While doing some research for an article about driverless trains, I came across this document by Mircea Georgescu (who most recently worked at Thales [I think?] and whose email I can’t track down! Mircea, if you’re reading this, trimite-mi si mie te rog frumos un email la smithsj@gmail.com!), that’s a sort of primer on [...]
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There are two general attitudes among urbanists towards the transportation omnibus bill that Congress has been struggling to pass in recent years (?). Some, like Streetsblogs and a number of political advocacy groups, hope for swift passage because of the bill’s transit spending. Others, like Cap’n Transit, balk at all the highway spending, and [...] June 23rd, 2012 | Tags: dc, FRA, politics, transit | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment |  printable viewNow that Chris Christie killed the ARC project, which would have built another rail tunnel between New Jersey and Manhattan, Transportation Nation is reporting that MTA boss Joe Lhota is asking the different New York area railroads to do what they were supposed to do half a century ago when they were nationalized: cooperate! [...] June 18th, 2012 | Tags: New Jersey, nyc, transit | Category: Uncategorized | 4 comments | printable viewCalifornia has, since the ’70s, had some of the strictest environmental laws in the country, but urbanists have recently been frustrated by what are known as CEQA lawsuits, named after the 1970 California Environmental Quality Act that serves as the basis of the challenges. CEQA battles have certainly hindered their fair share of highway and [...] October 4th, 2011 | Tags: California, HSR, transit | Category: byline=Stephen Smith, Environment | Comments are closed | printable viewShinjuku Station, Tokyo Train stations in Japan are a lot of things. They are busy – Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station sees two-thirds as many passengers as the entire NYC Subway. They are complex – the big ones are shared by multiple railway companies, from public to private and everything in between. Continue reading at [...] October 3rd, 2011 | Tags: japan, nyc, transit | Category: byline=Stephen Smith, Spain | Comments are closed | printable viewI’ll (hopefully) be doing an interview with someone at the Federal Railroad Administration (probably a PR person, but since its via email, hopefully they’ll be able to go ask bureaucrats and engineers the answers to some technical questions) for Streetsblog DC next week, so, if you’ve got any burning questions, let me know and [...] August 24th, 2011 | Tags: regulation, transit | Category: Uncategorized | 2 comments | printable viewI’m not sure how I missed this (actually, I have an idea – more on that in a minute), but back in February the Federal Transit Administration issued the following warning about strengthened “Buy America” transit procurement protectionism: Congress and the Obama Administration asked Americans to provide $787 billion to help avoid an economic catastrophe and [...] May 22nd, 2011 | Tags: Barack Obama, protectionism, transit, unions | Category: Uncategorized | 17 comments | printable view |
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On Favored Quarters, Off-Center Skyscraper Districts, and Poverty
Following up on my post yesterday skyscrapers in Europe, I’d like to explain why, in detail, central business districts are generally superior to off-center ones like La Défense outside Paris or Washington’s Virginia suburbs. It’s not that I just enjoy the spatial symmetry and organic shape of a centralized city – it’s actually more efficient! Neglect [...]