News Tagged: Transit
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It’s the frequency: transit expert Jarrett Walker shares insight in three talks
For transit planning expert Jarrett Walker, one of the fundamentals of transit is also one of the hardest points for people to figure out: you can’t make good transit-system decisions from behind the wheel of a car.
“If you’re a habitual motorist, it doesn’t matter how much you support transit, there are certain things about it you’re not likely to get,” Walker said. “One the most basic, if you’re a motorist or a cyclist for that matter, you’re going to appreciate the concept of speed but not the concept of frequency.
“In urban transit, frequency is vastly more important than speed in determining how soon you get where you're going.”
Walker, the author of “Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking About Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities And Our Lives,” presents his work at three OTREC-sponsored forums in Eugene and Portland May 16-18. Click here for more information on the presentations and Walker.
While driving or cycling faster typically means arriving earlier, slow transit vehicles that run often will get you to your destination sooner than fast, infrequent ones, Walker said. “It’s very difficult to get motorists to understand that importance. I tell them to imagine a gate at the end of your driveway that only opens once every half an hour.”
Tags: bus, bus rapid transit, human transit, jarrett walker, light rail, otrec, planning, portland, transit, transit planning, trimet
Gift creates transportation lecture series endowment
The Initiative for Bicycle and Pedestrian Innovation has received a gift to support an annual transportation lecture at Portland State University. The gift, which establishes the Ann Niles Transportation Lecture Endowment, was finalized last month.
Created by Philip Niles in memory of his late wife, Ann, the endowment will bring a speaker each year to address transportation and planning issues for students, faculty and the community. Ann Niles was a strong advocate for livable neighborhoods and served on many transportation-related boards and committees in Portland.
Ann Niles grew up in Grants Pass, Ore., and graduated from Reed College in Portland, where she met Philip. She earned a graduate degree in library science from the University of Minnesota and began her career at the Carleton College library.
Ann and Philip retired in 1999 and returned to Portland. Ann developed a second career in unban development and transportation and worked with the city of Portland and the Pearl District Neighborhood Association. She chaired the Pearl District Transportation Committee for eight years, promoting better sidewalks and crosswalks for pedestrians and better bicycle routes and parking throughout downtown Portland. Ann also represented the Pearl District on the Portland Streetcar Citizens Advisory Committee and the advisory committee for Portland’s transit mall revitalization.
Details on the lecture series, including information on the first lecture, will be released when available.
Tags: ibpi, pearl district, portland streetcar, transit
Summit speaker: well-designed transit systems and maps are things of beauty
Designing efficient transit systems is only one piece of the puzzle. Getting people to use them is another.
In his bestselling “Transit Maps of the World” and followup work “Paris Metro Style: In Map and Station Design,” Mark Ovenden detailed the beauty of maps people use to navigate transit systems and of the stations themselves.
“When you walk into the Paris Metro system, with its art nouveau stations, it does affect you, whether you notice it or not,” Ovenden said. “It feels nice to be in. It encourages people to use the train.”
Ovenden will offer his take on transportation systems as the keynote speaker at the Oregon Transportation Summit, Friday, Sept. 9 at Portland State University.
Ovenden vaulted to fame with “Transit Maps of the World” after a career in radio and television. But he always had an interest in collecting maps and riding transit systems. “On a school trip to Paris at 9 or 10, I just wanted to ride the Metro all day,” he said. “The teacher said, ‘no, come with us to the Eiffel Tower, you idiot.’”
Even out of context, the maps Ovenden compiled serve as an art work. But much of their beauty lies in their function: getting people around smoothly. Some of the best maps, such as those of Paris and New York, are both beautiful and intuitive. Maps that just make an artistic statement risk aggravating riders.
Tags: buses, cartography, london underground, maps, mark ovenden, oregon transportation summit, paris metro, rail, transit, transit maps of the world, urban railroads
Tales from TRB: L.A. gets moving
Tuesday, Jan. 25 dispatch from the Transportation Research Board annual meeting:
Sometimes even stimulus needs a little stimulus. That was certainly true in Los Angeles County, faced with a backlog of transportation needs.
Doug Failing, chief planner with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or Metro, spoke at a session at the Transportation Research Board's annual meeting titled “How the implementation of ARRA-TIGER projects was accelerated: a tale of four cities.”
The Los Angeles tale is one of good fortune and good timing. As talk of a federal stimulus package was heating up, the county passed Measure R in November 2008. The sales tax measure would commit a projected $40 billion to transportation projects over the next 30 years.
The federal stimulus project gave that effort a boost when it passed in early 2009. Metro then took a further step, Failing said: the agency would speed up 12 key mass-transit projects to be completed within 10 years instead of 30.
Transportation-system investments have gone a long way toward moving people more efficiently in an area known for its gridlock. Once the worst metro area in the country in terms of hours spent in traffic, that number has declined over the last decade, with other cities taking over that dubious distinction, Failing said.
That’s largely thanks to infrastructure improvements, he said, and with more on the horizon, the situation stands to get even better.
Transit stations operate in sweet microenvironment
Even residents of a gingerbread candyland can't get around with holiday magic alone. After all, Santa's elves still need a reliable way to get from their cozy homes to the workshop.
Sadly, transportation planners have turned a frosty shoulder to sugar-based transit systems. Until now.
On Dec. 3, Portland State University's Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning held the first gingerbread transit station competition. Four teams of students pulled their attention away from human transit to focus on the needs of gingerbread people and misfit toys.
Dealing with building materials of unknown structural properties, students field engineered solutions. Licorice sticks stood in for steel rails, candy canes for bicycle racks. For a binding agent, students mixed cream of tartar and egg whites instead of portland cement.
Tags: alkali-silica reaction, students in transportation engineering and planning, transit, travel-time reliability
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