I note that OpenStreetMap apparently has tags for mapping between OSM nodes and GTFS. I wonder how much GTFS data gets imported into OSM.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/General_Transit_Feed_Spe...
Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API
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Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API
#42Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API
#43On one hand, this is a great effort and I'm sure will help commuters a ton. But on the other, why on earth does the bay area have 31+ different transit agencies??
The Bay Area (once a generation of boomers passes) will HAVE to become more like NYC - with "cities" (using that term loosely for places like Cupertino, Mountain View etc as these are really sterile suburbs with trip malls) becoming more like "boroughs" with an overarching authority. We're talking a 30 year timeline, though.
You should read "Cities without Suburbs" if you want to know the politics around consolidation and how hard it is in most of the states.
A lot of it boils down into tiny municipalities being able to avoid a cripple larger metros that the littler metros hem in.
Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happens when the business govt wants low corp tax, and the residents govt wants high corp tax to fund programs? What happens when they disagree over zoning, ie which side gets to build somewhere? I don't think you can segment that way. One related idea that might work a little better (I think it comes from libertarian circles, can't remember exactly where) is representation by profession. So eg x % of the legisl…
Representation by industry has worked really poorly for Hong Kong, its a key part of why they have the majority of thr population protesting and demanding real democracy, not the corporate controlled legislature that currently presides over HK.
Thank you for letting me know, I didn't realize it had actually been tried. It appears to have also gone poorly in Taiwan. I absolutely didn't intent to say it was a good idea, merely that it was a similar idea to the parent's that might work a little better.
Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API
#45thanka sharing with us
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Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it actually worked well, people might use it, especially the undesirables. It’s also because the Bay Area is stupidly split up into dozens and dozens of small-medium sized municipalities spread over multiple counties. So every little group acts in their own locally optimal, shortsighted interests. Most of the people affected worst by the lack of public transportation and housing can’t vote in the areas that can ac…
> I’ve been thinking the past couple of years you should be able to vote in local elections in the area you work in, even if you don’t live there. In many areas this would effectively lead to the suburbs being able to dictate urban policy to the inner city, where suburban commuter interests like parking override the interests of the actual residents. The 1998 amalgamation of Toronto is a good example of this happenin…
Perhaps a better example than MARTA is Dallas’s DART: it’s one transit agency, in total control of all the busses, rail, and streetcars within the service area, which includes all of Dallas, almost all of the suburbs, and even the wealthy enclaves like the separate township of Highland Park.
From a customer perspective, it seems to work well: one map, one timetable, one fare payment program, one branding, regardless of what city or suburb or wherever you’re in.
It does have the occasional political snag though of suburbs occasionally spreading core service in Dallas proper thinner than they should be (e.g. in order to get DART representatives from the suburbs to sign off on a second subway alignment through downtown, urban Dallas representatives had to agree to fund a suburban-only E-W line that could have been better located also in the city proper). But, each city does contribute an equal proportion of funding (1% of all sales tax revenue) to DART, so it seems fair enough.
The result? From having no rail network in 1996 to having the US’s longest* single light rail network by 2020
*by track mileage; that isn’t to say the breadth of the system doesn’t have its own flaws, mainly that some high density urban areas are woefully underserved in the effort to have a single station in every (very car-oriented) member suburb
Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API
#47This partnership came about through a streamlined procurement mechanism called challenge-based procurement. Instead of months to issue an RFP it takes days and for bidders only hours to respond. If you want to learn more about how we’re helping cities work with innovative startups https://cityinnovate.com (we’re hiring)
Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API
#48On one hand, this is a great effort and I'm sure will help commuters a ton. But on the other, why on earth does the bay area have 31+ different transit agencies??
- Nine counties - 7,000m^2 - 7.75 million people - 101 municipal governments Shocking that we only have 31+ transit agencies. The place is dense!
The number of goverments is the only reason though. London also only has one transit agency with a similar population (and maybe size).
Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API
#49On one hand, this is a great effort and I'm sure will help commuters a ton. But on the other, why on earth does the bay area have 31+ different transit agencies??
The Bay Area (once a generation of boomers passes) will HAVE to become more like NYC - with "cities" (using that term loosely for places like Cupertino, Mountain View etc as these are really sterile suburbs with trip malls) becoming more like "boroughs" with an overarching authority. We're talking a 30 year timeline, though.
It should be noted that San Francisco is smaller than San Jose by quite a bit, and all the cities in the south are suburbs of San Jose.
If that magic combination ever happened, it would be San Jose as the main city. And somehow I don't think San Francisco would be happy being a borough of San Jose.
Re: Bay Area Regional GTFS Feed: 31 transit agency feeds together in one API
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regional transit policy needs to be what's best for the region. You can't let city specific special interests stall that because it does not work out well in the long term. Look at Boston. They canned I695 to stop a couple neighborhoods from being demolished and in doing so basically required all the major surface roads to handle significant commuter traffic (killing how many people over the years?) because they beca…
Think of all the people who live closer to the urban core in Boston now, due to this decision not making long distance commuting easier. Portland started ripping out freeways after I-205 destroyed multiple neighborhoods, and Seattlites organized to stop the central district freeway after watching I-5 vivisect the city, paving parks and neighborhoods.
Short term framing of "destroying neighborhoods" is exactly why we can't get anything done. For some reason everyone wants to try to freeze development so that things stay the way they are or revert to some past state. This is frankly stupid and in the long term has terrible outcomes. Look at SF to see what this does. Yes, any time land is taken by the government it sucks for the people there. Nobody is disputing that. What we are saying is that this short term pain is necessary for longer term and bigger picture improvements.
Look at the wealth disparity between the Worcester area (tolerable commuting access by rail and car to Boston) and the Fitchburg area (far less tolerable commuting access by rail and car to Boston) and then say that. As regrettable as it may be the best way for people who do not live in Boston to move up the economic ladder is to commute into Boston where you can make the big bucks and for practicality reasons doing so in a car is the least worst choice available to most people. Literally no party involved likes this arrangement but forcing every commuter that has to go somewhere between I93 and I95 onto surface roads ASAP does nobody any good. I'd call it cutting off your nose to spite your face but spiting one's face implies a level of forethought that was clearly absent.
Any major city is going to have a huge number of car commuters no matter what and decreasing the distance between the highways and their destination makes all the infrastructural changes at the surface road level that make a city less car centric more palletable.
The thing that really pissed me off about I695 isn't the specific highway or lack thereof specifically but that is represents a turning point prior to which it was possible to step on a few toes in order to get something that benefited everyone done and after which everything had to be compromised to hell and back in order to not run afoul of even the most microscopic stakeholder. This has just as big of an impact for public transportation infrastructure as it does for private transportation infrastructure and one would have to be a very near sighted fool to cheer that.
At the end of the day it comes down to regional interests vs local interests. The way I see it is that if Boston had built good highways in the 50s and 60s they would have been building subways in the 90s and '00s instead of digging overpriced tunnels. By caving to special interests they screwed themselves onto on a path that led us to where we are today.