ION Phase 2 - Cambridge's Light Rail Transit

[danbrotherston]

The people think that 7 years before Stage construction starts is too long, could you please tell me what you know about what the ridership on the 302 and the 206 are and how fast they are increasing, and what the threshold is for where an LRT becomes cheaper to operate on a cost per ride basis than a bus route of the same numbers?

You're approaching this logically, for a subject where there isn't a lot of logic. The ION extension is purely politics, the costs of operating a bus service couldn't matter less to the politics.

This is actually true of phase 1 too. The cost of operating 7/200 were not remotely a factor in a decision to proceed with stage 1. Redirecting development to the core, and protecting the countryside line, were the driving factors. The fact it moved people was just the mechanism of action, but was in no way the root cause.

If you really want to focus on ridership, I'd suggest re-framing your arguments in terms of whether ION phase 2 would deliver the same urban growth benefits due to low ridership. See if you can find data on the connection between ridership and denser built form.

This last part is getting close to the point, but isn't quite there.

Basically Bytor's assumption, which could be true or false depending on other factors, is that an LRT would have exactly the same ridership as a bus.

The problem in the region is that this assumption SHOULD be false. In addition to building the LRT we should be rezoning and redeveloping the city to make transit a focus over driving, to make stations accessible by bike and walking, to build high density developments near stations, etc. etc.

The problem is that we are generally bad at this. We have done some station area planning and a few station areas are growing very fast, but I don't really believe that'll happen broadly for many of the stations in Cambridge which are more like the suburban stations on the line that aren't seeing such major rethinking than the existing urban areas which are. (I know there are some planned developments, but not at most suburban stations, and the ones who do have developments planned are...at best...lagging severely on still mostly car oriented developments.)

I've said it many times before...it isn't just transit, it's land use, transit, and streets which all work together. We won't succeed if we only do one of these--it doesn't matter which we do...if we just build transit, it'll fail, if we just build a dense urban form with no transit, also fail...we have to do them together.