Recently I posted on the importance of frequency mapping in network maps. Most transit network maps, I argued, show all the transit lines but make it impossible to sort through them to figure out, quickly, which are likely to be useful. The bottom line: A map that makes all the lines look equally important is as useful as a road map that makes a freeway look just like a dirt road. Continue Reading →
Archive | September, 2010
Palestine: Time to Think About Transit?
Can good planning help address the grievous problems of the Palestinian territories, including the challenge of conceiving its patchwork of lands as a viable state? My friend Doug Suisman, a Los Angeles architect in private practice, has been working on the problem for years, through a remarkable project called the Arc. The New York Times profiled it five years ago. Despite all the bad news from Israel and Palestine since then, the work has continued. The idea is to have a plan for the urban structure and transport infrastructure of a Palestinian state, something that’s ready to go when an independent state is created and that can even be part of the run-up to independence. Continue Reading →
Christchurch: An Animated Quake Map
If you want a vivid map of what our friends in Christchurch, New Zealand have been going through, here’s a simple animation of the size, location, and intensity of the ongoing series of earthquakes. It comes by way of friends at NZ in Tranzit, who are also on top of the local transit news.
The Chinese Tunnel-Bus, or Train, or Whatever
Old news, I know.
Chinese designers have come up with an innovative cost-effective public transport system: the tunnel bus.
The remarkable bus straddles two lanes of traffic, allowing cars to drive underneath while it carries up to 1,200 passengers.
It’s environmentally sound too because it runs on electricity, using a state-of-the-art charging system. Called relay charging, the roof of the bus conducts electricity and contacts special charging posts as it moves along.
Engadget links to a video in Chinese explaining the concept, which is pretty clear even if you don’t know Chinese. A trial line is planned in Beijing, so we won’t have to debate it in theory for much longer.
But this is interesting:
It’s cost-effective because there are two ways it could operate: first off, special tracks could be laid into each side of
the road, like a tram.Or secondly, simple coloured lines could be painted onto the road for it to follow automatically on conventional tyres. There’ll be a driver on the bus at all times, though.
I’m not sure how that makes it cost-effective, but it does have the effect of reducing the bus-rail distinction an almost academic quibble.
Either way, this is going to be a large structure resting on narrow wheels. It could be on rubber tires but linked to an optical-guidance system (sensors on the vehicle responding to a painted line on the pavement) and the effect would be the same as if it were on rails: a controlled path with little or no lateral motion.
So is it a train or a bus? Who cares?
Navigation: “Turn Right at the Yellow Shop”?
From the Chicago Breaking Business Report:
Digital mapping company Navteq has introduced a new navigation system
that guides drivers based on the way people naturally give each other
directions, with Chicago as one of the initial cities in the launch.Its new system, called Natural Guidance, gives instructions based on
points of interest and landmarks. For example, instead of traditional
navigation systems that tell drivers to turn after a certain amount of
distance, Natural Guidance instructs users to “turn right after the
yellow shop.”
I hope you like the look of your yellow shop, because if you paint it green, you’ll be destroying your city’s navigation system.
Give me feet, or meters, any day.
On Pedestrian Malls: Look to Australia
Why are pedestrian streets in commercial areas so common and successful in Europe, but not in North America?
A while back, a reader emailed me to ask this. He observed that even in Vancouver, it’s hard to get a pedestrian mall going:
And why does a downtown core as densely populated as Vancouver only have one temporary pedestrian area (part of Granville Street)? And could Vancouver make the main shopping street (Robson Street) a pedestrian corridor like many UK towns and cities do (such as Birmingham, Glasgow, Reading, Bournemouth, and many more)?
I note you commented on Price Tags about Granville Mall earlier this year, and Price Tags has a recent article on the removal of a pedestrian area in Raleigh, North Carolina. Have you any further thoughts on these issues?
Comment of the Week: The Frequent Network Mapping Campaign
From Jeff Wegerson of Prairie State Blue, on the current burst of reader-designed Frequent Network maps on this blog, which began with this post.
It’s almost like Jarrett is running a contest here that not only doesn’t have a prize, it doesn’t have any well defined rules. And that is probably fine at this stage. It’s as if we are in a brainstorming session and told not to be negative to ideas because we want them to keep coming. Something like that.
Someone once said that the essence of leadership is to appear to have intended whatever good thing has just happened. So I appreciate Jeff’s assurance that I’m keeping up the illusion of being in charge here.
Montréal: The Pleasure of Maps Made by Hand, or by Eye
Google is getting us all used to the idea of automatically generated maps, which sacrifice many opportunities for clarity and beauty in order to be instantly available and automatically up-to-date. But Anton Dubrau, who writes the intelligent Montréal transit blog Catbus, asks:
I guess there is this general question whether frequent network maps should be automatically generated, or made by hand. Which is probably related to the question whether they should be abstract and compact, or geographically accurate. Or whether they should be published today, or … later. It took me more than a solid week to make a map of Montréal’s network by hand.
San Francisco: May 2010 Service Cuts Mostly Restored
As I said at the time, the first round of service cuts in San Francisco implemented in 2009 actually did some good by deleting some segments that, for geometric reasons, were always going to be ineffective. But the second round implemented in May 2010 were mostly just painful. Now, after a long struggle, that destructive second round is being reversed, mostly on September 4 with the remainder to come in December. I often criticize journalists for featuring bad news but missing the corresponding good news, so it’s only fair to do the same myself.
Do Complex Networks Require Complex Maps?
In his guest post, Aaron Priven explained the design process that he led for the distinctive AC Transit network map in 2003. Here are some pieces of that map. (For the whole thing in its most recent version, see here for PDF, or here in a version that you can pan and zoom online.)