You’re on Winter Street, in the old First Ward, and a 1.5 mile long conundrum is rolling by.

This is the most efficient form of land transport we have. It’s a train, 150 cars each filled with 120 tons of Wyoming coal, pulled by five 4,400 computer-controlled locomotives with a crew of 2. It carries as much as 500 trucks, enough to supply electricity to 3000 people for a year.

Yet it’s running slowly down a 150-year-old rail line that happens to be in the middle of a residential street. The last new rail route into Houston opened in 1927, and the city has grown around the tracks. Passing freight trains block major streets, divide neighborhoods, and endanger children.

For 50 years, government has been ignoring freight railroads, hoping they would go away. This is the only form of transport we have that isn’t government subsidized. But railroads have actually made a comeback, carrying Asian imports, new cars, grain, cement, and raw plastics, taking trucks off the road, saving money, and reducing energy consumption. Now states and cities are starting to take notice: trains are not only a problem but a solution. And with the right infrastructure investments we can not only solve those problems but take more trucks off the highways.

This Friday, four miles from Winter Street, the Houston Region Freight Rail Taskforce is meeting to discuss upgrading Houston’s rail system for more capacity and less neighborhood impact. I doubt you’ll see much coverage; unfortunately this process is taking place away from media attention and public scrutiny. But this may be the most important transportation project in Houston today, and it has the potential to improve our city. I suggest we all stop, look, and listen.

The design top speed of Houston’s light rail cars is 66 mph. Why? Because the top speed of Dallas’ is 65 mph.

Houston is seemingly doomed to endless comparison with Dallas. So once Dallas started construction of a light rail system in 1990, it became inevitable that our rail transit efforts would be compared to theirs.

Sometimes comparisons are helpful — before 2004, one of the best ways to refute “nobody will ride light rail in a hot, sprawling city like Houston” was to point to Dallas. But the parallels only go so far.

The latest version of the comparison goes like this: Dallas doesn’t run its light rail lines in streets. So neither should we.

First of all, it isn’t true. This is Lancaster Road in South Dallas:

While the two DART light rail lines that run north from Downtown Dallas are designed as fast transit to get people into the city from from the suburbs, the two light rail lines that run south from Downtown serve urban neighborhoods, much like METRO’s North, Southeast, and Harrisburg lines will.

Secondly, A city’s transit system is ultimately shaped by the city itself: how it has grown, what transit is in place already, and local politics. In this regard, Dallas is different from Houston in some significant ways:

• Dallas has no equivalent to METROExpress. They didn’t start building HOV lanes until after they started building rail, so the suburban bus service there was was stuck in freeway traffic along with everyone else. We already have high quality non-stop suburban commuter transit, so there’s less to be gained by building suburban rail.
• While Downtown Dallas is as big as Downtown Houston, Dallas does not have the equivalent to the Houston Medical Center, Uptown or Greenway — dense secondary urban employment centers that account for a significant part of Houston’s employment.
• Dallas has a lot of abandoned or underused railroad lines, some of which happened to be in the right places. One — now the northern Red Line — followed the North Central Expressway, surrounded by office buildings (see below). Another — to be used by the Green Line starting in 2010 — goes from Downtown to the Southwestern Medical Center
• The Dallas metro area is politically fragmented. DART is made up of 15 different cities. To get their representatives to vote for rail projects — and to keep those cities from dropping out of the system — DART needed to commit to serving them with rail. The DART map is driven as much by political realities as by transit priorities.

Thirdly, do we really want to be like Dallas? This is a city whose most prominent landmark is a big sphere on a stick.

Consider this: DART built 45 miles of line for $2 billion and has an average weekday ridership of 59,000. Houston built 7.5 miles of line for $320 million and has an average weekday ridership of 40,000. Maybe Dallas could take some notes from us.

The San Diego Trolley has taught a lot about how to build good good transit since it first line opened in 1981: implementing cost-effective transit, linking transit modes, expanding gradually but systematically, and building public support. The Trolley’s newest lesson, actually takes place on a university campus.

Universities make great transit destinations. To start with, a university is a major employment center. Commuter students, of course, have the same travel patterns as employees. And students who live on campus will ride transit, too: they’re less likely than the general public to have cars and they want to get off campus sometimes. This is old news. Some east coast universities have had rail transit access for a century. And many modern rail transit systems serve higher education: DC’s Metrorail, for example, has 10 stations named for universities.

But San Diego State University stands out. When San Diego’s MTDB was designing the Mission Valley East line, it wanted to put a station at the fringe of campus, down alongside I-8. But as this article notes, the university demanded better. The result is an underground station right within campus, next to the student center and alongside a new campus green.

This is the right way to serve a university with transit. The campus is a pedestrian-friendly realm already; the key is to put transit within that realm. Ask students to ride a shuttle bus or to walk across wide parking lots to get to the station and they’ll seriously consider driving instead.

We’re dealing with similar situations here in Houston. Two universities — UH and TSU — anchor the east end of the Universities Line. And judging from what METRO consultants were saying at the scoping meetings, neither administration wants rail on campus — just near campus. Students that want to ride light rail may be in for a shuttle bus ride or a long walk.

Why? I would understand trying to keep the public off of a closed campus, but both UH and TSU are open to visitors. And while at grade light rail doesn’t fit into campus as neatly as a subway does, it’s both quieter and safer for pedestrians than the cars that both universities allow onto campus (check out the Portland State University campus). And it’s a fact that criminals can drive.

Obviously, there are administrative issues that have to worked out between a university and a transit agency to put rail on campus. But the goal here isn’t to make life easy for administrators; it’s to make life easy for students, faculty, and staff. From that perspective, rail on campus makes a lot of sense.

What do you think? Visit our forums.

Above: before an after at Fannin South. METRO extended the Main Street light rail line just south of 610 so it would be able to build the yard and shop on undeveloped land it was able to buy without using eminent domain and without displacing homes or businesses.

If you’ve been to a METRO meeting recently, you’ve probably been handed a flyer warning you of METRO’s eminent domain powers. An article in the Houston Business Journal again raises the same issues. Eminent domain has been a major political issue since the Kelo v. New London case in 2005, and anti-rail campaigners have been raising the issue of METRO’s powers since at least 2003. Should we be alarmed? Let’s consider:

• First of all, a definition: Eminent Domain is the power most governmental agencies have to force a landowner to sell them land. It is a specifically defined process includes legal protections so that agencies must justify their use of this power and to make sure the landowners are paid for the fair value of their land; if the agency and the landowner don’t agree on a value the proceeding goes before a court. Eminent Domain is not uncommon, but by it is not used for most governmental land purchases: agencies can (and frequently do) buy land on the open market as any private company would.
• METRO, like virtually all public agencies, has the power of eminent domain to acquire land it needs to build transit. This is the same process used to widen streets or build freeways. METRO has every incentive to avoid using eminent domain (by using public land or by buying private land from a willing seller), and it has used these powers sparingly. The Main Street line, for example, required only small amounts of private land — the yard and shop south of 610, the block between Wheeler and Blodgett, and a few small lots of substations — and most of it was bought in negotiations with landowners.
• In 2005, METRO contracted Todd Mason, a real estate broker, as its Vice President of Real Estate Services. His charge is to do joint development projects at transit facilities. The first two are a “town square” retail center at a new park-and-ride lot on 290 and a retail/office/hotel/condo development above the Texas Medical Center Transit Center. Both projects are structured as leases: METRO is not acting as a developer and will not be the landlord for the occupant; it’s merely leasing land and air rights to a developer. After those, METRO intends to do another project at the Wheeler station, where the light rail line cuts diagonally across a large block (that has to wait on the design of the Universities line, which will connect here).
  
  In all three of these projects METRO is making use of land it is already using for transit purposes. This kind of double use is nothing new: in the 1910s and 20s, New York’s Park Avenue was developed by the New York Central railroad above the tracks approaching Grand Central Station. It’s an efficient use of space, a good investment for the agency, and often a benefit to transit riders.
• METRO has the authority under a 1978 law to use eminent domain to acquire properties within 1500 feet of a “station or terminal complex” for economic development purposes (that is, for the construction of something other than transit facilities). That provision was clearly intended to create a tool with which METRO and the City of Houston could implement redevelopment.
  

  Barry Goodman, who was the first Executive Director of the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (Metro), honed in on the region’s transportation agencies and plans, saying that Metro has significant capability to promote more urbanity in Houston. Metro was established with some of the strongest land use controls in the nation, he said. They have the ability to condemn land within 1500 feet of transit stops, but Goodman noted they’ve never done so.

