A Transit Tangent!

To those who have read my blog in the past you may have consistently come across a reference to a transit project that I have spent a significant amount of time designing. While it seems at times like a colossal waste of time given I live in Africa having limited contact with people who could identify the merits and faults of my proposal, it has been an enjoyable exercise and a good creative outlet. However, often my ideas aren’t finished until I’ve reached some sort of tangible ending point to the project. A few months ago, I put the idea into an actual document that I sent to be produced into a physical booklet (thank you Katie!) and sent to people who could indeed have an effect on it. I was rewarded with a thoughtful response by the director of Wichita Transit, giving me a look at the document they have chosen to guide them in the future.

However, I have since found an additional solution to my list of kinks to be worked out, which brings me here, in search of another end. So therefore, I’ll present the plan and its associated update.

I have been working on this idea in one form or another since my freshman year of college, when I realized that the city had an interesting situation in that in every direction from the city, towards every other town nearby, there were rail corridors in various states of use. Then, I further recognized that most every major destination had one of these corridors in close proximity to it. Over the course of the next few years I developed several iterations of my plan until settling on open-ended bus-rapid-transit (BRT) corridors as the best use of the facilities. I admit, some would require more significant construction than others, and the costs could be significant, but with a commitment to the project, other necessary improvements (that will be constructed without the system) could be modified to make the project even cheaper.

Anyway, the system is based around consolidating the current offerings of the Wichita Transit into branches of an effectively high-capacity corridor where service would be dramatically increased. In places where buses run on nearby streets, they would be consolidated to one corridor and timed to cut the wait time for the next bus in half. The further you travel from city center, the less frequent travel is on the transit corridor, as buses turn off to offer local service on various streets. In the center of town, this does shrink service coverage, but if the corridor offers truly frequent service, people will walk to take it. The other advantage, and biggest gain, of the system is an assistance of non-downtown-oriented trips. Since stations on the busway could be used as a transfer point, the rider could ride one bus to the transitway and then switch services to another destination without going downtown, as is required now.

The busways with the most potential boil down to four different routes. A northeast busway which follows abandoned railroad tracks from Washington, just north of Central, to Wesley hospital before turning north towards WSU, and then turning east to travel at roughly 17th street to Rock Road. A second busway would follow Southeast Blvd from its break off with Washington all the way to 47th Street South and the Oaklawn community. This could be constructed concurrently with an effort to raise the train tracks paralleling the boulevard by sacrificing lanes on a street that is redundant to Washington, Hydraulic, and I-135 in the north, and has sufficient space for additional lanes further south. The western branches both begin in Delano, just north of Douglas, then the southwest splits to follow the active railway past Friends and then branches off to travel along the southern side of Kellogg to the airport. The northwestern line would travel parallel to the rails heading northwest along Zoo Boulevard. Perhaps, with the construction of a rail connection between Maize and North Broadway, the railroad could be convinced to abandon the right-of-way and the transitways would require very little property acquisition. There are other potential corridors, including a southern transitway I included in phase three that follows the western edge of the river, however, these four are the foundation of the system.

The product being put together for Wichita Transit’s expansion, currently focuses on decreasing wait times and increasing transfer opportunities which is a necessary goal. However, the busway concept allows users to take advantage of potential redundancies closer to the region’s core as buses converge on the downtown area, all the while seeing more comfortable transfer facilities. Even initially at the start up, frequencies at transitways are often much better than 10 minutes between buses. The following is a diagram of my hypothetical build out after the second phase:

There are some obvious shortfalls of the suggestions and service does lack to some important parts of the city. I had to create a hypothetical implementation in order to effectively show the potential of my system and this is the map for one potential solution. Two places that would really require service that I have not served well are the manufacturing hubs of Hawker Beechcraft and Cessna Aircraft. I would also advocate better north-south connections on the near east side (Hillside and/or Oliver service). With this level of investment in the system, it would develop beyond one of basic mobility service to one riders could truly plan their day around.

The current plan for Wichita Transit is to significantly increase frequencies, in some cases to every 15 minutes. Since this is already under consideration for improved bus service, I adopted it into my proposal as well. Each line is upgraded to 15 minute service, which creates very busy transitways where over half the system stations have frequencies of 6 minutes or less!

