Everyone knows that Phoenix has a huge sprawl problem. But now transit-oriented development is on the upswing in this Sun Belt metropolis. In December, the Phoenix region opened one of the most ambitious transit projects in recent U.S. history: a 20-mile light rail line with 28 stops serving three cities (Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa). Future plans include an extension within three years, with several new corridors being studied. 

The Valley Metro vehicles are handsome and comfortable, and thus far ridership has far exceeded initial projections -- with as many as 40,000 riders per day, compared to the expected 25,000. Each station features amenities and art installations. In addition, with many folks using the light rail as an intermodal step in their commutes, bicycles are welcome aboard. 

Writer, cartoonist, cyclist and transit advocate Ken Avidor points us to this video, which he used in a recent Daily Kos diary entry. Writes Ken:

The Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) Pod People are always challenging me to prove that PRT promoters are anti-Light Rail Transit (LRT). Here is a video by one of these libertarian, "free-market" guys claiming LRT is old and expensive and PRT is more modern and won't cost the taxpayers a dime. The fact is PRT is a Nixon-era concept and there is no evidence to prove it can pay for itself.

PRT, Avidor says on his "PRT Is a Joke" website, is often used as a "stalking horse" to undermine the funding and build-out of real-world mass transit projects. Its supporters include Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who, among other transgressions, opposes the expansion of that state's Northstar commuter rail line.

Judging from the above video, trashing new light rail service in Phoenix, the thrust of the pro-PRT argument goes something like this: 

Dude! It goes like a hundred miles an hour! You wouldn't have to read books or sit beside weird people -- AND you could listen to AC/DC!

On your iPod, of course.

This film, as featured on YouTube via Infrastructurist, shows the streets of Barcelona a century ago, taken from the front window of a tram going down the street. It's an amazing film. The central avenues of this Catalan city are so vital, so alive, a mix of every activity. Then the film compares the old streets to the same streets today. Quite a comparison.

The streets a century ago illustrate the principal of “tout a la rue,” meaning everything into the street. Cyclists, cars, pedestrians, streetcars, kids. And of course horses. Seems to work.

Interesting how bold the cyclists are in 1907. I wonder why they don’t seem to fear being tipped over by the streetcar tracks? They ride right across them, often at only a slight angle, and don’t get channeled into them. Were tracks built somehow with less of a gap between track and street? Were the tires of the bicycles fatter?

The views of the same streets today are distressing. I love Barcelona. It's one of my favorite cities. But the streets of today seem lifeless and sterile. Could they really be that barren today? Maybe the films from today were shot in the early morning, when few people were around. The streets certainly seemed very alive when I was there in 1994. Still, it's no doubt true that even the most active streets today are less so than those of a century ago. It's mostly the fault of the car, which we have given our streets over to so completely.

The 1907 scenes from Barcelona capture an era where so many transportation modes were either beginning, ending or right in their heyday, and mixing all together. Modern cycling as we know it developed in the 1880s and was really at its height in 1907. Streetcars, electric ones, were relatively new then but completely dominant. Cars were just beginning. There were still many, many horse-drawn wagons, and would be for another half century. Walking was there as well of course.

Could we get back to some modern version of that, an amazing lively mix of different ways of getting around, all in busy public streets? I'd like to think so.

One thing that comes to mind watching this old film are these incredibly expensive contemporary light rail systems, now built from San Diego to Charlotte to New Jersey. I tend to support their construction, but I can't help noticing how little subtlety they display in relation to their surroundings. They are typically grade separated and their presence is like a big stream of concrete squeezed out into the middle of a street. Even modern streetcar systems usually do not blend so seamlessly as this Barcelona one did. Why is this? Can we change it?

Photo: Nicholas Kibre/Wikipedia

The first thing one notices about Zürich is that trams are ubiquitous downtown. The city considered changing its tram network several times (either placing the trams underground or replacing the trams with a metro system), but voters rejected spending money on these ideas. However, in 1977, Zürich voters did approve an initiative to make the existing surface transit system work better by providing transit priority for trams and buses.

Transit priority means that public transit vehicles are given priority over other forms of transportation through such measures as traffic signal control, transit-only lanes, and traffic regulations. Watch carefully as a traffic signal changes from red to green just when a tram arrives at the intersection. Transit priority was not a new idea, but Zürich has succeeded in implementing it to a greater degree than almost any other city in the world. Zürich's public transit priority program is described in Implementing Zurich's Transit Priority Program.

Combined with Zürich's regional rail network, the extensive implementation of transit priority techniques enables the city to provide subway-like service without a subway, Nash explains. If the Zürich article interests you, check out Nash's entry on optimizing traffic signals for surface transit -- he's looking to add information about other cities that have implemented such systems.

Seattle's South Lake Union Streetcar is a 1.3-mile line that opened in December 2007, the first leg in the city's commitment to new transit and light rail. It passed the half million passenger milestone in its first year, surpassing ridership projections.

