November 16th, 2010 
admin 
China is currently developing a bus that is elevated above the road leaving it possible for cars to drive underneath it. This new bus is a great idea for China because it removes the necessity to widen the existing infrastructure (roads.) The Shenzhen Huashi Future Parking Equipment Company is calling this new bus the “3D Express Coach.”
Posted in Transportation 
Tags: 3D Express Coach, bus, China, public transit, solar power, transit, transportation 
3 Comments » November 14th, 2010 admin 
An unused subway stop located under New York City is starting to attract people. The photos below show the “City Hall” stop that was opened in 1904 however it has not been used for many years. The reason for this is that the “City Hall” stop had very curved tracks. When the train has redesigned, this created a gap that made it dangerous to enter and exit the train.
Posted in Adaptive Reuse, Transportation Tags: abandoned, historic, NYC, public transit, rail, subway, transit 3 Comments » November 3rd, 2010 admin 
Why are US cities so much weaker on this score? Lots of factors, but a big one has to be the decentralization of employment. The classic suburban business park, which is pretty much impossible for transit to serve effectively, is far more prevalent in the US than in Canada or Australia. From what I know of Vancouver and Australian cities, most business park development has some nexus with industry, whose space needs justify the low density. Recently we’ve seem some more American-inspired versions, but nothing on the scale and extent that’s common around US cities.
October 21st, 2010 admin 
One of my favorite things to do in Turkey is go down to the main otogar (bus station), ask around for buses to interesting destinations, and hop on. The station itself is no great shakes architecturally or anything, but I love the hustle and bustle and the feeling that a whole country’s worth of options is open to me. That sense of possibility and movement draws me to transit hubs of all kinds, from Grand Central Station to the dustiest little village bus stop. But one I could never work up any love for was my hometown of San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal. When I go back for a visit in the future, though, it might be a whole different story.
Posted in Transportation Tags: bus, California, green, LEED, public transit, San Francisco 11 Comments » October 9th, 2010 admin 
A class of graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania has created a plan to rebuild the Northeast Corridor as a true high-speed rail line that would transport passengers from Philadelphia to New York City in 37 minutes. Amtrak, on the other hand, has a less ambitious view of the future for the nation’s busiest rail corridor. Its new master plan calls for spending $52 billion by 2030 to cut travel time by about 20 minutes between New York and Washington and between New York and Boston. It envisions reducing travel time between New York and Philadelphia by four minutes.
August 27th, 2010 admin 
Over on the Switchboard blog written by Kaid Benfield, he writes today about a free downtown circulator that Baltimore has recently put in place. (pasted below) This is a great heads-up to those cities that are cutting back on transit in tough times. I’ve thought for a while that we need an entirely new service model for transit in most American cities, and will write about this more in future posts. The reality is the current system in most cities is so completely unsupported by fares that we might as well have completely free zones in order to encourage denser, walkable development…
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