http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?stid=10&aid=73400

This article is about complaints about AC Transit’s current RapidBus express bus.

AC Transit is proposing a future BRT line on the same route, which would differ from RapidBus because it would have exclusive bus lanes.

I believe that exclusive bus lanes are part of the conventional definition of BRT, so the complaint here as not about BRT.

Incidentally, a member of Friends of BRT went there yesterday at 5 with a speedgun, and he found that the maximum speed of buses was 20 mph. He did not see any dirt or dust being spread on this vendor’s t-shirt stand.

(The same street vendor is also against BRT, but that is another story.)

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny–fastbuses0828aug28,0,5317890.story


Staten Island bus transmitters to change lights from red to green

7:26 PM EDT, August 28, 2007

NEW YORK (AP) _ A pilot program starting next month will give buses the power to change red lights to green.

The technology, to be used on Staten Island, will link emitters on 300 buses to receivers atop 14 traffic lights along 2.3 miles of Victory Boulevard. It's designed to speed up bus service.

The devices will turn lights from red to green 7 seconds earlier if a bus is within about 120 feet of an intersection, city Department of Transportation spokesman Craig Chin said Tuesday. If the light is already green, the devices will make it stay green longer, he said.

For drivers on cross streets, their lights would turn red sooner or stay red longer.

The program will begin at the end of September, Chin said. Before-and-after studies will determine how much time is being saved.

The technology will be incorporated into the city's planned Bus Rapid Transit project, a speeded-up bus service that will be introduced over the next two years in each borough.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny–fastbuses0828aug28,0,5317890.story

Wasn’t it Robert Moses’s original vision that traffic would proceed at 10-20 mph as families “enjoyed” the parks from their cars?

If there must be tarmac, maybe the best bet is to dial back the speed limit to Moses’s vision. That would be pedestrian-friendly.

Eliminating the need for parking for large events is a fairly simple problem to solve. All you have to do is link the parking spaces to the event’s tickets. If you want to reserve a parking space up-front, you need to buy a more expensive ticket to include the cost of parking. Otherwise, you should not assume you will get one. It will encourage usage of mass transit and carpooling.

How about the opposite? When I buy a ticket to a music festival in Germany, the ticket price includes all streetcars and buses in the city. Shouldn’t your US Open – or Yankees or Brooklyn Nets – tickets include the subway fare (or a credit towards rail fare)?

Or is that asking too much, to have an integrated transit network that could accommodate more than just “get on, ride, get off.”

Gleich said the rapid bus has a system that allows it to communicate with traffic signals to keep lights green 10 seconds longer if the signal is about to change.

Wow – just imagine where we’d be in NYC if the MTA had imagination like this! I mean, our cutting-edge technology is to have one subway line where there are signs that can tell you when the next train might (or might not) arrive!

We biked out to Flushing Meadow Corona Park last weekend. Not only was there tons of tennis parking in the park (which has almost completely killed vegetation from wide swaths of parkland), but I was struck by the general dilapidation of just about everything other than the Unisphere. The “fountain of the planets” is particularly pathetic, and qualifies as an eyesore IMHO. This is in sharp contrast to Wards/Randall’s Islands, which over the last year has been extensively renovated, and beautifully landscaped and restored at what must be a huge expense.

NYC should take a look at what Seattle has done with its old world’s fair grounds, which (like Flushing Meadows Corona Park world’s fair grouns) include science and art museums, theatres, monumental scultpures, etc. There is such huge potential but no one seems to be doing anything about it. Instead, the money seems to be going towards turning the Hall of Science, the Queens Museum and other public spaces in this area into for-hire catering facilities while the public-access spaces rot away or are devoted to parking.

Eliminating the need for parking for large events is a fairly simple problem to solve. All you have to do is link the parking spaces to the event’s tickets. If you want to reserve a parking space up-front, you need to buy a more expensive ticket to include the cost of parking. Otherwise, you should not assume you will get one. It will encourage usage of mass transit and carpooling.

having grown up there, i can attest that the last 4 blocks of Telegraph need to be treated differently than the rest of the line. they should either close that area to traffic altogether and end the line at Dwight Way, or force the buses to lower their speed drastically, like to 10 mph.

it would be unfortunate if BRT got a bad rap due to this sort of bad planning.

Still, Villaraigosa’s planning appointees insist that creating parking hell is the key to a pedestrian-friendly future.

I think Mr. Morris just hit on a new slogan for us!