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Statistically, most of our expanding hours behind the wheel, nearly eight of every ten vehicle miles we travel, have nothing to do with work. Specifically, work-bound travel devours only 22.5 percent of the pie graphed by the Nationwide Personal Transportation Study of the Federal Highway Association. In fact, the commute itself consumes less than one-quarter of all our trips, a smaller percentage than two decades ago. For the startling fact is that it is not just the journey to work, not only the dashboard-pounding commuter, who creates the bulk of traffic and logs in the lost time, but all of us. It is in its grip so securely that we can barely perceive how both the quality of mobility and the quality of life have diminished. The nation is in “lifelock” to the automobile as the dominant means of transportation. The reasons for trying to make public transport an attractive option for non-commuting, non peak hour trips, become fairly obvious when you read the following tract from the excellent book Asphalt Nation by Jane Holtz Kay:
#PEAKHOUR JUST SPINS MANUAL#
Of course it’s also important to “knock the top off” peak hour congestion, as we’d need twice as many lanes of roading into Auckland’s CBD (and goodness knows how many more carparks) if it weren’t for our public transport system, but my issue is that generally when we look at public transport, the sole focus is on what happens at peak hour (the economic evaluation manual for public transport just about completely ignores off-peak issues).
#PEAKHOUR JUST SPINS FULL#
Is it to offer a transport system that will encourage a more sustainable urban form, that lowers our environmental impact and our reliance on fossil fuels? In many ways it comes down to whether we’re just providing commuter transit, or whether we’re providing urban transit.įrom my perspective, I think that public transport is important because of its ability to drive more sustainable urban forms, and (mainly in overseas cities) its ability to allow people to live a full life without a car. The answer to that is quite complex, and delves to the heart of the question “what are the benefits of a good public transport system?” Is it just to “knock the top off” peak hour congestion, or do we want public transport to offer a true alternative to driving, a system that makes it possible for people to live decent lives without having to own a car and use for the majority of their trips – whether to work, school, play, visit friends or whatever. “Shouldn’t we really be far more concerned about the quality of the public transport system at peak hour when it’s most well used?” There was one thing in particular that Jarrett mentioned, which I think is certainly worth repeating, and that is: “the quality of a public transport system should be measured by how it performs at 7pm on a Sunday night, rather than at peak hour.” I completely and utterly agree.
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We had a number of transport geeks in the same room, and unsurprisingly the result was a pretty interesting conversation.
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A couple of weeks ago I got to meet Jarrett Walker, the guy behind the excellent “ Human Transit” blog.