Transportation

Private Buses or Public Boondoggles 0
- October 16, 2012
A team of graphics artists has attempted to map the private buses that carry workers from San Francisco to Silicon Valley, reports the Wall Street Journal. At least six employers–Apple, ebay, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo–offer such services, but they are very secretive about where they go and how many people they carry. Click […]
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“Just One-Seventh of Capacity”0
- October 15, 2012
The San Francisco Chronicle is aghast that new 140-seat ferry boats between South San Francisco and Oakland/Alameda are filling an average of just 20 of their seats (scroll down to “On the line”). The service, which cost $42 million to start up, was expensive enough at projected ridership rates, but actual ridership so far is […]
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More on the European Transport Myth 0
- October 12, 2012
While many people believe that European travel modes are quite different from those of the United States, a close look at the data reveals two main points. First, Europeans travel a lot less than Americans: including flying, the average American travels about 85 percent more miles per year than the average Western European. Second, the […]
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Renationalization or True Privatization?0
- October 10, 2012
United Kingdom’s Department for Transportation is in trouble over a plan to transfer the franchise to run passenger trains over the London-Glasgow West Coast route from Virgin Trains (which is 49 percent owned by Stagecoach) to rival First Group. After fifteen years, Virgin Trains’ franchise is set to expire in December, and when the government […]
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The European Transport Myth 0
- October 8, 2012
An article in Transport Reviews compares U.S. and European transit usage and argues that Europeans use transit more because they have better transit service, low fares, multi-modal integration, high taxes and restrictions on driving, and land-use policies that promote compact, mixed-use developments–all things that American planners want to do here. One obvious problem with the […]
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Streetcar Woes 0
- October 4, 2012
Portland opened its new east side streetcar line a couple of weeks ago, but the real story is in the Lake Oswego plant that is supposed to be making streetcars to run on the new line. In 2011, the company, United Streetcar, announced that its first streetcars would be several months late and it would […]
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