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| Nashville dream (LetsMoveNashville) |
Example Nashville: This region didn't even get its big transit plans (Lets Move Nashville) approved in a referendum. The region will have to redo its long range mobility plans all over again. The plan would have given Nashville and its surrounding metropolitan area 26 miles of light rail, four new rapid bus lines, four crosstown bus lines, improved service on existing buses, 19 transit centers, and a suite of improvements to signals, sidewalks, and bike infrastructure, a package worth $5.2 billion. Nashville's Mayor Megan Barry, who had supported the failed initiative, resigned last year after pleading guilty to felony theft.
Example Durham: Most similar to Baltimore's Red Line sleighing, is Duke University's recent move to kill the deal for a regional light rail line in the Chapel Hill, Durham Raleigh triangle. The project has been some 20 years in the making, is essentially designed and its $3.3 billion price tag would be funded through an increased sales tax approved in referendum. The The ambitious 17.7-mile-long transit line would connect Durham, home of Duke University, to Chapel Hill. The line, originally also proposed to connect to Raleigh and the RDU Airport, is considered to be of utmost importance for the congested Triangle region: To bring it into the 21st century transportation age and provide some of the attraction that the once hip Research Triangle is lacking today. More importantly, it would have provided poorer communities without a car access to many jobs spinning off the huge Duke University complex, and its hospital. But Duke President Price decided to pull the plug and wrote to GoTriangle, the project managers:
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| Go Triangle transit map |
Significant efforts by many people from Duke and GoTriangle have been made over the past year to resolve a number of critical issues connected to the proposed Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit (DOLRT) project. Notwithstanding these many good-faith efforts, it has unfortunately not been possible to complete the extensive and detailed due diligence, by the deadlines imposed by the federal and state governments, that is required to satisfy Duke University’s, legal, ethical and fiduciary responsibilities to ensure the safety of patients, the integrity of research, and continuity of our operations and activities.He continues to cite electromagnetic interference, vibrations, disruptions during construction and liability as further reasons to pull the plug on Duke's support for the project. Unlike Maryland's Governor, Duke doesn't necessarily have the last word in the matter and the conflict may yet be resolved, either by further study, adjustments or, as some demand, through condemnation of parts of the right of way across Duke's campus, a very unlikely outcome. Duke's monkey wrench is not the only trouble, the State has also dwindled its contribution from initially 20% to a mere 7.7%. As a result GoTriangle canned the project on March 27:
The GoTriangle Board of Trustees voted unanimously today to recommend that the cost-sharing partners in Durham and Orange counties and the Durham - Chapel Hill - Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization discontinue the light-rail project.
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| Fenced off San Francisco transit center (Photo: Philipsen) |
The debacle came after everything was complete: The joy after the grand opening in August 2018 lasted only six weeks until fractures in two critical steel girders forced its immediate evacuation.The brandnew center still remains shutdown.
14,500 people who ride AC Transit buses in and out of the transit center each weekday and who had enjoyed the speedier commutes of the buses-only ramp from the Bay Bridge now had to return to the provisional facilities that had been used during construction, adding some 20 minutes to the trip times. The steel girders in question were shored up by massive provisional supports erected in the center of two streets running under the center and inspectors reviewed more than 15,000 documents related to the building’s design and construction, That work is now done and remedial beam repair is supposed to be completed by June 2019.
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| Surgery on the underbelly: Cracks in beams requiring temporary shoring in the streets (Photo: Philipsen) |
Meanwhile the locked and fenced center is an embarassment. An ugly chainlink construction fence surrounds the complex and is patrolled by security, not the kind of branding opportunity for Salesforce which had bought the naming rights for the Transbay Center and another blemish on the optimism that had surrounded transit projects until not too long ago.
Transbay will also be affected by the State's future high speed rail. California's new Governor Newsom added further bad news recently, when he seemed to call off most of the California high speed rail project. (He later corrected that he just delayed future phases due to lack of funding). The problems with the cracks in steel beams have little to do with transit but they still give the concept of large investments dedicated to public transportation a black eye.
While the Transbay Terminal will eventually open, and if everything works as planned, the start-up troubles will soon be a faded memory, the uncertainty around the high speed rail project will remain and Durham's light rail, Nashville's failed initiative and Baltimore's Red Line are ominous harbingers of a uncertain future for transit at a time when it would be needed the most to combat climate changing pollution from transportation.
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| The scrim makes TransBay recognizable. The signature Salesforce Tower designed by Pelli, Clarke, Pelli has its own cracks. (Photo: Philipsen) |
Klaus Philipsen, FAIA
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