Dunman: "Move Louisville’s absence of light rail a detriment to city’s future."

Green Line, Minneapolis, 2014

Defining the term:

Light rail is a commonly used mode of public transit in North America. The term light rail was coined in 1972 by the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA; the precursor to the U.S. Federal Transit Administration) to describe new streetcar transformations which were taking place in Europe and the United States. The Germans used the term Stadtbahn, which is the predecessor to North American light rail, to describe the concept, and many in the UMTA wanted to adopt the direct translation, which is city rail. However, in its reports the UMTA finally adopted the term light rail instead.

Then, on to the writer Dunman's customarily persuasive case.

Commentary: Move Louisville’s absence of light rail a detriment to city’s future, by Joe Dunman (Insider Louisville)

On April 14, Mayor Greg Fischer unveiled “Move Louisville,” which is Louisville Metro Government’s transportation plan for the next two decades. In its opening pages (alongside the photo of a smiling, bike-riding Fischer), the plan states its primary goal: reducing “vehicle miles traveled.” In other words, Louisville’s goal over the next 20 years is to get us to drive less ...

Snip.

If you truly want to decrease car reliance through alternative means of transit, you have to give commuters an option that provides shelter from the elements but also moves them around on a predictable schedule independent from other traffic. That option is rail.

But Move Louisville includes no plan for any kind of rail-based transit, which Mayor Fischer dismissed as unrealistic because of our city’s overall low population density.

Granted, he’s right. Much of Jefferson County has very low density, mostly because our planning policies for the past 60 years have financially incentivized sprawl or outright required it as a matter of zoning law. But just because rail transit may not make sense for every square mile of Louisville Metro, it certainly makes sense along certain routes.

Compare and contrast with the Bridges Boondoggle: How the Twin Cities got transit right.

When we reserved space at an Airbnb lodging in Minneapolis for our July visit, we had no idea it was two hundred yards from a light rail station. In fact, the light rail line connecting Minneapolis and St. Paul had commenced only a short time before.

Northern Road Trip, Day 3: Twin Cities, Twins game, twin transit.

As tourists, we loved it. Here's the flip side, and the argument from economic development. I try imagining Kerry Stemler riding mass transit, and all that comes back is a view of pigs flying above the ORBP boondoggle. Couldn't his cronies have profited from the right transit project instead?

How the Twin Cities got transit right: Big projects often divide cities. But Minneapolis' light rail line is creating jobs and driving development in underserved areas, by Steve Hargreaves and Dominic V Aratari (CNN)

 ... Touting the economic and social benefits of running the line through the neighborhoods' commercial districts helped win over the local communities. Alternate plans called for the line to be built along an interstate to the south or in a freight rail corridor to the north. Travel time along these routes may well have been faster, but likely would have produced fewer overall benefits for the cities.

Would Kerry Stemler survive in the principled Oregon habitat?

There, a future-oriented thought. Here, an Eisenhower-era error.

Without light rail, new span across Columbia is history, Oregon governor says, by Andrew Garber (Seattle Times)

The fate of the Interstate 5 bridge between Vancouver and Portland appears to largely rest on whether Washington state agrees to put up $450 million as its share of the cost. The GOP-controlled majority in the state Senate has said it will reject any bridge proposal containing light rail.

OLYMPIA — Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber’s office says a proposed $3.4 billion Columbia River bridge will die if Washington state tries to remove light rail from the project.

“Governor Kitzhaber has been clear from the start: No light rail. No project. No kidding,” Tim Raphael, a spokesman for Kitzhaber, said in a statement released Monday.

Backward ever since.

Courtesy of Bill Vandervoort at the Chicago Transit and Railfan Web Site, a time line of mass transit in New Albany and Jeffersonville:


JEFFERSONVILLE/NEW ALBANY TRANSIT HISTORY

1888 - Ohio Falls Street Railway Co. introduces streetcar service in Jeffersonville.

1889 - Ohio Falls Street Railway Co. sold to Jefferson City Railway Co.

1891 - New Albany Street Railway Co. introduces streetcar service in New Albany.

1893 - Kentucky & Indiana Bridge & Railroad Co., jointly owned by three steam railroads from Indiana, electrifies trackage across Ohio River and introduces multiple unit electric train service between Louisville and New Albany, Indiana. Service is known as the "Daisy Line". And was standard gauge, unlike the Louisville streetcars, which were broad gauge.

