Archinect - News

New York City MTA releases 20-Year Needs Assessment plan... sans price tag

2023-10-13T12:06:00-04:00

Some 400 miles of subway tracks, half of Metro-North’s Hudson Line and several Long Island Rail Road stations are in dire need of upgrades to stave off flooding and other extreme weather exacerbated by climate change, the MTA wrote in a report published on Wednesday. The report, called the 20-year needs assessment, is a breakdown of the agency’s $1.5 trillion worth of transit infrastructure, and details which equipment planners believe most urgently needs fixing over the next two decades.

The system, which is now (finally) on a more stable financial track, needs a litany of upgrades over the next two decades, according to the breakdown. A total of 350 of the 493 elevators operated by the MTA will need to be replaced in that timeframe. Another 6,300 rail cars and 100% of all 6,000 city buses will also need to be replaced. (The full assessment can be found here.)

The findings were published in advance of a five-year construction phase that begins in 2025, though an exact price tag for the slate of fixes has yet to be established by the agency.

Another audit from the state comptroller’s office released last week indicated that the MTA has not sufficiently used money from capital improvement projects to mitigate against the effects of climate change, as was made apparent by the September 29 catastrophic rain event.

Dodger Stadium gondola project clears major legal hurdle as challenges remain

2023-01-18T15:40:00-05:00

On Monday, Jan. 9, [Frank] McCourt scored a court victory when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff sided with proponents. Beckloff rejected a challenge to the unusual relationship between McCourt’s private company and the county’s public mega transit agency, LA Metro, which was struck without competitive bidding.

The former Dodgers owner was behind the leadership team that had been selling the project under the guise of environmental concerns (the scheme does reduce traffic by about 3,000 cars for each of the stadium's 81 home games) after cutting an alleged sweetheart deal with Metro Chief Phil Washington. The court ruling cited the Metro’s Office of Extraordinary Innovation policy on unsolicited proposals as a legally-justified means of circumventing the competitive bids process, which in this matter at least had tremendous civic and democratic consequences that touch on gentrification and other hot-button issues.

The plan is under further scrutiny for its role in McCourt’s apparent desire to create an LA Live-type development where the stadium's parking lots, which he still owns almost half of, currently exist. Meanwhile, a new study from the UCLA Mobility Lab has called into serious question the 5,000 projected hourly ridership figure that Los Angeles Aerial Rapid Transit Technologies (...

Chicago will receive $185 million for long-awaited CTA station accessibility upgrades

2022-12-27T13:40:00-05:00

Chicago will receive a total of $185 million in federal funding to make several of its Chicago Transit Authority and Metra stations accessible for disabled riders, officials announced Monday as part of a new program tucked into the bipartisan infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden last year.

The money is part of the larger $1.75 billion provision set aside for accessibility improvements in various urban transit agencies by the federal infrastructure bill from last year. New York is the only city to receive more. Per the Tribune, a total of 42 of the CTA’s 145 stations are not currently compliant with the ADA’s design standards. Nationwide, the number is thought to be around 900.

“It’s a sorry state,” disabled Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Army veteran who asked for twice the amount of funding before the bill was watered down in congress, told the paper. “I don’t take the ‘L’ in Chicago because I never know if a station is going to be fully accessible for my wheelchair or not.”

Arup will lead Penn Station’s new $73 million expansion project

2022-06-30T09:00:00-04:00

Arup has been placed in the lead for MTA/NJ Transit and Amtrak’s planned redevelopment and expansion of Penn Station in New York City. The tender was announced recently by the rail service and is part of a larger Gateway Program aimed at improving a critical infrastructure clog situated in a ten-mile stretch along Amtrak’s overworked Northeast Corridor.

The multinational engineering concern is now tasked with designing the first new tracks, platforms, and concourses at the 117-year-old station in over a century. The project will relieve an ugly bottleneck at the western end of Penn Station, doubling its capacity in a process that also generates a much-improved customer experience for commuters to the country’s busiest transportation hub.

Previously on Archinect: Gov. Cuomo's renovation plan for NYC’S Penn Station takes shape

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker said: “This announcement represents significant progress in the much-needed expansion of Penn Station and the modernization of our...

