[sustran] Re: Thinking Outside the Bus

[Paul Barter]

On 29 May 2012 14:26, Sujit Patwardhan <patwardhan.sujit at gmail.com> wrote:

> Conventional wisdom says that the way to create or improve public transit
> is to invest billions to engineer rails, trains and buses. But the
> Brunswick Explorer is one of many innovators that are seeing transit as
> more than an engineering problem and trying to  build transit that meets
> the needs of its residents.
> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/thinking-outside-the-bus/
> ...


Yes, it is an interesting item. But be careful! It is misleading (at least
for places with high labour costs).

See http://www.humantransit.org/2011/11/new-york-times-how-to-be-co
nfused-about-transit.html for a thoughtful critique of this NYT article.
Jarrett Walker writes:

"Brunswick's local buses, in short, are geared to people with special
needs, as small-town transit systems often are. ... These systems are
absolutely laudable. ... But they are intrinsically inefficient, in terms
of passengers service per unit of public cost... Serving special needs is a
good thing to do, but it requires lots of staff time per passenger, so it
will always have a very high cost per passenger.

Unless ... you pay the drivers less. Margonelli's next story is about the
emerging minibuses of New York, an important private sector initiative ...
The genius of these buses is that they tolerate lower ridership (mandated
in fact by their small size) but they can do this because the drivers make
much less than unionized transit agency labor. ...

So is Margonelli really a ferocious right-wing union-busting capitalist?
No, she's just unclear on transit's basic geometry and economics."

>From the same source (Human Transit blog) here is a better example of how
to do surprisingly well with public transport even in a very
transit-unfriendly suburban environment with high labour costs (
http://www.humantransit.org/2012/05/fort-lauderdale-yet-another-triumph-for-multi-destinational-networks.html).
The key is a 'connective network' with regular service in a grid (for
example) and making connections between services attractive and easy.

Paul
-- 
Working to make urban transport and parking enrich our lives more and harm
us all less.
paulbarter at reinventingtransport.org
http://www.reinventingtransport.org  http://www.reinventingparking.org