I wonder if a concerted high-visibility campaign in one transit-intensive US city might drive the issue to prominence. It wouldn’t even need to come from the government. Suppose, for example, that one prominent locally-based merchant in, say, San Francisco announced that from now on, they’d be giving out only $1 coins as change. This could be one of those good-corporate-citizen moves, designed to support transit patronage by putting dollar coins in people’s pockets. (I suspect they would also find that the change would result in faster service for the merchant’s customers, since coins are faster to grab and count than bills.)
Archive | August, 2009
Ride Quality: The Driver’s Role
In my series on streetcars, I’ve been groping toward constructing a coherent view about technology choice, a hugely expensive and political issue in transit development. Since this is a blog rather than a book, I’m thinking out loud, engaging with comments, and revising without erasing. The effect has probably been jerky and lumbering, with lots of small lateral motions that evoke the feel of riding a bus.
Speaking of ride quality, a reader asks:
Do you know if there are any cities that make a point of ensuring their bus drivers provide a smooth ride? In my experience, even with the same model bus on the same route, some bus drivers manage a vastly more pleasant and less jerky ride. So I’m just thinking that this aspect of the bus experience should be technically feasible to improve…
Good training covers this, but my own hunch is that drivers are good at ride quality based not on training but on how sensitive they are as people. A sensitive driver will constantly make unconscious choices that produce a smoother ride for her, regardless of whether she’s just driving her own car or driving a bus. A person who’s just not sensitive to quality of ride is unlikely to be made more sensitive by the kind of training that bus drivers get.
But I’d be interested in other perspectives, especially from bus drivers and people who know them.
Mundane Things That Matter: Abolish US$1 Bills!
If the Obama administration wanted to strike a dramatic blow for public transit, one that would immediate speed up transit journeys all across America, they would abolish the $1 bill, and get everyone used to the $1 coin.
Travelling in the US last month, I had several opportunities to feed dollar bills into fareboxes. Even if you have perfectly flattened your dollar bill, and folded out all its corners, the process takes at least three seconds per bill, and often closer to five, during which a bus or streetcar with a 100+ passengers goes nowhere.