Dogs and Cats living together…

Mass hysteria!

Two animal/transit notes:

Russian dogs riding the trains: There have long been packs of stray dogs in Moscow’s Metro, but a couple of them have learned to ride the trains – and do so for fun, apparently. (hat tip – Human Transit, Andrew Sullivan)

Neuronov says there are some 500 strays that live in the metro stations, especially during the colder months, but only about 20 have learned how to ride the trains. This happened gradually, first as a way to broaden their territory. Later, it became a way of life. “Why should they go by foot if they can move around by public transport?” he asks.

“They orient themselves in a number of ways,” Neuronov adds. “They figure out where they are by smell, by recognising the name of the station from the recorded announcer’s voice and by time intervals. If, for example, you come every Monday and feed a dog, that dog will know when it’s Monday and the hour to expect you, based on their sense of time intervals from their biological clocks.”

The metro dog also has uncannily good instincts about people, happily greeting kindly passers by, but slinking down the furthest escalator to avoid the intolerant older women who oversee the metro’s electronic turnstiles. “Right outside this metro,” says Neuronov, gesturing toward Frunzenskaya station, a short distance from the park where we were speaking, “a black dog sleeps on a mat. He’s called Malish. And this is what I saw one day: a bowl of freshly ground beef set before him, and slowly, and ever so lazily, he scooped it up with his tongue while lying down.”

Much more over at English Russia:

The commercial revolution of Moscow made their usual feeding places like trash bins out of direct reach, so they had to get to know new ways of getting their piece of food. That’s how appeared those “Shawarma hunts”. Sometimes though they use more gentle methods. Young girl sits on the bench to eat her hot dog – a big cute looking dog appears from the surrounding bushes and puts her head on her knees. The girl can’t help herself sharing the hotdog with a dog.

Among some more amazing skill those Moscow dogs are the ability not to miss their stop while going on the subway train. Biologists say dogs have very nice sense of time which helps them not to miss their destination. Another skill they have is to cross the road on the green traffic light. “They don’t react on color, but on the picture they see on the traffic light”,Moscow scientist tells. Also they choose often the last or the first metro car – those are less crowded usually.

And they’re savvy subway travelers, at that.

Dog in Moscow's Metro - pic from English Russia

Dog on a Moscow Metro train - pic from English Russia

Sadly, Casper the bus-riding Cat was killed in a hit-and-run incident in Plymouth. Casper liked to ride the bus, commuting with all the regular folks and even waiting politely in line to hop on. (hat tip – GGW)

The adventurous cat politely queues behind other passengers at the bus stop outside his Barne Barton home, then quietly trots on board and curls up on a seat for the ride.

…

Susan found out about Casper’s regular 11-mile round trips when he followed her to the bus stop one morning, avoiding passing vehicles by a whisker.

“The driver told me he gets on all the time,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it.

“He queues up in line with people and just sits patiently in the queue good as gold – it’ll be ‘Person, person, person, cat, person, person.’

Casper. Image from the Telegraph.

Precisely.

Minneapolis LRV, a project built with New Starts before the total focus on the CEI. CC image from joelplutchak on flickr.

Following up from previous discussions of precision and accuracy, Elana Schor at Streetsblog delves deeper into the subject.

While addressing the U.S. Conference of Mayors, assistant transport secretary for policy Polly Trottenberg was asked by the mayor of Clearwater, Florida, to outline how the agency might “quantify livability” in its upcoming rulemaking.

“Not everything can be measured,” Trottenberg said, adding that her colleagues wanted to avoid making the “mistake of false precision.”

She also addressed the pitfalls of relying on in-house economic predictions to assess transit projects. Several local rail lines have quickly exceeded initial federal ridership projections, casting doubt on the models used for the so-called New Starts program.

“Sometimes we’ve gotten so tangled up in the perfect mathematical science — we did it in New Starts,” Trottenberg said.

Data is good. But we cannot limit our information inputs to just quantitative measures. And when we do use them, we need to understand their limits. I’m eager to see how the FTA decides to evaluate the livability criteria, but the acknowledgment that the numbers have limits is a big step forward.

Assorted Portland tidbits

Portland Aerial Tram - image from joseph readdy on flickr

Ah, Portland. Metropolis of planning, bicycling, and all things creative. A couple of things have piled up in my open tabs or in my reader.

Portland hasn’t seen huge shifts in mode share (as noted here previously – hat tip to Jarrett Walker here and here), despite large investments in light rail, streetcars, and even an aerial tram.

