Human Transit

damascus: cars banned from the old city

2010-03-12T22:35:49+11:00

The Syrian newspaper Baladna launched a new English edition in December. The first issue is on the web, and features a story about the Damascus mayor's plan to ban cars from the narrow streets old city.

If Syria is an alien place to you, this article will make it feel completely familiar. In the interviews with restaurant owners, shopkeepers, and tourism operators, everyone says exactly what they would say if this were proposed in any other city in the world.

On some level, every city wants to believe that its transport issues are local, special, distinctive, when in fact the same issues can be found all over the world. Most transport issues arise from basic problems of geometry and economics. Your city may be a unique and wonderful place, but unless you're inventing new geometry or economics, your transport problems will probably look pretty familiar to a traveling consultant like me.

Example: Inner cities built at a pedestrian scale do not have room for everyone (or even most people) to take 12 square meters of real estate for their car, unless of course these cities are largely abandoned. That much is just geometry. The basic elements of urban economic activity are also more similar than different. Every city needs a range of transport options at different time/cost tradeoffs, and also needs to handle deliveries, all within streets that are valued as places more than as transport facilities. So it shouldn't be surprising that the debate about closing streets to cars sounds pretty much the same from one culture to another.

A later issue of Baladna (apparently available only in print) features a plan to replace microbuses with fewer larger buses -- also a common reform happening throughout the developing world. The overpromising is also common: The "ministry expects the capital to be ... traffic jam free by the end of next year." Stay tuned.

willingness to pay for transit improvements

2010-03-12T12:00:57+11:00

Do your city's political leaders understand what funding sources people would support if they knew what they were buying? A few weeks ago, the Source (a blog by the Los Angeles transit agency Metro) reported on a survey showing that current riders would pay 50c more in fares for a doubling of their frequency of service. This isn't as encouraging as it sounds, because a doubling of frequency, even with significant ridership increases as a result, will cost a lot more than 50 cents per new rider. But it's a useful soundbite. These questions, broadly called "willingness to pay" questions, need to be asked more, and more probingly.

In the recent Sydney Morning Herald Inquiry into Sydney public transport, we did some deep probing of public opinion on willingness to pay. Our survey experts at the University of Sydney's Centre for the Study of Choice took 2400 randomly selected people through a series of questions designed to observe the value they attach to different kinds of public transit improvements, and what taxes or fees could be higher, and by how much, if the money were clearly going to those improvements. The methodology, called a discrete choice experiment, is designed to avoid some of the usual biases in these questions. The method and its results explained toward the end of Chapter 1, here.

Ultimately, these findings determined the shape of our recommended 30-year investment plan. The most fundamental recommendations are (a) that Sydney needs a major transit investment program, funded largely by a range of increased state taxes and user fees, and (b) the plan must be dominated by transit, not roads.

We made these recommendations not just because of our own analysis and desires, but because that's the overwhelming preference of the public. Throughout the project, we recommended only things that could be funded using sources that, according to the survey, would get majority support, if the funding was clearly tied to the improvements. We concluded that if voters could vote up or down on that package of fees and taxes, to be used exclusively to build the specified transit lines, a majority would say yes.

For better or worse, Australians are not used to voting on specific initiatives. There have been national referenda on major national issues, including famous ones such as the granting of full rights to Aboriginals (passed in 1967) and the creation of a republic in place of the British crown (defeated in 1999). But there is no precedent for voting on state and local issues like how to fund the construction and operations of transit. Most Australian transit agencies are not separate governments entitled to certain funding, as they typically are in North America. Instead, transit is managed by state government direction. It's just one of many things funded out of the state's general revenues, and the elected government decides how that revenue is spent.

During the last year, watching the state and local budget crises across the United States, I've come to appreciate the stability of the Australian approach. Popular votes on specific taxes and spending have tied the state of California in knots, to the point where the task of government is almost impossible. American transit agencies that rely on a specific tax, usually some form of sales or payroll tax, experience huge swings in revenue, so at least once a decade they find themselves slashing service. This doesn't happen in Australia, or at least not as visibly. Service doesn't improve dramatically in better times, and isn't slashed as badly when times are bad.