  Note a key phrase in the quote above — “they’ve never done so.” METRO has had this power for almost 30 years and has never used it, even though they have had facilities like park-and-rides and transit centers that qualified as “stations and terminal facilities.” And they have given no indication that they plan to use it now. The people who championed this legislation are long out of power. The current METRO management and board did not ask for this power. And until last year, cities and counties had this power as well.
  

• METRO has allegedly talked to landowners along the Universities line about development projects. I don’t know any details here. But I would find it surprising if METRO hadn’t had such meetings. For example, say METRO needs some additional land for a station, and there’s a landowner along the line who is planning a project. If METRO agrees to put its station on his block rather than a few blocks down in return for him selling them the required land, it’s a win-win: METRO gets the land they need, the development gets more foot traffic, and nearby landowners don’t need to give up any of their property.
• Developers, urban planners, and transit agencies talk about transit oriented development. “TOD” has become a loaded phrase — some people love the idea, others find it scary. But it’s really a much more general and more innocuous concept than one might imagine. I’d say TOD is any development — retail, office, residential, commercial — that is built near a transit facility and designed to make it easy for its patrons to use transit. When we say TOD recent big developments like Dallas’ Mockingbird Station come to mind. But TOD can come in any scale, and it’s been around for a long time. Houston has TOD already, ranging from towers like 1000 Main and the Memorial Hermann Medical Plaza to small projects like the 5-unit Byrd’s Lofts. In fact, we’ve had TOD for a long time — the Heights and Neartown were both built around streetcar lines. Some of those converted houses with “anti-TOD” signs on Richmond are in fact TOD from 80 years ago. As these examples prove, TOD does not mean destroying neighborhoods — the towers both displaced parking lots, and the lofts were built in a vacant historic building. And TOD doesn’t mean we don’t let people drive — all three projects include parking. Most importantly, perhaps, TOD does not imply government subsidies or central planning — most TOD is built by developers who simply realize that they will make more money if they address everyone, not just people in cars.

Does all this add up into a big picture? Well, yes. All transportation is inextricably linked with development, because transportation projects serve the homes and businesses we’ve already built, and people and businesses will move to where they have easy access to transportation.

But other than that, each of these developments is independent. We can have TOD without METRO. We can have air rights development without eminent domain. And we can have METRO talking to landowners without any of the above. Rail opponents will tell you it means that METRO wants to work with private developers to condemn vast swaths of the city and build new super-dense developments. Frankly, METRO has its hands full just trying to build some transit. I am highly amused at this vision of an all-powerful transit agency. The history of METRO — 27 years of rail planning that resulted in only 7.5 miles of line — is full of proof that METRO’s ability to impose its will are limited. All of METRO’s board members are appointed by politicians, and all of those politicians care what the public think. Were METRO to try the kind of massive condemnation campaign that its critics envision (“half of downtown!”) there would be massive public outcry, and Bill White would tell them to stop. METRO’s track record — minimizing use of eminent domain, talking to people who own property along proposed rail lines, and finding ways to make additional use of land it uses for transit — gives no indication this agency is trying to rebuild the city.

It’s obvious why eminent domain upsets people. It is one of those powers — like arrest and taxation — that we reluctantly grant government because we feel it is necessary and useful. It should be done deliberately and fairly and infrequently. But without this power numerous transportation projects would be blocked because a single landowner won’t sell. As I see it, METRO needs to have the power of eminent domain to buy land that will be occupied by tracks, stations, bus bays, and other transit facilities, but it must be careful in using that power.

Personally, I dislike the idea of government redevelopment projects in general and the use of eminent domain to acquire land for them specifically. The redevelopment that works best is the kind that’s implemented lot by lot, not across many blocks at a time. Neighborhoods with mixed ownership are generally more resilient than those with one owner. And the scale of megadevelopment tends to result in less interesting places. The government has a role to play in the public right of way — in streets and sidewalks and transit — and in crafting regulations on issues like parking, setbacks, and curb cuts to permit appropriate development. But I don’t think the government should be rebuilding out city itself. I’d be happy to see METRO lose its powers of eminent domain for economic development (it’s possible it already has). And while CTC hasn’t taken a stand on this, I would imagine most of our members would agree with me.

