Norfolk’s 7.4 mile light rail starter line, The Tide, is currently under construction and due to open in 2011, and already Virginia Beach is looking to extend it. At the same time the Commonwealth of Virginia is studying increased passenger rail from Richmond to Hampton Roads, and just today President Obama awarded federal funds for high speed rail improvements south from DC.

With increased passenger rail such a hot topic in Tidewater Virginia, it seems a good time to consider what the future of rail transit there might look like. Assuming light rail is a success, as it is virtually everywhere it’s built, where might it go next? That Virginia Beach extension is the obvious next direction, but it’s far from the only option.

BeyondDC has extremely limited personal experience in Hampton Roads, but with satellite imagery from Google Maps available to anyone with a computer, it’s easy enough to get a pretty good sense of land use and density. Using that information it’s possible to make reasonably accurate assumptions about where transit might work best. Of course Google Maps is no substitute for real on-the-ground experience, but at the very least it’s enough to start a discussion. So here goes.

What a larger light rail system in Hampton Roads might look like:

Diagrammatic map.
Click to enlarge.

Geographic map, for context.
The red line is light rail currently under construction.
The orange lines are potential extensions.
Click to see it in Google Maps.

In total there are about 48.5 miles of light rail on these maps; 7.4 miles of under-construction-starter-line, plus a little over 41 miles of new proposal. The existing starter line is costing $288 million, or $39 million per mile. At that same per mile cost it would be another $1.6 billion to complete the entire system. That’s comparable to the cost of the DC streetcar system, for a much larger population. Obviously it is much less than the $5.1 billion Metrorail Silver Line.

Obviously there’s some weird stuff going on here. Those trips from downtown Portsmouth or Virginia Beach’s oceanfront to downtown Norfolk would take such a long time that I can’t imagine very many people would be interested in making them via rail. Nonetheless, those lines could be good corridors if you think of them as primarily serving downtown Portsmouth and the oceanfront, with the connections to the larger system merely a bonus. Hampton Roads is such a polycentric region that the normal of rail may not apply.

One last thing. There are probably critics who suggest that the Hampton Roads region is too small for such an ambitious system. That claim would ignore the experience of other mid-sized American metropoli, most particularly Salt Lake City, which is smaller and more suburban than Hampton Roads by just about every metric, yet has a successful system of 20 miles of light rail and 44 miles of commuter rail already in operation, with significant expansions to both planned.

So, what do folks think?

Central Crown Farm, at the proposed Corridor Cities Transitway station.

Crown Farm in Gaithersburg is a really good development. Putting asides its relatively far-flung location, the development team did everything right. It’s dense, it’s walkable, it’s got a good mix of uses, solid architectural guidelines, good public space, and good integration of transit (assuming Maryland can ever get the Corridor Cities Transitway built). The Gaithersburg city-administered plan is everything that the near-by Montgomery County-administered Gaithersburg West is not.

Unfortunately, in the depths of the recession it was left for dead.

And now, apparently, it is back on track. According to a story in the Gazette, a new set of developers purchased the property a few weeks ago. Since a strict annexation agreement with the city controls what can be built there, the new developers are moving forward with the same plan already in place, for 2, 250 residential units and 320, 000 square feet of commercial, mostly retail. With the basic plans already in place, the new team has set to work already on getting the individual plats approved for construction. No word on when construction will actually begin, but it’s nice to hear progress being made.

Metro’s safety problems are serious, but as BeyondDC noted last year the statistics show it is still overwhelmingly more safe than driving. Statistics don’t tell the whole story, though. They don’t account for things like this:

“My name is Penny Everline. I live in Arlington. I cannot drive due to a visual impairment, and I ride ART and Metro bus and rail to work, to shopping, to appointments, to classes, and to social activities. I grew up in a small town with no transit and moved to the DC Metro region as an adult. I know it sounds corny, but I believe transit saved my life… or at least helped me get a life.

“Before I had access to transit, I wondered how I would be able to do the basic things—go to work, pay my rent, go shopping, meet up with friends, etc. Now I do all of these things with great ease. I can honestly say that Metro and the other transit providers in our region opened doors for me and, hopefully, will continue to do so.”