Picture perfect? Aaron Renn penned an op-ed piece for the Oregonian, providing a little perspective about Portland’s image as the perfect planning city. Renn doesn’t question Portland’s overall quality, just if the reputation is deserved or not – if the praise matches the performance.

Renn follows his op-ed with a blog post, delving deeper into the stats, comparing hip and cool Portland to the decidedly less cool Indianapolis.

I note as a positive that Portland was clearly ahead of other similar sized cities in understanding the importance of density, transit, bike lanes, etc. But more importantly, that the “Portland model” had a wide influence in America. Perhaps Portland has had a greater influence on America’s urban environments than any other city its relative size in history. That’s an amazing accomplishment if you think about it. And what’s more, that influence has been a good thing.Naturally, they don’t need me to just tell them “It’s all good”. So on the areas for development side I noted their underperforming economy. It’s not so much that Portland is particularly suffering in this recession, though it is, or that it is a failure in an absolute sense, which it is not. No, rather I look at it like diving. There are two aspects: execution and degree of difficulty. Portland has very low degree of difficulty, so we would expect it to perform much better.

Renn’s takeaway is that policy can only do so much. That’s true, to some extent – policy sets the rules in place, and the dynamics of the city have to do the rest. There are also factors well beyond any city’s (or any region’s) control.

Like any data set, it’s wise to look at the limitations of the data.

Putting the emphasis back on Portland’s transportation policies, Jarrett Walker looks at car ownership rates in cities across the US – and Portland doesn’t even crack the top 50. (DC checks in at #4, with a 36.93% of households owning no cars – jurisdictions 1, 2, and 3 are all in Metropolitan NYC). Walker identifies three criteria that correlate with high rates of non-auto households – age of the city’s fabric (with an anecdotal correlation to density and design), poverty, and presence of major universities.

So here’s the question: How long will it take for a city that lacks age, poverty, or dominant universities to achieve the kind of low car ownership that these 50 demonstrate? How soon, for example, will a city be able to create a combination of density, design, and mixture of uses that yields the same performance as an old city that naturally has those features?

Portland is probably the most promising such city in the US, and it’s not on the list. Only 14% of households there don’t have a car, so it’s probably well down in the second 50. Like many cities, Portland has been doing everything it can to build a dense mixed-use urban environment. It’s the sort of city that convinces the Safeway supermarket chain to rebuild their store with townhouses and residential towers on top. But while people are moving into the inner city, they don’t seem to be selling their cars when they do, nor do they seem to be going to work by transit.

For me, the takeaway from this is the long lag time and staying power of transportation infrastructure. Even as older cities, built around walking and transit, have decayed, they remain more car-less than their fellow cities built with the car, to say nothing of cities built for the car.

I recall attending a lecture in grad school (and I cannot for the life of me remember who exactly gave it), noting the staying power of our street networks and other infrastructure patterns. In short, land use changes on a big, extensive scale take a long time to happen. Walker continues:

How much are zero-car households constrained by overly abundant residential parking? It’s still hard to sell a modern tower unit without a parking space included, even though there are many such units in pre-car cities like Manhattan and San Francisco, and many are quite desirable. What would it take to replicate that desirability in new inner cities like Portland’s? Couldn’t it be done at least in the name of affordable housing?

All good questions to ask, even if only asked rhetorically.

Finally, some pretty pictures. Free Association Design has some great planning graphics from Portland. Fun stuff to look at.

Portland's public realm. Image from the City of Portland

Portland's zoning code, graphically depicted w/ height limits and mixed uses (red shading).

Good stuff.

Cost-effectiveness

Streetcar tracks, H St NE - CC image from flickr

Over the past couple of days, there have been lots of reactions to the DOT’s decision to lessen the importance of their cost-effectiveness measures in decisions on new transit starts funding (TTP, Yglesias, TNR, TOW, Streetsblog), almost all of them positive. There are, however, some key points to consider. With the emphasis on livability as opposed to cost-effectiveness, the question will now be about measuring that livability. Jarrett Walker notes:

Great news, perhaps, but I look forward to seeing how FTA is going to turn something as subjective as livability into a quantifiable measure that can be used to score projects, particularly since the payoffs lie in development that a proposed transit line might be expected to trigger, but that usually isn’t a sure thing at the point when you’re deciding to fund the line. And of course, travel time does still matter.

Measurement is indeed the key. Part of the problem of the Bush Administration’s emphasis on the CEI was an expansive definition of costs and a rather narrow definition of ‘effectiveness.’