Guardian critic Rowan Moore on London’s coming underground colossus

2022-03-14T21:46:00-04:00

This megalopolis of engineering currently lies there, pristine, unspotted by gum or pigeon, with its 319-tonne trains gliding quietly through every few minutes, empty, so that those operating the system can familiarise themselves with the choreography of all that heavy metal. Electronic indicator boards announce their coming with white digits, a notch classier than the orange ones on the old tube.

Moore described the nearly empty £18.33 billion ($23.84 billion) project as an “alternative universe” before likening the transition between the new Elizabeth line and older Central Underground to a scene from (attempted architecture critic) Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

The full line is expected to be complete by 2023. Hopes were for the originally planned construction to end in 2018, before being pushed back three separate times owing to the pandemic and a variety of other causes. The expansion will eventually feature a motley slate of new stations from Hawkins\Brown and other big-name firms, but Moore doesn’t expect the enormous feat to be repeated any time soon, given the rise of certain ascendant technologies in the role of city planning.

“It can take a generation, in other words, to make something such as this happen. Since we are in a climate emergency, whatever environmental benefits may come from further such splurges on public transport – which incur upfront carbon ...

Philadelphia's planned SEPTA wayfinding redesign is gaining traction online

2021-09-18T09:00:00-04:00

So far, Philly’s proposed wayfinding makeover has won praise from transit advocates around the country. The proposal draws from international best practices for transit navigability, and reflects similar changes in Seattle and San Francisco as big cities grapple with how to lure riders back to mass transportation.

Philadelphia's transit system is the country’s seventh-largest and is often the subject of criticism over its wayfinding and disorienting layout. The $40 million redesign is going to be rolled out gradually and will be fully unveiled sometime in 2022.

A planned four-mile addition to the King of Prussia rail line is also coming thanks to unused federal COVID funding. SEPTA says the extension is one of five projects that will boost economic recovery in the area by 50%.

Bloomberg CityLab has more on the initial reception here.

City of Seattle tackles housing affordability, workforce automation, seismic upgrades with new "resilience roadmap"

2019-08-30T21:00:00-04:00

We must continue to prepare for acute shocks— events that could threaten our City’s ability to function, such as natural disasters. We must also address chronic stresses—challenges that weaken our natural, built, or human resources, such as income inequality and chronic homelessness. Stresses often exacerbate the effects of shocks when they occur, particularly for vulnerable populations.

The plan comes as Seattle, the fastest-growing city in the country, and the larger Puget Sound metropolitan region around it, prepare to nearly double in population by 2050.

Exploiting the complicated politics of transit expansion

2019-08-08T19:29:00-04:00

Proposition 105, a measure backed by a group called Building a Better Phoenix, would halt all future light rail expansions, directing already-earmarked tax dollars toward “other transportation improvements”—mostly road construction. Like a number of efforts to kill urban-rail plans around the U.S., the initiative to stop Phoenix’s transit development has ties to Americans for Prosperity, the advocacy group funded by David H. Koch and Charles Koch.

CityLab's Laura Bliss delves into the multi-faceted and contentious back-and-forth effort to build new light rail infrastructure in Phoenix, Arizona, where issues of urban equity, dark political money, and changing transportation needs have rankled residents of all stripes.

Pelli Clarke Pelli-Designed Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco to Reopen July 1

2019-06-11T19:40:00-04:00

Eight months after the discovery of cracked steel girders forced its closure, the Transbay transit center is safe to reopen, an independent panel of engineers and experts has concluded. The reopening is set for 6 a.m. July 1.

A five-member peer-review committee appointed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has approved a series of recently-completed structural repairs made to the Pelli Clarke Pelli-designed Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco.

Workers repair damaged structural beams at the Transbay Transit Center in San Francisco, Image courtesy of Wikimedia user Frank Schulenburg.

A pair of cracked structural steel beams were discovered in one section of the building just after the transit center opened late last year. Months of independent investigation and testing discerned that the beams cracked because a series of welding access holes that had been made to the steel beams to allow for their installation.

The affected beams were replaced and now, as Therese McMillan, MTC's executive director tells The San Francisco Chronicle, “The steel structure is sound for continued service."

