A Thought Experiment: You live downtown and you’ve got to travel a distance of 1.5 km, drop off a package and return home. If you lived in Toronto (as I do), the trip would cost you $6.00 round trip by subway. Would you pay it? A great many people would probably say answer ‘no’ to...
A thought experiment: Imagine a city that wishes to build a medium capacity transit system in a specific, given configuration. Due, however, to the unique geologic, social, political, cultural and economic state of the area the following applies: An LRT, BRT or CPT system (for the sake of argument, you could include any technology you...
Last week, a variety of news outlets (Associated Press, CBC, New York Times, The Drudge Retort and dozens of others) reported on a massive 100 km long traffic jam outside Beijing, China. The jam lasted ten days and stretched into Inner Mongolia only to ‘vanish’ seemingly overnight. Of all the reports on this story, the one that caught...
Ultimately, the problem with public transit is one of economics. Our current transit systems have no ability to adjust the supply of their inventory levels (seats) to match a given demand (ridership) at a given time of day. Its inventory is completely inflexible: Rush Hour: Too much demand, not enough supply. Late Night: Some demand,...