The other problem is one that Donald Shoup talks about extensively in his book, The High Cost of Free Parking. Namely, often imprecise data points are given undue precision in a bias towards quantifiable results and numbers – precision and accuracy are two different things, and it is important not to conflate them:

HOW FAR IS IT from San Diego to San Francisco? An estimate of 632.125 miles is precise—but not accurate. An estimate of somewhere between 400 and 500 miles is less precise but more accurate because the correct answer is 460 miles. Nevertheless, if you had no idea how far it is from San Diego to San Francisco, whom would you believe: someone who confidently says 632.125 miles, or someone who tentatively says somewhere between 400 and 500 miles? Probably the first, because precision implies certainty.

This doesn’t disprove Jarrett’s point – there are still metrics that can be used for more qualitative factors – but the larger issue here is a move away from false precision and towards outcomes that are more accurate – outcomes that better reflect the true (qualitative and quantitative) nature of cities.

With that in mind, it’s interesting to read some reactions published in the National Journal (h/t Planetizen).

Anthony Shorris: The new approach laid out by Secretary Lahood should force a re-thinking of all of our evaluative tools — cost-benefit analysis, alternatives analysis, environmental impact statements — with an eye toward re-balancing them away from an excessive reliance on only those measures that can be readily quantified. This re-thinking should be inter-departmental (including other agencies and OMB) and inter-disciplinary (including the perspectives of urban planners and designers as well as economists). One thing the financial crash should have taught us is that there are limitations to even the most seemingly sophisticated financial models, and that apparently crisp spreadsheets are no substitute for the prudent exercise of judgment that the American people have a right to expect of their leaders.

William Millar, APTA: With the action taken by DOT to consider all the factors required by law, transit projects can now be looked at from a holistic perspective. By judging a project on the multiple benefits it offers (i.e. mobility, economic development, environmental impact, land use improvements etc.), a well-rounded and more informed decision can be made. By removing the barrier that the Bush Administration implemented, the process is now in alignment with how it was originally intended to be.

Projects must still be cost effective and meet at least an overall medium rating in project justification and local financing. However, now, instead of a narrow prism through which to judge a project, a wider lens will offer a larger perspective. It should encourage innovative projects to be proposed and funded.

Links – bad day for the Midwest

Soldier Field, US v. Honduras World Cup Qualifier, summer 2009. CC image from flickr

The US has narrowed their list of potential host cities for the US Soccer Federation’s bid to host either the 2018 or 2022 World Cup – and shockingly, that list does not include the Windy City.

The final cities are Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Dallas, Denver, East Rutherford, N.J., Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Mo., Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, Seattle, Tampa, Fla., and Washington.

“With Chicago, I think there was some Olympic fatigue,” Gulati said, referring to that city’s unsuccessful bid to host the Summer Games in 2016. “And in this group, Soldier Field was one of the smallest stadiums.”

Good news for DC – both FedEx Field and M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore made this cut, which almost assures the region of hosting some World Cup games should the US win the right to host. This list of 18 cities will be trimmed to a final list of 12 stadiums.

However, the exclusion of Chicago is baffling. Chicago regularly hosts US World Cup qualifiers, Gold Cup matches, is home to an MLS team, and hosted many matches the last time the US hosted this event in 1994. Renovated Soldier Field is indeed small in terms of capacity, but this is Chicago we’re talking about here.

Only slightly less confusing is the exclusion of any stadia from the San Francisco Bay Area, but at least this can be explained by the poor quality of the extant stadiums in both SF and Oakland. However, the San Francisco 49ers stand to get a new football stadium in the near future, certainly before 2022 rolls around. Likewise, given Dan Snyder’s constantly rumored talks about wanting to build a new stadium for his micromanaged Redskins, DC could be looking at a new stadium, too.

Point being, 12 years is a long time from now. Leaving off two of the US’s greatest cities from a bid that’s meant to showcase not just America’s stadiums and hosting abilities but the host cities as well is just inexplicable.

(advice to the USSF folks – it’s 106 miles to Chicago. Hit it.)

Picture of 'Detroit Industry' mural. CC image from flickr

Detroit is another city that hosted World Cup matches in 1994, but was left of this bid’s list. That obviously isn’t the focus of Detroit’s current issues. Mammoth directs our attention to a piece by Bruce Katz on re-industrializing Detroit. Katz looks to international precedents (Turin, Bilbao), addresses the need to Detroit to shrink and shift – even with re-development and re-industrialization, and the huge impact this might have on the shape of the city.