Going from bad to worse: Penn Station's massive tunnel system is aging rapidly

2018-01-11T17:35:00-05:00

I’d been assigned to write a story about Pennsylvania Station, but I wanted to get a caboose-eye view of the decaying tunnels leading up to it, because the only imaginable way the station could be any worse is if it were underwater. Penn, the Western Hemisphere’s busiest train station, serves 430,000 travelers every weekday—more than LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports combined.

"As the gateway to America’s largest city," Devin Leonard writes in his piece for Bloomberg Businessweek, "Penn Station should inspire awe, as train stations do in London, Paris, Tokyo, and other competently managed metropolises. Instead, it embodies a particular kind of American failure—the inability to maintain roads, rails, ports, and other necessary conduits."

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.

Man Writes 91 Songs About the Washington, D.C. Metro System

2017-06-13T17:28:00-04:00

It took six years, but every subway station in the Washington, D.C. area is now immortalized in song. For musician Jason Mendelson, it’s his magnum opus.

The Magentic Fields wrote 69 songs about love; professional tax manager and sometime musician Jason Mendelson has managed to record 91 songs about the Washington, D.C. Metro system, with one song for each subway stop.

Map of the Washington, D.C. Metro.

While music critics will not be equating these two works anytime soon, it's rare for an entire transportation system to be memorialized in song (although [Get Your Kicks On] Route 66, along with Kraftwerk's Autobahn, come to mind). It's worth noting that Mendelson doesn't play favorites: in the video accompanying the article, he proclaims that "There are no boring commuter stops."

Will NY Governor Cuomo be able to fix Penn Station's problems?

2017-05-01T14:39:00-04:00

The urgency to fix the station has reached a peak. But this also creates a great occasion to get something done — something grander than Mr. Cuomo's current plan, a project born of political expediency.

For the majority of commuters in New York, New Jersey and the surrounding areas, Penn Station has been the source of many headaches, late arrivals to work, and chaos as of late. Throughout the month of April, multiple trains have been derailed, a train got stuck at Penn Station, there have been ongoing power problems, and a false-alarm of a gunshot caused a stampede injuring 16. All of these incidents have caused massive delays further congesting an already cramped transit system and instilling fears of safety. The issues have been so disruptive that there is even a social media push, #NoPayMay, for commuters to use April's tickets stubs in May due to the substandard service in the past month.

On Thursday, Amtrak officials revealed they would be closing several tracks over the summer but have yet to say how many, or for how long. While the need for improvements are highly recognized, many fear that Amtrak's approach to tackling the deteriorating infrastructure will strain the alread...

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. ...

Hyperloop One announces 35 semifinalists in 17 countries for its global challenge

2017-01-10T12:58:00-05:00

Whether you envisioned Hyperloop One as an overhyped pneumatic tube or an inventive way to transport cargo and/or passengers, 35 teams from 17 countries around the world have just been announced as semifinalists in the contest to create working transit corridors for the technology. The 35 proposed routes are sited in countries including Argentina, Poland, Australia, India, the U.K. and the U.S. (the full list is below). Finalists will be announced in May after three global showcase events where each team has the chance to demonstrate how their proposal will economically benefit their region. The showcases will be held in New Delhi on February 28th, Washington D.C. on April 6th, and London on April 27th. Twenty of the proposals currently have governmental or other funding sources already lined up.

Corridors in the semifinalist round include:
AR Buenos Aires-Cordoba
AU Sydney-Melbourne
CA Ontario (cargo)
CA Toronto-Montreal
CA Vancouver (cargo)
CH Shanghai-Hangzhou
DE Autobahn
EE Tallin-Helsi...

Trading the L Train for a giant inflatable condom?

2016-06-30T17:58:00-04:00

In 2019, New York City's Hurricane Sandy-damaged L Train tunnel will shut down for repairs, making it tricky to get across the East River without a new form of transport. In a competition sponsored by the Van Alen Institute to find alternatives, AECOM suggested building a fiber-glass fabric tunnel for pedestrians that could also double as a projection space.

The tunnel, which an AECOM designer likened to an inflatable condom in this DNA info article, would have segments above and below the water line in order to enable river traffic to pass over it.

