De-Stigmatizing Transit
This is one of my favourite prints hanging in my house. It’s of an old TTC streetcar by John Ward. It’s my favourite, not only because I love streetcars, but because of the woman inside the car wearing the fox stoll, (hopefully, there’s no PETA members reading this post) depicting the fact that there was once a time when public transportation was not the stigmatized method of mobility that it is today and was in fact used by every member across the socio-economic spectrum.
Only when we can get beyond this societal belief that transit is for “the poor” or “the drunk” will there be the political will to institute major funding shifts away from the private automobile to transit.
Let’s hope that day comes sooner rather than later…
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Agreed! One way of endearing transit to everyone is through beautiful and/or iconic design: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mita/3434858732/
Actually that is a hooker
Kidding of course. I really like it as well. Thanks for sharing Chris.
You are right though, transit is used by people from all walks of life. How wonderful would it be to have street cars or LTR (I guess streetcars would count at LTR).
I think it was Edwin who stated on another column that the reason it is looked down upon in Windsor is because of how poor the service is to which I agree. If it was a much better service with other options than just buses I would think most people wouldn’t mind using it. I know I wouldn’t. I could park the damn car for other than trips outside the city and be much happier for it.
Mita is also correct. Should the bus stops, benches et al be much more beautiful in design it may attract more people to use it.
In any case I believe we are not far off from more people having to use it do to the new economic reality all around us. Either way if transit were better serviced I would use it more.
Dave said: “Actually that is a hooker”
HA! That thought never occured to me, Dave. I’ll never look at that print the same again!
It has nothing to do with the fact that we use buses. Save for the O-Train, OC Transpo in Ottawa is strictly buses and it is heavily used, especially the Transitway buses.
No, it has everything to do with quality of service. If we could remove on-street parking on certain streets (such as Wyandotte) and make the lane transit only during Windor’s version of rush hour, you would improve service with little capital investment.
We need to rethink the whole downtown bus hub concept. While Windsor has it’s geographical idiosyncrasies, at the collector road scale it follows a grid pattern. A decade or so ago, Oshawa switched to a grid system and experienced an increase in ridership because it took less time to get to point B from point A.
We should have more variations of the same bus routes. Does the 1C have to go along Roseville Gardens then to Tecumseh Mall then through Forest Glade? There should be a 1C that follows Tecumseh E and terminates at Tecumseh Mall, another 1C could enter the Roseville Gardens area and terminate at the Mall, and yet another 1C would go to Forest Glade (but not enter Roseville Gardens or the Mall).
Lets make changes to the existing system before we go hog wild on an LRT that will be expensive to build and will need to be heavily subsidized. Thing is, even if we built an LRT, the bus system would have to be changed to feed into the LRT. Why not change it first before spending millions of dollars?
Sorry man. I never meant to ruin the picture for you.
Perhaps she is a high class call girl? Better yet, a women from the older way of life on her way to high society function.
I really like it as well. It reminds of a bit of the old art deco posters from the 1920s.
By the way it is VenetianDave o.k.
Are you a blind? VenetianDave
Buses are stigmatized in part because they are fundamentally loud, uncomfortable and noisy, relative to other forms of transportation.
Often, they are also slow, don’t run on time, and/or have very poor access (e.g., bus stops where you get splashed with water or rained on).
The latter things can be improved, but it is impossible to overcome the fundamental problems. Buses are great for short feeder trips but investments also need be made in more attractive forms of transportation, like light rail systems. That means more money up front, of course, but it pays off in the long term.
Short feeder trips? You may want to look at the success of the Transitway (also called Rapid Transit) bus routes in Ottawa. Articulated buses that largely run in their own right-of-way. They are the back bone of a major transit system. I’d say that investment paid off in the long term.
When I was in Ottawa last summer, my hotel room had a view of the intersections of Sussex Dr, Mackenzie Ave, Rideau St, Wellington St and Elgin St and it was non-stop buses all day long. To the south was the Transitway over the MacKenzie King Bridge. Again non-stop buses.
OC Transpo is at the point where an LRT is required to replace a portion of the east-west Transitway. This is a natural progression.