I’m recently returned from almost a month in Australia and New Zealand — mostly doing speaking events in Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland — and am way behind on blogging. This happens now and then, which is why you should also follow me on Twitter (@humantransit). When there’s no time to write paragraphs, I still write tweets.
Some important things:
- Holiday gift guide! I’ve reviewed the great new books by Jeff Speck and Christof Spieler, and also suggest, as a stocking stuffer, an Aaron Naparstek collection of traffic haiku.
- San Francisco and Minneapolis have eliminated parking minimums for new development. This is a colossal step that no other big US (or Australia/NZ) city has taken.
- Our firm is starting into bus network studies (not necessarily redesigns) in Salt Lake City (UTA) and Cleveland (GCRTA).
- Auckland New Network ridership is up massively gaining 7% year over year and much more than that on the North Shore where routes were restructured to connect with a rail-like frequent busway service.
- I am now a character in a play, written in Shakespearean iambic pentameter, which deals with what I hope is not the only thing I will be remembered for. It received a staged reading in Montreal last week. A sample:
It’s fun, and the writer, who goes by Joe Bagel but may have several identities, certainly knows his Shakespeare, and his Plato, and his hip-hop. More impressively, he cast himself as Musk, who is not, in the end, the hero.
Traffic, and traffic, and traffic
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of fossil fuel time
And all our highways have lighted fools
The way to coughing death. Out, out brief commuter
Life’s but a snarling shadow, a poor driver
That honks and crawls his hour upon the road
And then is heard no more. It is a drive
Made by an idiot, full of noise and fumes
Signifying nothing.
One question about the new Auckland network, which I am reading about for the first time today: what frequency do you need to have on the major lines for the network to work overall. I read a complaint on your September post about from a user who said it now took him too long to make the connections. There are obviously low frequencies that result in long times overall, and high-frequencies that provide little marginal benefit. I would think that there are models for testing this, but given consumer behavior, how often must the trunk lines arrive for the system to work?
Congrats on your (quasi) theatrical debut!
The excerpt from the play is pure gold. Love it!
Yeah, so no. Twitter is a cesspool of haters with occasional nuggets of good stuff (and lots of 1% types). A couple years back, I was pretty active on it (nothing like thousands of followers or anything like that) but earlier this year, I deleted the 2-3 accounts I had. The company won’t do anything about the worst violations of their own ToS so I decided they weren’t going to get the use of my eyeballs. Facebeast isn’t a *whole* lot better but it seems to exercise better control over the gross violations of their ToS. So far, their benefit to me outweighs their cost (to *me* – YMMV)
But … tweets are open to all, so post links and I’ll read them! 😀
“San Francisco and Minneapolis have eliminated parking minimums for new development. This is a colossal step that no other big US (or Australia/NZ) city has taken.”
Auckland has actually eliminated parking minimums in most zones, and in many they now have maximums. So not entirely correct!