However, the super-sized prophylactic ended up being a hard sell, losing out to the docking ferry proposal "Transient Transit" (pictured above) designed by BuroHappold Engineering and Kohn Pederson Fox Associates for the competition's $1,000 prize.

All the latest in river-design news:

BART and LA Metro battle via Twitter haikus

2016-06-29T18:26:00-04:00

Oh, SF BART Twitter account—back at it again with the going rogue. This time, instead of getting real with folks on the platform, they decided to have a little fun with the Los Angeles Metro account, challenging them to a full-on haiku battle on Twitter this past Friday.

The official Twitter account for the BART isn't sycophantic or pandering: when confronted with customer concerns, it answers them with actual facts, even if those facts wouldn't gel with a traditional PR department. Now, however, the BART account has gone one step further and is outright having fun, challenging the LA Metro and New York's MTA to a haiku battle.

While it's safe to say that both the BART and the LA Metro should keep their day jobs, having a playfully-minded transit system is not necessarily a bad thing.

When not writing haikus, here's what else public transit is up to:

Is Los Angeles becoming a "real" city?

2016-06-23T13:35:00-04:00

Could Los Angeles grow to become a “real city” like New York or London? Last year, LA gained at least 50,000 people, according to a recent report from the California Department of Finance, pushing the population to more than 4 million people for the first time in the city’s history.

Part of the appeal of Los Angeles has been its refusal to be like other cities. For years, its objective "center" was a forbidding cluster of office towers with near zero street life, while in outlying, low-density neighborhoods, people partied in back yards that ran up against wildlife preserves, hiking trails, and quaint man-made lakes.

However, as other big, traditionally urban U.S. cities gradually became stupidly unaffordable (looking at you, New York and San Francisco) and Moby wrote that one Op-Ed, a sizable number of creative-class types decided to try their luck in a place with what then had half the rental costs and much more temperate weather.

Now, with a rapidly growing subway system and a still undaunted, ebullient vibe, L.A. may be starting to take itself seriously as a city, which ironically could be its undoing, or the impetus for spectacular urban development. If history is any guide, it will be both, creating the newest weird, beautiful, idiosyncratic iteration we co...

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:

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:

Reality checking the Hyperloop hyperbole

2016-01-19T13:25:00-05:00

[Hyperloop] has the swagger of Elon Musk rather than the stigma of a public bureaucracy. Second, it’s going to be, like, a billion times faster than HSR. [...] And yet, this combination of enthusiasm and magnetism doesn’t buy farmland. It doesn’t ease eminent domain takings. It doesn’t blast through bedrock or relocate utilities. It doesn’t design station area plans. [...] The very same mountains, cities, canals, farmers, and habitats that complicate HSR also complicate Hyperloop.

For past reporting on Hyperloop in all its emerging forms:

NBBJ proposes 3 moving walkways to replace London's Circle Line

2015-09-11T05:50:00-04:00

Instead of relying on a subway that breaks down and causes interminable delays, what if the 17 miles of London's Circle Line were replaced with three moving walkways, much like the ones in airports, that allow pedestrians to step on at three miles per hour and then amble over to a fast lane of 15 miles per hour?

According to James Pinkerton, an architectural assistant at the London office of NBBJ which proposed the idea, the travelators would be easier to maintain than a traditional train system precisely because of its three separate walkways. If one broke down, the "two further lines would run smoothly," forming a ceaseless band of movement that wouldn't need to pause for stops or be held up by one solitary malfunctioning train. Travelers could simply walk on and walk off.

"We came up with this idea that benefits the city as a whole," he explained to me in a brief phone interview. Pinkerton was also part of the NBBJ team that created the shadowless tower, which was designed from a s...

Mass transit may benefit expansion of Uber and other for-hire car services

2015-09-10T19:21:00-04:00

A combination of (mostly) public transit along with some Uber rides can be affordable for a wider range of customers than Uber alone.

According to a study of New York City's private-car hiring habits, many of those who hired Uber did so as an extension of public transit: in other words, instead of Uber-ing all the way to a particular destination, a wider socioeconomic spectrum of New Yorkers frequently use some combination of public transit and private car services in their daily lives. For Uber to expand beyond the got-money-to-burn segment of the population, places with public transit may be a great place to start.