That is the express version of the plan, which is all about focusing on serving a transit district completely, as opposed to trying to serve the entire region with basic mobility. I’m not sure if it would be possible in this economic climate, but Wichita Transit has suggested perhaps seeking a transit tax or some other increase in funds in order to fund their ambitious expansion. I would perhaps suggest defining the transit district and levying the tax on those individuals residing and businesses operating within it, and people living outside the district could vote on if they want more basic mobility based services, funded by a smaller tax. I find that system both more fair, and more likely to get passed. As the people who need it are the people in the core but also are often overruled when the suburban vote is added to the mix.

The gap at the center of the map where the busways seemingly end in the downtown area is the subject of my recent work. I have been bothered by that problem since I finished the project. I will admit the idea came from a fun little hypothetical redesign of the Union Station site as a redeveloped transit center with the expansion of the Heartland Flyer. Connecting it to the bus network was a priority and developed the idea of William as an exclusive transit corridor. During the inevitable upgrades required at the station, a connection would be built from the back of Union Station to the William Street corridor to allow transit vehicles to pass underneath the railroad tracks above. To the west, William Street becomes Water street after curving northward next to Century II and the busway could extend northward following Water and the abandoned railway it comes to join. The recent downtown master plan has identified that the downtown area has an excess of lanes, which I agree with whole heartedly. However, the suggestion of a Douglas St transit facility takes away lanes from the one place in downtown where they are actually at a shortage. With a few connections, using excess lanes on other streets, the William/Water bus facility could be connected to the busways radiating out from town. The following is my drawing of such designed facilities:

The portion of Douglas between Water and the Delano district has a portion with 6 lanes, in front of Century II and 4 lanes across the river connecting to a two lane portion through Delano. Taking two lanes from each section should not significantly impair the traffic flow on the street, as it is simply moves the funnel east to near the Waco/Douglas intersection. The southeast busway would be accessed by converting one of the side-streets west of Washington into a transitway to connect to the back of Union Station and the northeast busway could connect to the William/Water transitway through dedicated lanes on Murdock St. A future redesign of Washington Street for service as both a street and transit facility could create Wichita’s own version of the loop, connecting all the major downtown facilities.

Implementing this also creates the potential for several transit oriented developments with a focus on residential (near Cleveland/Central), office and light industry (near Washington/Kellogg), or shopping (west of Delano). While the focus at this time should be the true core of the city, success of such a transit system could feed the need for additional transit focused space to be developed in the areas immediately surrounding the downtown core.

Another aspect of the design that I really like is the attempt to make downtown truly a multimodal travel center with the introduction of full bicycle facilities. Blue lines on the map represent fully separated bike paths, and dashed blue lines represent prominent bike lanes. With these facilities, the entire area from I-135 to the river and from Lincoln to Murdock would be bicycle friendly. With the improvements in walkability being promoted downtown, it would create a truly multimodal hub with walking, biking, potentially intercity rail, and transit given a significant presence, although I will not say equal footing, compared to cars. The first street corridor could be designed to look something like this:

Tired yet? I have one more thing :P When I made my proposal, I based it on population and income distribution data from more than a decade ago. The recently released Wichita Transit Plan has a section showing the population and employment densities for 2008 of the Wichita Metro Area. I combined them into a product that suggested transit suitability, as follows below:

*Sorry for the crazy colors. I messed with it in Picasa to try to improve the contrast, but I really couldn't get it to look all that good.

I have drawn on the Phase 2 build out of my transit system for reference. I think it does a pretty good job of hitting the biggest concentrations of high transit potential. The pink dot (highest score) just northwest of downtown would be near a transit stop built at Murdock and Waco. However, the other pink dot, between Lincoln and Harry on Oliver, is not served directly by a busway. It does make an interesting case for bus lanes on Harry street between Southeast Blvd. and Rock Road however, and I wonder if the Wichita Transit officials have considered that when advocating a BRT-light system for Douglas between the shopping malls. The map also demonstrates there may be potential for express buses to Andover and Derby then local service within their respective city limits.

And there you have it: my official update. It’s not perfect, and it would require significant investment, in both time and money, from the city. But I think it would start to develop a system that promotes non-automobile orienting living. A denser city is a cheaper one to supply basic infrastructure to so from an economic standpoint as well as an cheaper on to live in, especially if the price of gas starts to climb again. I think it's in the city's best interest to be actively seeking things that support enhanced density.

Hopefully I was reasonably articulate. It’s easy to see to see my maps and know all my ideas but not always simple to put those into words. Please feel free to comment and question the idea below! And if you’re still reading, thanks so much for actually considering it all!