But the Australian system is not so good at expressing a public consensus to raise taxes and fees for a specific purpose. Such a consensus clearly exists in Sydney to move forward on major transit investment. If the voters could set up a funding stream to do this and an agency tasked with doing it, as would happen in many American states, then we would be on our way. Instead, we have to wait for one of the competing major parties to embrace such an investment plan. The parties, however, aren't focused on the whole of public opinion; they're focused quite narrowly on marginal seats, the relatively small number of voters whose judgments will turn the election, and this is a very different polity than the city as a whole.

Sooner or later, I suspect Sydney will need to have some sort of referendum to put the funding sources in place to fund a decent transit expansion program. Based on our work in the Inquiry, which assessed the public's willingness to pay and then crafted an infrastructure plan to fit it, such a referendum could pass. But I certainly don't see the way to that in the Australian political system, nor does either of the major parties seem ready to take the lead.

new media and transit complaints

2010-03-11T01:09:59+11:00

So you just had a bad transit experience. A driver was rude to you. Your bus was early so you missed it. Your bus was late and missed the train connection. Or even worse: your bus is scheduled to miss the train connection.

Over at Planning Pool, (via Streetsblog) they're suggesting a new way to express your frustration in real time, on Twitter.

One of my favorite planning-related hashtags is #transitFAIL. The purpose of #transitFAIL is to publicize where public transportation fails its customers and users. It’s a particularly effective tool, because you can use SMS messaging or use a web-enabled smartphone to instantaneously tell the world about how transit just let you down. Some smartphones can even take photos or videos and upload them to Twitter, too.

Smart transit providers will use this feedback to improve their service and see where the problems are. I’d like to see transit providers use Twitter to notify people about service changes or delays, too.

Sounds great if your goal is to express your frustration with an illusion of impact. If thinking that you have "told the world" helps you get on with your day, then fine. But who in the world will care, and what do you expect them to do about it?

Planning Pool provides this sample of the tag's output, most of it completely useless to a transit agency that wants to do better.

Thanks, Scott Bradford, but what bus stop, and at what time? And thanks, "stevevirtue", but what are TTC and GO Transit supposed to do when you tell them, without details, that they've screwed up? Feel bad so you can feel better?

Your transit provider probably does care, but here's the hard truth:

Useful feedback often takes more than 140 characters, so maybe Twitter's not the right tool.

For example, comments about a specific transit experience are useless, and therefore utterly without impact, unless you've noted the line number and a way to identify the specific trip on the line. This can be either a reference to the schedule ("the scheduled 7:05 trip from 1st & Elm") or the vehicle number (the unique number painted on the bus, ferry or railcar).

All this is especially important if your complaint is about unacceptable behavior by a driver. It's frustrating for a transit agency to get a serious complaint without the information they need to identify the driver in question. Your transit agency can use your complaint as evidence if it wants to discipline the driver, but only if you've given them the information they need.

So decide what you want. If you want your comment to matter, provide the information that the agency needs to act on it, including contact details so they can follow up with you if needed. Your transit agency certainly has an email address for these comments, and may even have a number to receive texts from your phone. If you want to spew something useful on @transitFAIL, spew those addresses and tell people to send their stories there.

On the other hand, if you just want to get rid of your anger, by all means tweet it into space with #transitFAIL. But you've done nothing to improve your transit system.

seattle suburbs: the silence of sundays

2010-03-09T10:44:20+11:00

Community Transit, which serves most of the northern suburbs of Seattle, is shutting down completely on Sundays. This wouldn't be unusual in a small-city transit system, but CT's service area (most of Snohomish County) is a big suburban expanse with about half a million people. It has enough transit demand to support a low-end Bus Rapid Transit line, called Swift, which will presumably not run on Sundays either.

This is a fairly dramatic step by North American standards. Local transit in suburban areas generally appeals to people with few choices, but many, many of these people work in low-wage jobs in the service sector, such as restaurants and big-box retail. These business are open seven days a week and often are often busiest on weekends, so most of their employees have to do some weekend shifts. A transit system that doesn't run on Sundays will no longer be useful to these people. Based on what I've seen elsewhere, most of them will find other arrangements, and CT is likely to lose them on all five days a week that they travel, not just Sunday. Some, those without any good transport options, may lose their jobs.

