Sorry for the late reply. I think Rob Morache's earlier post contains the kernel of a major solution: more park'n'rides.
I agree there should be less "flag stops;" they are amazingly time consuming. I had an unbelievably long bus ride to and from T-burg last month which ended up way over schedule. (Perhaps flag stops could be allowed only during "off-peak" hours). However there should be many more "park and rides" to serve outlying AND not so far out areas. You can have parking nodes that cluster cars without having to build housing nodes and/or abandon existing housing stock (especially if they are in areas with farm stands or minimarts where people may also want to shop after work). If some park and rides are near town, people who need to do errands after work can take the bus back to their car and then go to the grocery store or--gasp--the mall without going all the way home first to get their car. Existing "side roads could be feeders to the bus system, so the only infrastructure change would be creating the parking areas. This would keep cars out of downtown, off the campuses, and help keep rural areas rural. And they don't have to be paved; Enfield is a great example. But we also need them closer in--say on the land the County owns near the hospital and the Health Department's current location (hmm; could the existing parking there turn into a park and ride once the Health Dept moves?) I think ALL the major routes into town need park and rides far out, part way into town, and then close in. To use 96 B as an example: say, South Danby, the hamlet of Danby, and then around the Danby-Town of Ithaca line. 96 North of Ithaca already has one in T'burg, but needs one further south in Ulysses and then again in the Town of Ithaca near CMC (where people from Iradell and Hayts Rd and the Dubois Rd areas could feed into the system). I live on Hayts Rd, and I know there is a LOT of interest in being able to take the bus to the colleges and downtown. I know park and rides require a lot of inter-municipal and interagency cooperation, but cooperation is generally a good thing to do. Margaret On Oct 21, 2008, at 11:13 AM: > Luckily, zoning does not exclusively determine how our cities and > towns are > shaped. Transportation is actually more critical. No amount of land > use > policy could have created Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo: they were > made > possible by the Erie Canal, and the canal had to come first. The > settlements > followed the design for transportation. The same later happened with > the > railroads. Similarly, in Curitiba, Brazil, planners designed fixed bus > routes through the countryside and mandated the densest future > development, > hence the most riders, be within a 5 minute walk of public transit. > Thirty > years later, Curitiba enjoys a convenient, well-used bus system > serving a > city filled with green-space. The fixed routes have been so > successful that > busses may soon be replaced by trains, to handle growing ridership. > > What built the ridership base was frequency of service. people could > rely on > bus connection to the core city without worrying about a schedule, > such that > the bus became a more convenient alternative to the car. Limiting > stops by > clustering development along the routes sped up travel times and > made bus > transit even more attractive to commuters, again boosting ridership. > However > these incentives to ridership came by way of intelligent land use > policy in > outlying areas. something we could clearly learn from the Brazilians. _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
