Light Rail: According to the experts at the American Public Transport Association (APTA), the “light” in light rail, as compared to heavy rail, refers primarily to passenger volume. This is a function of design; a heavy rail system like New York’s subways runs at higher speeds — thus more frequently — and has larger cars and longer trains, and therefore can carry more people. To accommodate this, it needs exclusive and capacious rights of way, which in crowded urban areas usually means going up — elevated tracks, like in Chicago — or down, like the subways. A light rail system, in terms of speed and size, is more akin to a bus on tracks, which means it can run on shared rights-of-way — that is, along the street.
Commuter Rail, on the other hand, refers specifically to inter-city travel, or at least routes between cities and suburban districts. This could be on a light- or heavy-rail system (in the latter case, like California’s Bay Area Rapid Transit), or on a conventional locomotive-pulled train. A typical distinction between rail transit systems and commuter rail is in the fares — commuter lines generally charge station-to-station fares, meaning longer trips cost more, unlike most urban transit systems.
Non-attainment means failing to meet federal air quality standards. The EPA designates “non-attainment areas,” which then have to implement pollution reduction measures like low-emission gas-pump nozzles and mandatory smog checks. In the view of transit and urban planners, Austin is dangerously close to slipping into non-attainment.
New Urbanism, the catch-all label applied to most tenets of progressive urban planning (it’s taken from a book by Peter Katz and a subsequent academic symposium, the Congress for the New Urbanism), is somewhat a misnomer, since many of its hallmarks are actually derived from the way cities used to be built. (Many practitioners, including Florida superstar architect Andres Duany, prefer the label “traditional town planning.”) When you hear talk about mixed-use development (residential and commercial side by side), compact cities, urban villages, town centers, or the quarter-mile rule (i.e., everything you need should be within a quarter-mile — walking distance — of your house), you’re hearing New Urbanism. Most showpiece New Urbanist projects have been greenfield developments, meaning created from scratch. Efforts to redevelop decaying central-city neighborhoods into urban villages — brownfield developments — have been less common.
Edge Cities: New Urbanism hit the mainstream when James Howard Kunstler took it to the bestseller lists with The Geography of Nowhere. He shared time on the charts with Joel Garrieu, descriptor of the parallel concept of the edge city, meaning a suburb that has developed its own self-contained urban core, where the need to commute to the central city has been nearly eliminated (think Northwest Austin). While edge cities are the product of sprawl — low density development encroaching on the perimeter, or growth fringe — many planners do not object to them, since they can reduce the need for auto travel.
Both urban villages and edge cities, ideally, should be characterized by transit-oriented development, defined by Roger Duncan in the Sustainable Communities Initiative as “designed to maximize mobility and access into and out of the area… (featuring) `people-mover’ technologies, easy pedestrian and bicycle movement, and transit connections centrally and conveniently placed.”
Light rail systems can be either electric or diesel, the latter usually seen in cars with engines on either end — called diesel multiple-unit systems, or dmus. Such a car is the RegioSprinter, demonstrated with great hoopla by Capital Metro in February. The RegioSprinter is made by Siemens, the German industrial behemoth who builds almost all the rolling stock (engines, passenger cars, and freight cars) used by Germany’s DeutscheBahn state railway; “Regio” refers to DB’s commuter rail system. Other manufacturers include Germany’s ABB/Daimler-Benz; Holland’s Breda; Canada’s Bombardier (pronounced “bohm-bahr-dee-ay,” not “bomb-a-deer”); and Japan’s Kawasaki and Kinki Sharyo. The largest American manufacturer still in business, American Passenger Rail of Sacramento, controls about 15% of the current [U.S.] market. Boise-based Morrison-Knudsen, formerly the Big Daddy of the light rail market, is no longer in the business. Nearly 80% of the light rail market is electric rather than diesel-powered.
* Light rail forms a tiny fraction of the overall U.S. public-transportation system, accounting for 722 million passenger miles (i.e., passenger trips times miles traveled) in 1994, compared to 10.7 billion miles for heavy rail and 20.2 billion for motor buses. However, it is the fastest-growing mode of transport, having doubled in passenger mileage since 1980; over the same period, heavy rail mileage was basically unchanged, and bus mileage decreased slightly. The total U.S. public-transit passenger mileage for 1984 — which includes light and heavy rail, buses, commuter trains connecting cities, and car- and van-pools — was 41.1 billion miles.
* If those numbers seem astronomical to you, consider that a mid-size transit authority like Capital Metro, with 30 million annual passenger trips, can easily rack up hundreds of millions of passenger miles a year. Those 30 million trips place Cap Met at #34 among American bus systems. Interestingly, though Cap Met ridership is below that of some transit authorities with similar-sized service areas — like Honolulu, Milwaukee, Portland, or even San Antonio — its operating budget, according to federal statistics, is higher than many of those agencies, including Portland’s vaunted Tri-Met. Before we blame that on Cap Met mismanagement, we should also consider that cities that do have the higher densities and mixed uses of the New Urbanism — as Portland does — can carry additional passengers at less expense. — M.C.M.
This article appears in April 4 • 1997 and April 4 • 1997 (Cover).