I hope CT or some other local government researches what happens to these riders when Sunday service ends. The best approach might be to survey the Sunday riders before the service stops, asking them for follow-up contacts so that they can be interviewed again a few months in the future. This would not only provide good data for other agencies facing the need to cut service, but would also be a nice way for the agency to convey some concern for the well-being of these customers.

children on transit: a personal note

2010-03-06T12:17:40+11:00

A few days back, frequent commenter Engineer Scotty did a much discussed guest post on the problems of travelling with small children on transit. He suggested, I thought, a reasonable range of accommodations that transit agencies should make (many of them good things to do anyway) and also talked through some things the parent can do to make the situation easier.

Scotty has twins, so he often drives a double-wide stroller/pram. To people who don't like the company of small children, a double-wide pram seems to evoke the same emotions that a Hummer evokes in car-haters like myself. It seems huge, excessive, "in your face." As Scotty observes, it can get on a bus in pretty much the way a wheelchair does, but like a wheelchair it takes a lot of space and demands some accommodation from other passengers if the bus is crowded.

It's been interesting to watch this post's reception for several reasons. First of all, a lot of this blog is about explaining concepts that not everyone has thought about, and on which many don't have a strongly-held view. But when the subject is children on transit, everyone's interested and everyone has an opinion. Scotty's post was featured by Streetsblog, and it drove my traffic to a level not seen since Portland shock-blogger Jack Bogdanski attacked me for suggesting he pay the real price of parking in downtown Portland.

But it's also been interesting because if Scotty pushed his double-wide into a room where I was sitting -- a bus, a train, a restaurant -- I'd instinctively try to move as far away as possible. I seem to have a condition called hyperacusis. It means that I hear sounds as being louder they are, high pitches in particular. A sudden high-pitched sound is literally painful, and from the reaction on my face when that happens you'd think I'd just been stabbed. Young children make sudden high-pitched sounds all the time, so it's often painful to be around them. I can have the same response to women who are inclined to soprano bursts of excitement. Not surprisingly, I have no children of my own, and my closest female friends are all mellow contraltos.

Now, reading the last paragraph, you may have the same reaction that many people have when hearing of someone else's disability: Sorry to hear that, must be tough for you, perhaps there should be organizations to help you out, but really, there's a limit to the accommodation you can expect in a public place.

That's exactly what used to be said to people in wheelchairs, but in the 1980s they pushed back hard and got a range of legislation -- including the transformative Americans with Disabilities Act -- that guaranteed their accommodation in public space, and their right to be treated as equal citizens rather than objects of pity.

I suppose I could start a campaign to have hyperacusis treated as a disability under those laws, but the changes I'd need to adapt public space to my disability would be too destructive to other people's equal enjoyment. Children make sudden high-pitched noises that hurt me, but children are also a necessary part of society and need to feel welcomed if they're to grow into healthy adults. A society in which hyperacusis was a fully accommodated disability would be a society where "children should be seen and not heard" -- a sentiment that was common in my grandparents' generation but that now seems uptight, Victorian.

What this means for me is that people with children -- and groups of excited young women -- often cause me to move away. I adapt, defer, and if possible, avoid. When I enter a cafe or bus, I immediately scan the space for children and groups of young women, and identify the spot most distant from them. If I'm already there and they sit near me, I may move; in a worst case, I may feel I'm being chased around the space, or even chased out. The other day in a cafe in Sydney, one such woman saw me moving away from her and asked if she and her friends had been too loud. So I actually had the opportunity to explain all this: No, you're not too loud; you're a young woman making sounds that young women make; I'm just unusually sensitive to loud, high sounds. I'm grateful to her for making me articulate this. Most of the time, when moving to avoid painful sounds, I just have to accept being perceived as an angry, uptight killjoy.

What does this mean for public spaces like transit? Transit is the consummate public space, but it's enclosed and constrained by its transport function; more like a cafe than a public square. It's likely to put us in direct contact with difference, including differences we find painful. This is why transit was a major battlefield in struggles over segregation and apartheid. Transit remains a site of anxiety about being near people who are different, and who behave differently.

