Population Pyramids I: Snapshots of a Place

If your community were a junior prom, a population pyramid would be its photograph.  Girls on the left, boys on the right, all clustered by clique, or in this case, by age group.  These handy planning tools graphically illustrate the age and sex composition of a place (city, state, nation, whatever) in a simple, immediately accessible way and should be included in any analysis of said place whether...

The Met in Metro

  Shelters on the Sprinter Line in Charlotte are unique identifiers but also part of the urban fabric. Photo courtesy of CATS. Art has historically been public, civic – both a product of and contributor to collective identity.  From Egyptian glyphs to idealized Greek athletes, from Roman triumphal arches to intricate altar pieces, art condescends to tell us something about who we are, where...

Go Figure: Figure-ground as a Land Use/Transportation Tool

It has long been widely recognized by many city planners, urban designers, architects, landscape architects, and historic preservationists, that, among many other influences, a viable community has a balanced relationship between building mass and open space that gives it a sense of compactness, spatial definition, and is in human scale. A typical figure-ground. This concern is even more relevant...

To Get to the Other Side

“Why did the chicken cross the road?” is the start of what is probably the first or second joke we ever hear in our lifetimes (my favorite response is one I saw on t-shirts in Texas:  “To prove to the armadillo it could be done!”).  That old saw came to mind when I was talking to my friend and professor of transportation planning at Florida State University Gregory Thompson (he also wrote...

Tutorial: FTIS

If you ever have a need to find ridership or any other transit data from transit properties (including your own) then you need to know about FTIS.  It stands for the Florida Transit Information System.  The Florida in the name refers to the state where the system was developed and the DOT that made it, not to the data or who may use it.  It is an easy-to-use interface of the National Transportation...

Transit is in the business of moving people, not relieving congestion

As regularly as an equatorial sunrise, Google Alerts sends me news clips from around the world of transit.  From these articles I know light rail is making progress in the Carolinas, transit ridership is increasing in car-mad Phoenix, and congressional candidates are talking about transit on the campaign trail.  Unfortunately, most of these missives from the transit field carry with them the promise...

Transit Shelter Advertising: Shelter Brought to You By . . .

Shelter image Michal Zacharzewski   Off-site advertising bans make ad-sponsored shelters tricky.  Why the California 9th Circuit Court of Appeals might be the new BFF of JTA.  The video is excellent.  Mike Miller, Jacksonville Transit Authority Director of External Affairs, has been showing it to citizen groups, neighborhood associations, civic organizations, elected officials and others. ...

Streetcar Timeline

From horse-drawn to recent hurricanes, here is the short history of the streetcar in pdf.

Cutting the Cord: Streetcars without Wires

  At the Americana at Brand in Glendale, CA, the money saved on overhead wires could be spent on lavish appointments for the streetcars themselves. Photo Gomaco Trolley Company. We tend to think of streetcars as operating on a fixed guideway.  The majority of the world’s streetcar systems, however, move between two of them, the unobtrusive rails in the ground and the power lines that run overhead...

Like Peas and Carrots: Co-locating facilities and transit

  For more than 100 Years the Reading Terminal Market has been the grocer, deli, cheese shop, bakery, and so mucyh else to commuters in Philadelphia. Steam Locamotives once stopped overhead but now Reading is served underground by SEPTA. Photo Scheib Shoppers could always tell when the train arrived by the sound of 700,000 pounds of steel laboring to a halt a few dozen feet overhead.  The Reading...

The Hundred Million Dollar Line

  There are few hours above the red line, but we pay mightily for them in infrastructure. Noting the exceptions of those few cities stuck in permanent rush hour, peak is the hour that rankles.  When angry citizens gripe about congestion they are not thinking of 10 a.m. or 10 p.m.; they are concerned about the hours in the morning and afternoon when most of us still go to a job.  When DOT or public...

Moscow Metro II: Buried History in the Moscow Metro

To say that the Park Pobedy (Victory Park) station is deep is to say that the Moscow Metropolitan is just a good way to get around.  Mounting the escalator, one immediately recalls the posters in the metro showing a station attendant, young, blond, and cute, in her blue uniform.  She smiles beguilingly and the text reads “Yest’ Vykhod.”  There is an exit.  This is reassuring.  The escalators,...

The Space Between: shaping community with transit

This photo simulation juxtaposes a modern streetcar vehicle (photographed in Tacoma Washington) with the newly built home of the Live Arts, a community theater in downtown Charlottesville. Image by Okerlund Associates. by Gary Okerlund and Todd Gordon Charlottesville, a small city in central Virginia with a population of 40,000, has been home to three presidents, Madison, Monroe, and most famously...

All Together Now

“Always do more than is required of you.”  General George S. Patton Time was, some folks did not get out as much as they may have liked.  Sidewalks were obstacle courses, parking lots deserts, and staircases mountains.  Getting around could be very difficult for people with disabilities.  They got some relief with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), which required bathroom stalls...

Preemptive Strike

A transit stop inventory and improvement plan can stave off lawsuits and make transit’s most common asset a bit less common. This stop, on a curb, at a curve, attached to a stop sign is not just unattractive; it could be dangerous. Courtesy Nelson Nygaard. Shopkeepers who want to mind the store better mind the door.  That rhyme is inspired by a 2005 study by the National Floor Safety Institute (NFSI),...