Transit & Travel Consulting
At long last, here is Part 3 of my bike tour of Coastal Maine in September. This episode included Acadia National Park and the final days before a two-week hiatus.
INTRO: In late August I moved out of my apartment in Boston, put about 8 boxes into storage, and took a bus to Brunswick, Maine with my bike and camping gear. By popular request for tour updates, I decided to record a series of brief, daily, mostly unedited episodes to share here. More episodes coming soon!
Despite its tremendous value and egalitarian mission, public transportation remains the only essential public service that charges a fare. The only reason we still collect fares is because we always have, ever since the early days of horse-car transit. Now, user fees make up only a small portion of total revenue yet create a significant barrier to people of all incomes and lifestyles, slow down transit and cost millions to collect -- all without any justification.
I explain why cities and towns everywhere should provide free transit services and debunk the five main arguments for the status quo.
Note: I have come to these "radical" ideas throughout my years of transit service planning and advocacy. Please listen to the episode before sending me hate mail. Thanks! But please do send me your thoughts and I will gladly share them (anonymously if you'd like).
Riders seen waiting in line pay, regardless of weather. Buses spend up to 30% of their travel time waiting to collect fares, depending on the volume of passengers.
Comments? Suggestions? Please visit CriticalTransit.com or email feedback@criticaltransit.com. Follow me Twitter @CriticalTransit and follow and support my work in Boston via TransitMatters.info. Your support goes a long way!
This episode covers from Belfast to Blue Hill, one day before reaching Bar Harbor.
INTRO: In late August I moved out of my apartment in Boston, put about 8 boxes into storage, and took a bus to Brunswick, Maine with my bike and camping gear. By popular request for tour updates, I decided to record a series of brief, daily, mostly unedited episodes to share here. Note that at the time of upload, I have completed my tour in Burlington, Vermont, and I will be compiling and uploading the remaining episodes very soon.
In late August I moved out of my apartment in Boston, put about 8 boxes into storage, and took a bus to Brunswick, Maine with my bike and camping gear. This episode covers from Brunswick to Belfast.
By popular request for tour updates, I decided to record a series of brief, daily, mostly unedited episodes to share here. Note that at the time of upload, I have completed my tour in Burlington, Vermont, and I will be compiling and uploading the episodes very soon.
Recent MBTA news and advocacy battles encouraged me to record a podcast to counter the dominant narrative. Let's review what's causing this mess and how to stop the bleeding and operate a reliable and effective network.
Why a well functioning and affordable T should matter to everyone, because we all depend on transit even if we never use it (some of the reasons). And right now it's neither.
The population of Boston has increased 10 percent since 2004 and T ridership is up 30 percent on major lines, causing severe overcrowding, yet no significant improvements have been made since at least 2000, and service quality is declining. People cite transit as a primary reason the want to live in big cities.
The MBTA is chronically underfunded, promoting inefficient operating practices such as a reliance on overtime, deferred maintenance and an inability to plan for upgrades. Instead of addressing these problems, the control board has chosen to vilify transit workers.
Rapidly rising rents and declining wages have forced large numbers of people to move to places with slow, infrequent and expensive transit service. We have repeatedly cut service and raised fares on these "low ridership" services, while ignoring others with great potential.
Fares impact everyone, including those most vulnerable to rising costs, middle class riders who are more likely to choose other options, and everyone impacted by increase traffic on our streets (i.e. everyone). Bus, subway and commuter rail fares have more than doubled since 1991, while the gas tax has increased only 3 cents. Like transit, roads and highways are heavily subsidized, yet only transit riders are being asked for more. Governor Baker says a fee is a tax, but apparently not if it's a transit fare.
Finally I discuss several alternatives to raise revenue -- focusing on better and faster service -- without increasing the fee for users. But no efficiencies will fill the $7 Billion budget gap -- and that's just to reliably run what we have, never mind desperately needed upgrades. A transit network is a valuable public service, not a business, and it's time we started treating it like one.
Comments? Suggestions? Please visit CriticalTransit.com, email feedback@criticaltransit.com. Follow me on Facebook and especially Twitter @CriticalTransit and follow and support my work in Boston via TransitMatters.info. Your support goes a long way!
