The unglamorous but essential struggle over the spacing of consecutive stops or stations on a transit line is an area where there’s a huge difference in practice between North American and Australian agencies, for reasons that have never been explained to me as anything other than a difference in bureaucratic habit. In Australia, and in most parts of Europe that I’ve observed, local-stop services generally stop every 400m (1/4 mile, 1320 feet). Some North American agencies stop as frequently as every 100m (about 330 ft). Continue Reading →
San Francisco
Beyond “On-Time Performance”
A San Francisco reporter emailed me yesterday with this question, regarding the city’s main transit system, Muni:
As you know, Muni set a goal in 1999 when the [San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency] board was formed, to have a 85 percent on-time performance standard. That was voted on in 1999 (Prop. E). Since then … the agency has yet to the meet goal or even gotten close to it. The highest it’s been was 75 percent a few months ago. … I wanted to ask if you if there is any danger for Muni to be so focused on this one standard? Are performance metrics evolving and why are they evolving? What else should Muni to be looking at as far as improving reliability?
The Resonance of City Names: What is “San Francisco?”
In a fine think-piece on “golden ages” of urban creativity, Aaron Renn of the Urbanophile mentions San Francisco as a place that isn’t having one: Continue Reading →
San Francisco: May 2010 Service Cuts Mostly Restored
As I said at the time, the first round of service cuts in San Francisco implemented in 2009 actually did some good by deleting some segments that, for geometric reasons, were always going to be ineffective. But the second round implemented in May 2010 were mostly just painful. Now, after a long struggle, that destructive second round is being reversed, mostly on September 4 with the remainder to come in December. I often criticize journalists for featuring bad news but missing the corresponding good news, so it’s only fair to do the same myself.
A Field Guide to Transit Quarrels
UDPATE: New, easier links!
My presentation “A Field Guide to Transit Quarrels,” which I did last month in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, is here as a PowerPoint with notes on each slide describing its essence.
If you want a taste of what I sounded like talking about this stuff, the backlit but audible video of the Seattle presentation is here. UPDATE: The Portland video, which is much clear, is here!
As always with free stuff on the web, there has to be some advertising. So: If you’d like me to do a presentation to your group or organisation. The recent North American tour was the last time I’ll do this for free, but costs can often be figured out.
Look forward to comments, as always. Thanks to Scott for the PDF links!
San Francisco: A Free Market in Parking Begins
(Update: Welcome, Andrew Sullivan readers! Please have a look around, including the welcome and manifesto. We do fun stuff here.)
US parodies of San Francisco as leftist and socialist may soon need some revision. San Francisco will soon have the most libertarian, free-market parking policy in the nation. And it should become easier to find parking. Continue Reading →
Ridership Down in the US? Look Deeper
It seems to be, and I’m sure the New Republic’s Robert Puentes is right about the causes — (1) recession-driven unemployment (which both reduces commute demand and reduces discretionary income) plus (2) the epidemic of service cuts, which is proving yet again that not many riders are so “captive” that you can’t drive them away eventually. Both of those factors are well-observed correlations.
But it’s interesting that the New Republic chose to feature this map from the Brookings Institution’s interactive source, which shows total numbers of public transit commuters by metro area, as opposed to this one, which shows the percentage of all commutes that go by public transit, or what’s technically called the Journey-to-Work (JTW) mode share. Continue Reading →
Now, Anyone Can Monitor Reliability
Can you think of a better way to measure service reliability than the ones your transit agencies use? Can you develop ways to analyze the system’s performance that will reveal more precisely where and why things go wrong? Now, any transit geek with a head for statistics can try out these ideas, and share what they discover, for any transit agency that publishes a real-time information feed. Continue Reading →
Transit and the Hierarchy of Needs, contd.
In a post last week I mentioned Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs, a simple diagram suggesting that certain needs will only arise if more fundamental needs are met: Continue Reading →
Line Numbering: Geek Fetish or Crucial Messaging?
Commenter Mike recently laid out a nice explanation of the line numbering system in Aachen, Germany, and then asked, fatefully:
How do professionals assign line numbers?
The answer is: Much as geeky amateurs do, when drawing imaginary networks. It’s a process of (1) imagining beautiful systems of order, and (2) willing them in to being. Unfortunately, real-world professionals have to proceed through the additional steps of (3) clashing with proponents of competing systems, (4) enduring the derision and sabotage of anarchists, and finally (5) resigning to a messy outcome where only traces of beauty remain, visible “between the lines” so to speak, for those still capable of enchantment. Continue Reading →