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Ridership Down in the US? Look Deeper

Posted on July 16, 2010 in Honolulu, Journalism, Los Angeles, New York City, Rail Transit, San Francisco

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 →

Paris: The New Old Métro Line 1

Posted on July 15, 2010 in Paris, Rail Transit

When he heard I’d be visiting Paris, Yonah Freemark told me not to miss the remodeling of Metro Line 1, the busiest subway line in Europe.  Its daily ridership is 725,000 — around that of the entire San Francisco Muni network (all modes).  It’s not surprising, when you look at where it goes.  (For those of who you need to know where north is, it’s down in this image, which I always find irritating.)

700px-Metro_Paris_M1-plan.svg Continue Reading →

Paris: The Street is Ours!

Posted on July 11, 2010 in General, Paris

Next time you’re involved in a debate about whether we should consider taking one lane of traffic on a busy street and setting it aside for buses, show them some pictures of Paris today.  Almost any boulevard, in fact.  Here’s Boulevard Raspail:

IMG_0780

Lots of traffic in two lanes, and a lane reserved for buses and two-wheels conveyances.  Yes, the bus lane is empty at the moment, but this demonstrates the great and damnable paradox of bus lanes:  If buses are moving well, and carrying more people than the car lanes, the bus lane looks empty most of the time.  Only a failing or obstructed bus lane looks like it’s full of buses.  That’s why bus lanes are such a hard sell in cities run by motorists who want to do the green thing but still form their impressions from behind the wheel of a car.  Continue Reading →

Paris: Customer Service as Modern Art

Posted on July 11, 2010 in General

Sometimes automated customer service is so bad that it becomes a kind of modern art.  Today, arriving at Paris’s Gare de l’Est to pick up my pre-booked electronic TGV ticket, I discovered that the machines for this purpose didn’t like my credit card, so I was told there was no choice but to wait in the general ticketing queue of the SNCF (the French national railway), which took about an hour.

The queue gave me plenty of time to study the row of ticket windows, mostly unstaffed, and the convenient electronic signs above each one.  As often happens at airports, these signs were mostly saying irrelevant things.  One sign, for example, specified international sales, and another domestic sales, even though we were clearly all in one queue and they were just taking whoever was next.  The faux-order conveyed by these signs is harmless enough, as long as nobody takes them seriously. Continue Reading →

u.s. transit capital funding: a big picture?

Posted on July 8, 2010 in Philosophy, Strategic Transit Planning, US Federal Policy

An email asks a seemingly eternal question, from reader Aaron Brown:

I … wanted to reach out to see if you’d be willing to provide any thoughts on the massive capital funding backlogs that major transit systems face here in the US. The latest reports I’ve seen throw around numbers above $50bn just to bring systems into a state of good repair, excluding any expansion. Given the current condition of local, state, and federal budgets, this number seems extremely daunting to me.Here in Chicago, for instance, we have a pretty solid transit system (relative to most US cities), but one that is old and badly in need of repairs. Again, however, the amount need just to bring the system to a state of good repair ($7bn for the CTA alone) seems overwhelming. We have aging buses and railcars, tracks and ties in need of replacement, and an L system with structures over 100 years old that are all competing for limited funds. And this is in a city and transit system that is seeing record ridership and will need to expand over the next few decades to serve one of the largest (and growing) metro areas in the country. Continue Reading →

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