What should qualify as "good" transit?
Should we set a minimum passengers per hour, set a minimum average speed, set a minimum frequency, set a minimum shelter, etc. to quantify "good" transit.
All too often in the USA, bus services wouldn't meet any of our suggested minimums.

That's why many Americans don't include bus services with good transit.

What could be compared to what is are galaxies apart.

But as you kinda touched on, the conversation seems to always come back to rapid transit (as in, bus vs rail) when local transit is so important to moving people around the majority of the city that doesn't have rapid transit, or getting to the rapid transit itself. That local transit is almost always buses, and it can't be ignored. I get that rapid transit is sexier and obviously needs to be developed as well, but slow local bus transit needs continued improvement too.

But that's what I'm saying. It's good that shitty bus service is being acknowledged as a problem, and there are people who see that improving local bus transit will make a big impact in public transportation. Too many people take bad local transit for granted and think the only way to really improve transit is to expand the subway or whatever as much as possible, when really it's just as important to develop the local bus transit alongside that.

You have failed to grasp how spread out American metros are. Great local bus service doesn't solve commuters services from the boondocks. A bus making stops every two to three blocks is not going to make a great 10 to 15 mile commute. What's needed is a rapid service.
Let's take DCTA recent experiences as an example. Commuters from Denton into Dallas travel 30 miles each way. When the A-Train replaced express bus services directly to downtown Dallas, ridership tripled although it requires a transfer to DART's light rail trains in Carrollton. That's why trains are so attractive to transit operators. The express buses did not get riders away from heavy congested traffic on the freeway, the train did.
Once you are in downtown Dallas or Denton, to make the last mile or two connection, that's where good local bus services shine. But buses alone, no matter how great they are, will rarely satisfy long distance commuters needs.

Also with trains you can have them automated and also have them run 24 hours a day or close to it.

Did the express buses not have access to bus lanes or HOV lanes on the route? If not then the problem was that the municipalities didn't have suitable transit ROWs rather than that it was bus service.

I'm not saying buses are better than trains or anything, just that they're ignored at the city's own peril. As Nouvelecosse said, if you treat your bus system like shit while giving the train its own right-of-way, it's not the bus's fault it's stuck in traffic. Trains certainly have an important role in sending people long distances, and buses can be used for longer trips too by being limited-stop, but I just see many situations where people dismiss bus improvements in frequency and things like that because "it still sucks" or something like that.

What I'm saying is treating bus service as a hopeless social service is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because if you question its utility in the first place you're not gonna work very hard to improve it. Vancouver has an extensive rapid transit network, but the regular bus system is crucial to getting people around all over the city as well. "Improving transit" often seems to just mean "extending rapid transit," which it should, but it should mean expanding frequency and operating hours of regular bus routes too. It's called a system for a reason - every piece plays their role. Otherwise, with the inutility of bus services as you describe them, why have them at all? Just run rapid transit only. I think not every corridor can warrant rapid transit, so on those, local transit needs to be made as good as it can be. It'll help more than people think.

This has renderings.

https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/n...ying-uber.html

^ Good. Let DFW be the guinea pig for crashing Uber taxis.

http://www.bluejeansandcottontees.co...pig-flying.png


Mind blown

Also in the DFW area, the suburb of Frisco will start a demonstration in July of on-call autonomous cars.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/news/f...-july-10668718

More gimmicky piss


• Video Link

I've seen a lot of stupid shit but this __________________________________________. (fill in the blank)

Dahir Insaat has a new video, those videos are funny

I got to hand it to him/them. That is some imagination. Can they show how it will work in inclement weather?

Chinese city gets 'smartphone zombie' walkway

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-...where-44383449




https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/375/cp...6_thepaper.png

^ apparantly or should we say appropriately enough its a tourist draw and everyone is snapping photos of it with their phones

There are freeways in Dallas with HOV/Managed Lanes, but I-35E all the way from Denton to Dallas isn't one of them - yet. It will take more than a $Billion to make it so - DCTA's A Train capital cost was around $300 Million. You do the math!
The problem with new HOV lanes in the Dallas area is that they are open to everyone who is willing to pay the toll to use them; a variable toll depending upon usage; so they're almost as congested as the regular free lanes.

Beijing subways could get facial recognition and palm scanning tech, Chinese media reports

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/19/chin...ning-tech.html

How could it possibly cost that much just to paint HOV labels on a lane in each direction and put up some signs? I'm trying to do the math but I'm having a hard time coming up with $1 billion. I mean, even if they needed to do the entire 34 km route, it would still cost 29.4 million per km. Not much less than some LRT lines. But yeah it sounds like they're not managed very well in the area and would be better off strictly as bus/EV/3+person only lanes.