Every society finds an ethical line between differences we can object to (certain levels of rudeness, hygiene, noise) and those differences that we are expected to welcome (not just race, class, age and gender but language, body type, styles of dress, styles of behavior, and of course a range of disabilities, not including mine). There are a lot of subtler lines that are hard to draw, because they're matters of social convention that properly shift over time and space. Does people's right to speak their own language extend to profanity, for example? I've seen people thrown off of buses in Texas simply for saying f**k, while in most big cities, that word is just normal urban noise.

Everyone who gets on a transit vehicle is already consenting to substantial accommodation and compromise. Some of us are even consenting to a high risk of pain. Successful transit is crowded, so it puts us in confrontation with difference, and sometimes, for some of us, the results can be physically painful. Yet I see no alternative to transit, and no alternative to children, so I'll also advocate for Scotty's right to bring his young kids onto a bus with me, even though I'll try to move away if he does.

(Photo: lauratitian via Flickr)

sydney: grid networks for gridless cities

2010-03-04T07:21:00+11:00

Whenever I talk about the value of grid networks, as I did here, someone always says: But my city isn't a grid. For example, Sydney, where I live now, is about as ungridlike a city as you'll encounter. In fact, there's no large system of order in Sydney's road network at all. Some roads follow what were once Aboriginal tracks, but mostly it just grew, one bit at a time, an accretion of millions of short-term decisions.

One of Sydney's biggest problems is that the road network is so focused on the CBD (top-centre in this image) that traffic is forced into the CBD that doesn't want to be there. But the problem is much, much worse if you're a transit passenger. As part of the Sydney Morning Herald's Independent Public Inquiry, discussed here, I did a quick review of the inner-city bus network looking for the pattern of frequent service -- service that runs every 15 minutes or better all day. The frequent network is the portion of the network where you don't have to worry about a timetable, and where transit can therefore be used with some sense of spontaneity and freedom. To my knowledge, nobody had drawn a map of inner Sydney's frequent network before. It turned out to look like this:

If you want to get around with any spontaneity in the inner part of Sydney -- where densities are highest, obstacles to driving are greatest, and car-free lifestyles should be most attractive -- the network forces you to go through the CBD (the yellow wedge on the north edge of the drawing). In the whole inner city of Sydney there is only one frequent crosstown or orbital service -- one that runs perpendicular to the radial lines, like the circular element of a spider web. It's highlighted in yellow. By contrast, most major North American and European cities have a whole grid of these orbital services, and they are often the most productive routes in the network, in terms of ridership per unit of operating cost.

As part of the inquiry, I sketched a map to give just a taste of what an inner city frequent grid network might look like for Sydney. It's not a proposal, just a possible starting point for thinking about one. But if you can't imagine doing a grid network in a gridless city, you might find it interesting to stare at for a bit. (All this is in the Preliminary Report of the Inquiry, in Section 4.2, and readers interested in the local detail are encouraged to dig there.)

Sydney's road network is so radial, and the CBD is such a large destination, that the grid takes more of a spider-web form (as defined here). I highlighted this in the diagram by using black and red for radial lines and all the other colours for orbitals, so that people could see how orbital services might work and how they could all fit together, with each other and with commuter rail and light rail, to form a complete inner city network.

But in the middle part of the map you'll notice some lines that do try to run straight east-west, even though the lacerated street network requires you to make many turns to keep going the same direction. As I explored in more detail here, most grid networks involve a fusion of standard rectangular grid lines and spider-web (or polar grid) lines. The rectangular lines express a "serve everywhere" impulse, while the spider-web lines express a "focus on the centre" impulse, and network design is a process of finding the balance and making them work together.

There are many ways to design such a pattern for Sydney. A detailed planning effort would feature months of work exploring various options, but what I sketched here, based on three years' observation of the inner city and about three hours of focused thought, is at least a step toward visualizing the future.

So yes, your city may not be a grid. But still, if you want a transit network that's useful for going at high frequencies from anywhere to anywhere, the answer will be some kind of grid, built on connections, with some mix of rectangular and spider-web elements, all fitted with more or less struggle to the unique shape of your city.

madison: new regional agency off to a good start

2010-03-03T21:22:33+11:00

A new regional transit authority for the Madison, Wisconsin region is about to meet for the first time. The Dane County Regional Transit Authority will take responsibility for all transit development for Madison and its suburbs, though it sounds like the City of Madison will retain control of its transit operations for now.

