Keys to Urban Rail Success
The keys to the success of urban rail are the following:
1. High residential population densities. Core area densities tend to be many times that
of more automobile oriented urbanized areas in the United States, Canada, Australia
and New Zealand. These high core densities support a high level of public transport
usage in the core areas, and as a result there is considerably less automobile usage.
Such substitution of public transport for automobiles does not generally occur in core
areas with lower densities.
2. Exceedingly large central business districts. For example, Tokyo, New York,
Paris and London Each of the examples have central
business districts with more than 750,000 jobs. Virtually no other urbanized area in the
developed world has a central business district with more that 400,000 jobs, and most
are in the range of 50,000 to 200,000. The massive central business district
employment numbers and densities support a high degree of substitution by rail of
automobile use that is not possible in smaller central business districts (because there is too little
demand and it is too dispersed).
But there are two additional issues ---
2. Little Suburb to Suburb Potential: With respect to reducing traffic congestion, urban rail can do little outside feed dense urban districts and
the central business district in the modern sprawling urban area. Suburb to suburb travel, for example, is not a lucrative market for Paris or Tokyo, much less
Phoenix or Portland. However, as noted above, where central urban densities are very high and where central business districts are very large,
urban rail can and does play a significant role.
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