Expanding our focus beyond Boston, we speak with Jeff Wood, a San Francisco-based consultant (The Overhead Wire) and operator of The Direct Transfer, a daily news source on transit, cities and urban design. Jeff also hosts Talking Headways, a weekly transportation podcast, and his work includes media, cartography, data analysis and research on transit modes and land use strategies. He also contributed to a new TCRP report on transit and land use connections (PDF).
Some topics include finding and pursuing a vision for transit, urban politics, gentrification and displacement, big project management, and achieving better bus service. Are private transit and taxis good for cities? Is there a transit space race? And an update on San Francisco's implementation of off-board fare payment on trains and buses.
Check out the Transit Matters podcast for more transportation news, analysis and interviews. We're working to build a more reliable and effective transit network in Boston. Visit Transit Matters to learn about our mission and our vision for transit, become a member and get involved.
Follow me @CriticalTransit for more frequent info and thoughts. Share this podcast: tell your friends and colleagues, and subscribe to the RSS feed to be notified of new posts and episodes.
Critical Transit resumes with Nick Pendergrast, sociologist, one-time urban planner and co-host of Progressive Podcast Australia. Nick is a lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia.
We talk about transportation and urban design, housing, demographics, social and environmental justice, related structural issues, and the importance of connecting public transit and urban planning with other progressive issues. Also, how we might go about solving the housing and transportation crises in our cities, and dealing with anti-development NIMBY types and people fearful of gentrification.
A few links from today's show: Becca Bor (clip on the history and structural issues around car-free transport); animal-only bridges in Germany; Beeliar Wetlands and Roe Highway Development (facebook); and why electric vehicles won’t solve the suburbs' transport woes (covered on Critical Transit episode 38, and we'll revisit this issue soon in the context of self-driving cars).
Listen also to my interview on episode 114 of Progressive Podcast Australia.
Follow me and my work on Twitter, Facebook and through my local organization TransitMatters.
Subscribe to the blog and podcast to be notified of new episodes and share it around.
Critical Transit is back after an unplanned break, and we're moving in a new (local) direction as part of a push for better transit in Boston. Learn all about the future of Critical Transit in this mini episode. Subscribe to the blog and podcast (iTunes), follow my thoughts on @criticaltransit on Twitter, like the Facebook page, and stay in tough with your reactions, discoveries and suggestions for topics or guests. Email feedback-at-criticaltransit.com or use the contact form.
This is the first of several episodes featuring content from TRB Annual Meeting sessions in Washington, DC, starting with the common themes of transport data, automation and the idea that technology will solve more than a few of our problems. From the sessions, we learn how to successfully insert a light rail transit (LRT) line into a city streetscape dominated by car culture, informed by experience in small French and Spanish cities; why industrial design matters at every stage of a project; and the importance of informal social paths (or, why attempting to corral pedestrians into designated crossing locations makes walking less safe). Do you have thoughts on these topics? Of course you do, so share them with the world! Suggest other viewpoints, new perspectives and ideas for further research, show topics and/or guests, by emailing feedback@criticaltransit.com or using the contact form or those social media tools.
Find me at Planning Camp on February 1 in Philadelphia, at the Human Transit talk in New York on February 6, and otherwise riding trains and buses around the northeast.
Finally, if you enjoy this time dump very useful transit project, please help support my work by sharing it with your friends and colleagues, leaving a review on iTunes and other places, and consider sponsoring an episode if you are able to.
Our guest today is transit data and communications consultant Aaron Antrim of Trillium Solutions. We learn how to manage, present and use transit information to improve mobility and expand freedom by making transit networks easier to use. Find Aaron's work at Trillium Solutions, including his analysis of social media for transit and what makes a great transit website. Or find him on Twitter.
Other links include: Detroit Bus Company; Rome2rio international trip planner; San Francisco Bay Area transit summary; Social Media is Bullshit by B. J. Mendelson.
Do you have thoughts on any of these topics? Share them with the world (or just transit nerds) by emailing feedback@criticaltransit.com or using the contact form or those social media tools.
Find me this week at Transportation Camp and the TRB Annual Meeting in Washington DC, and hopefully testing out some new Epic Transit Journeys. Please get in touch if we might connect soon in Washington or elsewhere in the northeast.
UPDATE: If you're in Washington this week you might like another event called GTFS in the World, a workshop on open transit data.
Finally, if you enjoy what you hear each week, please help support this project by sharing it with your friends and colleagues, leaving a review on iTunes and other places, and consider sponsoring an episode if you are able to.
