Category Archives: Urban Transit

Bus and Rail Mantras

Posted on 2012/05/21 by

Bus is cheaper than rail. Paint is cheap. Rail only made sense a hundred years ago when construction costs were lower. Trains have no inherent advantage over buses. It doesn’t cost more to operate a bus than to operate a … Continue reading →

Posted in Incompetence, New York, Transportation, Urban Transit | 56 Comments

Where Should Streetcar Corridors Be?

Posted on 2012/04/30 by

At a meeting of some of the Greater City people about the Providence streetcar proposal, many of us had severe criticism of the current plan. The line is too short; it is S-shaped; it detours to serve a hospital that’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Providence, Transportation, Urban Transit | 39 Comments

What’s a Subway/El?

Posted on 2012/04/16 by

The rapid transit built in New York beginning with the first els codified two characteristics that spread to the rest of the US, and are often seen in other countries’ rapid transit networks as well. First, it is separate from … Continue reading →

Posted in New York, Regional Rail, Transportation, Urban Transit | 60 Comments

One-Way Pairs: the Bad and the Ugly

Posted on 2012/04/08 by

One of Jane Jacobs’ prescient observations about bus service in The Death and Life is that one-way pairs, as practiced on the avenues in Manhattan, are bad for riders. Her argument was that one-way pairs require people to walk too … Continue reading →

Posted in Incompetence, Israel, New York, Transportation, Urban Transit | 19 Comments

Surreptitious Underfunding

Posted on 2012/03/15 by

One third of the MBTA’s outstanding debt, about $1.7 billion, comes from transit projects built by the state as part of a court-imposed mitigation for extra Big Dig traffic; interest on this debt is about two-thirds the agency’s total present … Continue reading →

Posted in Cars, Politics and Society, Regional Rail, Transportation, Urban Transit | 25 Comments

Park and Rides, and Good Planning

Posted on 2012/03/02 by

Some people with experience in American bus planning have come strongly for park-and-rides, as a convenient means of concentrating all people boarding buses at one spot in order to improve frequency. The charge is led by Joel Azumah of Transport … Continue reading →

Posted in Good Transit, Incompetence, Regional Rail, Transportation, Urban Transit | 66 Comments

Macrodestinations and Microdestinations

Posted on 2012/02/24 by

In her book Dark Age Ahead, Jane Jacobs complains that freeways as built are good at getting people to macrodestinations (downtown) but not microdestinations (particular addresses within city center). In her example from Toronto, this is correct, but in general, … Continue reading →

Posted in Cars, Development, Providence, Regional Rail, Transportation, Urban Design, Urban Transit, Urbanism | 29 Comments

Trip Chaining

Posted on 2012/02/20 by

Gendered Innovations’ charts of trip chaining and gender breakdown of public transit riders got me thinking about how different systems of transportation handle a mixture of short and long trips. Eric Jaffe at The Atlantic Cities reports this and suggests … Continue reading →

Posted in Cars, Development, Good Transit, Transportation, Urban Design, Urban Transit, Urbanism | 13 Comments

MBTA Mode Shares

Posted on 2012/01/24 by

As a followup to my claim in my first post about improving the MBTA about the low mode share of commuter rail for trips into Boston, here are some figures about commuter rail use, by sector. All numbers exclude commuters … Continue reading →

Posted in Regional Rail, Transportation, Urban Transit | 3 Comments

Improving the MBTA: Electronics and Concrete

Posted on 2012/01/17 by

Where improvements in New York and other very large cities can easily include multiple new subway lines, the same is not true of Boston. The concrete pouring would be wasted, since Boston’s existing subway lines are not at capacity. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Regional Rail, Transportation, Urban Transit | 18 Comments