But it makes no sense whatsoever to deal with our concerns about eminent domain by not building transit. Are we going to limit our transportation options out of fear of a 28 year old law that hasn’t been used? That’s like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And of course, that’s what the people handing out those flyers want: they’re against transit, and this is another means to that end.

forum topic

Some days, the transit debate feels like a battle of extremes. On one side are people who want no transit at all. On the other side are people who always want more. This post is a challenge to the latter.

METRO is proposing to spend $1.2 billion — roughly half local funding and half federal funding — to build 28 miles of urban high-quality transit by 2012. Of those, 8.8 are LRT and 19.2 are BRT:

A lot of people on the east and north sides of town are upset that they’re getting BRT instead of LRT. That makes sense; LRT is nicer. But BRT is about 2/3 the cost of LRT. So we could replace 19.2 miles of BRT with 11.5 miles of LRT. But wait: METRO replaced LRT with BRT because on those lines, LRT didn’t meet federal cost effectiveness requirements (tightened since the 2003 vote). So LRT means no 50% federal funding. Thus 19.2 miles of BRT means 5.8 miles of LRT:

If you live along Harrisburg or on the North Side, or if you commute from 290 to Uptown, sorry.

But of course a lot of people don’t like street level light rail. To avoid accidents and traffic impacts, they say, we need to elevate. Monorail costs something like $160 million a mile (that’s the cost for the Las Vegas line, the only full-sized urban monorail built in the U.S. in years), about 2 1/2 times the cost of street-level light rail. Elevated light rail would be similar. Of course, elevating everything means we lose federal funding on the Universities line as well. Thus 8.3 miles of LRT and 19.2 miles of BRT becomes 3.8 miles of monorail (we’ll keep the 0.5 mile LRT extension of the Main Street line to the Northern Intermodal Center.) We can connect Main Street to Greenway Plaza. And that’s it:

But elevated structures are ugly. So how about we build a subway? That’s even more expensive: 300 million a mile or more. So that leaves us with 2 miles of subway. It’s great transit — from Main Street to Kirby. Maybe you can walk to Greenway from there:

Nobody’s going to be happy with that. But I can already guess a different response. You might say that $1.2 billion is not a lot of money. That’s the cost overrun on the Katy Freeway project (original estimate: $1.4 billion. Cost now: $2.7 billion plus) and less than the yearly profit at Haliburton. For that matter, it’s the weekly cost of the war in Iraq.

OK. But Haliburton’s not going to build us a free rail line. And neither will the Pentagon. Government money comes in pots. There’s highway funding, and there’s transit funding. METRO gets its money from its own sales tax and from the FTA. The Katy Freeway’s cost comes from TxDOT, HCTRA, and FHA, and none of those agencies are funding rail transit.

For that matter, as Robin points out, METRO has different pots. 1/4 of METRO’s tax revenues — $100 million a year, or 20 more miles of federally funded light rail by 2012 — gets distributed to local governments. And we voted in 2003 to continue that until 2014.

So you want more transit? You want monorail or elevated rail or subway? If even the first map above looks small to you, don’t blame METRO. They can only work with what they have. I would love for there to be a miracle technology that would solve all our transit problems. There isn’t. Ultimately, the only way to get better transit is to pay for it.

So it seems to me you have two choices: either you think about how to work with the money we have, or you figure out where more money would come from. The former means compromise. The latter means changing our political culture.

Cities that have built major rail transit systems have mayors and county leaders who present the public with a vision of what their city might be like and how transit will be a part of that. They have state legislatures and governors that interpret “transportation policy” to mean more than building highways. And they have congressional representatives who fight to get money for rail projects. And they have all of that not because of happenstance but because citizens demanded it.

So stop complaining. And do something.

More in the forums.

On Monday, construction crews in California slowly lowered a 1.4 million pound section of bridge onto a barge destined for a scrapyard:

(San Francisco Chronicle)

Appropriately, it was the reverse of an operation performed almost 80 years earlier:

(Derleth Collection, Water Resources Center Archives, UC Berkeley)

The Carquinez Bridge was doomed by its own success. It was opened in 1927 as two-lane bridge carrying a US highway between two small towns at the fringe of the San Francisco Bay Area. In the late 1950s, it was joined by a twin bridge to become part of the Interstate system. Today, the suburbs have spread well to the north and the east, and the freeway is a major commute route. The old bridge didn’t meet current earthquake codes, and, even with three lanes squeezed into it, it was too narrow. The replacement bridge opened in 2003.

80 years is actually a fairly long life for a transportation structure. There are older bridges and tunnels and rail lines, to be sure, but wear and tear and the demands of growth and ever heavier vehicles make most of what we build obsolete in only a few decades. Houston’s first five-level freeway interchange, for example, opened at the Katy Freeway and Beltway 8 in 1989. Work is already underway on replacing it. The state of the art will be rubble in less than 20 years.

Over the past 50 years, people like Jane Jacobs (who died yesterday) have made us more aware of historic buildings and much more dedicated to finding ways to save them. One of the milestones in that movement was the preservation of Grand Central Terminal. But transportation facilities that aren’t buildings don’t often get the same treatment. Often, they’re literally in the way of progress: the office building that would have replaced Grand Central could be substituted for with office space just down the street. It would be hard to move I-10. But even historic bridges that aren’t in the way — the Carquinez Bridge wasn’t — are routinely demolished.

I had a personal affinity for the Carquinez Bridge. I grew up only 5 miles away; it inspired me to be a structural engineer and even made an appearance in the essay that got me into Rice. But that bridge has greater significance as well. It was the first high-level bridge on the West Coast, preceding the Golden Gate by a decade. It was designed by one of the greatest American bridge builders, David Steinman. It remains a landmark in the history of bridge engineering. And by creating a link where there was none, it literally reshaped the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a truly historic structure. I could make similar arguments for the Beltway 8 interchange — what building would better exemplify Houston’s 1980s boom?

Were the Carquinez Bridge a building, it would still be standing. Yet it’s done more than any building to shape the cities and towns around it. Transportation isn’t some afterthought, some sort of routine infrastructure to be built and forgotten. It’s at the core of our civilization. I wish we thought of it that way, not just in remembering what we built but in planning what we are about to build.

(San Francisco Chronicle)

Our forums welcome your thoughts.

I had a rant all ready to go about the METRO system map.

Then METRO fixed the map — not just what I was going to complain about but a lot more — without me saying anything.

You can click “more” at the bottom to see my original post. But now I’m going to talk about the new map.

Here’s the old map, dating back to 2005:

Here’s the new version:

The first, most obvious chnage is the bus route color coding. On the old map, all routes were the same color. Now, bus routes are in a least half a dozen different colors. That makes it a lot easier to trace a bus route across the map.

The other major improvement is on the light rail line. On the old map, it was as thick as the bus lines, but a different color: purple. That was an odd choice for the Red Line. On the new map, it’s a thick, red, dashed line. It stands out among the bus routes better, shows up well on the overall map as well the Downtown/Midtown and Texas Medical Center detail maps, and matches the name of the line. It can also extend well to more lines in 2010 and 2012.

The importance of a good transit map is obvious: it’s how riders will figure out which route to ride. A good map makes the transit system easier to use. The new map is a significant step forward in that regard. Could it be improved? Of course. Some ideas:

Better station symbols. Over half the stations on the Main Street line have different platforms for northbound and southbound trains. The map should show that. The black rectangles on the map don’t stand out well anyway. More prominent symbols, with directional arrows, might work better:

Parking information. Where can I park and ride? At a park-and-ride lot, obviously, but some transit centers have parking, too. How about a symbol for that? And, while we’re at it, a symbol for bike parking?

Bus route frequencies. Not all bus routes are created equal. A bus that runs every 15 minutes (like the 2 Bellaire) is very different from one that runs every 45 (like the 34 Montrose). METRO publishes a bus route frequency guide; a condensed version on the printed map would be helpful. But that information could also be on the map itself.

Looking at METRO’s recently updated system map, I noticed something:

• Many transit agencies color-code their rail lines, then name the lines for the colors, like DC’s MetroRail does.
  
  

• Others color code their lines, then name them, as on the classic London Underground map.
  
  

• New York’s subway has so many lines it has to use a system of letters, numbers, colors, and shapes.
  
  

• Some agencies don’t use colors at all, as on this Septa subway-surface lines map.
  
  

• METRO is the only rail system I know of that names its lines for colors, but doesn’t color-code them.
  
  
  
  The Main Street light rail line is called the Red Line. But on the maps, the red lines are buses. The Red Line is represented by… a purple line. (To make things more confusing, if you use the online trip planner, the Main Street Line AKA the Red Line ASA the purple line is known as the 700.)

