NTD’s new modes

While you were sleeping the National Transportation Database (NTD), the nation’s repository for transit data, added a few categories of vehicle types: Commuter Bus (CB), Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), the combined Monorail/Automated Guideway (AG), Hybrid Rail (YR, basically light rail that acts like commuter rail), and Streetcar (SR).  I can’t find a date for when this happened but 2011 is the first...

Tampa Amenitizing Again

My first reaction to seeing a news story on Tampa getting an advanced bike sharing program was, “Here they go again.”  I recently wrote a piece about the amenitization of America, this trend where cities attempt to get people to come downtown (as opposed to live downtown) or attract tourists with gimicky activities or investments like children’s museums (aka science centers), toy...

Old is New

If a picture is worth a thousand words, here are 2,000.  I have written much about streetcars and why making them fast and efficient is ∞ better than purposefully making them slow and inefficient.  These two images, separated by nearly 100 years, show that the problems may not change, so our reactions to them must. Having rail vehicles stuck in traffic may fulfill the desire to have “kinetic...

Most Honored Beach Bus Campaign

  Beach Bus Signs. Photo and materials by Bow Stearn. There are three things to love about this simple and effective campaign for the Beach Bus, a service offered by Panama City Beach in the great northwest of Florida that we can all learn from.  The first two are important on the public side, the third from the perspective of the transit agency itself. The Wrap - Bow Stearn (rhymes with Cow...

Cut Off

For a little Friday fun this is from the wonderful comics website the Oatmeal.  There really is something about being wrapped in platic and steel that makes us behave just a little bit nutty.         These images are from Minor Differences. Click here to view the full comic.

Bungalow Love

The view of Warren Ave looking toward Love Street. From the roof of his craftsman cottage at 113 South Love Street in Thomasville, Georgia, Brad Sheffield could easily see the illicit retail going on in his neighbors’ back yards and even right out on the street.  “I got really good at recognizing the signs of a drug deal or a prostitute working,” he says with a laugh.  “I called the police...

The Pedestrian Accelerator

I came to transit on foot, I like to say.  Of course one always accesses transit on foot, that is as a pedestrian, but I also mean I got into the transit business because I enjoy walking so much, especially in places that make walking a pleasure.  I used transit occasionally growing up in Tampa where transit service was occasional and walking was torture; much more often as an embassy guard in Seoul,...

Measuring up the free-child policy

Transit is almost universally the best mechanized transportation value for individuals but for families—multiple people traveling from a single household—paying multiple fares can erode some of the value of buses and trains and make owning an more attractive even for people living at the margins.  The free fare for young children can help a struggling parent and has been widely adopted by the...

Where Trolleys Fly: The French Tram Experience

Tom Parkinson is the coathor of this photo essay which is an excerpt of a presentation given to the TRB Rail Transit Committee in January 2013.  Click images to enlarge.   Look mom, no wires. The French word for placing trams in context sensitive locations, as in this historic street in Orleans, is insertion. The French decided to get rid of traditional trams in the 1930s.  The last traditional...

Lean on Me

  In case you have not read NPR’s and the New York Times’ exhaustive coverage, sitting is now considered bad for your health.  From these breathless news accounts (We are all sitting, we are all fat, we are going to die!) we are also learning that early office workers were more likely to lean against cabinets to read and write and that only slackers sat.   Now companies are...

Amenitization of America

You have probably been to the McWane Science Center in the heart of downtown Birmingham even if you have never been to Alabama.  You might know it as Mobius Kids if you visited in Spokane, Fernbank in Atlanta, CuriOdyssey in San Mateo, Amazement Square in Lynchburg, the Imaginarium in Anchorage, the Zeum in San Francisco, or in Albuquerque the plainly descriptive Defense Nuclear Weapons School.  They...

Horror Style: Why Second Empire Scares You

Edward Hopper's lonley House by the Railroad (1925) A sunset walk in the 5th District of Budapest, just a couple streets away from Heroes’ Square and the National Museum, is an awfully pleasant way to spend a fall evening, so I was surprised when my delight at the 19th century streetscape turned decidedly to the creeps.  The silence around me was not the eerie, too-quiet kind.  In fact, it...

They Say: Three Quarters

This is a recurring feature where we explore commonly repeated phrases in the transit business to see if they ring entirely true.  Today we will look at complimentary paratransit service, which we always hear is a requirement within three-quarters of a mile of fixed route service, excepting “commuter bus, commuter rail, or intercity rail systems.” Is this true?  As always we go to the rules,...

VMT, Capacity, and Congestion: a visual study

Vehicle miles travelled (VMT), capacity, and congestion are related if not always well understood concepts that are essential to the public discourse on transportation funding.  I am going to try to clear them up with this visual explanation.  Imagine the differences between these three things:  a children’s bucket with 100 marbles, a tumbler with 2 ounces of whiskey, and a half full glass.  VMT...

Paying the User Fee

The knock on transit is often that buses and trains are heavily subsidized by governments, which they are because pretty much all transportation projects are heavily subsidized, roadways getting the biggest bite of the subsidy cheese.  That discussion usually happens on the supply side, however, where the rubber stamp meets the road and millions of dollars go to states, local governments, regional...