Should Transit be Free?

Jarrett Walker at Human Transit has an interesting article about the free-fare experiment in Guangzhou China.  They are hosting the asian games this year and in order to ease traffic, they restricted driving and made the transit free.  The ridership doubled.  That was much more than the capacity of the system and delays occurred so they canceled the free transit.

Some people think that transit should be a public service and free to the public.  Would that make you ride public transit instead of driving? 

Train Wraps for Safety

It looks like train wraps (where they ‘wrap’ a train with images for advertising or other purposes – the images do not block the windows, but covers the entire train) are not just for advertising.  Here is an article about a new safety message being implemented by Valley Metro in Phoenix.

I wonder if having the train wrapped like that would have helped a pedestrian I heard about (this was not in Phoenix).  Seems a pedestrian ran into a train.  There is a section of the alignment where the train is running alongside of car traffic and there area several streets crossing the tracks.  A pedestrian was crossing the street against the light, and running to avoid the cars, when she ran right into the side of the train.  She fell, the train operator stopped to see if she was ok, and she ran off apparently not injured.  Probably more embarrassed than anything!

Here’s a picture of the train in Phoenix that they are hoping will remind the car drivers to stop on red!

Relieving Inner City Congestion

A very interesting article at the Transport Politic about reducing congestion in city centers.  He compares the congestion pricing used in London to the traffic limiting plan in Paris.  To very briefly summarize (go read the article, he does a much better job) – in Paris they removed a lot of the parking in the city, they created many more bike and bus lanes, thus making it more difficult to drive in the city.  It has had the intended effect of reducing traffic significantly in the city.  It is definitely an alternative to congestion pricing.

I’m not convinced that it’s a better option.  One big benefit to the congestion pricing is that London is taking the revenue from it’s congestion pricing and using it to increase transit service (since transit use increased as car traffic went down).

Here in Seattle they are talking about increasing the fee for street parking in the city (from $2.5o/hour to $4.00/hour).  I regularly go into the city and park for an hour.  I could take the bus, but then my one hour trip is now easily 2+ hours.  But if the parking rates are raised I might be inclined to take the bus for more of those trips.  (the bus costs $4 round trip).  But at least I still have the option of driving and parking should I need to.  That’s why I’m in favor of the congestion pricing (London) solution over traffic control (Paris) solution.

Do you live near a large city?  What would be your preferred solution?

No signal is no longer an excuse.

Pretty soon you will no longer be able to use the ‘no internet signal’ excuse for not working while commuting or while flying!  More and more transportation modes are adding wifi signals – so you will be able to work anywhere and everywhere!

San Jose Light Rail and Singapore Airlines are both adding wifi signals to their services (Singapore airlines I believe will charge a fee – what airline doesn’t charge a fee for everything these days.).

I love the idea of having internet on an airplane – especially for longer flights.  Just please don’t let that really loud guy in 7C use his cellphone during the flight!

Advertising on Trains

Karen Wilkinson at the Government Technology Blog has written an article about advertising on transit.  BART is looking at putting video monitors in the stations and in the trains.  It sounds like something similar to what’s in many elevators these days – news and advertising with no sound.  I think that’s a great idea to help generate some additional revenue for the transit agencies.  I do like that there’s no audio – we don’t need additional noise!

I also love it when they wrap a bus or a train.  Some of them are very original and clever!

How do you feel about having a video advertising on the train when you ride it?

Ridership Numbers Increase

Steve Hymon over at the source posted a new article about the increase in transit ridership.  I remember riding the Blue Line when I lived in LA and how crowded it was then.  I can’t imagine how crowded it must be now.

Some people think that the downturn in the economy is responsible for reducing ridership.  I think that people start taking transit to save money on gas and parking.  What’s your thought?