Washington DC has its downtown circulator, and now the Washington DC of Australia, Canberra, has one too. What’s more, my clients in Canberra created their circulator for almost zero in new operating costs, using one of my favorite planning tricks. Starting next week, four color-coded lines will provide frequent links among all the major tourist attractions, government buildings, universities, commercial districts, and interchange points in the dense core areas of the Australian capital. Continue Reading →
Maps
Walkscore.com and the Lure of the Single “Score”
[Note: This post is from 2010 and has not been updated to reflect more recent developments, including the acquisition of WalkScore by Redfin.]
The Conservative Planner [blog site no longer active] has a thoughtful attack on WalkScore.com‘s methodology for calculating a simple “walkability score” for any neighborhood in America. He’s found several examples where WalkScore has given a high score to a place that’s clearly hostile to pedestrians when viewed on the ground. Continue Reading →
Email of the Week: Enlightenment Through Rotation
Interesting. From David Marlor:
I’m wondering if I’m the only person that does this. When looking at a city map or any network map, I like to look at it sideways or upside down. Our eyes are designed to see things horizontally, but we’re not that good at seeing things vertically (probably why we like wide-screen TVs). So when we scan a map, we look left and right, more so than up and down. Continue Reading →
Cool but Disturbing Tool Maps U.S. Commutes
Want to know how many people commute from one zipcode to another? Here’s a nice graphical tool by Harry Kao. Input a zipcode and it shows the commute distribution by origin zipcode, from the 2000 Census. I put in 94111, the San Francisco Financial District. Continue Reading →
Comment of the Week: The Frequent Network Mapping Campaign
From Jeff Wegerson of Prairie State Blue, on the current burst of reader-designed Frequent Network maps on this blog, which began with this post.
It’s almost like Jarrett is running a contest here that not only doesn’t have a prize, it doesn’t have any well defined rules. And that is probably fine at this stage. It’s as if we are in a brainstorming session and told not to be negative to ideas because we want them to keep coming. Something like that.
Someone once said that the essence of leadership is to appear to have intended whatever good thing has just happened. So I appreciate Jeff’s assurance that I’m keeping up the illusion of being in charge here.
Montréal: The Pleasure of Maps Made by Hand, or by Eye
Google is getting us all used to the idea of automatically generated maps, which sacrifice many opportunities for clarity and beauty in order to be instantly available and automatically up-to-date. But Anton Dubrau, who writes the intelligent Montréal transit blog Catbus, asks:
I guess there is this general question whether frequent network maps should be automatically generated, or made by hand. Which is probably related to the question whether they should be abstract and compact, or geographically accurate. Or whether they should be published today, or … later. It took me more than a solid week to make a map of Montréal’s network by hand.
Do Complex Networks Require Complex Maps?
In his guest post, Aaron Priven explained the design process that he led for the distinctive AC Transit network map in 2003. Here are some pieces of that map. (For the whole thing in its most recent version, see here for PDF, or here in a version that you can pan and zoom online.)
Guest Post: Aaron Priven on the AC Transit (Oakland-Berkeley) Transit Map
Continuing the recent series on frequent network maps, today’s post is by Aaron Priven, who actually managed the redesign of a network map. I don’t agree with everything he says, but the resulting map (current version here in PDF, here in a version that you can pan and zoom online) certainly shows a lot of thought. It’s interesting to see the thought process explained. I’ll share my own responses to this map in a near-future post.
Jarrett’s post on frequency mapping, and a number of the comments there, referred to the AC Transit system maps. (AC Transit is the bus system for a large portion of the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay, including cities such as Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, and Fremont.) Continue Reading →
The Perils of Succeeding “On Average”
Two recent comments on different topics got me thinking about averages, and why people like to talk about them more than they like hearing about them.
Toronto transit expert Steve Munro made this comment on the familiar perils of transit operations in that city:
In Toronto, the TTC reports that routes have average loads on vehicles, and that these fit within standards, without disclosing the range of values, or even attempting any estimate of the latent demand the route is not handling because of undependable service. Service actually has been cut on routes where the “averages” look just fine, but the quality of service on the street is terrible. Some of the planning staff understand that extra capacity can be provided by running properly spaced and managed service, but a cultural divide between planning and operations gets in the way.
Toronto: A New Frequent Network Plan
In the midst of all the frequent-network-mapping fervor, here comes the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) with a proposal for consistent all-day 10-minute frequency on a network of critical lines covering high-density parts of the city. A frequent network map is already in the newspaper, but it remains to be seen if this brand will make it onto their system map, along the lines of similar brands in Portland, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St.Paul, and Salt Lake City among other North American peers. Anyway, here’s the map: