NYT Says West Coast cities are catching up to the East Coast on transit
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Seattle just opened its completely grade-separated three stop extension of its light rail / light metro / premetro. Los Angeles is supposedly on track to open its new Crenshaw light rail line next month.
I don't think that's accurate. The progression towards completion is so slow that metro now uses two decimal places. The last monthly report showed completion at 99.24% compared to the previous month at 99.20%. Metro has no confidence that the contractor will complete next month, but even if they do, that's followed by about 6 months of testing.
No. It's a cross between a "light rail transit" line and a "rapid transit" or "subway" line.
The hierarchy of terms would be, from slowest on average to fastest:
Streetcar (or modern streetcar)
Light rail transit
Light metro
Subway/metro (or rapid transit)
In terms of average speed, the difference between the light metro and the real one would not be all that great; the differences would arise from distance between stations (the closer together they are, the slower the average speed) and top speed of the vehicles (typically, light rail vehicles have slightly lower top speeds than heavy rail cars).
As a light rail line would have grade crossings where a light metro would not, it's likely that the line will operate at a lower overall speed limit than the light metro would simply in order to reduce the likelihood of crashes or pedestrian injuries at the grade crossings. Where the crossings are protected by full four-quadrant gates, however, this might not be the case, and in such cases (e.g., the Long Beach Blue Line in LA), there would be no real operational difference between the LRT line and the light metro.
I can appreciate the nuanced distinction between "light rail" and "light metro", but it confuses even transit nerds, much less the general public. I usually hear it about Seattle and have never heard it used in LA.
The easiest, most common, and likely least useful definition is to go by the vehicle type. The green line in LA is almost entirely elevated, has no grade crossings, travels at 65 mph, and uses high platforms but given that it uses light rail vehicles, it's light rail imo. After the crenshaw line opens, much of it will operate at metro-like frequencies (20 trains per hour), but it will still be light rail.
What l like about light metro is that it can be used to describe light rail that functions like a metro, like in Seattle. I doubt that it ever catches on though. I know that in LA, the subway, the light rail, and Metrolink commuter rail are all called the same thing by most riders - "the train".
Today, the agency has 17 ground leases with developers who have built nearly 200,000 housing units, 2.6 million square feet of office space, 371,000 square feet of retail space and nearly 2,400 parking spaces, and 18 more projects are in development.
Something seems off with that statement or maybe just my understanding of the message. It's hard to believe that MARTA itself owns property with 200,000 housing units and 2.6 million square feet of offices. That would mean that MARTA owns property equivalent to nearly half the population of the city of Atlanta. That works out to 5,200 housing units per station, which is a ton in a city that only averages maybe 3 units per acre.
Something seems off with that statement or maybe just my understanding of the message. It's hard to believe that MARTA itself owns property with 200,000 housing units and 2.6 million square feet of offices. That would mean that MARTA owns property equivalent to nearly half the population of the city of Atlanta. That works out to 5,200 housing units per station, which is a ton in a city that only averages maybe 3 units per acre.
Oh, dear.
I mistyped something that I didn't then check afterwards in that article.
There are two zeroes too many in that housing-unit figure: there are 2,000, not 200,000, housing units built on land MARTA owns.
All the other figures are what were reported in the Stateside article I linked to.
Agreed, mooguy, that "light metro" is a nonce term (a phrase of very recent origin and not widely adopted). I use it in my weekly transportation column for Next City, but it isn't yet widespread.
But I think it serves a purpose inasmuch as a number of LRT systems have design and operating characteristics of rapid transit yet use smaller railcars more closely resembling trolleys than subway cars.
And actually, we've left the ur-light metro off this list: Buffalo, the only LRT line in the country that runs in the street downtown and in a subway tunnel in the outlying neighborhoods.
But Seattle also has subway stations outside of Downtown: Beacon Hill, Capitol Hill, University of Washington, U District, and Roosevelt, as well as several elevated stations outside of Downtown (Mount Baker, Northgate).
But Seattle also has subway stations outside of Downtown: Beacon Hill, Capitol Hill, University of Washington, U District, and Roosevelt, as well as several elevated stations outside of Downtown (Mount Baker, Northgate).
Buffalo has no subway stations downtown; its LRT line runs on the surface in the city center.
That's what makes that city's light metro unique.
Subway stations in outlying neighborhoods are fairly common; most of New York's underground stations are found in them, and all but four or five stations on Philadelphia's almost-totally-underground Broad Street Line are likewise. There's even a two-station underground segment of Chicago's Blue Line 'L' that takes the line from its original outer terminus of Logan Square to the median of the Kennedy Expressway headed towards O'Hare Airport.
Whatever you call it, what Seattle is doing is quite impressive, however, as is the willingness of Seattleites to tax themselves to build it even after Washington State voters took away one funding source. I'm aware that there's an advocacy group there that calls itself "Seattle Subway," arguing that what Sound Transit is building really is one of those — and I wouldn't say they're wrong in so arguing.
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