Washington DC’s transit agency WMATA is preparing to publish a frequent network map, and wants your comments. To start, they’re taking the approach of showing frequency as a highlight on the main network map, as this makes it easier to show how multiple overlaid routes combine to form a frequent line. Continue Reading →
Connections vs Complexity
Posted on November 20, 2010 in Basics, Connections, Transfers, London, Los Angeles, Portland, Sydney
In my first “basics” post on connections, I explained why a network that requires connections (or as North Americans call them, “transfers”) can actually get people where they’re going faster than a network that tries to avoid them.
But there’s another important reason to plan for connections rather than direct service, one that should be important to anyone who wants transit to be broadly relevant to urban life: Unless you welcome and encourage connections, your network will become very, very complex. Continue Reading →
Connection Fare Penalties: Why They Happen
Is it fair to have to pay more if your trip requires a transfer or connection? I’ve argued that it isn’t, but I also have an appreciation of the difficulty of eliminating these penalties. So when complaining about a fare penalty, try to understand the situation from the transit agency’s point of view. Not because they’re right and you’re wrong, but because you many need to help them solve the problem that it presents for them. Continue Reading →
Connection Penalties as “de facto Redlining”?
Sometimes a comment is so representative of a common point of view that I want to share it even though I neither agree or disagree exactly. Sometimes too, a comment raises a language point that’s worth noticing. From David Vartanoff: Continue Reading →
“Mapnificent”: Your Freedom to Roam
Long ago I highlighted an early product by WalkScore.com which enabled you to select a location and time of day, and then showed you a map of all the places you can get to on transit within a specified time. Reader Tom West points me to a new effort along similar lines, called Mapnificent, by Stefan Wehrmeyer. He describes the product on his blog in both geeky and practical detail. Continue Reading →
The Peril of Low Base Fares
Are transit fares in Los Angeles cheaper than in San Francisco? That’s the impression you’ll get from a direct comparison of the base adult cash fare. The travel blog Price of Travel just compared the base fares of 80 major tourist cities around the world and noted that, while San Francisco Muni’s base fare is $2.00, that of the Los Angeles County MTA is $1.50. Continue Reading →
The Horrors of “Transferring” in 1974, and a Happier Future
Posted on November 16, 2010 in Connections, Transfers, Fares, Journalism, Legibility, Oakland, Vancouver
Connections, or transfers as North Americans depressingly call them, are the foundation of a simple, frequent transit network that’s there whenever you need it. I laid out the basic argument here, but in brief, a transit system that tries to run direct service from everywhere else (so that nobody has to make a connection) ends up as a confusing tangle of hundreds of overlapping lines, few of which are frequent enough to rely on or simple enough to remember. Continue Reading →
Transit’s Role in “Sprawl Repair”
Posted on November 15, 2010 in Access, Be on the Way, Bus Rapid Transit, Fresno, Los Angeles, Pedestrians, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), Urban Structure
Duany Plater-Zyberk, one of the leading planning firms associated with New Urbanism, is thinking about “sprawl repair,” a process by which utterly car-dependent landscapes could be transformed into something more walkable, and thus more resilient. Galina Tachieva of DPZ has an article explaining the concept at Planetizen. Continue Reading →
Portland: Now, the 1970s Need Historic Preservation
You know you’re middle aged when a thing that was new to you as a teenager shows up in a museum, or as an artifact deserving “historic preservation.” I will never forget coming around a corner in Berlin’s DDR museum and seeing a whole bunch of wide-eyed teenagers gazing at one display; it turned out that they were all looking at a manual typewriter. Continue Reading →
New York’s Broadway: Why Do the Cab Drivers Hate It?
New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is here in Sydney, and spoke last night at the City of Sydney’s CityTalks series, hosted as always by Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore. Sadik-Khan gave her standard presentation on her work in New York, with emphasis on the conversion of traffic and parking space to pedestrian and park spaces. She also highlighted the new Bus Rapid Transit project, called Select Bus Service, clearly distinguishing between SBS projects that are still compromised, such as First/Second Avenue and Fordham Road, and those that really will be fully exclusive-lane and thus highly reliable, such as the 34th Street line now under development. Continue Reading →
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