Navigation

Author Archive | Jarrett

Vienna: Weaving A Total Network

Posted on August 27, 2009 in Connections, Transfers, Vienna

In talking about transit planning I’m constantly stressing the need to think in terms of interconnected two-dimensional networks, not just the one-dimensional “corridors” that are the focus of so many transit studies.  It’s a hard point to convey because (a) interconnectedness implies connections, also called “transfers,” which people supposedly hate, and (b) networks are complicated and abstract and hard to think about, which is why I’m always trying to create and promote tools for making them simpler.

What’s more, network effects are really hard to photograph.  The closest you can come is a photo of a really smooth cross-platform connection, such as this one I observed in Vienna:

Continue Reading →

Like a Cheetah

Posted on August 14, 2009 in Philosophy, Technophilia

Last night, on the treadmill at the gym, I watched a bit of a National Geographic Special on the maglev train that connects Shanghai’s airport with its city center.  Most of it was about the engineering challenges of the project, and the many small dramas of solving them. At the end of the piece, we viewed the train from above as it rushed away on its elevated guideway, while the narrator said something like:  “But the future of the maglev train is very much in doubt.”

And I thought:  “Like a cheetah.”

Continue Reading →

Words I Deleted Today

Posted on August 13, 2009 in Language

A client has asked me make the following deletions in a report I’d prepared for them on a public transit planning issue:

“… serious issues of bus access …”
” … to flow through these critical points …”
” … without extreme and circuitous deviations …”

The deleted words are all “emphatic adjectives,” words that mean nothing more than “Hey!  This bit here is important!”  Serious, critical, and extreme are all-purpose emphatic adjectives, while circuitous becomes emphatic if it’s used redundantly as I did here, “circuitous deviations,” because of course all deviations are circuitous.

Continue Reading →

A Silver Medal for the Silver Line?

Posted on August 11, 2009 in General

Everyone should peruse the comment thread on my last post, “Should we ride mediocre transit?”  If the post and its thread helps you clarify and explain your own view on the question, then this blog is doing its job.  (Yes, there’s still no tip jar; I still have a salary as a transit planning consultant, but you’ll be the first to know if I don’t!)

Among the comments, Brian suggested that we need a system

… to “certify” transit systems on a Bronze-Silver-Gold scale according to criteria like frequency, operating hours, accessibility, travel time and so forth.”  (Emphasis mine.)

Certification schemes such as Brian proposes function just like those notorious “rankings” — whether for  cities or universities or transit lines.  They sort a bunch of disparate data and somehow reduce it to a single score.  To get there, they do two very different things:

Continue Reading →

Hard Questions: Should We Ride Mediocre Transit?

Posted on August 9, 2009 in Philosophy

We are constantly told that if we want to support transit, we need to ride transit.  Current ridership figures are routinely cited by both supporters and opponents of transit as evidence justifying a proposed level of transit investment.  This implies that by riding transit, or not, we are effectively voting in a consequential poll.

Yet there’s also a lot of mediocre transit out there, especially outside the biggest cities.  Sometimes transit really isn’t the cost-effective and time-effective way to get somewhere.  Even if you don’t own a car, you may be able to afford a taxi for, say, 30% of your travel in your city and at least 30% of your trips require using transit that doesn’t work very well.  Should you use transit anyway, because it needs your vote?

Continue Reading →

The US$1 Bill Abolition Campaign Begins with You!

Posted on August 6, 2009 in General
Dollar coin On my post about the transit speed benefits of abolishing the US$1 bill, many commenters re-emphasised that $1 coins do exist.  The US Mint wants to promote them, but that they are failing to catch on with the public.   Cashiers encounter resistance when they give them out in change.  The resulting back and forth with the customer takes far more time than it’s worth, so even a cashier with revolutionary impulses learns it’s just easier to give out dollar bills.
I wonder if a concerted high-visibility campaign in one transit-intensive US city might drive the issue to prominence.  It wouldn’t even need to come from the government.  Suppose, for example, that one prominent locally-based merchant in, say, San Francisco announced that from now on, they’d be giving out only $1 coins as change.  This could be one of those good-corporate-citizen moves, designed to support transit patronage by putting dollar coins in people’s pockets.   (I suspect they would also find that the change would result in faster service for the merchant’s customers, since coins are faster to grab and count than bills.)

Continue Reading →

You are here: Home › Jarrett
Older posts Newer posts