Posts filed under 'Transportation'
If you ever walked along a historic railroad and looked around, you might notice artifacts from an earlier time: abandoned telegraph poles, mechanical signals, and perhaps a watering station if you were lucky. Looking out further you see clusters of settlements, industries, and businesses that located next to the strategic iron highway. A walk along the railroad is an opportunity to perceive and understand our economic and social history through the built form. Some artifacts speak to our current setting: abandoned siding tracks, litter, and backwater houses.
Naomi Adiv, a doctoral student from U.C. Davis, is comprehensively documenting elements and their perceived meanings along the 170 mile Capitol Corridor from San Jose to Oakland, Sacramento, and Auburn, California for her dissertation. Reading just a little bit of her blog has resonated with my fascination of the railroad and formation on the landscape.
photo by compujeramey
March 6th, 2008
Originally posted on the Adaptive Path Blog
In my mind, it seemed perfect: Technologists and transit-enthusiasts coming together to rethink the transit experience. A chance to bring the experience design gospel to an industry in need. Brimming with missionary zeal, my transportation planner husband and I headed off to the Bay Area TransitCamp.
I wasn’t prepared for the culture shock. My idealism was greeted by a ragtag bunch consisting of khaki-clad engineers, frumpy transit riders and suit-wearing transit officials. The engineers preached the possibilities of open-source data. White-haired transit riders screeched frustrations about their particular pet issues. And the transit officials defended cuts to bathroom-cleaning with the hard, cold facts of their bureaucratic reality.
Welcome to TransitCamp.
Could this possibly be the crowd that would transform transit? It felt like anarchy. “No complaints without solutions” was the only rule, and organizer Tara Hunt had to reiterate it again and again. Yet as idealism and realism collided, something impressive happened. We learned from one another. iPhone app developers learned that 40% of riders are below the poverty line. Cost-conscious officials learned that dozens of techies are eager to develop solutions–for free.
I realized that making a difference requires a humble and listening posture. Transit is an interdisciplinary problem that requires interdisciplinary understanding. While it produced interesting ideas, TransitCamp’s greatest triumph was fostering an atmosphere of learning and collaboration between unlikely bedfellows.
February 27th, 2008
I just read about an interesting measure that’s been approved by the Norwich City Council to set parking fees based on the length of cars. The measure incentivizes generally more fuel efficient and less space-consuming cars:
While I think it seems like a great idea, I can’t help but think about the people who feel they don’t really have any other choice. As street parkers in a high demand area, there are lots of times we wish we had a SmartCar so we could fit it in the non-spaces… but we can’t just run out and buy a new car. The tiniest cars are way out of our price range right now. (Of course the constant nagging would probably factor into our decision when we do need a new car.) But even more without a choice are, as people against the measure cited, families with children for whom cramming everyone into a Mini isn’t possible.
Reading about teachers’ struggle to find parking at a San Francisco school made me think as well:
“Every recess - and sometimes in the middle of class - teachers at San Francisco’s Buena Vista Elementary School dash outside to move their cars before a parking ticket appears on their windshield. Up to six times a day, they forgo a chat with a student, a sip of coffee or a trip to the bathroom to play musical cars among the one-hour spots around the school.”
Planners generally say, “Driving is not a right. Just take transit.” But “teachers said that such options are often impossible or inconvenient with bags full of lesson plans, books, students’ homework and art supplies.”
It’s easy for young, mobile, urbanites to look down on those who commute an hour to work from the suburbs or drive a minivan. But understanding the forces that drive people to do so — financial, practical, social — is the key to providing realistic options for everyone.
February 1st, 2008
This might be old news for some of you in planning… but it’s interesting to think about it from a people-centered place design perspective. Several European cities are trying a new experiment…
Getting rid of all traffic signs results in… safer streets?
The premise is that by accommodating people’s natural interactions with each other and inherent behaviors (e.g. people’s tendency to be more cautious and courteous when they aren’t being forced to) instead of forcing them into an artificial construct of control, people will behave better naturally.
An interesting example of designing places around people’s natural behaviors, supporting and capitalizing on these behaviors rather than coercing them! And the more interesting part? It seems to work — resulting in less accidents.
“The many rules strip us of the most important thing: the ability to be considerate. We’re losing our capacity for socially responsible behavior,” says Dutch traffic guru Hans Monderman, one of the project’s co-founders. “The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people’s sense of personal responsibility dwindles.”
LINK: http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,448747,00.html
[via http://archinect.com/]
November 30th, 2006
“The increasing deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics in recent years is allowing a new approach to the study of the built environment. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed - alongside the tools we use to design them and impact on their physical structure.
Studying these changes from a critical point of view and anticipating them is the goal of the SENSEable City Laboratory, a new research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
“[This] project (Real-Time Rome) aggregated data from cell phones, buses and taxis in Rome to better understand urban dynamics in real time. By revealing the pulse of the city, the project aims to show how technology can help individuals make more informed decisions about their environment.”