The best news? The press tried to whip up technology wars by asking each new board member: "Should a regional transit system begin with a focus on expanded bus service or commuter rail?" Most of the board members refused to divide up the world that way, insisting that they were open to whatever form of transit best met the needs. If the new board can keep its focus on results instead of technologies, they'll go far.

guest post: families and children on transit

2010-03-03T11:06:02+11:00

This guest post is by EngineerScotty, a software engineer and part-time transportation geek from the Portland, Oregon area. He is a frequent commenter here on Human Transit.

I'm a father of several small children, including twin boys (now four years old). [Not those in the picture -- JW] Using public transit provides parents with several challenges not faced by childless passengers; and conversely, families with children provide transit authorities with challenges--and opportunities--that are unique. In a recent thread on PortlandTransport.com, one poster, a dedicated urbanist with a bit of a temper, made it clear to myself and other parents that he considered kids--our "screaming brats" as he put it--unwelcome on transit.

The exchange got me thinking about the particular issues facing parents who use transit--whether by choice or due to economic necessity. This blog has covered a few family-related subjects, such as the issues faced in New York when schoolchildren take public transit rather than dedicated school buses and the situation is not managed well, but families and children haven't been dealt with in a systematic fashion here. In many cities, especially those without a strong transit culture (and the land-use patterns needed to make that a reality), having a larger family can be an obstacle to transit use--and in many places, it's assumed that having children invariably means a move to the suburbs. This is unfortunate, for several reasons, so this article examines several ways that a transit agency can help attract and keep families as customers--and why it is worth the effort.

In this post, I'll frequently refer to TriMet, our local transit agency--your own agency's policies may differ. TriMet is actually a reasonably-friendly transit system in several important ways--but as always, there is room for improvement

Riding the bus or train with children

Taking children along onto transit vehicles can prevent several difficulties, aside from the obvious hassle of herding the kids around in a crowded place. (Packing small kids in and out of a minivan also has its difficulties, believe me). The most obvious hassle is that depending on the transit system, traveling with children may require an extra fare be paid (or an extra pass be acquired). TriMet permits children under 7 to ride free with a paying adult passenger, and children under 18 (along with certain qualifying students 18 and older) travel at a reduced price (and may travel alone). TriMet has a few other family-friendly fare policies, which I will get into in a moment.

Beyond the potential added expense, there are numerous other practical difficulties involved with taking children on the bus or on the train. Older vehicles, especially the high-floor variety, often have difficulty accommodating strollers and such; even when they are accommodated, loading and unloading of strollers may require use of the wheelchair lift. Double-wide strollers, for those of us with twins, are especially difficult to take on board. And even if strollers aren't involved, safe travel with small kids generally requires that the kids sit; whereas grownups traveling alone can cram into a crush-loaded train, that isn't a sane option if you've got a preschooler with you. Which often means waiting for the next train...

...which brings us to the topic of service frequency. Waiting for the bus is unpleasant. Waiting for the bus with a tired toddler is far more so. While low service frequency is a barrier for anybody, its especially true for parents traveling with kids, for whom reading a book or playing with your iPhone isn't an option. When you're dealing with small children, low service frequency has one other drawback--small children have a tendency to throw tantrums, dirty their diapers, need to go to the restroom (now!)--and when this occurs, the proper course of action for the parent is to get off the bus or train, take care of the problem, and catch the next one. With frequent vehicles and stations with basic amenities, not a big deal. If the next bus is a half-hour later, and the only restroom is in a 7-11 near a bus stop in a bad neighborhood, it's a big deal and often a deal-breaker.

Land use issues

Jarrett often points out that land-use outcomes, more than transit planning, dictate transit outcomes--and this has a significant effect on the family-friendliness of transit--and the effect on working families. A recent report by the Center for Housing Policy found that for every dollar a working family saves on housing, it spends 77 cents on transportation, and a 2003 report from the Surface Transportation Policy Project found that working families spend 19.3 cents of every dollar on transportation.