Obligatory DC connection:

Detroit has to change physically because it simply cannot sustain its current form. It was built for two million people, not the 900,000 that live there today. Manhattan, San Francisco, and Boston could all fit within Detroit’s 139-square-mile boundary, and there would still be 20 square miles to spare. Even more than its European counterparts, which had much less severe population losses, Detroit will have to become a different kind of city, one that challenges our idea of what a city is supposed to look like, and what happens within its boundaries. The new Detroit might be a patchwork of newly dense neighborhoods, large and small urban gardens, art installations, and old factories transformed into adventure parks. The new Detroit could have a park, much like Washington’s Rock Creek Park, centered around a creek on its western edge, and a system of canals from the eastern corner of the city to Belle Isle in the south. The city has already started on the restoration of the Detroit River waterfront, largely bankrolled by private philanthropy. The city has created a new “land bank,” which can take control of vacant and derelict properties and start the process of clearing land, remediating environmental contamination, and figuring out what to do next with the parcel, whether that’s making it into a small park, deeding it to a neighbor to create a well-tended yard, or assembling large tracts of land for redevelopment or permanent green space.

Also from mammoth, Rob Holmes takes a peek at the massive scale of some new solar infrastructure, linking to this post on the sprawling SEGS facility in California – conveniently located next to the world’s largest boron mine for scale comparisons.

Similarly, the scale comparisons remind me of a video recently shared with me about mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia. The video comes from Yale University’s Environment360. the 20 minute video is extraordinarily well shot and edited, and well worth a watch. Given DC’s proximity to Appalachia and our (relative) reliance on coal power in this region, it’s definitely of interest to those of us in the Mid Atlantic region.

At a bare minimum, the images in the video alone are worth a watch.

When I think of tools for urban living, GMC trucks aren’t the first thing that come to my mind. I guess using that kind of comparison is like saying a jackhammer is a tool for hanging picture frames around the house.

Portland hasn’t seen big shifts in travel modes recently, as Jarrett Walker notes. However, Jarrett and a few of his trusty commenters seem to have a bead on to the potential cause – relatively cheap parking.

In other recent work we’ve been doing, we’ve repeatedly seen that parking price is the most powerful locally-controlled lever for shifting people out of single-occupant cars, in the absence of more direct congestion charges. Increases in parking costs drive big shifts to transit or other options.

In my experience working on various transportation demand management programs, this is absolutely true. Since TDM programs do not usually have the scope to implement congestion pricing, parking pricing is the single biggest contributor to mode shifts.

Fun with maps and movies

DCist takes note of Matt Yglesias’ tweet on the New York Times’ fantastic interactive map of various metropolitan areas, broken down by zip codes and how popular each of Netflix’s top 50 rentals of 2009 was in those areas.

The geographic patterns are fascinating, and quite revealing about the social and economic geography of the DC area.

Some screenshots (click to see full size):

Tyler Perry is popular in PG County, but not so much at Andrews AFB. Also note the other cities on the right.

Milk presents an almost complete opposite map of popularity.

Role Models. Complete with spikes in popularity at couple military bases (Andrews AFB, Fort Meyer, and Fort Meade) and two colleges (Georgetown and Maryland).

Absolutely great stuff. Maps are available for 12 Metropolitan areas: New York, Boston, Chicago, DC, the Bay Area, LA, Seattle, the Twin Cities, Denver, ATL, Dallas and Miami.

Hump-day late-night link-dump

CC image from chethan shankar on flickr

Stuff that’s been piling up in my open tabs…

Jarrett Walker takes a look at Seattle, and how the city’s geography of natural chokepoints and barriers aid the city’s transit usage, despite lacking an extensive rail transit system (though it’s getting bigger as we speak).

Transit planning is frustrating in such a place, but road planning is even more so. Ultimately, Seattle’s chokepoints have the effect of reducing much of the complex problem of mode share to a critical decision about a strategic spot. If you give transit an advantage through a chokepoint, you’ve given it a big advantage over a large area.

A follow-up post on the subject delves deeper into chokepoints.

For DC, there are a whole lot of factors that shape the balance (or lack thereof) of development between the western portion of the metro area and the eastern half – but these kinds of choke points are certainly part of the success in shaping that development around transit for Metro’s Potomac River crossings.

Free parking FAIL. This is out of date now, but the Mayor of Providence’s plan to offer free on-street parking as means of encouraging downtown shopping backfired, big time.

Since there’s free parking all day at metered spaces, employees from the nearby courthouse and some from other government offices are taking parking spots early and are staying all day.

