[sustran] Bicycles - Improving the image

[J.H. Crawford]

> I can agree we need more and better studies done to see how street
>space can be apportioned more fairly.  We also need better mass transit
>routing designs.  I am, for instance, in complete disagreement with
>route designs which attempt to get busses, for example, into every nook
>and cranny of a neighborhood in an attempt to garner more fares. I'm
>vexed to no end when I see some of the tortorous routing designs taking
>busses up narrow, local neighborhood streets blowing heat and pollution
>there while stalled and blocking the thoroughfare because they're too
>big to maneuver easily.

Route design is terribly difficult. Long circuitous routes are terrible
as you suggest. The problem with low densities is that it's basically
impossible to provide decent service--too few riders.

>  Meanwhile, this 'cover all bases' approach as well as viewing jitney's
>as competitors rather that 'feeders' makes transportation offers
>dramatically vexing to all.  The passenger already on board is plagued
>by too many stops that are of little or no use to them, but waste their
>time simply to collect more fares on already overcrowded busses.  When
>jitney's as feeders could easily make it more efficient to have bus
>stops placed further apart, thus speeding such trips as well as allowing
>busses to operate more efficiently thus lowering their polutive effects.

Problem here is that once on the jitneys, people will want to
stay on them to their final destination. People hate to transfer,
and I don't blame them. It's an incredible waste of time. So
you end up with Manila, where the streets are mobbed by jitneys.
This, of course, is not as bad as it might be--they are at least
not in private cars, and my experience with Indonesian bemos is
that you can get a LOT of people in a jitney.

In a city without a real center, jitneys may be a pretty good
solution. They need to be cleaned up (so do buses), but they
can provide quite flexible transport at fairly reasonable cost.
Because of the smaller number of passengers, they don't have to
stop as often as buses, so service should be somewhat faster.

>  In this coming age of information technology, people have even more
>need for exercise for their health and so a variety of hpv's which could
>provide opportunites for such exercise, lower pollution and still
>provide short distance transportation as well as employment, go
>unexamined, while people pay several hundereds of dollars per year to
>effectively 'waste' energy in a gym; for exercise, that could just as
>easily be expended solving some of their own tranportation problems
>motorlessly.

If you're riding an exercise bike in a gym, you won't get hit
by a car (unless one comes in through the plate glass window).
Danger is the #1 reason why I don't ride a bike even in Dutch
cities any more.


                                          ###

J.H. Crawford    Crawford Systems    joel at xs4all.nl    http://www.mokum.com/