In some cities, the transit friendly neighborhoods (the nice ones, anyway) tend to cater to a demographic that tends to be childless. Portland's Pearl District is an excellent example: it is well-served by transit, has lots of fine dining, shopping, art galleries, clubs, and other trappings of the "yuppie" lifestyle. It also has zero public schools, is full of tiny apartments, and has few businesses and other amenities which cater to children. (Portland Public Schools will reportedly open a school there in 2011). Some residents LIKE it that way, of course--but it's not a convenient place to raise kids. Suburbia, on the other hand, is VERY attractive to parents, with low-traffic cul-de-sacs, larger houses (often with yards), etc... but the things that make the suburbs attractive to families are devastating to good transit outcomes. Unfortunately, even in a relatively progressive city such as Portland, much new housing is suburban sprawl, not urban infill. It seems to be a pattern in many US cities, residential units large enough to be attractive to families typically are freestanding homes, not apartments, and are located in the suburbs. Larger dwelling units in the inner city are often scarce and expensive. And once you move to the suburbs, that minivan practically becomes essential.

One other relevant fact about having kids--you have a built-in carpool. In some ways, hauling the kids around in a car is arguably "less bad" for the environment than the driver-only trips that dominate commutes. On the other hand, in many cases, such trips involve either a) grownups transporting children to destinations (the kids are too young to travel by themselves) or b) grownups bringing children along on errands, in lieu of arranging for childcare--so the additional trips may not be useful in the sense that everyone in the car is being productively moved around.

The importance of families

Some may dismiss families with children as an unlikely (or undesirable) transit demographic, and propose that transit agencies instead focus on those demographics more likely to be transit-compatible, such as childless families and commuters. However, there are several problems with doing so.

Families who make the decision to move to the burbs are more likely to abandon transit altogether. A car will be a necessity--and then a second car will often become attractive. At that point, even the morning and evening commute for the family breadwinner(s) may be instead done by automobile.
Many trips made by families, especially daytime errands with smaller children, are made during off-peak hours--an important consideration for agencies trying to load-balance (which is pretty much every agency).
Children who grow up comfortable with transit are more likely to use it as adults; those who grow up in the suburbs--and whose main exposure to "transit" is an uncomfortable yellow school bus--are more likely to continue an auto-centric lifestyle when they grow up.
Families with children are an important political constituency as well. If they have no stake in good public transit, they are less likely to support it with their votes or their tax dollars.
Children who are of sufficient age to travel alone, but aren't old enough to drive a car, are a natural transit constituency. [I began riding the buses across Portland every day when I was about 9 years old. -- JW]

What can agencies do?

How can transit agencies (and other governmental agencies) improve things for families (beyond the obvious thing of more frequent and more comprehensive service)?

Family-friendly fare structures. Permit small children to ride free or at reduced price. Sell family passes, entitling the entire household to travel on transit (together or separately). Consider lower prices for off-peak travel. (If congestion pricing is a good idea for motorists, why not for transit users as well?)
Make it easy to exit a bus or train (in order to take care of a child who needs a time-out or a restroom) and board a following vehicle, without any additional charge--including for cash fares. TriMet does well here--a single use ticket is actually a pass to use the system for up to two hours; so exiting and re-boarding on the same fare is not a problem. (Parents should be sure to obtain a transfer from the driver when boarding a bus; nothing special need be done for MAX light rail or the Streetcar).
Better transit marketing towards families--make it clear they are welcome and valued. Enforce the rules; make sure transit is not an uncomfortable place for parents. Keep the vehicles clean. Honolulu's TheBus system does well here, though the intense density of Hawaii's largest city doesn't hurt, either.
Transit-tracker and similar technologies are very helpful, especially on lines with low frequency. It's much more pleasant to wait for a bus with a child if you can DO something with the child besides sitting at a bus stop, and if nothing else, you have an answer to the inevitable repetition of "when is the bus coming, Daddy?"
Make sure drivers are aware of child-related issues, and have training to deal with things like lost or separated children. TriMet recently turned a potential negative incident into a positive one, after a child was left stranded on a MAX train when the door closed between the child and the parent. Fortunately, other passengers on the train noticed what happened, helped the child off at the next stop, and waited for the parent to catch the following train. The driver call button--which the parent had pressed--was not responded to; an investigation revealed that the call button was functional and simply ignored by the driver. To its credit, TriMet fired the driver. Many transit agencies are unwilling or unable to discipline drivers for acts of misconduct or negligence such as this.
Encourage development of dense, family-friendly housing and neighborhoods, and ensure that ample residential developments are located close to transit hubs.
Make more agreements with schools to provide transportation, where feasible. Like in New York, TriMet provides bus service for students attending Portland Public Schools--PPS does not operate yellow busses (at least not for general student transport). Unlike the New York City case, where transporting schoolchildren was an underfunded mandate, the school district pays the transit agency for the service (and probably saves both agencies a fair bit of money). And the school district has staggered bell times, so the load on TriMet is spread out a bit more.

