At the request of several readers from Greater Charlottesville / Albemarle, we are posting this clarification:
Back on 18 February Jim Bacons posted “Bus Rapid Transit Studied for Charlottesville.”
We agree with Jim’s comments about the need for an authoritative analysis and who should pay for any shared-vehicle system.
Given our experience with shared-vehicle systems and our past work in the Charlottesville / Albemarle Subregion, we do not have high hopes for BRT penciling out.
At 6:30 PM we made the following comment on the original post (edited for clarification):
OK, no one seems interested in this topic so here are some thoughts:
BRT is primarily an “in-the-median” shared vehicle system.
In US of A, applications of BRT would work for a “two or three big stops” subsystem. For example Air and Space Annex / Dulles South Terminal, Dulles North Terminal and an Intermodal terminal in Tysons Corner.
(We should have noted a potential station at Reston Town Center. There would be vastly more demand and an existing limited access roadway with exclusive Airport Access lanes in this application as compared to a C’ville Zentrum to C’ville airport along US Route 29.)
In smaller agglomerations — e.g. Ottawa — BRT does not live up to its potential because there is not the nodal intensity to generate trip demand.
Unless there are Core stations underground as in Seattle, (very expensive) the system works best with when the station is under a big platform over the ‘expressway’ of which the BRT occupies the median.
Platforms such as employed in the U-Bahn service to Nordvest Zentrum in Frankfort AM would work well.
South American applications — e.g. Curitiba — have broad ‘Boulevards’ that separate Village-scale Superblocks.
C’VILLE does not have the Critical Mass to support any of these spacial distribution strategies.
What happened to the Street Car / Trolley idea for C’VILLE?
(Sean Tubbs of Charlottesville Tomorrow provided information on the Trolley proposal and provided other resource links in the original string which are very helpful.)
Following a post concerning the need for a “compelling vision”
EMR noted (again with editing for clarification):
The “compelling vision” must be a vision of future, functional settlement pattern, not of this or that Mobility and Access system. The Mobility and Access System comes after there is a decision on the desired settlement pattern.
This comment was misinterpreted by a commentor as being a suggestion that: “unless the plan is to Nuke C’VILLE and start all over”
There is a pervasive misunderstanding that it is hard to evolve functional settlement patterns from those that exist now.
Human settlement patterns are organic systems and they are continually evolving. The problem is that current Agency and Enterprise projects, programs, incentives and controls are not geared to evolving functional settlement patterns because alternatives make more money and / or gain more benefit for some in the short term.
“how does C’VILLE or any area that already exists and cannot be torn down and recreated – evolve to more optimal settlement pattern?”
(See above)
“If I understand EMR correctly, it is futile to be thinking in terms of different ways of accomplishing access and mobility if the settlement pattern itself is dysfunctional.”
(No, it means that the first step is to create a plan for functional settlement patterns.)
(It also means that it is futile to try to spend money on a shared-vehicle system in hopes that a functional settlement pattern will just evolve due to the new system. The settlement pattern and the Mobility and Access system must be planned and evolve together.)
There are many individuals and several groups that would like to see a clear rendition of what the shape of the future should be in Greater Charlottesville / Albemarle
Once those images are clearly articulated, a number of shared vehicle systems should be examined to see which (one or more) systems best serve these settlement patterns.
One of the many weaknesses of the Blog format is that posters, commentors and readers must be ever vigilant lest intentional or unintentional attempts to misinterpret comments mislead those who are seeking an understanding of complex issues related to human settlement patterns.
Comments on the original C’ville post by Jim Bacon and especially on the proceeding post by Jim titled “Heavy Rail and Flying Pigs” are prime examples of comments by those who have an agenda to (and/or are paid to) confuse and confound useful dialogue.
Our thanks to those who were confused by the comments and contacted us directly for clarification.
We hope this clarification is of use to those who are trying to bring functional settlement patterns in the Charlottesville – Albemarle Subregion.
EMR
