Urban Criticism

A red line bus arrives at Broad Ripple station

Bus Rapid Transit tends to get a bad rap in the United States. In theory, BRT—that is, a bus system that operates like a train, with clear stations, off-board fare payment, (preferably) dedicated lanes, signal priority, and the like—seems like an ideal technology. It should not only allow cities to build high-quality transit, but allow them to do so quickly and inexpensively, leveraging their existing road space, expertise in road construction, and familiarity with bus operations. In actual practice, however, BRT in the United States has largely been disappointing. All too often, American BRT projects have suffered something of a death by a thousand cuts. Slowly but surely, conflict-adverse politicians and locals hostile to change chisel away at once-grand plans, removing a bus lane here, reducing the size of stations there, reducing service everywhere, and so on. As a result, the final systems are frequently a double compromise: transit that is not only a step down in capacity and comfort from rail, but which has been so thoroughly diluted as to seem like little more than an extravagantly branded local bus line. In American transportation circles, this phenomenon is so sadly common that it even has a name: BRT creep.

Nothing about this process, however, needs to be endemic to bus rapid transit. While it may be surprisingly easy to implement BRT poorly, when it is implemented well—that is, when it offers a quality service that travels to and from the places that people want and need to go—it is a powerful transportation tool, one especially suited to less dense cities and/or less busy routes. To illustrate that point, perhaps no American city to date has implemented BRT better than Indianapolis, IN. While this mid-sized, Midwestern city may not be the first name that comes to mind when one thinks of quality of public transportation, its new Red Line—the first of its three planned BRT routes—is actually a sterling example of how to do transit investment right. Indianapolis has demonstrated that, even in the face of a hostile political environment and physical landscape, it is possible to build effective, high-quality transit—transit that is legible, fast, frequent, easy to use, and which supports a diversity of ridership. As the Red Line shows, while the path to BRT success is not necessarily easy, the route itself is not particularly complex: all it takes is the institutional attention to detail—and the local political will—to put riders at the fore. Of course, no system is perfect, and the Red Line does still have some kinks to work out. On the whole, however, it stands as an object lesson in how to implement truly high-quality transit in a low-density city on a tight budget. It may well be this country's new gold standard for bus rapid transit. Read more...

More than thirty miles north of Midtown Manhattan, deep in New York State's Westchester County, the Sing Sing Kill cuts a jagged, rocky ravine into the steep, riverine countryside. A small creek, it winds its way through the equally small town of Ossining, its waters carving out a succession of scenic vistas as they make their way down to the Hudson River. Its name alone is arresting. A dramatic juxtaposition, it combines the anglicized name of a Native American tribe—before it was appropriated, this land belonged to the Sintsink, part of the larger Algonquin-speaking Wappinger—with kill, an old Dutch word for creek. What has truly made the name infamous, however, is the metonymic prison which still stands near the stream's mouth. Indeed, by the turn of the Twentieth Century, the idiom "to be sent up the river"—that is, to be sentenced to Sing Sing Prison—had become so ubiquitous that the village itself decided to change its name to Ossining, just to avoid the association.

Unusual nomenclature, however, is only a part of what makes the small waterway worthy of note. A larger piece comes in the form of the towering, wall-like monolith which just so happens to intersect its course right in the middle of town. Built of well-weathered stone, the structure bursts from the ravine's rocky walls and soars across the creek's valley with an unmistakable human straightness. But while the crossing is clearly a product of engineering skill, its rough-hewn stone walls and rugged, aged demeanor also grant it an air of natural permanence, as if it has stood here since time immemorial. The grand viaduct bridges the kill itself by way of an impressive masonry arch—a spot known to locals as the Double Arch, thanks to the later stone arch bridge built underneath the original, larger one. By any measure, it is an impressive sight.

Left: The Double Arch as seen in a 1907 postcard. (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
Right:The arches today, seen from above and behind.

What truly makes this spot unique, however, is what that monolith contains. As you may have already surmised from the title of this piece, the crossing carries within its walls the former channel of the Old Croton Aqueduct, one of the most important pieces of infrastructure in New York City's history. More than that, however, this viaduct also offers the only place that a visitor can actually set foot inside this remarkable (and remarkably intact) structure. For anyone with even the slightest inkling of romanticism for either urban infrastructure or urban history, the trip is a surreal and affecting experience, one well worthy of the journey upstate. Read more...

Overview and Broad Ripple Village

Indianapolis had, for quite some time, been one of those cities which stuck in the back of my mind: a place I had an interest in exploring, but could never quite pin a reason on why—a feeling I think may be very familiar to those who study cities. Over this past summer, thanks to a new local friend, I finally had the opportunity to indulge that interest, and visit parts of the city and its environs. My timing was far from perfect: not only was my trip brief, but it came only a little more than a month before the opening of the city's new bus rapid transit Red Line. Still, the city has a lot going for it, and hopefully someday soon I will have to opportunity to return and do some more in-depth study.

In physical terms, Indianapolis is a predominantly suburban, auto-focused city—even more so than many of its similar Midwestern siblings. Of course, like almost every older American city, it did once have a large, thriving streetcar network, but much of the region's physical growth seems to have come at the tail end of the streetcar era and at the dawn of the age of auto-dominance. As such, outside of the downtown—most of which I sadly did not have time to explore on this trip—there is sadly little traditional urban fabric. Worse still, outside of downtown's famous Mile Square, much of what once did exist has been razed, either for urban expressways or in the name of progress. Even in outlying neighborhoods that developed before the car, the rigid separation of commercial and residential buildings and the reification of the detached, single family home are paramount. As you research the city, you are told that, thanks to the absence of natural boundaries and ethnic enclaves, most neighborhoods have fuzzy boundaries—if they exist in more than name, at all. The city can seem a uniform tapestry of large roads and suburban houses, sprawling in every direction.