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When City Manager Oliver Chi looks across Station Square next to the new Gold Line stop in Monrovia, he doesn't see a dilapidated train depot. He sees a bustling restaurant.
Where an empty lot now sits, he sees a five-story apartment complex. That old lumber house? A bustling food hall.
Los Angeles County's growing light-rail network plunges deeper than it ever has into suburbia this week with the opening of the Gold Line extension linking Pasadena to Azusa.
— LA Times
Obsessed with infrastructure? Take a look at some related coverage:The Bike Wars Are Over, and the Bikes WonMore details on Glendale's "freeway cap park" emergeWhy cranes keep collapsing, despite "sophisticated equipment"US government agency develops new batteries that could revolutionize energy... View full entry
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.
— LA Times
"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: Eric Garcetti vs the Car: how LA's mayor plans to change the way Angeleños get aroundLA's freeway system is... View full entry
Sure, the news was all but confirmed, but today the Port Authority made it official: The transit org announced that the World Trade Center Transportation Hub—anchored by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava's Oculus—will officially open in "the first week of March," per a press release. [...]
What that actually means for commuters: There will finally be a link between the World Trade Center PATH station and 11 NYC subway lines, along with the East River ferries.
— ny.curbed.com
Read the Port Authority's announcement in full here. The WTC Transportation Hub previously in the Archinect news: Leaking water delays opening of World Trade Center Transit Hub's luxury shopping mallMassive 'spine' skylight in Calatrava's WTC Oculus nears completionNYMag talks to Santiago... View full entry
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.”
— Inverse
Related stories in the Archinect news:Jakarta, already 40% below sea level, is building one of the biggest sea walls on EarthJakarta's "car-free days" are only the start of the city's long journey to becoming bike-friendlyMVRDV-Jerde-Arup Present Peruri 88 for Jakarta, Indonesia View full entry
The dream of a Brooklyn-Queens light rail is quickly moving into the realm of reality. A non-profit advocacy group called Friends of the Brooklyn Queens Connector has officially formed to address the need for a more robust transportation system that could connect underserved, and now booming, areas of Brooklyn and Queens. They’ve just released a detailed proposal revealing the route and the potential design the modern streetcars could take on. — 6sqft.com
After 19 years, the Arnhem Central Station masterplan will finally be complete with the public opening of the new transfer hall tomorrow. Since UNStudio won the competition in 1996, the journey to construct the urban development in the Dutch city of Arnhem was an arduous one filled with “an... View full entry
[...] one year after announcing the concept of its game-changing MULTI elevator technology, ThyssenKrupp unveils a fully-functional 1:3 scale model at its Innovation Center in Gijn, Spain. The MULTI system uses linear motors instead of ropes, enabling horizontal movement and transforming conventional elevator transportation into vertical metro systems. — bloomberg.com
Previously on Archinect: ThyssenKrupp's cable-free elevator test tower tops out in less than 10 monthsUp and Down, Side to Side; ThyssenKrupp's cable-free MULTI elevator to begin testing in 2016 View full entry
The plateauing and decline in U.S. vehicle miles traveled per capita that occurred between [2005-2014] was described by some hopeful commentators as a dramatic shift that was indicative of the preferences of a new workforce...Marginal changes in the way a new generation behaves...cannot overcome the realities of a country where more than three-fourths of jobs are located more than three miles from downtowns and where only one-fourth of homes are in places that their residents refer to as urban. — The Transport Public
More about car transit on Archinect:Welcome to Evanston, Illinois: the carless suburbiaDawn of the self-driving car: testing out Tesla's autopilot functionFrom California to Texas, car culture is losing its monopolyCan a loss of driver autonomy save lives?Designers imagine a world of self-driving... View full entry
Beginning in 2017, the London transit hub that's been described as "a dingy, grey, horizontal nothingness"* will undergo a massive redesign to incorporate a new high-speed rail line connecting London and Birmingham.The first phase of the so-called HS2, connecting London and Birmingham... View full entry
In western Europe, the bus stop is the most humble of building types, a meanly utilitarian structure that adds little or nothing to the roadside. But in the old Soviet empire, from the shores of the Black Sea to the Kazakh steppe, the norm is “wild going on savage”, as Jonathan Meades writes in a beautiful new photobook featuring 159 bus stops, each illuminating “the Soviet empire’s taste for the utterly fantastical”. — theguardian.com
Find more of these beauties photographed by Christopher Herwig for the new book Soviet Bus Stops over at The Guardian.Related stories on Archinect:Community Bus Stops Transform BrazilWorld Class Architects Design Bus Stops in AustriaHigh Tech Bus Stop in Paris by Patrick Jouin View full entry
For decades, Americans have been losing their ability, even their right, to walk. [...] there are vast blankets and folds of the country where the ability to walk – to open a door and step outside and go somewhere or nowhere without getting behind the wheel of a car – is a struggle, a fight. A risk.
[...] we encourage car travel and discourage moving on foot. More than discourage it, we criminalise it where deemed necessary.
— aeon.co
Related:NY Mayor de Blasio's Times Square overhaul runs into massive oppositionMIT's "Placelet" sensors technologize old-fashioned observation methods for placemakingWhy Can't One Walk To The Super Bowl? View full entry
ThyssenKrupp's MULTI elevator test tower is happening, indeed — and at a seemingly impressive rate. Less than 10 months after starting construction, the currently 232-meter structure in the German city of Rottweil recently celebrated its topping out. ThyssenKrupp is aiming to have the tower... View full entry
'We are transforming LaGuardia into a globally-renowned, 21st century airport that is worthy of the city and state of New York. It’s the perfect metaphor for what we can achieve with the ambition and optimism and energy that made this the Empire State in the first place, and I want to thank our many partners for joining us to build the airport that New York deserves.' — Gov. Cuomo — governor.ny.gov
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo alongside Vice President Joe Biden officially unveiled the proposed design for the new LaGuardia Airport earlier this week. The $4 billion revamp will transform the airport into a single, structurally unified main terminal, including expanded transportation access... View full entry
At the end of May, Metro will debut its FORWARD plan: a fully reconfigured bus network that emphasizes more frequency, better night and weekend service, direct lines through high-ridership corridors, and grid-style access to many parts of the city. The top five routes will now all get 15-minute peak service... Rather than lobby for more taxpayer funding or jack up fares, Metro looked for more efficient ways to use its existing resources. — CityLab
In an unfortunate sequence of events, reports earlier this week state that the U.S. House Appropriations Committee voted to cut Amtrak funding by an estimated $260 million -- one day after a fatal Amtrak passenger-train derailment in Philadelphia on May 12. As investigations on the accident ensue... View full entry