Last week in San Jose, and this week in San Francisco, Eric Eidlin of the Federal Transit Administration, which funds local connections to High Speed Rail, gave a talk with case studies of European rail station design. Â Update: here is his blog post on the topic.
Multimodal station integration
First, physical service integration. Here is the Central City station in Erfurt, where the local light rail pulls up below the High Speed Rail tracks. The station, in a mid-sized city with about 200,000 residents, serves 34,000 passengers per day with 344 underground vehicle parking spaces.
In contrast to the superbly-integrated Erfurt station, the station serving Aix en Provence, a city with about 140,000 people, is located 10 miles from the center of town, and serves 7000 passengers with 2860 parking spaces.
Integrated customer experience
High Speed trains in France are faster point to point than in Germany, and tend to use dedicated tracks. By contrast, trains in Germany often use blended tracks with local service, along the lines of the blended system between Caltrain and California High Speed Rail. While the German trains are slower point to point, the German system has much better connections – both physical connections, and integration of fares, schedules, ticketing, for an overall more seamless rider experience.
The app below lets you plan a trip, from origin all the way to destination, including a connecting bus, local rail, and high speed long distance rail. You don’t need to think about the fast that the components are provided by different agencies.
There is a service that integrates other first and last mile modes, such as carshare and bikeshare, into a rider membership program (I don’t think they are technically integrated yet, but imagine if they were?)
Station as destination
Some European stations do a superb job at creating stations that are shopping and entertainment destinations. The photos below show stations in Leipzig and Paris St Lazare which are popular shopping malls.
Lessons for the Bay Area
The Bay Area’s major multi-modal stations – Transbay, Millbrae, and Diridon – where local services connect, and also feed High Speed Rail have opportunities to learn from best practices in Europe to provide better pedestrian connections between modes, and to consider a high-traffic station as a potential shopping and entertainment destination. The most immediate application of these lessons are in Millbrae, which is considering a major mixed-use transit-oriented development for approval this year, and San Jose, which is reviewing the Diridon Station Area Plan this year. While the major transit new construction in Diridon is years off (BART, High Speed Rail), the zoning and policy decisions (like parking) will have a big impact on how successfully Diridon can transition into an urban destination.
The lesson about service integration is profound. In an ideal world, which may not be this one, our region would rally, and make use of the Clipper transition to demand actual integration of fares, schedules, and data, to enable the sort of rider experience provided by that app in Germany.
Clipper should and could absolutely be used to implement a Stuttgart-like “Verkehrsverbund” (regional transport cooperative /association). In Stuttgart (Germany), the VVS (Verkehrsverbund Stuttgart http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkehrs-_und_Tarifverbund_Stuttgart) allows one to buy a ticket (whether it be a single-use, multi-ride, day, multi-day or annual pass) good for travel between two points which is completely agnostic and independent of modes used to complete the trip. I might use a streetcar and train to go one way (or on one day) and use a combination of buses and cogwheel train or BART-like “S-Bahn” for the trip back (or on another day). Whichever suits me and my needs or mood best … and the ticket is valid and the same price regardless of mode across the entire greater Stuttgart area spanning dozens of suburbs and outlying cities in perhaps a 30 to 40-mile radius (http://www.vvs.de/download/Tarifzonenplan.pdf). And they’ve been doing it that way using POP (proof-of-payment) and TVMs at least ever since I spent most of the summers of my youth there in the mid 70’s. It’s beautiful and it works sooo well. Easy, convenient and customer (rider) friendly. None of this customer-hostile byzantine patchwork of fares, tariffs and other BS that Clipper largely and merely serves as a stored value system for.
To see a list of German Verkerhsverbünde:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_transport_associations
So can we get there and if so how? In Switzerland I am told it was a rider movement.
Same thing in London (Oyster): http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/tickets/london-rail-and-tube-services-map.pdf
Here is what it took to get the job done:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_for_London
Starting with this piece of legislation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_London_Authority_Act_1999
Good luck!!!
I don’t know how … but I suspect it will require legislation to force MTC and the agencies to do it. So I guess that means grooming one or more sponsors/co-signers to draft and introduce a bill … and to shepherd it through the process to get Gov. Brown to sign it. Or … a regional ballot measure? Hell, I don’t know how to do it. Just spit-balling here. The greater Sacramento, LA and San Diego areas should have ’em too.
Thanks for posting this, Adina. I wanted to mention that I just published a blog post that goes a little deeper into the relevance of HSR station area planning lessons from Germany and France for us in California. You’ll find it here: http://urbancurrent.org/2014/03/03/reflections-on-french-and-german-high-speed-rail-stations-californias-struggling-central-cities-as-both-blessing-and-curse/