Does this matter? The identity crisis isn’t making the trains run any slower, but it might be confusing some passengers. It also seems to indicate that even METRO hasn’t caught on to this rail thing yet. The Red Line is unlike anything we’ve ever had before; it’s more frequent, more convenient, and more rider-friendly than any other transit service we have, and it’s faster and more comfortable then the local buses we’re used to. This is a fundamentally different thing, and we need to treat it as such. Shouldn’t the map highlight this service?

Recently, I’ve been seeing advertising everywhere for Fall Creek, the giant planned community up on Beltway 8 and Highway 59. There was an insert in the Houston Press, a flyer in the mail, and even a billboard next to my own condo (above).

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the “15 minute” number is a lie; Google Maps pins the drive from Fall Creek to the very edge of Downtown at 23 minutes, and that’s without traffic. But it’s nowhere near the worst I’ve seen. 6007 Memorial, a condo at the edge of Memorial Park, advertised that you’ll be in the Medical Center in only “One poignant Billie Holiday song on your favorite CD. ” That’s 12 minutes, and even good music (or over-the-top lifestyle marketing) won’t make driving down Kirby pleasant.

But the big lie is the implication that the commute will stay easy. Fall Creek was built because 59 was just expanded and because that quadrant of Houston is still relatively undeveloped. But now there are thousands of houses being built up there. I remember when Silverlake in Pearland was advertising its short commute to the Theater District. Then, 288 was a relatively easy drive. Now, it’s among Houston’s worst . Supply (of concrete) created demand (for houses) and now TXDOT is getting ready to lay more concrete.

Ultimately, we are widening 288 not for who lives there today (because they will send up stuck in traffic again in the not too distant future) but for those who have not yet moved there. Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack said as much back in August:

Without an infusion of bond money, Radack said he may delay building or widening major thoroughfares that would provide access to pasture land where subdivisions could be built, creating more taxpayers to pay for county services, Radack said.

“The more people you have in Harris County paying taxes lessens the burden on those already here,” he said.

There’s a myth that we build transportation projects to meet current demand. There’s also a myth that Houston’s growth is steered by private enterprise, not government intervention. For proof otherwise, just look at the billboards.

Feel free to complain about your commute (or about bad lifestyle advertising) in the forums.

This is Grand Central Terminal, in New York City. It’s a commuter rail station with an attached subway station and one of the most spectacular interior spaces in the world. This photo shows how big it is. It doesn’t show the vaulted ceiling, painted with the the constellations, with major stars lit with individual light bulbs. It does show something else: everyone’s moving. When commuters arrive here in the morning, they walk right to the subway or out the door to work. When they come back in the afternoon, they walk right to their train. For the purposes of the vast majority of its users, this is a hallway. 50 years ago, when long-distance trains still originated here, this was a waiting room. But today you can’t catch a train further than New Haven or Poughkeepsie, and there’s really no purpose for a room this big and grand at a transit station. If you have one, it’s worth preserving. But why build one?

A different scenario: a brand-new transfer station, built from scratch in an industrial neighborhood on the edge of Downtown, served by commuter rail, Greyhound, Amtrak, local buses, and a short extension of the light rail line. Sound familiar? Well, we’re talking about Salt Lake City. I present the Intermodal Hub:

The building’s nice, but not spectacular. It doesn’t have to be. Greyhound is using it already; the Utah Transit Authority will begin work soon on the commuter rail and light rail platforms. There’s a bus maintenance facility for Greyhound, and there’s room for a future parking garage.

The price tag? $23 million, plus $32 million for the light rail extension. The commuter rail platforms and tracks aren’t included in that cost, but they probably cost well under $10 million. Curious? Check out the pdf fact sheet or this article.

Whatever the right solution for Houston’s Northern Intermodal Center is — and I do hope METRO conducts a public process to determine it — I would suspect that it will resemble Salt Lake’s version more than New York City’s. And that’s fine — the measure of success here is not how impressive the building is, or even how many people use it; it’s whether the facility makes trips more convenient.

Bonus:

Microsoft’s Windows Live Local has bird’s eye views of
Grand Central as well as more modest light rail-commuter transfer points at Baltimore’s Camden station and San Francisco’s 4th and Townsend station

The place to talk about this is in the forums.