The streetcar features many top-of-the-line tech amenities, including real time arrival message boards, solar-powered ticket vending machines, and human-activated doors to save energy while the train is in layover mode. If you go to the Seattle Streetcar web site, you can find out the next arrival time and actually watch the streetcars moving via GPS trackers.

As you'll see in the film, development is booming along the South Lake Union corridor. "If you build it, they will come" certainly seems to apply here.

Ask virtually any store manager at the Saint Louis Galleria about shoplifting, and you'll invariably get two responses: One, it's out of control; and two, it's gotten exceedingly worse since August 2006, when MetroLink opened a stop just 500 yards from the high-end shopping center.

In the first six months of this year, Richmond Heights police made 345 arrests at the mall. That's nearly double the number of arrests made in all of 2005, before MetroLink opened its Shrewsbury line.

More alarming are the numbers of juveniles (kids under the age of seventeen) arrested at the mall. This year police are on pace to take 276 juveniles into custody for shoplifting and other offenses — a sevenfold increase over the 39 kids arrested at the Galleria in 2005.

"I know it's not politically correct, but how else do you explain it?" comments a frustrated Galleria store manager.

Not everyone is as reactionary. A police officer who regularly patrols the mall, asked to explain the "surge," replied: "Who knows? Perhaps it's the downturn in the economy. Or maybe it's the need for teens to feel like they have to wear the latest fashions."

Of course it could also be that improved transit brings more people in general, or that authorities are more likely to target those who appear out of place for engaging in activities that might otherwise go overlooked. But after establishing its "city problems invade the 'burbs" theme, the story avoids such analysis, relying instead on rote "he said she said" coverage. To wit:

Richmond Heights police reported arresting three adult males — ages 23, 29 and 31 — implicated in a string of thefts earlier this summer. According to Macy's loss-prevention officers, the men would enter the department store, conceal merchandise under their clothes and then hightail it across the Galleria parking lot to the MetroLink station. By the time Macy's officers realized what had been stolen, the men were already on a train out of town.

"Just as we don't blame the automobile industry if someone commits a crime with a car, you need to be careful about blaming the mode of transportation for some of these recent isolated incidents," says [Metro spokeswoman] Dianne Williams.

Photo of St. Louis Galleria: merfam/Flickr

The ribbon cutting for the $2.8 billion project was attended by Congressman John Culberson and Governor Rick Perry. The Houston Chronicle was there and got some choice quotes.

"This project, for all intents and purposes, is complete," announced Delvin Dennis, interim director of the Texas Department of Transportation's Houston District. "Tomorrow morning the (high occupancy-toll) lanes open. If you're not doing anything, take a ride on them."

Perry noted the roar of traffic below, above and around the crowd, which was gathered on a frontage road overpass.

"This is the sound of freedom we hear," he said. "These people need roads to get to work, to church and to school."

One kind of freedom Texans don't need, according to the state and Rep. Culberson, is freedom of choice.

Despite its size, the widened freeway adds "just one new 'free' lane, a pair of toll lanes and no significant transit improvement," said Robin Holzer, chair of the grass-roots Citizens Transportation Coalition.

"Too bad it does not have a space for a commuter rail like our design did," said environmental attorney Jim Blackburn, who tried unsuccessfully to force the state to revise its plans, add mass transit and lessen the project's impact on neighborhoods.

Some still hold out hope for the addition of light rail -- the transit authority chipped in to have overpasses reinforced for train traffic. But the Chronicle reports that Culberson, "whose ability to get federal dollars was crucial to the widening project, pledged not to give up a single freeway lane for Metro rail."

Culberson may not have much of a say after January, though, depending on the outcome of his tightening race for re-election. As it happens, Culberson challenger Michael Skelly made his fortune in wind energy.

Photo: Federal Highway Administration

Devotees of the Red Hook, Brooklyn Fairway grocery store can have the pleasure, after loading up on gourmet salt and other essentials, of sipping coffee on their back veranda over looking the river. It's a wonderful view. On your right is the Statue of Liberty, flame aloft, and to your left, about ten feet away, a decrepit old green streetcar.

This old trolley, which adds a rough urban charm to the spot, is about all that remains of an admirable effort that ended a few years ago by Bob Diamond and cohorts to bring streetcars back to Brooklyn.

Diamond, renowned for his discovery of the old Atlantic Avenue tunnel -- one of the oldest rail tunnels in the world - may have simply been peaking too soon, for streetcars are coming back. While they aren't back in Brooklyn yet, they are in many cities. Dozens of cities have built, or are building, new streetcar lines. They include Portland, Kenosha, Charlotte, Little Rock, Lowell, Memphis, Tampa, San Diego and Charlotte. Some of them are installing vintage or antique cars; some are installing brand new ones. They join cities like New Orleans, Toronto, Melbourne and San Francisco that kept or revived existing lines.

Paris, France launched a sleek, modern streetcar system last year. More Paris photos below...

