Hybrids: Leaves on the Nevergreen Tree

Yahoo’s green blog had a post a few days ago that listed writer Lori Bongiorno’s green hypocrites.  One of them was certain hybrid owners: “Owns a hybrid, but drives all around town alone. The kind of car you drive is just one part of the transportation equation. Walking, biking, carpooling, and taking public transportation when you can are also important. Try to drive the most fuel-efficient...

The High Cost of “Major Service Change”

The headline on Phillip Matier’s and Andrew Ross’s story just sounded bad:  “BART spending $800K to define three words.”  It is easy to imagine the public saying “That’s more than 250,000 per word,” or “I’d have done it for half that.”  In fact, commenters on the online version of the San Francisco Chronicle story had lots of other three-word proposals like “Clean the Trains,”...

Population Pyramids II: How to Build

The raw data from the census in Excel. Following up on Population Pyramids I which shows the story-telling power of population pyramids, this post explains how to create them. Negotiating the labrynth of the U.S. Census Beureau can be a challenge so this link will take you right to the 2008 ACS 1-year Data.  Under the 2008 tab in the blue area chose Subject Tables from the list at right.  Select...

Keeping Riders

Saleswoman Deanna Droira-Garcia very suddenly lost her ability to drive when she began having epileptic seizures.  As a result she was riding Tri-rail down in Miami, Florida, and saw a car card advertising a competition for the best stories on why riders use and value transit.  Before her seizures, Droira-Garcia had driven not only to work, but for work as she traveled to make sales calls.  She...

The Met in Metro

  Shelters on the Sprinter Line in Charlotte are unique identifiers but also part of the urban fabric. Photo courtesy of CATS. Art has historically been public, civic – both a product of and contributor to collective identity.  From Egyptian glyphs to idealized Greek athletes, from Roman triumphal arches to intricate altar pieces, art condescends to tell us something about who we are, where...

Go Figure: Figure-ground as a Land Use/Transportation Tool

It has long been widely recognized by many city planners, urban designers, architects, landscape architects, and historic preservationists, that, among many other influences, a viable community has a balanced relationship between building mass and open space that gives it a sense of compactness, spatial definition, and is in human scale. A typical figure-ground. This concern is even more relevant...

Tutorial: FTIS

If you ever have a need to find ridership or any other transit data from transit properties (including your own) then you need to know about FTIS.  It stands for the Florida Transit Information System.  The Florida in the name refers to the state where the system was developed and the DOT that made it, not to the data or who may use it.  It is an easy-to-use interface of the National Transportation...

Transit Shelter Advertising: Shelter Brought to You By . . .

Shelter image Michal Zacharzewski   Off-site advertising bans make ad-sponsored shelters tricky.  Why the California 9th Circuit Court of Appeals might be the new BFF of JTA.  The video is excellent.  Mike Miller, Jacksonville Transit Authority Director of External Affairs, has been showing it to citizen groups, neighborhood associations, civic organizations, elected officials and others. ...

Like Peas and Carrots: Co-locating facilities and transit

  For more than 100 Years the Reading Terminal Market has been the grocer, deli, cheese shop, bakery, and so mucyh else to commuters in Philadelphia. Steam Locamotives once stopped overhead but now Reading is served underground by SEPTA. Photo Scheib Shoppers could always tell when the train arrived by the sound of 700,000 pounds of steel laboring to a halt a few dozen feet overhead.  The Reading...

The Hundred Million Dollar Line

  There are few hours above the red line, but we pay mightily for them in infrastructure. Noting the exceptions of those few cities stuck in permanent rush hour, peak is the hour that rankles.  When angry citizens gripe about congestion they are not thinking of 10 a.m. or 10 p.m.; they are concerned about the hours in the morning and afternoon when most of us still go to a job.  When DOT or public...

All Together Now

“Always do more than is required of you.”  General George S. Patton Time was, some folks did not get out as much as they may have liked.  Sidewalks were obstacle courses, parking lots deserts, and staircases mountains.  Getting around could be very difficult for people with disabilities.  They got some relief with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), which required bathroom stalls...

Preemptive Strike

A transit stop inventory and improvement plan can stave off lawsuits and make transit’s most common asset a bit less common. This stop, on a curb, at a curve, attached to a stop sign is not just unattractive; it could be dangerous. Courtesy Nelson Nygaard. Shopkeepers who want to mind the store better mind the door.  That rhyme is inspired by a 2005 study by the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI),...

Busload of Low-Hanging Fruit

The view of downtown Tallahassee from Florida State’s Westcott Fountain, 2004. Beauty does little to diminish the chasm that exists between two hilltops; the view from one to the other can be lovely, even spectacular, but traversing that space can still be difficult from the steepness of the grade or from obstacles on the path.  So it is in Tallahassee, Florida, where on one peak of College...

Getting to U

The transit map for Madison, Wisconsin shows a thick gray band running along University Avenue south of the University of Wisconsin, Madison (UW).  Far from a blank on the map, it actually represents a space so dense with bus routes – 13 weekday routes – that any attempt to represent each of them would have rendered an illegible, varicolored spaghetti.  Metro, the City of Madison’s transit...

Ye Olde Transit Village

     Park Street Station, 1903. The state house is in the distance. Photo from Library of Congress.   When it Comes to TOD, Boston’s Track Record Is Uncommonly Good    Dover Street Station on Boston's Orange Line, the city's first elevated line. This was the last of the elevated stations and marks the height of Boston's first wave of transit planning and construction. Photo from...