Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. This week’s lineup: • Fourth London bus route goes fully electric (Intelligent Transport) • Court rules Paris car ban illegal (CityLab) • Trams may run again through Rome’s historic city centre (NextCity) • Secret bedroom discovered in Berlin U-Bahn (CityLab) • Seattle wants to bring back historic trolleys (NextCity) • LA Metro Rapid expands all-door boarding (Metro Mag) • Next generation Acela trains in production (Railway ...

A recent scientific study shows that the structure of bus networks can drastically shape demand. Conventional wisdom states that transit riders are averse to transfers and that consequently bus networks should be designed to limit their number. Probably as a result of this belief, many real bus systems try to connect as many origins and destinations as possible without transfers, so they are usually composed of long, circuitous routes with redundant overlapping sections – and the resulting bus ...

Some readers may already be aware of the current consultation on the pedestrianisation of Oxford Street between Orchard Street (just to the west of Selfridges) and Oxford Circus. This is part of a programme to realise some of the Mayor’s manifesto commitments. Unfortunately, in the minds of many, the scheme has become equated with removing buses (and other remaining traffic) from this section of Oxford Street. It’s only collateral damage In reality, in the context of the overall ...

Shenzhen is set to become the first city in the world to have a fully electrified bus fleet. From a small collection of fishing villages 40 years ago to a metropolis on track for a global milestone, Shenzhen has come further, faster than most cities. Already home to the largest fleet of electric buses in the world – roughly 14,500 at the end of May – the city is expected to electrify 100 percent of its public transit bus fleet by the end of 2017. If successful, it will become the first in ...

The bus system is the workhorse of New York City public transit, serving residents of all ages, ethnicities, and income levels across all five boroughs. Its size and scope is unparalleled, with 5,700 buses, 330 routes, and 16,000 stops serving well over two million passengers each day—more than the combined daily ridership of LIRR, MetroNorth, PATH, and New Jersey Transit.[i] The bus system is also the future of New York City public transit, connecting emerging job hubs outside of ...

This piece investigates what I believe has gone wrong with London’s bus blinds in recent years and seeks to explain the solutions I put forward when asked by Leon Daniels, TfL Managing Director Surface Transport. Being flattered to then be given the task of designing the more legible displays now appearing on some buses, this article covers some of the thinking. At the outset Leon asked me to ensure that all displays were clear, unambiguous and aesthetically pleasing — and aesthetics play ...

London buses could be powered by discarded coffee granules in the future under a new project which converts them into fuel. Londoners typically drink over 20 million cups of coffee a day collectively, leading to lots of wasted excess granules. This amounts to 200,000 tonnes of grounds that are produced by the capital alone each year. Arthur Kay, the founder of clean energy company Bio Bean, noted that the excess beans were high in calories and typically just chucked away. These calories have ...

Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. This week’s lineup: • Is London’s hopper fare encouraging Londoners onto buses? (CityMetric) • Harry Beck’s Imperial Airways map (Tube Map Central) • Millenium Falcon found on Earth, next to the M3 (The Twitter) • Let a thousand streetcars bloom in NYC (Village Voice) • San Franciso BART extension to Silicon Valley on track for June 2018 opening (SF Chronicle) • LA Purple Line subway extension proceeding despite NIMBYs (LA ...

Welcome to Reconnections’ Friday Reads. This week’s lineup: • TfL is pedestrianising Oxford Street & rerouting the buses (CityMetric) • New TfL consultation on new walking/cycling river crossing between Rotherhithe and Canary Wharf (IanVisits) • List of London’s fictional Tube stations in film and television (IanVisits) • Uber ad exposes problem with Uber in crowded cities (StreetsBlog) • Toronto bike lane enforcement officer has his Twitter account suspended ...

How Seattle Bucked a National Trend and Got More People to Ride the Bus Almost every major U.S. city has seen years of decline in bus ridership, but Seattle has been the exception in recent years. Between 2010 and 2014, Seattle experienced the biggest jump of any major U.S. city. At its peak in 2015, around 78,000 people, or about one in five Seattle workers, rode the bus to work. That trend has cooled slightly since then, but Seattle continues to see increased overall transit ridership, bucking ...

The MBTA partnered with BostonBRT to pilot all-door boarding on Silver Line routes 4 and 5 (Washington Street) from May 24th to June 6th, 2017. The goal was to measure how service improved when passengers could board at each door instead of lining up at the front door. Before the pilot began, the MBTA and BostonBRT identified several different metrics on which the SL 4/5 was expected to improve during the pilot, including reliability, reduced dwell time, and customer satisfaction. For the MBTA ...

The Fédération Nationale des Associations d’Usagers des Transports (FNAUT) Île-de-France, the greater Paris Association of Transport Users, has written a letter to Valérie Pécresse, President of the Regional Council of Île-de-France, requesting a study into the conversion of Paris’ busiest bus lines to trolleybus. The Association stated that “no technical resolution appears ideal” ‎for the replacement of diesel buses. Electric buses, which could represent 80% of ...

An electric bus just snagged a world record by driving 1,100 miles on a single charge. The Tesla Model S [car] can cruise for about 550 miles without recharging when pushed to the limit. Proterra just strapped two rooftop batteries on its 18-ton bus and drove the vehicle 1,101.2 miles on a single charge. The Sept 4 feat at Indiana’s Navistar Proving Grounds reportedly clinched the long distance record for any electric vehicle (EV). The previous title was set in 2011 by an experimental one-seat ...

London’s red buses are to be equipped with new safety technology including automatic braking, audible warning systems and new mirrors as part of a trial aimed at improving safety. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan set out a ‘Vision Zero’ approach to road danger earlier this year in his draft transport strategy. It aims for no one to be killed in or by a London bus by 2030, and for deaths and serious injuries from road collisions to be eliminated from London’s streets by 2041. The new safety ...

Excerpts: “The coming age of driverless cars has typically centered on Silicon Valley highfliers like Tesla, Uber and Google, which have showcased their autonomous driving technology in luxury sedans and sport utility vehicles costing $100,000 or more. But across Europe, fledgling driverless projects like those by Deutsche Bahn are instead focused on utilitarian self-driving vehicles for mass transit that barely exceed walking pace. “Forgoing the latest automotive trends of ...