Public Transport

It's no wonder so many American cities aren't planning well. According to this article I read on Salon, "Americans love traditional American small towns, main streets and historic districts," [Patrick Siegman, a transportation planner] says. "But largely because of minimum parking requirements, it's completely illegal to build anything like that again in most American cities. It's really hard to build anything where anyone would want to walk from one building to the next." Unbelievable. I always knew that American=car owner, and I learned that LA used to have tons of street cars but got rid of them in 1963 because the auto industry wanted the city to do so. And having lived in and visited many different countries where public transport is generally pretty convenient, it makes me sad to be forced to drive everywhere when I go a lot of places in the US. I especially wish there was a national passenger train system that was reasonably affordable and fast, like the bullet train in Japan and the TGV in France.

Since we live close to some main streets, the public transport here in Vancouver is generally fairly convenient for us. It's better than in my hometown, in any case. I think it's similar to where we lived in Japan, actually. I never rode the bus there so I'm not sure. However, I know a lot of people who are somewhat disappointed with the service in Vancouver--not enough buses during rush hour (buses too full to stop and pick up more passengers), no service via SkyTrain to many suburban areas, and no SkyTrain to the airport yet, among other complaints. My biggest surprises were how easy it is to cheat the system.

In Tokyo, when you ride the subway you must put your ticket through the turnstile to get in and out of the system. It won't let you out if you haven't paid enough, and there are usually enough employees around to prevent gate-hopping. Here, there are no turnstiles and you can get on the bus in the back sometimes, avoiding showing the bus driver any proof of ticket/pass. It just seems silly to not have these safeguards in a for-profit transport system. And since most people use the public transport here for commuting to work and school, it would make sense that the seating layout on the train would promote fitting the largest number of people in the cars at once. As the layout stands now, there are way too many people in seats and not enough room for standing. If they changed the seating layout, I think they could increase the number of people on the trains by 10% at rush hour. Which would mean people wouldn't have to wait for the next train to come when they couldn't fit on the first one that came.

I've been riding the bus and the SkyTrain a lot the past week or so, which means I've spent a few hours on public transport here and have had time to ponder the problems. I still think my dream job is Consultant to Everything. Don't you wish you could get my advice on how to fix things? Email or call me and we'll set up an appointment. Just don't call me bossy or a control freak. Because I'm not. I just want things to be as good as they can be. Why settle for the status quo when it can be so much better? Maybe I should take my own advice.