What can parents do?

Of course, parents need to be responsible passengers as well. If your child is ill, keep him or her home (unless the trip is medically necessary). If the child starts to misbehave on the bus or train, take him off until he calms down (often times, being removed from a bus for bad behavior--or even the threat of doing so--will be sufficient to correct the problem). Don't permit children to disturb other passengers. Basic courtesy goes a long way. That said, trips on transit can be a positive experience for kids, especially when there's zoom and whoosh involved.

Families are an important demographic for transit, and one which is often ignored--or written off as too auto-dependent to bother with. But they can be valuable customers to have, for many reasons. Many of the policies which benefit families will also benefit commuters and other riders not traveling with children, improving the value of transit for all.

(Photo 1: lauratitian via Flickr)

(Photo 2: http://www.flickr.com/photos/labanex/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 )

vancouver: olympic transit payoffs

2010-03-01T16:23:44+11:00

Why should a growing city with high ambitions for sustainability host a big blockbuster like the Olympics, with all the risk and nuisance that it entails?

So that everyone can see exceptional transit ridership, and exceptional volumes of pedestrians, and exceptional limitations on private car traffic, and can ask: "What if that were normal?" Here's how Gordon Price put it yesterday:

“You now have a public that sees the possibility,” said (SFU City Program director Gordon Price).

“We just conducted the greatest controlled traffic experiment in North America.”

In a growing city, a big event like the Olympics is an imperfect but vivid glimpse of what "normal" might be like 10, 20, 30 years in the future, when there will be that many people moving every day.

Vancouver's record transit ridership is a fun fact during the Olympics, but afterward it will be a useful fact. When planning the city of the future, people can say "we'll have 1.7 million people on transit every day," and it won't be just a number. Everyone will remember what that looked like, how it felt, and the effort required to achieve it. Many Olympic statistics will be useful in this way.

Obviously, 1.7 million people commuting every day will feel a lot different from huge masses of people pouring out of stadiums. In many respects, a "routine" daily patronage that size would be easier to handle than the Olympics.

The political challenge of urbanist planning, at its core, is the need to visualize a future city that is bigger, denser, more economically active, more intense in every way than the city citizens know today. Planners know now to visualize that, often with be benefit of other cities' experience, but too often, all we can do is recite numbers: future populations, future trip generation, future ridership. To the average voter, these numbers are abstractions faintly tinged with fear. Will I want to live in a city that's that big, or that intense? How can I know?

The memory of the Olympics will bring some of those numbers down to earth. Now, everyone in Vancouver has experienced a day with 1.7 million people on transit, so similar numbers will have some meaning to people who don't normally deal in abstractions.

The memories of the Olympic crowds on transit will probably include many features that citizens won't want in their everyday life, but it will be possible to grasp the scale of how different the future might be, and how the life and infrastructure of the city will need to change as a result, and how Vancouver may, as a result, be an even better place to live.

Congratulations to everyone in Vancouver, and at its fine transit agency, TransLink, for a successful Olympic Winter Games.

Photo of street hockey in Robson Street: Price Tags.

concepción, chile: notes of an urbanist tourist

2010-02-28T23:24:00+11:00

The pleasant university and port town of Concepción, Chile appears to have gotten the worst of yesterday's earthquake. To help you visualize the news, here is the photo album from my visit there in 2004. Obviously I was looking at buses a lot, but my impression was of an educated and prosperous place with a significant interest in urban placemaking, extending far beyond the manicured Plaza de Armas that you'll find in any Chilean town.