ity is restrained by limited street capacity. Boarding bulbs (sidewalks that protrude into the street taking over parking spaces) and careful curbside management make transit service reliable without dramatically changing the street. On neighborhood streets, improved transit stops provide a significantly better pedestrian environment and can serve as foci for other neighborhood improvements. Careful curbside management means designating space for deliveries and drop-offs/pick-ups as well as setting a fair price for curbside parking, relieving delays for transit and private vehicles and adding a safer place for bikes. Corridor streets are usually long and direct, providing venues for high-frequency transit service at the center of regional mobility. Such streets designed as highway-like arterials provide for high-speed vehicle traffic and minimal or substandard pedestrian and bicycle facilities. Prioritizing transit throughput and pedestrian safety on these corridors supports high transit capacity at a city-wide level while attracting local investment. Often such corridors are overlooked as candidates for dedicated transit lanes, better organizing the street, and reducing aggressive driving. Providing exclusive spaces for walking, biking, transit, and driving accommodates different travel speeds and needs of distinct travel modes. Downtown (aka central business district) streets have high pedestrian and transit volumes. The high density of destinations (i.e., shops, restaurants, offices, and theaters) is only made possible by transit. Separating transit from general traffic is often needed to achieve safe and efficient transit performance while supporting pedestrian activity on vibrant streetscapes. Downtown transit streets are often premier public spaces, which has to be balanced against the need to keep transit service on schedule. Exclusive transit space, transit malls, or space shared with other active modes can create large time savings and radical improvements to street life. Creative use of one-way streets can support a productive transit grid. Transit priority traffic signals, transit signal progressions, stations with near-level platforms, longer spacing of stops, and all-door boarding expedite transit boarding. Of special consideration are edge-front transit streets, which have one side bordering a waterfront, park, campus or other edge and has limited intersecting streets. Such streets can be configured for high-capacity transitways with fewer conflicts and for insulating
pedestrian and bike paths from vehicle traffic, creating a premiere streetscape, e.g., Queens Quay in Toronto, Ontario, Canada finished in 2015. Side boarding island transit stops deserve special attention for they must permit accessible boarding and alighting (defined by the American with Disabilities Act). For low-floor vehicles using bridge plates, nearlevel boarding can be achieved with a 9.5- to 12-inch platform. Platforms higher than 14 inches require all doors be configured for level boarding, and thus, may be not be compatible with some buses. Such stops should include an accessible ramp, shelter, seating, way finding, and passenger information. Additional recommendations apply depending on whether a stop is near-side or far-side. Transit stop elements, such as small shelters and transit curbs, should be considered where a small number of people wait at a given time. Transit curbs are specially-designed curbs to enable transit vehicles “to dock,” reducing the gap between the vehicle and the platform, facilitating level or near-level boarding. Types of transit curbs include concave-shaped concrete, as well as standard rectangular-section, elastomeric curbs. Dedicated contraflow transit lanes are used on streets where general traffic is one-way but allowing bi-directional transit routing. Such lanes enable connectivity, shorten bus travel times by eliminating route deviations or additional turns. Green transitways are fully-separated bus or rail routes (both center- and side-running) planted with grass or shrubs. The major benefits are improved stormwater infiltration and retention, noise dampening, and support for rain gardens and other higher biomass or high absorption areas. An example is the St. Charles Ave. streetcar line in New Orleans, LA.
Hogan Leaves Out Transit
ACT Press Release of March 24, 2017 Action Committee for Transit is glad to learn the Purple Line and Metro were an important part of Governor’s Hogan’s discussions with U.S. Transportation Secretary Chao. Both these two major transit projects are truly “shovel-ready” and would immediately benefit from Federal funding. The Washington region projects on the Governor’s priority list—highways and
Transit Times, vol. 31, no. 2, April 2017
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