massurban:

SF Examiner:

San Francisco lays out $200 million in bike projects in next 5 years

Will Reisman.  Jan 27, 2013

The City is proposing $200 million worth of changes to its cycling network in the next five years.

Building 12 new miles of bike lanes, upgrading 50 miles of existing paths and installing more than 20,000 new racks are all part of the plan.

Biking has increased by 71 percent since 2006, and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which manages cycling policies in The City, is hoping to build out its network to meet the demand.

At the board of directors’ annual workshop meeting Tuesday, the agency is expected to discuss potential scenarios for bicycling expansion.

As part of its five-year strategic plan, the agency proposes to upgrade 50 intersections to accommodate bicycles and deploy and maintain 2,750 bikes as part of a grab-and-go bike-sharing network.”

Photo: Anna Latino/ Special to the S.F. Examiner

A city committed to bike infrastructure. I love it. I want more bikes!

thegreenurbanist:

invaderjones:

fiend4bikes:

The Mythical MBTA Bike Train! (by Lovely Bicycle!)

Would this be so hard?

What a fantastic idea!

Can we get this on Amtrak trains too please?!

massurban:

“Why U.S. Transit Systems Are Still So Far Away From Converting to Driverless Trains

Stephen Smith. July 9, 2012

With Google priming Nevada to be the first state to allow driverless cars on its roads, transit fans could be forgiven for asking: Where are the driverless trains?

The technology is relatively simple and has been around for decades. Unlike cars, which are autonomous and proceed on sight alone, railways must be centrally controlled to prevent collisions. So while a driverless car is limited by how far its sensors can “see,” the central computer that directs driverless trains is fully aware of all trains on its tracks, removing much of the guesswork.

The United States doesn’t yet have any fully automated trains outside of a few airport shuttles and small-scale “people movers,” but Europe and Asia have adopted the technology quite readily. European firms like Italy’s AnsaldoBreda and France’s Matra (now owned by Siemens) pioneered the technology, and which operates on six continents. Africa’s first system, in Algiers, opened in November of last year.

The obvious advantage of driverless trains over their manned counterparts is that transit agencies don’t have to pay drivers. Upgrading to driverless requires a large upfront investment, and still requires humans to act as engineers, maintenance workers, janitors, and station managers. But after the investment is made, eliminating the driver position offers agencies flexibility and riders much more frequent service.

During rush hour, the main impediment to more service is the number of trains an agency owns, and in some cases tracks that simply can’t handle any more traffic. But during off-peak hours, it’s the cost of putting drivers on each train that determines how often the trains come.

Driverless service eliminates these costs, “break[ing] the connection between frequency and labor costs,” as transit consultant Jarrett Walker put it. Vancouver’s driverless SkyTrain network, for example, has off-peak headways that would make Americans drool with envy. Riders on the Expo and Millennium trunk line never have to wait more than 5 minutes for a train, even late at night – a frequency that would be prohibitively expensive without driverless trains.”

Via: The Atlantic

Photo: Reuters

This is sort of a silly question because it assumes that the federal, state, and local governments are interested in investing in infrastructure improvements. While there certainly are a lot of people who understand that America’s failing infrastructure is holding us back, most lawmakers aren’t interested. From California and Wisconsin arguing about high speed rail to the people of Virginia barely consenting to build the Metro out to Dulles airport to Congress’ stripping down the transportation bill politicians have shown over and over that they a) have no interest in improving America and b) have no long-term vision. 

curiousaleta:

massurban:

“Public Transportation Systems Are Leaving People With Disabilities Behind

Sarah Laskow. May 10, 2012

To use New York City’s paratransit service—the on-demand public transportation system for people who can’t use the bus or the subway system—a customer must call one to two days in advance, between the hours of 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. She can request a pickup time or submit an appointment time by which she must reach her destination, but not both. The driver will pick her up anywhere from 30 minutes before to 30 minutes after the agreed-upon time. If anything changes, the customer must call three hours in advance to cancel the trip.

That’s more hassle than most people would put up with to visit a doctor or have dinner at a restaurant or go to the store. And that’s how the system is supposed to work. Before the Americans with Disabilities Act passed more than 20 years ago, there was no guarantee that public transit would serve disabled people at all. The ADA required paratransit service as a supplement to public transportation systems, as well as increased access on regular public transit routes for people with disabilities.

But advocates for disabled people are still fighting for better transportation options. At last count, there were 2 million people with disabilities in the United States who never leave their homes. More than a quarter—560,000 people—say that’s because of transportation difficulties. The American Association of People with Disabilities notesin a new report that only 20 percent of Amtrak stations have complied with ADA standards. Major subway systems are only required to make “key” stations accessible.

And for people with disabilities—particularly those who use wheelchairs—taxis are rarely an option. In New York City, for example, only 233 of more than 13,000 taxis are wheelchair-accessible, less than 2 percent of the city’s taxi fleet. The nonprofit Disability Rights Advocates brought a lawsuit against the city, which controls the taxi fleet through a licensing system, demanding that number be increased. Late last year, a district judge ruled that city must create a comprehensive plan for providing taxi service to the disabled. 

New York is in the middle of designing the “Taxi of Tomorrow,” a fuel-efficient cab decked out with USB ports and other luxuries. At one point, it looked like these cabs might be wheelchair-accessible, but the Mayor’s office wasn’t particularly interested in prioritizing that. Now, Comptroller John Liu (a likely candidate in next year’s mayoral election) says he’ll block the taxi contract unless all new cabs can accommodate wheelchairs. 

Part of the reason it’s so difficult for public transit system to serve people with disabilities is that they’re woefully underfunded. It’s important that cities make it possible for people to get around without cars in order to create dense neighborhoods and keep pollution down. But it’s also important that those systems don’t leave people with disabilities stranded in their homes or on a street corner, unable to get where they need to go.”

Via: GOOD Magazine

Photo: via (cc) Flickr user man pikin

Let’s not forget about people who need a little extra accommodation to get from here to there.

fyeahtrains:

A Shinkansen 700T on a test run of the Taiwan High Speed Railway.

America needs high speed rail. The Acela is NOT HSR. 

I’ve only taken Taiwan’s HSR once, but it was awesome. It was right after it opened (like the second day it was open to the general public) and I went from Taipei to Kaohsiung in under 2 hours. That used to be like a 5 hour trip. How awesome would it be to reduce travel times by more than half in the US? 

publicradiointernational:

kateoplis:

On the streets of Beijing: an electric tricycle

Where can we get one?

This is kind of awesome. 

thisbigcity:

Is this the world’s newest Bus Rapid Transit system? Opened in May 2011, Cape Town is hoping to transform public transport. More on This Big City.

這是全球最新的公車捷運系統嗎？南非開普敦的系統於2011年5月啟用，希望改善大眾運輸。全文請見《城事》。

This summer I used the BRT system in Bogota. It was so easy to use and convenient. The fact that I rarely needed to wait more than a few minutes for a bus made all the difference. Missing your bus and then having to wait 30-40 minutes for the next one sucks and makes it hard to recruit new riders. I hope that Cape Town continues to build its capacity so that it can become a model for other African cities.

via The Atlantic Cities: You Already Own the Next Important Transportation Planning Tool

It’s your cellphone. This is really awesome data gathered from (de-identified) cell phone gps that shows common travel routes and can help planners identify travel and congestion planners.