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Looking for awesome transit? Follow the money
Feb 06 2012
By Chris Turner
Read More: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/blogs/looking-for-awesome-transit-follow-the-money
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To put it bluntly in urban design terms, we become what we fund properly. If you insist that the only thing people want is an automobile-centred sprawl-topia, then that’s what you'll fund, and that’s the piece of the bigger urban puzzle that’ll function to its full potential. You build the nicest, shiniest suburban paradise of broad curving avenues and big-box consumer palaces you can muster, and if there’s some pittance left in the public coffers, you drop in a couple of concrete bus-stop benches and tuck a sidewalk or bike lane behind some chain link. And then say you’ve put plenty of free choice in the marketplace, and the Brooksian utopia’s still What The People Want.
- If, however, you make the alternatives just as enticing, just as user-friendly and even awesome on occasion, that’s what people choose. Younger Americans are already demanding walkable neighborhoods in record numbers. Even with transit systems and cycling infrastructure that would (and does) make a Scandinavian laugh, transit use and bike commuting is booming. So what happens when you make transit awesome? When you make it the best option? Well, I saw one answer recently in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, a city that has nowhere near the access to capital for big infrastructure projects that Houston or Los Angeles or Toronto does.
- From what I saw, automobile traffic in Guadalajara was far better than the developing world average (and nowhere close to the near-permanent free-for-all gridlock I’ve seen in Asian cities like Bangkok and Hyderabad). But because its BRT routes do the job just as well or better – with covered, comfortable stations, dedicated fast-moving lanes, and costs far less than car ownership – they’re bustling. The system was deployed in less than a year and already carries more than 130,000 passengers per day. Which, for those of us in prosperous Canadian and American cities waiting decades for rapid transit buildouts as ring roads and suburban freeways continue to dominate public funding, sounds pretty awesome indeed.
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This is a central downtown node on Guadalajara’s Macrobus network, a prime example of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), the low-cost, quickly deployed approach to awesome transit that’s swept Latin America in recent years.
Feb 06 2012
By Chris Turner
Read More: http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/blogs/looking-for-awesome-transit-follow-the-money
.....
To put it bluntly in urban design terms, we become what we fund properly. If you insist that the only thing people want is an automobile-centred sprawl-topia, then that’s what you'll fund, and that’s the piece of the bigger urban puzzle that’ll function to its full potential. You build the nicest, shiniest suburban paradise of broad curving avenues and big-box consumer palaces you can muster, and if there’s some pittance left in the public coffers, you drop in a couple of concrete bus-stop benches and tuck a sidewalk or bike lane behind some chain link. And then say you’ve put plenty of free choice in the marketplace, and the Brooksian utopia’s still What The People Want.
- If, however, you make the alternatives just as enticing, just as user-friendly and even awesome on occasion, that’s what people choose. Younger Americans are already demanding walkable neighborhoods in record numbers. Even with transit systems and cycling infrastructure that would (and does) make a Scandinavian laugh, transit use and bike commuting is booming. So what happens when you make transit awesome? When you make it the best option? Well, I saw one answer recently in Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city, a city that has nowhere near the access to capital for big infrastructure projects that Houston or Los Angeles or Toronto does.
- From what I saw, automobile traffic in Guadalajara was far better than the developing world average (and nowhere close to the near-permanent free-for-all gridlock I’ve seen in Asian cities like Bangkok and Hyderabad). But because its BRT routes do the job just as well or better – with covered, comfortable stations, dedicated fast-moving lanes, and costs far less than car ownership – they’re bustling. The system was deployed in less than a year and already carries more than 130,000 passengers per day. Which, for those of us in prosperous Canadian and American cities waiting decades for rapid transit buildouts as ring roads and suburban freeways continue to dominate public funding, sounds pretty awesome indeed.
.....
This is a central downtown node on Guadalajara’s Macrobus network, a prime example of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), the low-cost, quickly deployed approach to awesome transit that’s swept Latin America in recent years.
