MetaFilter posts tagged with transportation and transit

So you ditched your car - here's help with public transit

desjardins — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:58:07 -0800

NextBus uses GPS to tell you the predicted time of the next bus. Google maps show buses in real time, and you can get updates on your phone/PDA. The coverage is limited to certain agencies within the US, so these other sites might be useful: Hopstop covers subways and buses in NYC, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, DC, and more. (mobile version) Google Transit has many US metro areas in addition to Canada, Europe, and Japan. (previously) Many more locations inside. Other trip planners (mostly mobile):

MTA (New York City)
MTA (Los Angeles)
Amtrak
New Jersey Transit
MBTA (Boston)
Washington DC Metropolitan Area Transit Authority
Chicago Regional Transit Authority (CTA, Metra)
A Train (Atlanta)
Valley Metro (Phoenix)
San Francisco Bay Area 511 (BART, Muni Metro, VTA Light Rail, Cable cars, Commuter Rail, buses, ferries)
Portland (interactive map; roll your own app)
King County Metro Online (Seattle)
Toronto (TTC Buses and subways)
Vancouver (BC) Translink
Paris (RER, TGV, Metro, bus, more - in French)
London Underground and DLR
Norikae-Annei (Tokyo)

Encyclopedia of Transportation Planning Strategies

salvia — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:04:26 -0800

Too much traffic? Can't find parking? Choking on smog? Worried about climate change? Gas prices too high, but you still have to drive? Send your city planner a link to the Online Encyclopedia of Transportation Demand Management strategies. The Victoria Transport Policy Institute was mentioned in a comment back in 2005, but not the encyclopedia, which is one of the most complete online transportation resources that I've run across lately.

Lee press-on car

XMLicious — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 05:16:25 -0800

The Tata Nano (pic) is a car that costs less new than the amount I've spent on gas during single car trips, recently announced to the auto market in India. The Chery QQ ^, successful , wide ly ex por ted, and recognized as the Hostage Taker's Vehicle of Choice by China Car Times, is the runner-up for the world's cheapest car but is still approximately twice as expensive. Yes indeed, the price of gas is not going to come back down. So much for my coast-to-coast road trips. Forbes magazine's The World's Cheapest Cars (javascript slideshow)

Adding up US subsidies for auto travel with and without the costs of war

salvia — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:02:34 -0800

In the U.S., motorists do not pay their way. The US government spends more on highways and other auto-related expenses than it receives from auto-related taxes, unlike almost every country in Europe. In a recent report [pdf], Mark Delucchi calculates automobile-related costs and revenues in three different ways and concludes the subsidy is around 20-70 cents per gallon or $24-105 billion in 2002. But what are automobile-related costs, you ask? Largely tucked away in footnotes and background papers [pdf] are his careful considerations about which expenditures to include and what portion of costs relate directly to automobile oil use, for everything from the highway patrol, to fighting brushfires, to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to military activity in the Middle East. Don't miss Report #15, in which Delucchi and coauthor James Murphy seek to calculate: “If the U.S. transportation sector did not use oil, how much would the U.S. federal government reduce its military commitment in the Persian Gulf?” [pdf] (especially Table 15-12, which summarizes much of the paper). [previously] [originally via]

subway(station)spotting

amberglow — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 14:19:39 -0800

Beautiful Subways --worldwide--from palatial to postmodern, folksy to brutalist (pee smells not included--and don't miss Tehran's)

Whither useful information for an overdesigned site?

calwatch — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 00:12:37 -0800

R.I.P. Bay Area Transit Information Page, 1994-2003. The site, started by two Berkeley students, provided quick access to transit information in the San Francisco Bay Area, who later received funding for their efforts in 1996. Instead, it gets replaced by this abomination of web design. On the other hand, it is very unusual for a web site to keep the same user interface over the span of almost a decade. Already, there have been user interface rants, complaints about not finding information, sarcastic commentary, and a brief eulogy delivered from one of the original creators, and it hasn't even been the first day. Is content over style dead or are information sites like this (flash) the wave of the future?

Merge, dumbass!

riffola — Fri, 04 Jul 2003 18:34:38 -0800

Microsimulation of road traffic with a time-continuous model [via MagentBox]

Arson in South Korean subway

antimarx — Tue, 18 Feb 2003 02:19:02 -0800

More senseless killing, boys and girls: an Arson in a South Korean subway. "With 135 people injured, many seriously, and at least 90 people listed as missing, officials say they expect the death toll to rise much higher." This will, no doubt, help in stabilizing the region.

wsfinkel — Tue, 05 Mar 2002 07:12:15 -0800

Pigeons Ride the Subway!(NYT Link) This reporter found truth behind a New York urban legend, train riding pigeons. Any weird stories of urbanized animals in your area?

yevge — Thu, 01 Nov 2001 15:03:40 -0800

California Governor Announced that there is a credible threat against the bridges of the state of California. Including the Golden Gate Bridge. The attacks are likely to take place between the second and ninth of November, during rush hour.

moss — Sun, 09 Sep 2001 00:27:07 -0800

Transitinfo.org has been around for years, but doesn't seem to have been posted here yet. It lists schedule and fare information for several dozen public transportation agencies in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. It's not too flashy, but it's one of the most quietly useful websites I've found. For those of you who don't live in and around San Francisco: are there websites like this for other regions?

tranquileye — Mon, 30 Jul 2001 05:02:18 -0800

I guess we'll walk. Much of eastern Canada is currently in the grip of one of the worst summers for smog on record, and a recent poll showed that 58 per cent of Canadians support the idea of limiting car use on smoggy days. However, just 37 per cent said they were willing to pay more taxes in order to improve public transportation.

rorschach — Fri, 15 Dec 2000 05:58:33 -0800

Eating food on the D.C. metro, revisited. I think it's funny that the girl is being represented by the Rutherford Institute.

daveadams — Mon, 29 May 2000 22:01:34 -0800

Car-free Cities
Would you like to live in a city where everything you need is within a five-minute walk? Where you can get from one side of a city of a million people to the other in less than thirty minutes? Where the air is clean, people are healthy, children and the elderly aren't dependent on others to get where they want to go, and life is beautiful? You can have it all--just ban cars.