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.)
General
Mundane Things That Matter: Abolish US$1 Bills!
If the Obama administration wanted to strike a dramatic blow for public transit, one that would immediate speed up transit journeys all across America, they would abolish the $1 bill, and get everyone used to the $1 coin.
Travelling in the US last month, I had several opportunities to feed dollar bills into fareboxes. Even if you have perfectly flattened your dollar bill, and folded out all its corners, the process takes at least three seconds per bill, and often closer to five, during which a bus or streetcar with a 100+ passengers goes nowhere.
The Revolution on Transit
Amid the mounting civil unrest in Iran’s capital, when everyone fears that mass violence may be imminent, let’s pause to notice that the Tehran Metro is still running.
Andrew Sullivan‘s wall-to-wall coverage includes this cellphone-video record of a ride on the Metro on this exuberant and anxious day.
It’s an immense challenge to keep a transit system running in such conditions. Transit operations are a real-time collaboration of many people with different political views. The fierce disagreement inflaming the population must also divide and arouse the transit workforce. Some may even feel tempted to distort the operation in a way that benefits their side of the conflict. In such conditions the necessary teamwork becomes a real test of an operating company and its staff.
Obviously, there are baser considerations at work. I’m sure the government would have shut down the metro — which is clearly helping the opposition assemble larger crowds than the government can muster — if they didn’t need to maintain the illusion that life is normal in Tehran apart from a few hooligans.
But I just want to recognise the ordinary drivers and dispatchers and attendants who are keeping the Metro running in these days of terrifying uncertainty. It’s not just diligence, it’s courage.
About the Blog
Human Transit is a blog about public transit planning and policy, by a consultant with 20 years experience in the field.
For more on the blog, its purpose, and its author, please see the welcome and manifesto.
About the Author
Jarrett Walker is an international consultant in public transit network design and policy, based in Portland, Oregon. He has been a full-time consultant since 1991 and has led numerous major planning projects in cities and towns of all sizes, across North America, Australia, and New Zealand. He is also the author of Human Transit: How clearer thinking about public transit can enrich our communites and our lives (Island Press, 2011).
He is President of Jarrett Walker + Associates, a consulting firm that provides advice and planning services North America. He is also a Principal Consultant with MRCagney Australia.
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Copyright and Disclaimer
All content on Human Transit is copyright Jarrett Walker.
All views expressed in blog posts and pages on this site are solely those of the author, Jarrett Walker, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any of his employers or clients, past or present.
Welcome and Manifesto
Welcome. Let’s talk about public transit.
I’m Jarrett Walker, and this is my professional blog. Since 1991 I’ve been a consulting transit planner, helping to design
transit networks and policies for a huge range of communities. My goal here is to start conversations about how transit works, and how we can use it to create better cities and towns.
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