This trend is a good one, for streetcars can be one more way to give people alternative to driving, and thus enabling more walkable, bikeable streets. Perhaps most important, streetcar lines are the most urban of transit systems, at least those that run above ground. Unlike their competitor, the so-called "light rail line," streetcars mesh almost seamlessly into a street without bulky grade-separating apparatus and stations that can end up making a street less walkable. Streetcars are also less polluting, more energy-efficient and cheaper to maintain than their other big competitor, freewheeling buses.

Before World War II and the complete domination of the private car, streetcars used to run on virtually every major street New York City and indeed, every major street in every city in the United States. These old lines, although long gone, have left their mark on streets in big and small ways.

For example, most local shopping streets tend to be where the old trolley lines ran, like 5th Avenue or 7th Avenue in Brooklyn. That's because commerce tends to congregate around transportation lines. Those shopping streets are still there, even though the streetcar lines are not. Most of New York City's current bus lines run along the same routes as the old trolleys.

Another marker is in names, which, as in shopping streets, tend to persist. The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, formerly of Brooklyn, derives its name from the hundreds of streetcars that used to roll down the streets of this New York City borough, and the "trolley dodgers" who had to jump out of their way. The name was apt, for the number of streetcar lines that once were in Brooklyn is truly astonishing. It is indeed a subject for an entire field of research.

Could Brooklyn or other boroughs ever have anything like the dozens of different lines they once had? I don't want to rule it out, even though it's clearly a dream. What's not just a dream is that streetcars are coming back, perhaps even in this region. Stamford solicited proposals just last week to examine the potential for a new four-mile line that would connect major nodes within the city. Whether this would qualify as a streetcar or a light rail line might be a matter of semantics.

I could see streetcars playing a substantial role within many cities in the region, even Manhattan. The Regional Plan Association's (where I'm a Senior Fellow) Third Regional Plan recommended a Midtown light rail loop, which is essentially just a streetcar loop. Vision42 has been pushing for years for a Midtown light rail loop part of its plan to pedestrianize 42nd Street. Vision42 argues that light rail loop could be built at far less cost than the proposed #7 subway line extension while providing many of the same benefits in helping to improve mobility and galvanizing development on Midtown Manhattan's far west side.

As a "mode," to use a planneresque word, streetcars have a lot to offer. They are better than buses, which are the usual lower cost alternative, because they provide a smoother ride, even while traveling at higher speeds, and being more beloved by customers. One study showed that streetcars travel faster than buses, because drivers tend to defer to a train-like vehicle and get out of their way. As significant, they tend to attract more private development because rails in the street have a permanence that inspires confidence in commercial and residential developers.

The usual competitor to streetcars is light rail lines. Interestingly, there is no clear distinction between a light rail line and a streetcar line, although there are general ones. Light rail lines tend to have dedicated and separate right of way, tend to travel out of town rather than within town, tend to have longer trains, and tend to have fewer stops. And most significantly, tend to cost a lot, lot more to build, often three times as much per mile.

A good place to start looking at the possibilities of streetcar revival is Street Smart: Streetcars and Cities in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Gloria Ohland and Shelley Poticha of Reconnecting America. In a series of separately authored articles, it provides a range of both broad overview and technical analysis of the options involved. They look at vintage cars, new lines, even things like the "rapid streetcar," that blends the best of both the streetcar and light rail styles.

Some combination of the above could clearly work in Brooklyn, to name my own favorite borough and dwelling one. If that were to happen, then the lonely streetcar in Red Hook could be a reminder of what is to come, rather than just of what was.

Photos: Aaron Naparstek, Paris, France, March 21, 2007

For me, one of the things that makes Amsterdam and Copenhagen so bike-friendly is the fact that people's cars are so much smaller over there. The vehicle above is an extreme example. But you don't see very many SUV's and the gigantic tractor trailers are off-loaded outside the city center. On a Dutch-style upright bicycle, my eye-level was almost always higher than the tops of the cars on the street. That gave me a really strong feeling of safety and control.

This is the bicycle parking garage in front of Amsterdam's Central Train Station. Someone told me that it holds 20,000 bikes but I didn't verify that. Suffice it to say, this thing holds a lot of bikes. Hey, that reminds me, what sort of bike parking facility is planned around the new Lower Manhattan transportation hub? Or would bike parking conflict with Santiago Calatrava's poetic architectural vision of a child setting free a bird?

The tram is the main mode of transport in inner-city Amsterdam. Fast, sleek, non-polluting, and exceptionally quiet, I nearly got myself hit by one of them. Actually, it wasn't that close but they do keep you on your toes, trolley-dodging and all that. It was really nice getting around town on these. Unlike the B63 bus that I rode in Brooklyn this morning, the tram in Amsterdam is rarely stuck in traffic thanks to its dedicated right-of-way and traffic signal priority. George Haikalis and Roxanne Warren of Vision42 think that these would work well on 42nd Street.

The weather in Holland in October is highly unpredictable. It seemed like every time I went outside it started raining. Every time I went inside it got sunny. The rain doesn't seem to stop people from riding their bikes.

Waiting for the rain to subside under the awning of a pub, I found this pleasant neighborhood street scene.