1894 - New Albany Street Railway Co. sold to New Albany Railway Co.

1902 - New Albany Railway Co. sold to New Albany Street Railroad Co.

1903 - Southern Indiana Interurban Railway introduces service between Jeffersonville and New Albany. Louisville & Southern Indiana Traction Co. formed, and acquires Jefferson City Railway Co., New Albany Street Railroad Co., and Southern Indiana Interurban Railway. Louisville & Southern Indiana Traction Co. arranges with Big Four steam railroad to operate service across Ohio River bridge into downtown Louisville, and lays its own standard gauge track within Louisville.

1905 - Daisy Line service assumed by Louisville & Southern Indiana Traction Co. Louisville & Southern Indiana Traction Co. lays additional rails on Ohio River bridge, enabling broad gauge streetcars to operate between Indiana side of bridge and downtown Louisville, sharing bridge with standard gauge steam railroads.

1912 - Louisville & Southern Indiana Traction Co. reorganized as Interstate Public Service Co., controlled by Samuel Insull.

1925 - Interstate Public Service Co. becomes subsidiary of Midland Utilities Co., also controlled by Samuel Insull.

1929 - First highway bridge across Ohio River to Jeffersonville completed. Bridge Transit Co. formed to operate bus service across bridge. Interstate Public Service Co. soon after discontinues local streetcar service across Big Four bridge.

1930 - Interstate Public Service Co. reorganized as Public Service of Indiana.

1932 - Samuel Insull resigns from Midland Utilities Co.

1932 - local streetcar service in Jeffersonville and New Albany replaced with buses.

1934 - Daisy Line sold to New Albany & Louisville Electric Railway, and bus service in New Albany sold to Home Transit, Inc. New Albany & Louisville Electric Railway and Home Transit are both under same ownership. Bus service in Jeffersonville would eventually be operated by Jeffersonville Bus Lines, which in the early 1950's would be acquired by Bridge Transit Co.

1946 - Home Transit replaces Daisy Line streetcars with buses, due to of conversion of connecting Louisville Railway Co. streetcar line to buses.

1954 - New Albany & Louisville Electric Railway officially renamed The Daisy Line, Inc.

1973 - Bridge Transit Co. ceases operations. The Daisy Line assumes operation of the bridge route, thus operating bus routes over both Ohio River bridges. And Home Transit assumes local bus service in Jeffersonville.

1976 - The Daisy Line ceases operation, replaced by Free Enterprise System.

1983 - Transit Authority of River City acquires routes operated by Free Enterprise System.

If it's in the water, we need all the Gills we can get.

I've occasionally joked that local film and music producer, Gill Holland, with whom I've only chatted casually a few times at art events, is my new best friend; it's just that he doesn't know it yet.

Eventually, metro area leaders will figure out that our economic future depends largely on how successful we are in attracting people who think like Gill.

Let's hope that occurs before we spend $4.1 billion making ourselves look like head-in-the-sand ignoramuses with a national spotlight on our upturned backsides.


Printed verbatim from Gill's letter to the C-J's editors:

I agree with Ed Glasscock and Cary Stemler that the future of Louisville relies on solving transportation issues, but I don't think completing the Ohio River Bridges Project as it was approved six years ago is the solution. A lot has happened in six years: Gas prices went to $4 with an ensuing decrease in driving and increase in interest in smaller and electric cars; and the economy collapsed and has drastically affected companies like UPS, Ford and Toyota that are specifically mentioned on the Build the Bridges Web site as "crucial to our economy."

Green-lighting and financing an old plan today does not make sense without reviewing it in light of these factors. We should update the plan and then go back to the same Kentucky and Indiana state transportation agencies and the Federal Highway Administration who approved the initial plan. Taking the time to do so is in our interest, and in the interest of our children and grandchildren, before we expand highways and bridges and overpasses in our booming and increasingly vibrant downtown area.

Downtowns should be for people, not overpasses and highways. I don't want to look out my window and see a four-story highway overpass in downtown obscuring and towering over the church steeples. We already breathe in too much exhaust from flow-through traffic that finds Louisville a convenient place to drive through on the way to somewhere else. Let's first build the East End Bridge and see how much of this through-traffic can be re-routed. This will be a sacrifice on the part of many land-owners in that area, including my family, but it will benefit us all long-term.

If we are trying to solve transportation issues and get off our addiction to oil, how is increasing the drive-ability of commuters by adding more bridges and lanes going to decrease traffic and pollution? Where is the incentive not to drive?

