Some Musings on Reno Regional Transit

It was great seeing Aisha @ EcoStreets talk a little bit about the BRT / Light Rail plans that have been getting a little discussion in the media sphere lately.  Whenever this topic comes up I feel compelled to noodle on what shape and form an ideal Reno regional transit system would look like.

The Urban Blog’s 2009 Concept for Regional Transit in the Reno area
Note:  This drawing is not a detailed plan for every street the route would run down or what technology it would use.  It is intended to paint broadly the important regional destinations that would need to be served by public transit.  Liberty has been taken with cardinal directions in particular.

Fundamental to this concept is the idea that a majority of the important regional destinations be considered and served and they fall into the following categories:

Transportation Hubs, Residential Hubs, Jobs Hubs, Destinations, Mixed Use Areas

It’s been encouraging to see that RTC Washoe’s plans for the BRT / potential Eventual LRT system they’re planning include feeder routes called RTC LOCAL to feed the RTC RAPID system they want to build.  That’s encouraging because whenever I think about this problem, I end up coming back to the need to tie this 40 x 40 mile metro area together with transit that gets people where they actually need to go, from not far from where they’re starting.  This means they’ll need vehicles that will take them the long haul, but it needs not to be a hassle to get to that vehicle.

However, if you get to the luxury of considering what I just mentioned, it means you have a workable system.  And I think a workable system means a system with a design that appears to the educated observer as something that would work in real life.

With that, I propose the above transit corridors- their destinations to be the ones that are most important to cover in the three county area that is represented above.

Now might be the best time yet to imagine such a thing, so if you’ve had notions of a regional transportation system that would serve the tri-county area ideally, please let me know what you think.  If I were in charge, this is the system I’d build.  How about you?  Comment here, link to your blog, etc.  Enjoy!

Comments

[Aisha O'Brien]

Thanks for the link!

I really know very little about city planning, but I think a good idea is to expand your map and perhaps make an interactive google map where people can adjust your idea to the way they think it should look. You could then aggregate that info and show RTC what people really think about where the buses should go.

I don't know how much resources your have at your disposal, but it would be a really cool thing to see. I think someone at the J-School did that. I could look into it if you like :)

[urbanblog]

I've been thinking of ways to democratize this process, but for the short term I'm leaning toward a more static survey mechanism. If you have a j-school colleague who has created a visualization like that they should take it public.

For my part from an urban planning perspective what I'm trying to do is identify the shape and form of the metro area to be served by a given high-capacity, high-frequency transit system. This manifsests itself in maps like this that I create from time to time and is by necessity abstracted from the road map to a degree. Working from collected data would certainly produce a more compelling picture.

[Justin]

What about the McCarran loop?

[urbanblog]

Hey Justin - great question. I'll answer it with an answer and with a question :)

The short answer is the McCarran Loop is not on this "map" for the same reason no actual streets or highways are visible. I purposefully left out the actual street grid that this map overlays because I'm not trying to suggest "we'll run a vehicle down street x or y" What I'm trying to suggest is "people need to go from home to work and other destinations and back" That is, I'm trying to identify actual travel patterns and provide an idea of a utility that could serve those needs.

Put another way, to me, saying "Let's run a vehicle around McCarran" is kind of like saying "I'm going to run an extension cord from the basement to the hall closet". What are you going to plug in in the hall closet? Or is the hall closet the source of all the outlets in your home? If so what are you going to plug in in the basement?

So I'll get to the question I have for you: what critical origin or destination on the McCarran Loop does not appear to be served by this map? Try not to think about how you use McCarran in a car, but rather where you need to travel to and from.