A quick look at some of the things that make intercity bus travel work (or not): Fastest growing form of intercity travel: Buses Number of intercity bus trips in 1960: 140 million In 1990: 40 million % decrease in intercity bus service between 1980-2002: 50.6% “Curbside” bus carrier – Megabus – inauguration date: 2006...
The 1950’s Looney Toons animated short Rabbit Fire is perhaps one of the best-known of all Bugs Bunny cartoons. It’s an influential piece of work that’s invited all kinds of scholarly conversation. In it, the confused and generally helpless Elmer Fudd is hunting for rabbits. Self-servingly, Bugs Bunny convinces him that it’s not actually rabbit-hunting...
There’s nothing more common and consistently wrong in the transit planner’s toolbox as ridership forecasting and projections. It’s like voodoo: 90% of the time it doesn’t work, and the 10% of the time it does no one knows why (hint: it’s not because of the voodoo). So here comes Tom Rubin, a veteran transit consultant...
Taken For A Ride is a documentary first broadcast on PBS in 1996. It tells the story of how a consortium led by General Motors, Firestone Tires and Standard Oil systematically worked to uproot the American streetcar network and replace it with roads, buses and private automobiles. The short hand for this incident is the...
How you define a problem determines how you solve it. Most transit agencies, planners and governments tend to define an urban public transit problem as a decision between Roads and Rails: Should we use buses, light rail/streetcars or subways? It’s no surprise then when buses, light rail/streetcars or subways are the end result. That’s what...
To use CPT properly you have to be creative, original, daring and ultimately a little bit mad. That madness is good and important, especially nowadays when cities viciously compete for talent and tourists. Homogenous, cookie-cutter cities no longer make the grade. People want remarkable. Light Rail (LRT), Subway and Bus technologies are useful (sometimes) but...