Precedents
THE
TAXI AS TRANSIT MODE,
THE
CITY OF
Shared
Taxis are used in many countries
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_taxi
Over 60% of
Text message a request for a taxi and get grouped with several other ride requests in the same vicinity at the same time to share a taxi cab.
“ Texxi is a Demand
Responsive Transit Broker. We use advanced scheduling technology to make the
most of existing transport resources at times of peak demand. Use of the scheme
extends well beyond club night transportation and will provide a myriad of
solutions to well known problems. Anywhere, anytime there are a lot of people
to move from a single location as efficiently and safely as possible, texxi
will provide a good solution to a perennial headache. “
Smart Elevators: A Faster Way
Up and Down
Smart elevators are designed
to transform the simple act of traveling between floors. Instead of pushing a
button to go up or down, passengers first select the floor they want. Then they
are directed to the elevator that will take them to their destination with the
fewest number of stops.
Hearst's
elevator is called the Miconic 10. It's made by the Schindler Corp., though
other manufacturers including Otis Elevator and ThyssenKrupp Elevator have
similar models.
Easy
riders -- casual carpooling rolls on ( article in San Francisco Chronicle )
Excerpt from article :
Every weekday morning, mostly in the East Bay, you see them
lined up like lemmings -- sedans, SUVs, pickup trucks and the odd sports car,
creeping along the curb. Coming up the sidewalk toward them, dressed for the
day's battle with the city, are the hardy commuters.
It's the casual carpool, a free-form, almost completely
unorganized amalgam of that rare thing in the social economy -- something that
actually works, an idea that benefits most of the people involved. Cars heading
for San Francisco get filled with people going in the same direction, and the
drivers can use carpool lanes to bypass the wait at the Bay Bridge tollbooths
and, as lagniappe, save $3 a day.
Now the carpool experiment -- though it's probably unfair to
call a 30- year-old activity an experiment -- has spread from its birthplaces
in Oakland and Berkeley into such far-flung places as Vallejo and Fairfield,
growing even as the Bay Area grows.
Could this be extended to
casual van pooling?
Unpaid van drivers could pick
up 9 riders at one TC and take them 20 miles along an HOT to another TC. The
driver benefits because he gets the use of a HOT lane for free on his morning
commute to a regular desk job. Capitol Metro could lease special vans with an
armored seating area for the driver. The driver pays Cap Metro $300 a month to
lease the van and gets paid one dollar for every passenger carried. A driver
could collect $18 a day and $360 a month. He gets a vehicle for free and the
use of an HOT lane. This would take the peak demand pressure off the bus fleet.
Riders benefit because they don’t have to stand on crowded buses.
Queue Jumpers
A more aggressive method to
avoid bus delay at intersections is the queue-jump lane.
A “queue jumper” gives rapid
buses their own lanes at intersections,
with a traffic signal that
turns green a few seconds ahead of the other signals.
This allows the bus to
proceed ahead of other traffic, contributing to improved traffic flow.
These bypass lanes can speed
up bus service by 30 to 60 seconds at a typical signalized intersection.
In most cases, queue-jump
construction ranges from $200,000 to $500,000 per intersection.
See pages 16 & 17 of PDF.
Queue jumper bus bays provide
priority treatment for buses along arterial streets by allowing buses to
bypass traffic queued at
congested intersections.
These bus stops consist of a
near-side, right-turn lane and a far-side open bus bay.
Buses are allowed to use the
right-turn lane to bypass traffic congestion and proceed through the
intersection.
Bus Rapid Transit web site
with articles about BRT activity around the world.
Download Report by
Breakthrough Technologies Institute
and Environmental Defense:
Changing Lanes:
Linking Bus Rapid Transit
and High Occupancy Toll Lanes In Northern Virginia