Penny is a member of WMATA’s Riders Advisory Council. She started SaveMyTransit.org to provide a place for people to tell their stories, so our elected officials know just how important it is to have reliable, safe transit.

If you have a story to tell, give her site a visit and put it on the record.

Last June when an automated Metro train plowed into another in Takoma, the correct response was to demand more money for capital maintenance of the system. The problem was primarily technical. Metro is getting old, and unless we keep it up accidents will happen.

When a a couple of workers were hit this morning by a maintenance truck being manually operated, the only explanation is that there was a breakdown in communication between workers on the track and the driver of the truck. We’ll have to wait for the investigation to know whether that breakdown was caused by inadequate safety protocols, unfollowed ones, or something like a broken radio.

If it turns out to have been an equipment problem, that’s a clear indication that we need more money. If it turns out to have been inadequate or unfollowed protocols, that would beg the question of who isn’t taking safety seriously, and why aren’t they.

The most recent issue of the Journal of Public Transportation includes an academic paper about the history, impacts, and future of public bike-sharing programs around the world. The paper is written by Paul DeMaio of The Bike-Sharing Blog, who also happens to be heavily involved with the planning of Arlington’s upcoming bike-sharing system.

The paper is the definitive resource available on the subject. If you’re interested in bike-sharing, give it a read (pdf).

The Tysons Corner subway under construction. Photo by Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project. Click to enlarge.

Two tantalizing transit tidbits. Hooray for alliteration. Anyway:

1. Last week ANC 3B of Glover Park discussed the prospect of a streetcar on Wisconsin Avenue. The ANC is considering (or considered?) a resolution asking DDOT to include a Wisconsin Avenue route in its extensive planned streetcar network. A Facebook group called Wisconsin Avenue Streetcar Coalition has since sprung into existence.
   
   
2. The latest email version of the Dulles Metrorail project construction update newsletter included the photo at right showing the actual (!) subway tunnel under construction below Route 123 where it meets International Drive. Although most of the line through Tysons Corner will be elevated, there will be a short subway segment between the Tysons Central 123 station and the Tysons Central 7 station. Strangely, as of this writing the online version of said newsletter doesn’t include the photo.

The BeyondDC Newsfeed is a simple RSS feed of urbanism-related headlines aggregated from regional news outlets. I am considering retiring it, primarily because it seems redundant in the Twitter age. Twitter is easier to update, and much more dymanic; multi-party conversations fly on Twitter in a way they never did with the blog-like comment listings on Newsfeed items. I can link to articles just as well on Twitter, but don’t feel guilty giving my opinion. I also have a feeling that Twitter reaches more people, although direct comparisons of readership are difficult.

So my preference is to do away with the Newsfeed and fold that functionality into increased tweets. However, I’d like some feedback. If large numbers of people are still using the Newsfeed (despite my poor treatment of it), I’ll reconsider.

If you have an opinion, please share. Comments are also welcome, naturally.

Update (1/27): The vote was pretty overwhelming in favor of keeping the Newsfeed, so it will be retained. I’ve started updating it again. Thanks for your feedback; it definitely made a difference.

Buses account for 1% of the vehicles on 16th Street, carry 30% of the people traveling on it, and are allocated 0% of it as a dedicated running way. Cars account for 99% of the vehicles, are allocated 100% of the space, and carry less than 70% of the travelers. What’s wrong with this picture?

Imagine how many more people would ride transit in that corridor if the bus were actually faster than a car. Imagine how many would ride if the S line didn’t bunch in mixed traffic so notoriously. Imagine how much more quickly we could move people by focusing on getting the transit though efficiently instead of pretending it doesn’t exist.

Sign the petition to build a bus lane on 16th Street.

While in Colorado over the last week I took several pictures of transportation infrastructure, especially Boulder’s unique cycling and bus facilities. Combined with pictures from earlier trips, they are presented in the slideshow below.

View slideshow

Preview: A light rail train runs along the street in downtown Denver.

I will be in Colorado until 1/16 due to unexpected personal business. There will be no posts to the BDC home page or Newsfeed until after that time. Tweets will continue.