They are the most antiquated trolleys in the US. You pull a cord to request a stop even underground. Services run every 20 minutes+ are purposefully bunched on Sundays so the combined core has 15+ minute service gaps. Drivers have to open their window and flip a physical switch where the 10 diverges
San Juan, PR is front-door only boarding on the buses. Richmond, VA is all-door boarding for BRT and standard buses.
Philadelphia I’d change to being single door, with exceptions for trams (apart from at 13th, 15th, 30th, and 19th/22nd WB where all-door boarding is permitted) as the whole G line and the surface T lines are front-door boarding only
Canada has higher transit use than the US because there is far more transit service per capita there.
If you want ridership, you have to run service.
Great report focused on reducing vehicle miles traveled (not anti-electrification but says it's over emphasized). Notes continued roadway orientation of departments of transportation. Instructive graphic on $ programs. Across levels, spending favors roadways over safety, sustainability & true choice
Ten years after the Paris Agreement, nations are still falling short of their commitments to reduce emissions and mitigate climate change.
More than that, they haven’t shown enough follow-through on the goals they set. Instead, it’s been cities and local governments that have taken the lead.
I remember finally seeing this map in public after years of the agency lacking any accessible official map (or a working public website), so satisfying!
Florida has the nation’s 8th worst rate of roadway deaths, with twice the fatality rate of states like Massachusetts & Minnesota.
Florida’s governor is focusing his highway patrol on targeting immigrants for deportation.
Congestion pricing has improved life in New York City by: reducing cars on the street, speeding traffic (especially at peak hours), speeding buses and making them more reliable, expanding transit ridership, reducing car crashes, reducing noise complaints, and increasing the number of visitors.
Fire response times fell in the NYC congestion zone, even as they increased in the rest of the city.
Car crashes with injuries fell citywide, but they fell especially dramatically in the congestion pricing zone from 2024 to 2025
Local buses have sped up dramatically in the congestion pricing zone.
NYC’s congestion pricing is a policy miracle: Less traffic, less noise, faster transit, more business sales, more transit revenue. And it hasn’t produced the negative effects outside the cordon zone we were afraid of.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Thank you!
I am writing an article covering suburban alleys and their potential future as shared streets, could I use this photo as an example of how design changes make narrow rights-of-way make for safer active transport conditions attributing credit to you?
A picture of L’enfant plaza station in Washington, DC
Get me to God’s country
Who said that bus lanes and circulation plans are big cities' prerogatives?
Valeggio sul Mincio (16 k inhabitants) has a short contraflow bus lane followed by an alternate direction street segment that allows buses to go through the city center while through traffic is partially diverted around it.
Ridership is a big concern for transit agencies in terms of their ability to raise funds from fares.
But one thing that's been exciting to watch is that while many agencies, like DC's WMATA, have lower ridership on weekdays than they did pre-pandemic, they now have higher ridership on weekends!
How Far do your tax dollars for Transit go?
After people complaining over and over that SEPTA was inefficient, I had to run the numbers of Ridership to Operating budgets and would you look at that.
Not only is SEPTA good with money, but they are literally the best in the US
US metros can certainly learn about increasing transit ridership in auto-oriented neighborhoods from Canadian suburbs
But the way these articles seem to go out of their way to ignore how higher transit demand is at least partially driven by higher gasoline prices is frustrating and frankly suspect
In response to Conner Dougherty's NYT article, it's helpful to revisit a piece I wrote. In the USA, the poorer you are, the greater percentage of your income you spend on transportation. In the EU, it's the opposite.
Why? USA has car-dependent sprawl, EU has good transit.
itdp.org/2024/01/24/h...
Sprawl “solves” the housing crisis by turning it into a transportation crisis.
Asian grocery stores are a lifeline to the communities they serve. But store owners say the prospect of sweeping tariffs are threatening their ability to stock up on goods and keep prices affordable.
Many are used on local bus routes, particularly in Brazil and Chile but elsewhere too. They’re not very efficient but with our abysmal fare evasion rates and impending fiscal cliffs for large orgs some sort of WMATA-style opening gate may be worthwhile to study
This point doesn't get emphasized enough. Just a few years ago Roosevelt Blvd was a top-5 deadliest road in the country. Now it isn't even the deadliest in Philly
Yucatan, one of Mexico's lowest car-ownership states demands two spaces per unit and two parking lanes per street. The result of a flawed federalism, out-of-touch engineers, and class-based policymaking.
Facts:
—Subway travel is far safer than car travel
—More than 250 people died in car traffic-related incidents in 2024 in New York City, compared to 10 on the Subway gothamist.com/news/feeling...
—Subway crime is declining rapidly in incidence www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/ne...
We have room for but one language in this country, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding house. ~ Theodore Roosevelt, 1919
Politicians of all stripes throughout history have used language as the pretense for their xenophobic nationalistic inclinations.
My hope would be that a tall, swing-open gate attached to the black box akin to those at WMATA stations would be sufficient to deter ~70-80% of evaders given how many today just walk on quickly as their strategy. Added maintenance burden is a fair point though
Many Latin American buses have turnstiles to force fare payment, without compromising driver safety. While this presents an accessibility issue, could some sort of gate, that opens when fares are paid, be added to bus fronts in the US (in cities not considering all-door boarding like Philly)?
Mass deportations would reduce the construction labor force and exacerbate the housing shortage nationwide. More than 30% of construction workers were born outside the US in California, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, and Texas.
New research @urbaninstitute.bsky.social shows that mass deportations would likely worsen the housing shortage by decimating the labor force.
Immigrants make up >23% of the construction workforce & more in FL, TX. About half are estimated to be undocumented immigrants. www.urban.org/urban-wire/m...