounds for self-driving cars in Pittsburgh.

Related on Archinect:

Connectivity, not territory: why we need to make a new map for the US

2016-04-15T20:31:00-04:00

America faces a two-part problem. It’s no secret that the country has fallen behind on infrastructure spending. But it’s not just a matter of how much is spent on catching up, but how and where it is spent. Advanced economies in Western Europe and Asia are reorienting themselves around robust urban clusters of advanced industry. Unfortunately, American policy making remains wedded to an antiquated political structure of 50 distinct states.

More on the infrastructural mess in the US:

"Hugely overwrought": Oliver Wainwright on the newly-reopened Les Halles

2016-04-06T12:31:00-04:00

Unveiled this week, the €1bn redevelopment is the largest infrastructure project that Paris has undertaken in decades, aiming to fix the messy tangle where Europe’s biggest underground station disgorges 750,000 passengers a day into a labyrinthine warren of shops [...] It is hugely overwrought, the layered steel roof pulled to and fro in tortured twists and turns, forming a contorted rollercoaster of curved trusses and angled bracing...

"The whole thing has a forlorn droop when seen from the west, as if sagging under the weight of expectation. Nor does the colour help. Ranging between sand and rancid butter depending on the light, the yellow steelwork casts a jaundiced pallor across the scene, lending the interiors a decidedly institutional air."

From marketplace to open pit to "custard-coloured flop" – more on Les Halles here:

Kazuyo Sejima envisions "camouflaged" design for Seibu's new bullet train

2016-03-15T18:20:00-04:00

Working with [Seibu Group's] design team, [Sejima] has proposed a concept for [their] 'Red Arrow' series that would be one with the environment, melding into the background as it travels through city and countryside. The plan represents a sharp deviation from train designs of the past, which have emphasized a bold, striking look through slick lines and bright colors. In contrast, Sejima has chosen keywords like 'friendly' and 'soft' to define her new vision for express trains in Japan.

Lyft gets cozy with LA transit agencies to share data on Metro connections

2016-02-24T13:20:00-05:00

Metro is negotiating an agreement with Lyft aimed at learning more about ride-share trips that begin and end at key Metro stations [...] The relationship would last at least a year and would give Metro a rare peek at data typically kept private. The deal, one of the first of its kind in the United States, would shed light on the role that ride-sharing plays in ... the so-called "first mile, last mile" gap [...] In exchange for Lyft's data, Metro would advertise the service to its riders

Lyft's recent advertising has also been flaunting its connection with public transit – ads all over the US depict the local city's rail map with branching pink veins, suggesting how Lyft can extend existing public transit infrastructure (even though you're still definitely in a stranger's privately-owned vehicle).

Below is an ad in San Francisco, riffing on Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART):

Check out more pieces on ridesharing and public transit:

MIT and TU Delft emerge victorious at Hyperloop competition; Elon Musk drops hint about "electric jets"

2016-02-02T12:45:00-05:00

[MIT's] team was awarded the top prize, and...Delft University of Technology from the Netherlands were the next runners-up. [...] Musk took questions from the audience on everything from what inspired him to create the Hyperloop idea (being stuck in LA traffic), what advice he had for the winning teams (lots of dry runs), and what "crazy idea" he is working on next (electric jets — Musk says he thinks he's close to something, but said precious little about how they'd work).

MIT's design will go on to compete at the Hyperloop test-run competition this summer, hosted at a bespoke race track being built near Hawthorne, CA – SpaceX's headquarters. Here's the complete list of winners from the competition, hosted by Texas A&M University:

Best Overall Design Award: MIT Hyperloop Team, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Pod Innovation Award: Delft Hyperloop, Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands)
Pod Technical Excellence Award: Badgerloop, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Pod Technical Excellence Award: Hyperloop at Virginia Tech, Virginia Tech
Pod Technical Excellence Award: HyperXite, University of California Irvine

Other teams advancing include:

rLoop (non-student team)
uWaterloo Hyperloop, University of Waterloo
UWashington Hyperloop, University of Washington
University of Toronto, University of Toronto
RUMD Loop, University of Maryland and Rutgers University
GatorLoop, University of Florida
Team HyperLynx, University of Colorado-Denver
Hyperloop UC, Univers...

So Cal has dumped a lot of money into transit projects, but there's been little pay-off so far

2016-01-27T20:36:00-05:00

For almost a decade, transit ridership has declined across Southern California despite enormous and costly efforts by top transportation officials to entice people out of their cars and onto buses and trains. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region's largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating.

"Despite a $9-billion investment in new light rail and subway lines, Metro now has fewer boardings than it did three decades ago, when buses were the county's only transit option."

Related:

Jakarta, the world's largest city without a subway, is drowning in traffic

2016-01-19T08:00:00-05:00

Since 2000, the world’s second-largest megacity, Jakarta, has seen its population swell by a staggering 34 percent. Though the city proper is home to just 10 million, the urban zone is home to 30 million [...] “Jakarta is the largest urban metropolitan area in the world without a metro,” he [Deden Rukmana] says. “And a metro is the most crucial element of transportation for a megacity. There’s no way it can exist otherwise.”

In spite of sleet and snow, cycling prevails in Minneapolis

2016-01-18T13:33:00-05:00

Minneapolis, despite its frigid winters, has surged to the top of national rankings for urban biking and was the only U.S. city included last year on a global index of bike-friendly communities. Since 2000, the percentage of bike commuters here has jumped 170 percent [...] Minneapolis' bike-friendly reputation advanced on the saddle of key elected officials, grassroots advocates and critical investments that over the past decade helped transform it into a mecca for biking.