It’s leaving holiday shoppers out of the stores.

Not a good idea to try and offer the same things malls offer when you don’t have the means to do so. Better to use price to encourage turnover and maximize usage, while marketing the advantages that urban shopping districts do have over malls.

Seventy Percent. Previously, I’ve looked at some details of transit plans elsewhere, and Denver’s FasTracks system, centering on a revamped Union Station is as interesting of a case study as any. They’ve now released the 70% design documents for Union Station (large PDF – 15.3 mb).

Denver Union Station - Diagram of transit facilities, with underground bus concourse connecting light rail platforms (left) with commuter rail/inter city rail (right) and the historic station building.

Headquarters? What is it!?! It’s a big building where Generals meet, but that’s not important right now.

Huh? Oh, that. Northrup-Grumman is moving to town. Ruth Samuelson handicaps the race for capturing the actual HQ building, and she’s not betting on DC:

So I guess being right in the thick of Washington D.C. could make a difference. But, realistically, people are betting against the city (this is again from the Sun story):

Washington, which has 1,000 Northrop jobs now, strikes him as out of the running. The potential threat of a terrorist attack is omnipresent in defense contractors’ minds, so he doubts one would choose to locate its leaders there. Maryland and Virginia benefit from being near the nation’s capital but at a potentially safer distance, though “there’s a clear pattern among the recent arrival of defense companies in Washington: They tend to favor Northern Virginia,” [Loren B. Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute] said.

Now, if we’re all blown into oblivion by a rogue nuclear weapon, is there really that much of a difference between having your HQ in Rosslyn or Crystal City, as opposed to NoMA or the Capitol Riverfront?

The Census is coming. And Maurice Henderson wants you to fill it out. Do it. Doooo it.

US v. Canada. While this particular hockey fan is basking in the glory of a thrilling, 6-5 overtime victory for the US over Canada in the World Junior ice hockey championships (with the game winner scored by John Carlson, a prospect for the Washington Caps), TNR’s Avenue blog looks at the economic and metropolitan implications of re-shaping the NHL into more of a rivalry between countries and between cities. Taking the same passion you see from national team competitions and channeling it into club competitions – perhaps taking a page from soccer’s rivalries and sense of place?

Biosphere. BLDGBLOG takes a look at the abandoned and deteriorating Biosphere 2 project in Arizona.

Lighting, again

I had a chance to stop though Judiciary Sq’s north mezzanine today, the one with the new lighting scheme. My concern from the initial photos was that the lighting along the escalators, where the coffered vault has less headroom, requiring direct overhead light rather than the indirect lighting in the rest of the system, was too much of a departure from one of Metro’s distinct design elements.

New mezzanine lighting. Note the difference between the indirect fixtures in the middle and the direct ones over the escalators. CC image from flickr.

The white lines from those lights take away from the pattern of the coffers, despite the increased lighting in the area (which is substantial).

Direct light fixture detail. Photo of the author.

Increased light near escalators. Note the birghtness of the walls.

Increased light near escalators. Note the brightness of the walls. Photo of the author.

The increased illumination does indeed make a big difference, particularly in seeing where to walk. However, might there be another solution to illuminate the walkways without some of the awkward, direct light fixtures. Several of the new and newly renovated stations make use of LED lights embedded in stairway handrails. These lights, directed downward, illuminate the floor to ease navigation without the need for overhead fixtures.

LED handrail lights, Navy Yard station. Photo of the author.

In anticipation of the baseball crowds for Nationals Park, Metro expanded the Navy Yard station’s Half Street entrance to include an elevator and a new staircase from the mezzanine to the platform, which uses the LED handrail lights to illuminate the stairs.

Might this type of fixture be integrated into the brass handrails in Metro mezzanines? While these lights might not have much range, they wouldn’t need much – the new, hanging indirect lights in the Judiciary Sq mezzanine work just fine with enough overhead clearance.

Populating DC

Things going up. CC image from flickr.

Some assorted Census/demographic items from recent days:

DC’s population is closing in on 600,000 residents. One of Ryan Avent’s commenters (rg) notes the historical issues with the accuracy of the Census Bureau’s annual population estimates for cities and urban areas:

Building on what Eric wrote: throughout the late 1990s, the Census Bureau estimated that the District was hemorrhaging population, right up to the 1999 estimate. Lo and behold, when they actually conducted the Census in 2000, it turned out that the 1999 estimate was off by tens of thousands of people: in 1999 the Census Bureau estimated the District’s population was 519,000; the 2000 Census counted 572,000 people in the District!!! They were WAY OFF in 1999. I write this not to trash the Census Bureau but to note that their estimates can be quite suspect. In the case of urban areas, it seems that their methodology, at least in 1990s, was biased against urban areas. So, do not be surprised if the actual 2010 Census count is much higher than this 2009 estimate.

