Tag: bus

The Twin Cities Find the Key to a Happy Commute

Posted on by robbie

Waiting at transit stops is hardly enjoyable. Between navigating crowds, dirty platforms and schedule delays, public transportation can be a lot for commuters to endure. But part of that difficulty may be just be perception.
A study from 1993 found that waiting just one minute felt more like 4.4 minutes of traveling — which means if it takes you 20 minutes to get home, it’s likely you’ll feel you should have been there after five minutes of waiting.
While more transit agencies are alleviating the problem by updating stops with real-time schedules, it turns out that the setup of a stop might make the wait a little more bearable.
According to an unpublished working paper from researchers at University of Minnesota, a stop’s amenities — such as benches, shelters or visible schedules — may play more of a role than we think. The study found that riders at a stop with no shelter perceived a five minute wait to feel more like six minutes, whereas commuters at other types of “premium” stops (such as those with shelters or full stations) perceived a five minute wait to be closer to three minutes.
Researchers surveyed 822 bus and train riders in three types of categories: no shelter (a curbside stand), a basic bus shelter (including a bench and weather protection) and premium stations (completely or partially enclosed).

“That’s actually a very good thing, because this amenity shortens people’s estimation of waiting time,” says Professor Yingling Fan, a transport scholar leading the project.

The study also finds that posted schedules are more effective at low-frequency stops while high-traffic stops could benefit from displaying wait times between arrivals.

While the study reaffirms there is a psychological component to good transit planning, the findings are limited based on short waiting times. Shelters seem to make less of a difference after 10 minutes of waiting, however, few participants actually waited for longer than that period of time. Posted schedules caused people to overestimate how long they had been standing at a stop, but after 10 minutes, people at stops with schedules began to underestimate the amount of time they had been waiting. For example, 10 minutes would seem more like eight-and-a-half minutes.
As City Lab points out, human tendency to round up numbers in fives and 10s makes it more difficult to distinguish the difference between eight minutes versus 10 minutes. The study also neglects to probe why covered or enclosed shelters are perceived faster than curbside stops.
But ultimately, the takeaway is that a basic bus shelter (which can cost around $6,000 in the Twin Cities), may be a cheap solution to improving commutes.
MORE: Public Transportation Is Getting a Major Makeover

No Wheels, Just Feet, on This School Bus

Posted on by robbie

What cuts down on costs, helps the environment, and most importantly, keeps kids in shape?
Walking to school.
With childhood obesity rates at historic highs, there is significant demand to fix this harmful epidemic, and this solution is as simple as they come.
A unique program, called the Walking School Bus, collects kids along a route and together, they make their way to school as a group – not totally dissimilar to the bus experience, but with the added benefit of exercise and fresh air. With no bus driver needed, transportation money instead goes towards a chaperoning adult who not only leads the children and ensures their safety, but also can act as a mentor and role model for them.
Although walking programs can be found running independently of each other throughout the country, many of them are funded by the National Center for Safe Routes to School, a program established to help find alternative routes for children to get to school.
Walking School Bus programs vary in size – in Providence, Rhode Island, only 14 kids participated last academic year, whereas in Columbia, Missouri, 450 children from 13 different school districts took part.
Sadly, Columbia’s program has lost funding, but the Walking School Bus program still exists and can be set up in your community. Here’s how.

Why Salt Lake City May Become the New Leader in Public Transportation

Posted on by robbie

Salt Lake City seems like an unlikely candidate to be a pro-public transportation city. Cars are king in the capital of Utah, where city blocks are long and streets are an unusually wide 132 feet — a measurement Brigham Young allegedly described as enough room to turn a wagon team without “resorting to profanity.” With much of the majority-Mormon city shutting down on Sundays, pedestrians struggle to transverse the Rocky Mountain-backed landscape.
Which is why Robin Hutcheson, a new executive-board member of the National Association of City Transportation Officials, is becoming something of a Salt Lake City rock star: She’s instrumental in diversifying transportation options in the metropolitan area of 1.2 million to include bike lanes and a commuter rail line. And the measures she’s taking could provide a crucial blueprint for other urban centers. 
Atlantic Cities profiled how Hutcheson is harnessing Salt Lake City’s increasing friendliness to public transportation. She’s been head of the transportation planning division of Salt Lake City since 2011, and is a biker, runner, and all-around public-transit devotee. With the help of state and city investments into public transportation, more pedestrian-friendly streets, and business and church cooperation, Salt Lake City has self-adapted to the idea of reducing reliance on cars.
The reason doesn’t just lie in ease of movement, it’s about the environment, too. Salt Lake City suffers from visible smog, and has been named one of the ten worst cities in the U.S. for short-term particulate pollution by the American Lung Association. “As the air-quality issue has risen in the public eye, people are accepting that we need to do more than just say we’re going to do better,” Mayor Ralph Becker told Atlantic Cities. “It’s about people being able to move around in their city without having to use their car. How do we get from where we are today to having a city where people easily get around, can drive if they wish, but that isn’t their only or necessarily their best option?”
Enter Hutcheson. Her initiatives include a new low-cost transit card called the Hive Pass that allows holders unlimited access to buses, light rail within the city, and commuter trains for only $360 a year. Others, like the rail line connecting Salt Lake to Provo that opened in December 2012, caused public transit ridership in Utah to rise an astonishing 103 percent. TRAX, the city’s light rail system, saw its ridership increase 6.8 percent last year and a current plan calls for two more lines to open by 2015.
Meanwhile, Hutcheson and her team have also been working hard to make Salt Lake a more welcoming city for people on bicycles and on foot. Last December, a streetcar line with a walking and biking trail alongside it opened in the rapidly-developing Sugarhouse neighborhood. The city also has a seasonal bike-share and are designating new bike lanes in town. Salt Lake has been granted a budget for bike and pedestrian capital improvements that will be about $3.5 million for 2014-2105, a marked increase from just under $500,000 in 2009.
With Hutcheson making a positive imprint all over Salt Lake City, so is her city’s chapter of the Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS), which she founded. The organization itself was established in 1977 for the professional advancement of women throughout the transportation industry — from road engineers to airline pilots. Her perspective on public transit is partially shaped by WTS, which believes that women have an unmatched lens into what commuters need. For instance, they have an acute sense of the dangers of a long wait at a dark bus stop, or traffic patterns when driving children back and forth between activities.
With or without her WTS foundation, one thing is for certain: Hutcheson’s work in Salt Lake City is likely to have reverberations in cities across the country.