The Government Accountability Office (wiki), formerly the Government Accounting Office, loves BRT (PDF). And we’re not talking about ‘love’ in some mellow sense of the word - we’re talking intense, burning love. Consider me shocked - and appalled.
Let me explain.
Up until two days ago - until the time I read that 2001 GAO report, and [...]
Did you ever stop to think about some particular malady affecting society, and wonder just how it came about - how it was allowed to happen? It could be anything, really - like charging people for drinking water, or preventing them, by law, from capturing rainwater - something just so over-the-top ridiculous that you have [...]
When I heard Brazil was getting the 2014 World Cup (I’m a soccer nut, as well as a bike nut) - I thought, “Hmmm…every other World Cup means new transportation gets built like crazy.” I wanted to find out what was popping down in Pelé’s homeland with respect to transportation issues - having been to [...]
The SFBC asks:
Want to know how we can speed up buses on Van Ness, one of the busiest routes in the City?
No.
This has been another edition of Simple Answers To Simple Questions.
…I should not that ’speed up’ does not have to mean actually making the buses achieve higher miles-per-hour (MPH) levels - it could just [...]
The biggest problem I have with bus rapid transit (BRT) is that it elevates motorized transport - the bus - over active transport - namely, walking and biking. What this means in real terms is that bicycles will not be allowed to travel on Geary Boulevard. I mean, technically one might be legally permitted to [...]
We’ve seen the StreetFilms hagiography of the Transmilenio BRT - now let’s take a look at something that might be a bit more indicative of the true nature of Transmilenio - let me present, ‘Transmilenio In Pictures,’ for your pleasure.
First, when you want to go somewhere, walk to the gangplank, and walk over it to [...]
For any of you progressives or environmentalists (or humans) out there, you know that watching Bush over the last few years has been an exercise in ‘forget what he says’ and ‘oppose everything he does.’
Now, it would be stupid to hate BRT just because Bush loves it - that would be a bit like voting [...]
Problem: Building BRT systems without also providing adequate space for walking and bicycling improvements places non-sustainable forms of transit above sustainable forms of transit.
The above photo is from Curitiba, Brazil. We have to ask ourselves, is this what we want the streets of San Francisco to look like? Is this what we’d rather have instead [...]
There are plenty of good reasons to dislike bus rapid transit systems (BRTs), but maybe especially so if you are a bicycle person. One simple, straightforward, easy-to-understand reason is that buses have an uncanny ability to trap and crush things under their rear wheels. This is the scene I caught while walking through SoMa today:
The [...]
In the ongoing development of plans for a reduced-car Market Street, I’ve been wondering what role, if any, the presence of all the sex-related businesses on Market Street would play. Curbed SF says one of the sex superstores is going away.
Is fewer cars and more pedestrians and bicyclists a good thing or bad thing for [...]
