Archives for public transportation

Making Public Transportation Work, Part 6: High Occupancy Vehicle Lanes

High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes are the sixth element of public transportation services to be covered in this National Bus Trader series. Previous segments of this series covered other missing elements: Alternative Work Schedules (https://transalt.com/article/making-public-transportation-work-part-1-alternative-work-schedules/), Park-and-Ride Lots (https://transalt.com/article/making-public-transportation-work-part-2-park-and-ride-lots/); Feeder Service (https://transalt.com/article/making-public-transportation-work-part-3-feeder-service/); System Design and Networks (https://transalt.com/article/making-public-transportation-work-part-4-system-design-and-networks/) and Ridesharing. This segment covering HOV lanes somewhat overlaps some points made in the Ridesharing installment. However, this is somewhat true of every element in this series. This is so because, in an optimal system, all elements must work together. And, working together, one element necessarily overlaps or intersects with fellow elements. This is

Making Public Transportation Work, Part 2: Park and Ride Lots

Particularly regarding fixed route transit and paratransit, the abandonment of designing a system has cost these modes dearly. This is largely because software emerged in the early 1990s to configure routes, establish schedules select stops and dispatch – and we stopped bothering. As all National Bus Trader readers know, transportation involves more than just the vehicles. There must be roads, bridges, tunnels, rest stops and parking lots – for starters. And this is only if the “system” comprises personal vehicles, trucks and taxis. For shared-ride vehicles, especially large ones (buses and motorcoaches), much more is needed for a “system” to

Uber and Lyft – Defendants Most Vulnerable, Lawsuits Most Lucrative

Uber, Lyft and other TNCs (Transportation Network Companies) are part of the largest, most extensive and diverse criminal enterprise this country has ever seen. Having this network’s activities exposed in open court would not only disclose their collusion with countless other companies, but could mean the end of their operations in your State – and possibly beyond. Or it could lead to regulations that would kill their business model and crush their profits. Facing someone with my knowledge, these companies would NEVER proceed to trial: Their practices would be exposed even if they won. The principal challenge is to control

Congestion Pricing: How it Can Make Sense

Lately, the phrase “the first time in our nation’s history” has been uttered a lot. These “firsts” are rarely acknowledged when the event is not of mainstream interest. And it is rarely acknowledged even when it morphs into a huge, household phenomenon. This up-and-coming phenomenon – congestion pricing – may soon become one of those events. Unfortunately, without many other much-needed changes, congestion pricing may quickly fizzle into a minor, historic footnote (as it has done for most of the past 50 years). However, if it succeeds – which it will if accompanied by the other changes needed to make

Survival and Prosperity, Part 3: The Gains of Winning, The Cost of Failure

In Part 1 of this series, I identified a gaping hole of opportunity for profitable motorcoach service – in countless corridors where intermediate-distance travel is provided only by commercial airlines. In earlier installments, I exposed the travesties of the commercial airline industry (Southwest Airlines excluded) which make travel of any distance by Today’s commercial airlines an expensive, inconvenient-at-best obstacle course (see https://transalt.com/article/drivers-v-robots-part-2-the-nature-of-modern-travel/). I explored this sector’s corruption in great detail (see https://transalt.com/article/expanding-the-mode-split-dividing-line-part-1-exponential-airline-industry-corruption/). These factors render a mode-split from small- and medium-distance commercial airline flights to luxury motorcoach travel an extraordinary opportunity. All we need is the right vehicle, described in

Defending Contractors, Part 3: The Whistleblower’s Song

A few months ago, 85% of the nation’s motorcoach fleet lay around collecting dust. As noted in a former installment of National Bus Trader (see Motorcoach survival in the age of covid: the end of charter and tour service for now), the fat charter and tour sectors of yesteryear are gone – at least for some time. If ridership on the mode (transit) transporting our tired, poor and huddled masses has shrunk by 10 percent in each of the two years preceding COVID-19, one can expect far fewer motorcoach joyrides. As we struggle to bounce back, limited stimulus funds notwithstanding,

Motorcoach Survival in the Age of Covid-19, Part 3: The End of Charter and Tour Service – For Now

Over the years, I have predicted countless things in the pages of National Bus Trader. No reader will ever find me to have been wrong. Nor am I wrong about this: Some day, charter and tour service will come back stronger than ever. But that day is a long way off. The challenge is what to do in the meantime. Particularly from the Pandemic, America is in far deeper collapse than most people would have thought possible. Recent estimates have suggested that renters (and their families) of 20 million households could be evicted after the short-term bans on evictions expire.

The Danger Deterrent: Long Wheelbases and Left Turns

Like most fields, public transportation is swollen with studies, both in the U.S. and abroad. Yet some of the most fascinating things seem to be never studied, or rarely studied.                 One example of this phenomenon comes from my experience examining more than 80 incidents involving vehicle-pedestrian and vehicle-vehicle incidents. Many of them involved buses or coaches turning.  I learned many unique things from these incidents. Yet some things are still puzzling. One of them is the dozens of incidents that involved buses, motorcoaches or van- and minibus-conversions (to accessible vehicles) making left turns. Yet  I cannot recall a single