Lessons in Transit Innovation

The Hudson-Bergen Light Rail, across the river from New York City, offers a look at the benefits and challenges of a street-level transit line.

Making Philly more accessible to college students could help keep them in the city after graduation, prolonging the economic benefit and supplying skilled workers.

Bus service for people who live outside major cities is either nonexistent or might as well be. But some communities are helping bring mobility to non-drivers with bus service they can really use. This article looks at a variety of places in which public transportation is highly popular and efficient—from Germany to Seattle.

New York City suffered from fires that erupted in overcrowded, run-down apartments. Then the city sleuthed through residential records and found that landlords who foreclosed let their properties fall apart and ignored safety-code violations. Greater Toronto wants to expand upon New York City’s method by using transportation surveys, census data and computer data to build transit lines.

A Dallas urban neighborhood was dilapidated with abandoned storefronts and offered no vitality for pedestrians. A group of artists and community members created Build a Better Block, in which local artisans and small businesses took over a vacant block and transformed it for a limited time to encourage the ingredients for more permanent urban renewal.

Bus service for people who live outside major cities is either nonexistent or might as well be. But some communities are helping bring mobility to non-drivers with bus service they can really use.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, necessity has bred an interesting kind of financial invention for the New York MTA: the world’s first “catastrophe” bond - a reinsurance for the insurer - designed to protect public transportation infrastructure, specifically against storm surge. These bonds privatize risk for public gain, creating a kind of tool that may protect economic development against all kinds of natural and man-made disasters around the world.

At the San Francisco headquarters of Uber, three televisions greet visitors and employees just past the check in desk. The central screen plays a video on repeat: “Moving riders, moving partners, moving newlyweds, moving ice cream, moving Kenya, moving China, moving Australia, moving anywhere.” On the opposite wall, bright green dots are plotted on a black world map, demonstrating the spread of this ride hailing company that just completed its 2 billionth ride.

Cities tend to be dangerous and difficult places to live for older residents. A private public partnership in New York is catering to seniors through small changes in the city such as para-transit options and seniors-only hours at public establishments.

Paris is a city plagued by traffic jams and air pollution. In 2007, the local government created a public bicycle sharing program called Velib that has drastically reduced the number of cars on the roadways and parking lots. During five years, over a hundred million people have used the program and it has a quarter of a million subscribers.