Comments on: Are Clean Buses the Answer?

By: Joeventures

Joeventures — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:02:15 +0000

That's quite ironic. Having been to downtown Orlando, I can tell you the photo there is not very representative of what I experienced when I was there. I mean, yes, they do have one-way streets, etc., but the downtown area is decidedly not like most of the rest of Florida. I'll be going there again later this month and plan to take photos. The photos I took last time I was there are admittedly not that great.

By: Ridgelandistan

Ridgelandistan — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:52:10 +0000

Barry, you’re right. That photoheader with the text “Orlando” over the tailpipes of cr%p spewing cars couldn’t be a worse choice…unless its a Freudian slip and really represents what Orlando is about. …Since killing cyclists is a popular pastime in Florida, the latter is probably true.

http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-05-10/story/florida_the_most_dangerous_state_for_bicyclists

By: Barry

Barry — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:39:25 +0000

Some irony, methinks, in the photo-header of the City of Orlando Transportation site for Lymmo — I counted at least five lanes of one way traffic there, around 15 cars visible, no real hint of a bicycle lane, and no buses nor lanes for them.

Welcome to Orlando. Please bring you car and enjoy driving our wide, wide roads uncluttered by unsightly rail lines, buses, bikes, or actual people. (Two walkers glimpsed in the distance, surely . . . tourists.)

By: Flaka

Flaka — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:10:34 +0000

I agree, Ridgelandistan. The masses in Atlanta don’t use public transport because the network is limited (in terms of destinations and frequency), but the state (or whoever) won’t expand upon the network because people don’t use it.

I’d like to see a congestion charge applied in Atlanta, but we all know that’s not going to happen. No elected official is going to dare infringe upon the public’s love affair with the car! Gradually eroding the convenience of the car and expanding the desirability of public transport is probably the only way forward.

By: Joeventures

Joeventures — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:36:55 +0000

There was a proposal to build what would have become a not-entirely-genuine BRT system here in Atlanta. It would've been part of the same project that was planned to widen I-75 on the Northwest to 23 lanes. The plan was not to give the buses dedicated lanes, but to have them travel in the HOT lanes. And when there's traffic, the BRT would've become what some of us call BST -- Busses Stuck in Traffic. That's not to mention the really awful (and extraordinarily expensive) station designs they were considering. And the routes they thought up were circuitous and illogical. Let's face it: with GDOT and GRTA working on the project, it would've been destined to fail. I would hope that should we ever try BRT in Georgia in the future, we take some lessons from Bogota. If I recall correctly, the Transit Implementation Board's plan for transit in the Atlanta region does not include any dedicated BRT, per se, but would use buses to accomplish much of the suburb-to-suburb service they are planning. Closer to home, Orlando has a free, dedicated-lane, signal-prioritized bus service in their downtown area, called the Lymmo.