Without getting into details of the bridges project per se and without discussing financials for the time being (though TARC's 2003 budget for the FTA-recommended project of 25 light-rail stations and 17 miles of track came in at $748 million, much less than the four billion being discussed for the Ohio Rivers Project), here are some blue-sky, out-of-the-box ideas for discussion. Let's picture the perfect city that we all know Louisville can be and then see how and if we can get there. It may take years, but I don't plan on going anywhere.

It is possible that the future of Louisville is dependent not on being the "pinch point" for transportation (as it is described on www.buildthebridges.com) but on having the coolest downtown in the United States, with increased density, downtown living and walk-ability. More businesses, more retail, more restaurants, and more downtown life would attract more entrepreneurs to start more companies, creating more jobs and increasing the tax base. If more folks lived downtown and there were more companies downtown, there would be fewer commuters.

Before spending $4 billion dollars, maybe we should do a study on the effects of closing (yes, you read that correctly) the downtown bridge to vehicles and converting it to a light-rail shuttle. How about another maybe crazy idea: a ban on all passenger car traffic downtown between 1st and 8th streets and Main and Broadway and turning it into a "Green Zone" with a tax incentive program for entrepreneurs and new businesses? I am just trying to think outside the box and stimulate discussion; obviously, lots of work would need to be done to validate any of these far-fetched ideas.

We could then add a light-rail loop around this Green Zone, or use the existing trolley busses that always look empty. This loop could be connected to all the major suburbs by other light-rail lines with parking hubs at the end stations. Think of the benefits if we freed up all the present parking towers and parking lots in downtown to be converted into office buildings with store-front retail and residences. With a loop of public transportation, no one would be more than five blocks from the office. Right now, even with the $4 gallon gas fading from our memories, we are all "Toads"; we love our cars just as much as that great character in The Wind in the Willows. So a drastic change in behavior would be needed to pull this off, but maybe it is worth thinking about it.

Louisville already seems fragmented into neighborhoods divided by highways and overpasses. If we came together and redefined our common downtown, we could also discover a renewed sense of community.

GILL HOLLAND

Worth a read, worth a ride

A couple of weeks ago, I bumped into David Coyte of the Coalition for the Advancement of Regional Transportation while working on a local historic home with other community activists.

David expressed his appreciation of our efforts to save the house. I expressed my appreciation for his efforts to save the region.

While far too many of our regional leaders have resigned themselves to anachronism by simply adopting the same outdated methodology that helped create our transportation problems, David and his cohorts at CART have consistently prodded them to consider alternatives a little more forward thinking than the increased dependence on single-passenger, fossil fuel burning automobiles that threatens our economic and environmental sustainability.

His May 17 letter to the Tribune, reprinted below, does just that:

This is an open letter to the public also sent to the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet:

Public perception is that the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is not really interested in public input.

We at Coalition for the Advancement of Regional Transportation or CART would like to know what traffic mitigation measures are being implemented. Since the additional congestion from this project will impact us at the most critical air quality periods we would expect that Kentucky Transportation Cabinet would implement aggressive CM measures.

Are there going to be express buses from New Albany or other western areas to help with commuter congestion?

Has KYTC considered a commuter rail service from New Albany to downtown during this period? There is available ROW to implement such. This option could significantly reduce congestion and speed commutes. Bus service helps, but still contributes to traffic and congestion.

What alternative street routes are being emphasized and how are they being marked?

What is KYTC, or KIPDA, doing to monitor traffic flows during this time to evaluate the effectiveness of these routes, our urban street capacity, emergency routing, etc.

We look forward to a reply before the public meeting.

— David Coyte, CART - Louisville

Similarly, the LEO has taken responsibility for keeping the public informed of those alternatives, while the Courier-Journal and its corporate publisher Gannett have eschewed journalistic integrity, choosing to accommodate the often hypocritical and nonsensical pronouncements of transportation officials rather than challenge them.

LEO staffer Stephen George, in particular, has single-handedly outworked the C-J, questioning local politicos' stances on 8664, Smart Growth, and any number of planning issues that they'd just as soon not have to explain and often can't.

Most recently, George posed a challenging question to himself: Can one live in Louisville without a car? He answered it the only way someone really could, by giving up his car for six weeks.

The results of that experiment produced a LEO cover story:

Share the Road by Stephen George, LEO