News Tagged: Transit
25 Entries Tagged
Summit speaker: well-designed transit systems and maps are things of beauty
Designing efficient transit systems is only one piece of the puzzle. Getting people to use them is another.
In his bestselling “Transit Maps of the World” and followup work “Paris Metro Style: In Map and Station Design,” Mark Ovenden detailed the beauty of maps people use to navigate transit systems and of the stations themselves.
“When you walk into the Paris Metro system, with its art nouveau stations, it does affect you, whether you notice it or not,” Ovenden said. “It feels nice to be in. It encourages people to use the train.”
Ovenden will offer his take on transportation systems as the keynote speaker at the Oregon Transportation Summit, Friday, Sept. 9 at Portland State University.
Ovenden vaulted to fame with “Transit Maps of the World” after a career in radio and television. But he always had an interest in collecting maps and riding transit systems. “On a school trip to Paris at 9 or 10, I just wanted to ride the Metro all day,” he said. “The teacher said, ‘no, come with us to the Eiffel Tower, you idiot.’”
Even out of context, the maps Ovenden compiled serve as an art work. But much of their beauty lies in their function: getting people around smoothly. Some of the best maps, such as those of Paris and New York, are both beautiful and intuitive. Maps that just make an artistic statement risk aggravating riders.
Tags: buses, cartography, london underground, maps, mark ovenden, oregon transportation summit, paris metro, rail, transit, transit maps of the world, urban railroads
Tales from TRB: L.A. gets moving
Tuesday, Jan. 25 dispatch from the Transportation Research Board annual meeting:
Sometimes even stimulus needs a little stimulus. That was certainly true in Los Angeles County, faced with a backlog of transportation needs.
Doug Failing, chief planner with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or Metro, spoke at a session at the Transportation Research Board's annual meeting titled “How the implementation of ARRA-TIGER projects was accelerated: a tale of four cities.”
The Los Angeles tale is one of good fortune and good timing. As talk of a federal stimulus package was heating up, the county passed Measure R in November 2008. The sales tax measure would commit a projected $40 billion to transportation projects over the next 30 years.
The federal stimulus project gave that effort a boost when it passed in early 2009. Metro then took a further step, Failing said: the agency would speed up 12 key mass-transit projects to be completed within 10 years instead of 30.
Transportation-system investments have gone a long way toward moving people more efficiently in an area known for its gridlock. Once the worst metro area in the country in terms of hours spent in traffic, that number has declined over the last decade, with other cities taking over that dubious distinction, Failing said.
That’s largely thanks to infrastructure improvements, he said, and with more on the horizon, the situation stands to get even better.
Transit stations operate in sweet microenvironment
Even residents of a gingerbread candyland can't get around with holiday magic alone. After all, Santa's elves still need a reliable way to get from their cozy homes to the workshop.
Sadly, transportation planners have turned a frosty shoulder to sugar-based transit systems. Until now.
On Dec. 3, Portland State University's Students in Transportation Engineering and Planning held the first gingerbread transit station competition. Four teams of students pulled their attention away from human transit to focus on the needs of gingerbread people and misfit toys.
Dealing with building materials of unknown structural properties, students field engineered solutions. Licorice sticks stood in for steel rails, candy canes for bicycle racks. For a binding agent, students mixed cream of tartar and egg whites instead of portland cement.
Tags: alkali-silica reaction, students in transportation engineering and planning, transit, travel-time reliability
FTA Perspective on Regional Implications of the Federal Livability Initiative
Rick Krochalis, Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Region X Administrator, recently kicked off the Center for Transportation Seminar Series on January 8th with a presentation on the Regional Implications of the Federal Livability Initiative. The presentation touched on the federal interagency partnership in addition to FTA’s involvement in the effort. Smart growth and transit-oriented development are not new concepts. With growing congestion, energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, needs for maintaining a state of good repair on existing transportation systems in addition to a growing and aging and population in the United States; transit is playing a key role in helping address these issues.The seminar was followed with with a roundtable group discussion with TriMet and local partners; and meeting with faculty and students highlighting transit-related research. You can download the podcast or view the seminar if you missed the presentation. Livability is also the theme for the winter transportation seminar series.
Tags: fta, livability, rick krochalis, transit
Visiting Scholar: Brian Taylor, UCLA
Dr. Brian Taylor, Professor in Urban Planning and Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA, was the guest speaker and OTREC Visiting Scholar for the CTS Transportation Seminar on November 16, 2007. Dr. Taylor presented "Transit’s Dirty Little Secret: Analyzing Patterns of Transit Use." Later in the day, he was also the keynote speaker at the fall TransNow Student Conference at PSU, presenting "Rethinking Congestion" to the group of students from around the northwest. Professor Taylor’s research centers around transportation policy and planning. In particular, his work explores how society pays for transportation systems and how these systems in turn serve the needs of people who have low levels of mobility.
Archives
Categories
Filter By University
- Portland State University
- University of Oregon
- Oregon State University
- Oregon Institute of Technology
OTREC's Most Used Tags
active transportation alex bigazzi bicycle bicycle infrastructure bicycling chris monsere design e-bikes electric vehicles emissions hau hagedorn ibpi institute of transportation engineers jennifer dill john macarthur karen dixon kelly clifton krista nordback livability livemove marc schlossberg metro miguel figliozzi nico larco nitc oregon department of transportation oregon institute of technology oregon transportation summit otrec portland state university proposals psu public transportation region x region x consortium research rfp rita robert bertini step sustainable cities initiative transit transportation modeling transportation research board trb trimet university of oregon university of utah visiting scholars program walking