Making the Portland Streetcar Faster

I have had a great time working with two capstone classes at Portland State University on transportation applications. This is one of the efforts. Implementation is coming soon.

Update (5/22/11): The vimeo page has been viewed almost 1,000 times. It's no internet sensation, but I have enjoyed watching it.

Transformative Leadership in Transportation

The National Bike Summit seems to be the nexus of bike advocacy, industry, and political leadership. For as much as I am not sure the bicycle community has a voice equal to transit, highways, and others in transportation (because of the low mode split), I am always impressed with how it is covered by BikePortland.org and others in the blogosphere. 

The link (and excerpts) was appreciated because it includes a couple of transformative leaders in transportation. The session included Earl Blumenauer who is arguably the most important person at the federal level (for both bikes and streetcars) and the most exciting leader at the municipal level in Janette Sadik Khan, who is moving NYC forward with a pace that is impressive. 

I used to think that the facilities were the most important element of transforming transportation, but the more I am involved and thinking about it, the more I think it is one part facilities and an equal effort on the softer side of the issue, exposing people to being on their bikes. I started from watching my father commuting by bus, figuring out he could get there faster on his bike, followed by him wanting to accomplish distances on his bike as a part of his life's goals, and then ending with an awareness of how cycling can transform his family and the children, making them healthier, wealthier, and wiser? Okay, the wisdom stuff is tough to come by, but I agree with Blumenauer when he suggests:

“It’s something that speaks to every single item on the front page of our newspapers: Oil instability in the Middle East, health problems, congestion,” he said. “Everybody on a bike is somebody who is not in front of you in a car, competing for a parking space.”

Making the shift from an expensive transportation system built around the automobile to a more efficient network that accommodates all users may be good logic, but it’s also a leap of thought. “The pivot point is not easy,” Blumenauer acknowledged. “We have habits and politics and mindsets that are entrenched.”

I had a good time today spreading the news with a class at Portland State today. I spoke about the importance of bicycle, pedestrians, transit, and freight movement at traffic signals to a class of senior civil engineering students. I am not sure I have much of an impact with a two hour presentation on a single day with undergraduates, but perhaps there is something that rings true with them as people and the next time they make a transportation choice, it becomes a subconscious thought that the City wants them to access downtown with a mode that is more efficient to serve by the transportation system.

Traffic Signal Controller Cabinet for Dutch Tram Line

On my trip to the Netherlands, I had a chance to speak to the Northeastern University class that spends a month at TU Delft.  
The class features several speakers from the local community and invited guests (like me) to have the students explore European transportation practices. The class I attended provided a tour of a new tram line and the development associated with that planning. On the tour, we ran into a crew that was working on implementing signal timing for the new tram line that was added. The people that I met were contractors with the electrician from Poland and the other technician did not talk much. It was difficult to communicate with them, but I did learn a little about the cabinet, the tram detection, and I got a peek inside the cabinet. There seems to be a lot to learn from the European experience.  
There are specific intersections on the Portland to Milwaukie line that might take directly from the practice used commonly in the Netherlands and Denmark. 

Streetcar Construction on Grand Avenue

The transition to working at the City has presented a tremendous amount of opportunities to contribute on projects happening "close to home". The Portland Streetcar is one of the most difficult projects because of the range of traffic impacts associated with construction throughout the project and the pace that is anticipated by the Project Team. The primary intent with the expedited schedule is to control costs and to reduce business impacts which are laudable goals.
The first two photos here were shot the first week in February outside of Metro's office building, literally two days after they began construction. The last photo was taken less than two weeks later and shows the concrete slab with the rails completely in place in this section of the project. I have heard that the intent is to be in and out of a block within four weeks. At this pace, it appears that it's possible given that the crews are able to work during the peak hours of traffic.
We're working on the traffic impacts and exploring ways we can reduce the adverse impacts of the construction. One of the strategies we've undertaken is to install six cameras that can be used to monitor conditions along the corridor. The cameras will allow us to visually identify the positive effects of the signal timing changes we implement on the corridor. It would be advantageous if we had the ability to implement Media Access Control (MAC) readers to measure the actual performance on the street system.