For the last four months, I’ve been part of a team looking at the big-picture problems of public transport in Sydney, sponsored but not controlled by the city’s main newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald. We released the draft report today, so I can finally talk about it. Continue Reading →
Public Outreach
As Washington Shivers …
Anyone interested the transit effects of weather will appreciate this press release from WMATA in Washington DC, announcing the suspension of all above-ground transit services in the current snowstorm.
Metrorail trains will stop serving above-ground stations at 1 p.m.
today, Saturday, December 19, due to heavy snowfall that is covering
the electrified third rail, which is situated eight inches above the
ground. The third rail must be clear of snow and ice because it is the
source of electricity that powers the trains. Metro officials believe
that by 1 p.m. the exposed third rail will be covered by snow. All
Metrobus and MetroAccess service also will stop at 1 p.m. because
roadways are quickly becoming impassable.
Environmentalist Critiques of Strategic Transit Planning
How should environmentalists engage with long-range transit planning studies? What should you focus on? What should you object to?
Long-term Transit Plans: Asking the Real Questions
For several years I worked on a Strategic Public Transport Network Plan for Australia’s national capital, Canberra, so I’m happy to report that the plan has now been released for public comment.
The concise Executive Summary pulls together a number of key ideas about long-term transit planning that I’ve found useful in many cities, so even if you don’t know or care about Canberra you might find it interesting.
The most important single idea in the plan (as in much of my long-term planning work) is the Frequent Network, which consists of services that will run every 15 minutes or better all day, every day of the week. This is the level of service that can motivate people to choose a transit-dependent lifestyle, because it assures you of the ability to get around without building your life around schedules. The proposed Frequent Network includes Rapid service (red lines in this image, stopping at “stations” every 1 km or so, averaging 40 km/hour) and Local service (orange, stopping every 200-400m, averaging 20 km/hour). (As always, click image to enlarge.)
Unhelpful Word Watch: Convenient
A Transport Politic post on US high-speed rail today contains this quotation from Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman:
With high-speed rail, speed is not the issue. Convenience and trip times are.
What does he mean by convenience? For that matter, what do you mean by convenience? I’ve been hearing this word in conversations about transit for more than 20 years, and in this context, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean anything.
Did Sim City Make Us Stupid?
Ah, SimCity. … As a youngster I spent many hours building fields of residential tract housing, industrial parks, huge blighted and substantially vacant commercial districts, mega-highways connecting them all, and Godzilla.
When I recently discovered that the original SimCity was released as open source, I had to download it and try it out. I knew that it was inaccurate, but it was nostalgia. Then I discovered exactly how inaccurate it was. “No mixed residential and commercial areas?!? WTF!” I did play it long enough to also notice that transportation was pretty much a capital expenditure with no operating costs. Sigh.
Yes, those are the two of the worst fallacies built into the original Sim City: