From around the Transit Blogosphere

To broaden the horizons of readers when it comes to transport matters, here are a few posts from around the transit blogosphere of late that I have found interesting read:

1. Metro Rider LA talks about one of my favourite topics, the high cost of free parking. I find this paragraph particularly excellent:

When you subsidize something, you get more of it. Right now, in this city, we have an artifically high amount of driving because of subsidized parking. This gets us tremendous congestion and very unwalkable streets. It’s no surprise that people do not want to open street shops downtown – who wants to walk near there? It’s just not a nice area to walk around. If we had market-priced parking, then we would also see more transit use, more biking, more walking, etc. These options all become more appealing when we pay the real cost of our driving. Subsidized parking should be a thing of the past.

2. Human Transit celebrates its first anniversary. This is seriously the best transport blog I have ever come across, as Jarrett is careful to be balanced in his opinions and use his considerable knowledge to help broaden our understanding of transport planning. I have certainly learned a lot over the past year from reading his blog. He also has the kind of job I aspire to having one day: an international transit consultant who travel around the world fixing cities’ public transport systems. Please come to Auckland Jarrett!
3. The Transport Politic discusses a light-rail project in southeast Houston, and the worries of local residents that the project will result in the massive gentrification of their area, eventually resulting in them being priced out. An interesting twist on the wider benefits of public transport projects, although the blog post does argue that transit in and of itself is unlikely to be a powerful enough force to achieve such drastic changes – it needs to be backed up by land-use planning changes. Whether or not the changes are a good thing is an interesting matter for debate.
4. Captain Transit compares buses to burgers. Yes, seriously. The point is that up until relatively recently buses were seen as the cheap and nasty side of public transport – its burgers. Yet just as there has been a shift to gourmet burgers over the last decade, there has also been a shift towards higher quality bus-based public transport. The Northern Express in Auckland is a classic example.
5. Back in Auckland, Jon C at AucklandTrains has Auckland City mayor John Banks outline the emphasis he places on getting transport right in the Auckland Super City. Aside from repeating the utterly incorrect urban legend that Auckland is the second most sprawled city in the world, it is excellent to hear that Banks is so committed to rail these days.

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