Stand clear of the closing doors, please.
Only about 2% of Americans commute with mass rapid transit, like subways or
elevated railways.
Ideally, it's fast, efficient, smooth and can carry a lot of people, but it also requires
a lot of funding, legislative approval, and can essentially only be found in large cities in the
U.S. The most recent metro line in New York is the Second Avenue
Subway. Only the first phase of this line is complete, but if it's fully funded, it would span
eight miles and 16 stations from Harlem down to the Lower East Side, carrying an
estimated 560,000 riders a day.
But projects like these are a massive undertaking.
When complete, the estimated cost would be upwards of $17 billion.
Not to mention the first phase was completed in 2017, and construction on the second phase hasn't
even started largely because of funding.
It wasn't until a recent $23 billion investment from the U.S.
Department of Transportation when the city started making actual plans to move forward with phase
two. But the most obvious and widely used alternative to a subway system is a
bus which about 2.3% of US commuters use.
Because buses sway, they jump, they buck.
There's a lot of shudder and shake.
And that's the big problem.
The ride quality in buses is why many people don't like to ride them.
And that might be why the buses in New York see half the amount of ridership as the subway system,
despite the fact that there's over 200 bus routes compared to just 28 rail service lines.
The number of overall public transit commuters has also dropped significantly since before the
pandemic. One alternative, which could be faster than buses but less
expensive and complex than the subway system, is Autonomous Rapid Transit, or A.R.T.,
which is classified as a mid-tier transportation system.
It's a fully electric train-bus hybrid invented by CRRC, a mass transit manufacturer
in China. It's been deployed in three Chinese cities and is being considered in a myriad of
cities across the world to connect larger train or metro systems in a suburb or on the outskirts
of a city.
The first ART system opened in Zhuzhou, China in 2017, which is connected to
much of the country via high-speed rail, but previously lacked a proper mass transit system for
its 4 million residents.
And they had the same rationale as we did that metro
systems across the city were working well.
But how to get to them, how to go across to those rail systems,
how to join up the city to connect it.
That meant going down main roads.
But when they came to build light rail as the CRRC were
trying, they found they couldn't.
It was too disruptive.
So they invented something from high-speed rail, which they were
producing, which took the technology and put it in a bus and transformed
it.
But because it doesn't run on a proper rail system and instead runs with rubber wheels on a virtual
track painted on roads, it's been called a glorified bus.
I went there thinking, this is this is going to
be something hiding like a bus.
It'll look like a light rail, but it is, in fact, a bus.
But when I rode it, it was dramatically different.
I could find myself feeling like I was on a train.
The reason being, trackless trams are autonomously guided and are equipped with sensors, cameras and
stabilizing technology like controlled acceleration and active suspension systems, giving
it a smoother ride.
While it can be taken over by a driver and run on any road like a bus, it's generally supposed to
follow a predetermined virtual track.
Right now it's used in Zhuzhou, Yibin and Harbin, China, as well as in Israel.
And Newman says CRRC is sending a couple of the locomotives to Perth, Australia later this
year. He plans to invite city developers and urban planners from across the world to watch them
in action once they arrive.
We've been working in Brisbane, in Sydney, in Melbourne
and in Perth mostly.
And in each of these places the local governments have worked out
where they want it to go and where they would have development
that would help pay for it and bring in the urban regeneration that they want
as well.
And where these trams can go is partly what makes them unique.
The semi-autonomous system follows distinct painted lines on the road, so routes can be
changed much easier than a light rail.
The vehicle itself costs about $2.2 million and is estimated to cost around
one-fifth of price of a traditional tram system per mile.
Having a trackless tram as something that does what a light rail does
and yet costs the same as a bus.
That's the great attraction.
And I think having a cheap option is going to make
it very attractive.
But as with every form of transportation, it's only as good as the infrastructure that supports
it. Similar to bus rapid transit and other mid-tier transit systems operating on a road
can come with significant challenges.
So for these transit systems to operate efficiently, they need to have consistent traffic
flow or designated lanes and be given priority over cars.
That way you need it to be have priority is where you're getting close to a
station and where you need to get into that station in a way that
has priority.
No other cars can get in there and it's walkable for
people to get to that station.
New York City has the fastest metro system in the United States, but a certain areas are
rejuvenated. It's become a bit outdated now, areas that have become popular to live in, like
Fort Greene and Clinton Hill are famously disconnected from the mass transit system.
And train lines outside of Manhattan connect to each other notoriously infrequently.
For example, if you're living in western Brooklyn and trying to get to eastern Brooklyn, it's faster
to go into Manhattan and back down to the other side as opposed to cutting straight across.
Largely because there are so few interborough lines and the bus routes are inefficient.
Efforts to change this have not seen a lot of success though.
The BQX or Brooklyn Queens Connector was proposed in 2016 as a waterfront
streetcar that would stretch 11 miles from Red Hook, Brooklyn, all the way to Astoria,
Queens.
We are in Brooklyn Bridge Park at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Columbia Street,
and this is where the proposed BQX line would go.
You know, most people sort of think the proposal is dead in the water because the
cost of light rail is just very, very high.
Cities all over the world have proposed light rail systems that either get
greatly reduced or don't happen at all because of the expense of putting
rail in the roadbed.
It's it's highly disruptive to the business community, to
for residents.
It's very expensive.
Lisa Chamberlain has been pushing for New York to consider trackless tram as a new transit option.
As a streetcar route, the BQX was estimated to cost roughly $1.7 billion.
But I think that there is an alternative to this, which is known as trackless tram,
and depending on the estimates, it can be anywhere from 1/10 to 1/3 of the
cost of light rail.
So an ART system in place of a streetcar along the proposed BQS line would be a cost
effective and efficient alternative if given priority lanes as it can travel up to 43
miles per hour. But it would likely cut into street parking along the line.
So the big obstacle to my mind in New York City
is the fight over street space.
Putting aside a dedicated, protected right of way for
trackless tram is the only way it works.
And if we can't muster the political courage in New York City to do that,
we won't ever be able to experience it.
While autonomous rapid transit is still in a relatively early stage of development, it's been
established in disconnected portions of Chinese cities since 2017.
And if the US begins to prioritize public transportation infrastructure, technology like
this could help growing American cities.