In the March, 2020 installment of National Bus Trader, I penned a scathing article about fare collection (see https://transalt.com/article/drivers-v-robots-part-8-collecting-the-fares-skimming-the-passengers/). But like many things in transit, things only and always get worse and worse. It is hardly surprising that ridership continues to decline, placing the future of transit at risk of soon disappearing in many part of the country. But my most recent experience with the New York City subway system was so exasperating that I felt it worth summarizing the key benchmarks in the history of fare collection. The Good Old Days When the introduction of buses began, car owners
Just as the bottom was about to drop out of the transit industry – ridership so low that a few systems abandoned fares altogether – new opportunities for increases in ridership are opening up. I am certain that the dysfunctional transit sector will squander the major opportunity. But it still interesting table talk. The opportunity is derived mostly by the substantial number of riders and potential riders working remotely – either totally or, more recently, on a hybrid basis. In either case, the roadways of many cities should thin out meaningfully (despite the dynamic known as “latent demand”), making transit
Even while roughly 18 feet of Iceland melt every year, there are plenty of Americans who do not believe in climate change. As in Iceland, everyone does in the South Sea islands, where the coastline is receding dramatically. But this belief is not as universal in huge countries like the United States where weather patterns were vastly different long before any notion of climate change emerged, and long before some of the forces that led to it, like large-scale fossil fuel consumption, even existed. (In the 19th Century, the sixth-largest industry was whaling!) This is not true of every contributing
Freedom. The superficiality America promotes itself to have around the world. An easier con I cannot imagine. An obvious example in the motorcoach sector is our failure to regulate limits of shift inversion – which Canada, Europe and Australia employ and enforce. In contrast, we are still battling over issues related to electronic logs. Shift inversion is not the theme of this article. It merely illustrates a broader theme that courses through our society, and which is, bit by bit, falling apart – and the world is noticing. This is certain true of our transit service; I have written about
Once in a while, a published article is so thought-provoking, or so filled with concern, that the thoughts are echoed that same day in multiple other publications. Today’s piece (October 6, 2023) in the NYTimes (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/11/06/business/economy/commuting-change-covid.html) about commuting triggered a spin-off in The Hill (https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4292731-biden-funding-amtrak-northeast-corridor/) and the excellent daily post by Matt Daus. Less talked about in these articles were the implications for transit ridership – although some frightening figures about this were cited in the NYTimes piece. Reworking these thoughts for the transit and motorcoach industries, I am presenting them below. Despite the last few tumultuous years, most Americans
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
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, 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
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
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