This is indeed true. The 1990 Census put DC’s population at 606,900. That same year, the population estimate for the city pegged the population at 603,814 (the decennial census is a snapshot of the nation on Census Day, April 1 of each 10th year – the population estimates are supposed to be a snapshot of July 1 of each year…), and things went downhill from there, at least in terms of the estimates:

Year   Population   Change
1990   603814
1991   593239   -10575
1992   584183   -9056
1993   576358   -7825
1994   564982   -11376
1995   551273   -13709
1996   538273   -13000
1997   528752   -9521
1998   521426   -7326
1999   519000   -2426

This decade hasn’t seen the same massive declines from year to year, yet it remains to be seen if the positive signs from the population estimates will translate into the same kind of bump seen from the 1999 estimate to the 2000 Census. Compare the previous decade to this one:

Year   Population   Change
2000   571744
2001   578042   6298
2002   579585   1543
2003   577777   -1808
2004   579796   2019
2005   582049   2253
2006   583978   1929
2007   586409   2431
2008   590074   3665
2009   599657   9583

Either way, the 2010 Census effort will be vital for the city.

More is better: Various folks chime in on the new growth – Loose Lips, taking note of the Post’s article, for example.

D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), whose district stretches from Georgetown to Shaw, gave credit to former mayor Anthony A. Williams (D) for the city’s apparent population rebound. Williams, who was in office from 1999 to 2007, set a goal in 2003 of adding 100,000 residents in a decade. Williams invested heavily in development, improving city services and reducing crime.

“The whole image of the District of Columbia began to change from a dangerous, dirty, unsafe place to a very different city,” Evans said.

Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) dates the changes to 2005, with the construction of thousands of downtown apartments. The ensuing influx, Graham said, changed the character of his ward, including neighborhoods near the Columbia Heights Metro station, 14th and U streets, and the eastern end of the U Street corridor.

“We’ve always felt that we were having this population growth, but it just wasn’t being reflected in the data,” Graham said.

Indeed – and the best way to get the data to reflect the on-the-ground reality is to have a strong showing for the 2010 Census.

Domestic Migrants: Ryan Avent and Matt Yglesias look at the primary cause in the uptick in DC’s population – domestic migration. People are moving here, as a net positive, for the first time in a long time.

Data Types: Jarrett Walker notes some changes in the way detailed economic and transportation data will be collected and organized.

Overall, the neighborhood-level American Community Survey is going to be a great thing. It will present in rolling averages of the last five years, so it will show a bit if a lag, but it’s an important step. You can’t fix what you can’t quantify.

That last sentence brings to mind one of the City Paper’s quotes of the year, from former City Administrator Dan Tangherlini:

Optimism without data is really just an emotion.

Subway architecture – world tour

Several sources have linked to a great photo compilation from design boom on avant garde subway station architecture from around the world. The images come from:

stockholm tunnelbana
munich u-bahn
bilbao metro
shanghai bund sightseeing tunnel
dubai metro
tokyo – iidabashi station
prague – line a
moscow – komsomolskaya station
toronto – museum station
barcelona – drassanes station

Some of the stations are quite striking – and no, DC did not make the list.

The question it raises for me is the value in having a coherent design language for the system – providing ease of use for passengers – and sparking visual interest and making great spaces. DC’s vaulted stations fit into its federal, monumental role quite nicely, but the uniformity of the system (despite the small differences and details) can also be monotonous and dull.

In the event that more underground Metro stations are added within the District (perhaps with the New Blue line, or other core expansions), it’s interesting to think about new station architecture that would maintain the same design principles of the current system (volume, open train rooms, common materials – concrete, brass, red tile, etc, indirect lighting) while also allowing some variability that could provide unique identification for certain stations without sacrificing design unity.

Stockholm Metro Escalators - CC image from flickr

Stockholm Metro - CC image from flickr

Many of Stockholm’s stations, for example, use the look of exposed rock tunnels (a look considered for DC by Harry Weese, incidentally – to show the differences in construction methods for the stations drilled into the rock, versus those crafted with cut-and-cover methods), providing unity between stations while still allowing for unique designs.

Perhaps future expansions to the Metro could swing more in the direction of unique station designs and public art installations.

City Block

a work in progress…