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!
Recent Comments