For the latest (and arguably) greatest in Uber news:

• Uber brings Mad Max to Seattle

• Uber faces suspension and $7.3M fine in California

• Two Uber executives detained in France

From California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopoly

2015-08-12T14:36:00-04:00

"You have generations of people under the age of 35 … who are choosing to live car free and car-lite." – Westside Councilman Mike Bonin

From the newly installed "protected" intersections in Austin, Texas and Davis, California to additional proposed bus lanes and bike paths in Los Angeles, car culture is becoming less of a given and more of an expensive, perhaps even less desirable, option. Cities across the U.S. are starting to rethink their approach to large scale transportation infrastructure projects (i.e., freeways) as driving per capita remains stagnant. Of course, this trend is somewhat complicated by the rise of cheap door-to-door transportation options such as Uber, which make it easier for the car-less to get around without having to own a vehicle. For its part, Los Angeles is considering approving an initiative known as Mobility Plan 2035, which would redesign major boulevards and avenues to encourage people to get out of their cars and into the mass-transit dreams of city planners.

Last week, Archinect highlighted Christopher Hawthorne's review of the additional lane on the 405 freeway, a project that bega...

Map Revealed for de Blasio’s City-Wide Ferry System

2015-02-04T10:58:00-05:00

The current ferry plan will cost $55 million, with plans to expand to Coney Island and Stapleton in Staten Island once more money is secured. Additionally, service will be restored to the Rockaway ferry, which was put in place in 2012 after Hurricane Sandy wiped out subway service to the area.

On Tuesday, Mayor de Blasio gave his State of the City address where he announced plans for a new, city-wide ferry service that will serve neighborhoods including the Lower East Side, Astoria, the Rockaways, Sunset Park, Brooklyn Army Terminal, Bay Ridge, Red Hook and Soundview, among others. Today, a map has been revealed that shows existing ferry lines, those that will open in 2017 and 2018, and those that are proposed.

Special interest money kills Nashville's "Amp" BRT aspirations

2015-01-23T20:25:00-05:00

Nashville’s bid to build its first high-capacity transit line is dead, the Tennessean is reporting today. It’s a victory for the Koch brothers-funded local chapter of Americans for Prosperity and a defeat for the city’s near-term hopes of transitioning to less congested, more sustainable streets. The project, known as the Amp, called for a 7-mile busway linking growing East Nashville to downtown and parts of the city’s west end.

How Transit Measures Fared on 2014 Midterm Ballots

2014-11-05T13:57:00-05:00

At the broadest level, it's fair to say that urban mobility didn't have the most encouraging day. In recent years, conservative transportation policy has been much more inclined to favor highways serving rural and outer suburban regions than alternative modes that boost balanced city networks [...] But at the city and county level, where most transit initiatives occur, the midterms yielded a number of big victories, in keeping with the general success of transit ballot measures in recent years.

What Can the French Teach Americans About Transit?

2014-10-29T17:15:00-04:00

...there's an awful lot that U.S. cities should learn as soon as possible about the way the French design their transit networks. Whereas American light rail systems have had modest success and modern streetcar lines have questionable transit value, France operates 57 tram lines in 33 cities that together carry some 3 million passengers a day and create a fantastic balance of mobility options for urban and suburban residents alike—all built in the last 30 years.

The Next-Generation Airport Is a Destination in Its Own Right

2014-08-27T14:45:00-04:00

With views of the downtown skyline, the $1.1 billion new Indianapolis airport has been celebrated for its sense of place, and for treating its passengers as "guests," much the way the hotel industry does. It has its own civic plaza, a light-filled central space with 35-foot ceilings that functions as the nexus of activity—every passenger, whether arriving or departing, passes through—where half of all the airport's shops and restaurants reside. [...] What is Indy doing right?

Why Portland Is Building a Multi-Modal Bridge That Bans Cars

2014-08-20T14:44:00-04:00

Tilikum Crossing is the nation's first multi-modal bridge that will be off-limits to private automobiles. It will carry MAX light rail trains (the impetus for construction) as well as Portland's streetcar line and city buses, and of course pedestrian and bike lanes on both sides—but no cars. [...] "Transit has a huge impact on urban planning. I mean, if you look at our city, it was designed around streetcars. On some level, it has to be part of their DNA."