First is Worst

“Don’t ever, ever be the first to try out a new technology in transit,” Gregory Thompson told me over lunch.  I had just started my first job at a transit agency and we were about to be the first in the country to install a major technological upgrade to our system (I won’t say what).  My former professor was not happy to hear this.  He worked for BART in the 1970s when they were the first...

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...

Charter Rules

The breathtaking view from the sky of Husky Stadium, a multimodal place on gameday. That could be a problem. Photo by Mary Levin.         Husky Stadium is a point of convergence.  From its lofty seats sky, mountains, verdant land, and water are layered in undulating shades of blue and green; the built and the natural environments blend as multi-story towers wave through the trees; and here...