Public Transit

When civic leaders from around the world gathered for Vancouver's 2012 Cities Summit last week, urban transport was on everyone's lips, and information sharing was seen as the key to unlocking future successes.

A recently implemented 10-cent fare increase is just one sign of Mayor Rob Ford's attacks on public transit in Toronto, according to this editorial from the Toronto Star.

In Cincinnati, voters have defeated an attempt to block the city's new streetcar, which now will move forward and could be operational as early as 2013. The new streetcar will link downtown and the uptown district around the University.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has mandated that city employees on the clock be required to ride Chicago Transit trains and buses, with a few exceptions, in order to get reimbursed. BJ Lutz reports.

The Obama Administration has decided to provide federal funding for a variety streetcar projects. Over the past few months, cities including San Antonio have proposed routes that will run through densely populated areas.

The Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) released its 2011 Urban Mobility Report, which shows how many additional hours in traffic each commuter would be subject to if public transportation were discontinued.

Transit officials in San Francisco are considering a plan to allow transit riders to board through all doors of buses in an attempt to cut delays.

Public transit is expensive, and most transit agencies don't make money. But Hong Kong's MTR is different.

Author Russell Shorto claims that "the willingness of Europeans to follow top-down social planning" makes public transit and bicycling more feasible in European cities than they are in the States where people don't always agree with technocrats.

Transportation is increasingly a major civil rights issue, according to The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which argues that federal funding disproportionally serves car drivers.

In Washington state, King County Council will vote on a measure to adopt a new algorithm for transit service policy.

Data on taxi pick-up and drop-off points can be a useful tool to better understand urban mobility, and how taxis can function as an aspect of public transportation, according to this post.

Millions of federal dollars could be lost if transportation officials in metropolitan Detroit can't figure out a way to combine a variety of transit services into one regional authority.

Los Angeles' public transit authority has joined those of other major U.S. cities in providing a real-time tool for checking to see how soon buses will arrive at specific stops.

Transportation for America (TfA), a campaign to strengthen the nation’s transportation network, released an update to its “Dangerous by Design” report, an analysis of pedestrian safety in the design and use of American streets.

A new study says that Los Angeles, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Eugene and Pittsburgh are leading the surge with the best bus rapid transit (BRT) systems in the nation.

Google announces the addition of D.C.'s Metro and bus routes to their online and mobile maps, including connections to other commuter transit systems.

The Brookings Institution recently analyzed the top 100 metropolitan areas in the U.S. to see how easy it is to use transit. Time presents the best and worst from the list, which includes some surprises.

Even office parks in the exurbs can have high rates of transit use, according to success seen at an office park in San Ramon, California.

As reporter Robert J. Hawkins notes, "It's like 2008 all over again." Back then, skyrocketing gas prices sent people fleeing to use public transit. Today, the pattern remains the same, at least in San Diego.