LINK: http://senseable.mit.edu/
RELATED POSTS: Personal Paths Through Cities
September 25th, 2006
Is it a coincidence that millions more Americans travel by car and plane than bus or train? “The very word ‘lost’ in our language means much more than simple geographic uncertainty,” wrote Kevin Lynch, who cleared a path for the modern art and science of wayfinding in his landmark work, The Image of the City. “[I]t carries overtones of utter disaster.” Getting lost on public transportation may not be disastrous for passengers, but when tourists are turned off by the experience, it’s a disaster for cities; when new users aren’t turned into repeat customers, it’s a disaster for transit agencies and for society; and even regular riders sometimes require reinforcement.
We all know that being lost is a bad experience. Wayfinding design, for those unfamiliar with it, is about creating creating comforting experiences through designing understandable spaces that make people feel in control of their surroundings and choices.
For many, unfortunately, public transportation represents the opposite of a comforting experience.
Thus, I’m excited about San Francisco’s Wayfinding Project and the steps they’re taking towards enhancing the wayfinding experience of transportation users. Their recommendations are simple but practical, and include….
Recommendations for Busses and Streetcars:
• Include Transfer Information on Signs
• Add Signs Featuring Destination Information
• Improve Shelters and Provide Basic Information at All Stops
• Simplify Destination Descriptions
Recommendations for Subways and Commuter Rails:
• Color-Code BART Lines
• Remove Outdated, Damaged and Non-Standard Maps and Signs
• Clearly Differentiate BART and Muni Entrances
• Streamline and Enhance Station- and Platform-Identification Signs
• Add and Upgrade Directional Signage
• List and Give Directions to Destinations Near BART
• Add Signs Along Pedestrian Pathways to BART
• Clearly Designate Pathways to Connecting Transit
Food for thought… What have your public transportation experiences been like? Do you have any suggestions for ways that your local transportation system’s wayfinding experience could be improved?
LINK: The San Francisco Wayfinding Project [via Adventures in Urban Living]
RELATED: Rethinking the Library Experience
September 9th, 2006
The author calls his collection of panoramas, “suburban sprawl and other calamities,” but I’m curious whether everyone looking at these photos would see “calamity” captured therein.
I’ll admit — my first reaction was that some of these look like beautiful, safe places to live (some people who live there must have thought so) — and that it’s got to be debatable how bad all of this is.
To tie this back into the purpose of this site… I’ll pose the question, exactly what are the effects of sprawl from a user experience perspective? Do people choose to live there because there’s something positive about the experience, or do they see living there as a necessary evil? (And does it even matter if it’s not sustainable?)
LINK: Suburban Sprawl Panoramas (left side)
LINK: East Bay Sprawl Panoramas
Thanks for the link, Jess!
September 7th, 2006
U.C. Berkeley’s
Transportation
Seminar Series
September 8, 2006
4:00 to 5:00 p.m. in 240 Bechtel Hall
Donald Shoup, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Urban Planning, UCLA
The High Cost of Free Parking
About 87 percent of all trips in the U.S. are made by personal motor vehicles, and drivers park free for 99 percent of these trips.
If drivers don’t pay for parking, who does? Everyone does, even if they don’t drive. Minimum parking requirements in zoning ordinances explain why free parking is so plentiful in the United States.
Initially the developer pays for the required parking, but soon the tenants do, and then their customers, and so on, until the cost of parking has diffused everywhere in the economy. When we shop in a store, eat in a restaurant, or see a movie, we pay for parking indirectly because its cost is included in the prices of merchandise, meals, and theater tickets.
We unknowingly support our cars with almost every commercial transaction we make, because a small share of the money changing hands pays for parking. We don’t pay for parking in our role as motorists, but in all our other roles-as consumers, investors, workers, residents, and taxpayers-we pay dearly.
Even those without cars have to pay for “free” parking. Donald Shoup will explain how faulty data from the Institute of Transportation Engineers helped get us into this mess, and how we can get out of it.
September 6th, 2006
When most of us urbanites drive to wherever we’re going, our trip process may look something like this:
local street>main artery>main artery>freeway>main artery>local street
You do this because even though it may not be the most direct route, it’s fastest and fairly easy to understand.
But a transit trip requires us to think in a completely new system of wayfinding. Many bus routes are designed to snake through every neighborhood and activity center so that people only have to hop on one bus to get to their destination.
walk>transit route>walk
As an example:
But while it may be easy for a person to say “I just hop on the 93 and it will take me there”, the route is a tremendous waste of time. A 10 minute drive or 30 minute bike ride can easily take an hour on transit.
People already have the street hierarchy wayfinding system etched in their brain. Why not create a bus system that mirrors our mental maps and stop wasting our time?
Alexa’s comment:
I asked Seth, “So what would a bus system look like that mirrors our mental maps?” He said he was just curious what a transportation system would look like where busses run up and down single streets (e.g. the High Street bus, the 8th street bus) and where you don’t have to pay for transfers.
So to get from place A to place B you’d get on the high street bus, then get off and get on the 8th street bus, etc… the way you do when driving or walking and taking the most direct route. Something like that.
I agree that busses take a lot of time which is a big deterrent to using them, but I wonder if it might be more annoying to have to get on and off all the time?
September 4th, 2006