The first decade of the millennium saw significant growth for transit in America. From 2000 to 2010, the number of regions with fixed-guideway transit — rail systems or bus systems with dedicated lanes — grew from 27 to 40. And ridership followed. In the period beginning in 1995 and ending in 2008, total American transit ridership…
It’s no easy task getting across San Francisco during rush hour, but some new technology being installed on Muni buses is now helping thousands of commuters. SFMTA began utilizing transit signal priority on the 14 Mission line in late March. According to John Haley, Director of Transit for the agency, it had sped up commute…
Buses on San Francisco’s Mission Street corridor are running a bit faster thanks to a pilot signal priority program. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (CA) has seen measurable improvements after installing devices on buses that extend green time as the vehicles approach intersections. Since the system was activated on March 26, average travel time…
All across America, city buses are waiting. Waiting at stoplights, waiting behind long lines of cars, waiting to pull back into traffic, waiting at stops for growing crowds of passengers. And no, it’s not just your imagination: Buses are doing more waiting, and less moving, than they used to. A recent survey of 11 urban transit systems…
Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA) officials on Thursday unveiled a traffic signal network that they say will cut bus riders’ travel times by 20 percent along heavily congested Poplar and Elvis Presley Boulevard. The Transit Signal Priority Program consists of devices on all MATA buses that automatically send signals to cabinets located at intersections with…
In 2013 Americans took 10.7 billion trips on public transportation, which is the highest annual public transit ridership number in 57 years, according to a report released by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). This was the eighth year in a row that more than 10 billion trips were taken on public transportation systems nationwide. While…
BALTIMORE — When the City Sports running store opened here in 2006, then-manager Cami Walker found himself “begging people to come in.” The store was one of the first in the new Harbor East neighborhood near the popular Inner Harbor tourist zone. “They’d say, ‘Where’s Harbor East?’ and you’d say, ‘Well, it’s east of the…
In this funny and thought-provoking talk, Janette Sadik-Khan, transportation commissioner of New York City, shares projects that have reshaped street life in the 5 boroughs, including pedestrian zones in Times Square, high-performance buses and a 6,000-cycle-strong bike share. Her mantra: Do bold experiments that are cheap to try out. To view the talk, click here.…
“An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport,” argues Enrique Peñalosa. In this spirited talk, the former mayor of Bogotá shares some of the tactics he used to change the transportation dynamic in the Colombian capital… and suggests ways to think…
Washington, DC (December 10, 2013) — New analysis of four iconic cities shows that commuters can save millions of hours of travel time by shifting to bus rapid transit (BRT) systems. The report from EMBARQ, the World Resources Institute program for sustainable urban transport and planning, draws primarily from case studies conducted in Bogotá, Mexico…