Tired of this crap? (A woman scraping ice off of her car windshield) Take the Bloomington Transit bus!

Yeah, we said it! 🗣️🧊

bloomingtontransit.com

The few who planned depended upon the many who rode.

But the few kept forgetting that.

Introducing the 15-Hour City “The 15-minute city principle suggests you should have your daily needs—work, food, healthcare, education, culture, and leisure—within a 15-minute ...

"The 15-Hour City believes everything has its place. Houses go in one location, businesses in another, and in between is a dark sea of soul-crushing concrete and asphalt."
buff.ly/fLNN71n

A fact that sounds like bullshit but is actually true:

There is more square footage of parking *per car* in the US than there is square footage of housing *per person.*

Every time I see a circular bus route I wonder how many people really want to travel in circles. Medellín.

woman smiling Local woman excited about ditching the car for the unreliable bus that comes every 3.5 hours - "it's the inconvenience that really attracted me."

Local woman excited about ditching the car for the unreliable bus that comes every 3.5 hours - "it's the inconvenience that really attracted me."

The snow hasn't stopped us! Join us tonight at 19:00 and if you can't make it in person you can still take part via Zoom:

us06web.zoom.us/j/8476825094...

Mark your calendars evening of Feb 3rd to talk at MUN with the best lineup yet of both transit advocates and key decision makers in St John's!

Radical proposals in the UK - what do you think? In 2019, consultants suggested gradually increasing the age St John's buses would be free to cover all school-age children but it never happened.

🧵Reading @economist.com about the mess Jakarta (pop 43m!) is in, I was oddly reminded of St John's. "After years of expansion it now encompasses the neighbouring cities of Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi (see map). Yet there is far too little co-ordination among these neighbouring authorities."

Yesterday because of snow, the city's offices opened atnoon... but Metrobus didn't start running until 13:30. We called in to OpenLine @vocmnews.bsky.social to point this out (1:05:25) and suggest at least we should have a smaller "priority" bus service when this happens. vocm.com/2019/08/01/o...

Why Waymo can't compete with the bus Public infrastructure deserves to win out over private convenience.

"But like so many tech 'fixes,' robotaxis offer a clean and convenient solution for the wealthy few at the expense of the many."

"We should all be taking the bus."

I've a lot of respect for @humantransit.bsky.social but living in a city with profound "bus stigma" I think this is wrong. Sadly, people who don't see transit as something they or their friends use won't support adequate funding. They need visible, significant improvement to start mainstreaming it.

Routes with fewer stops that don't loop through side streets could help make transit work more effectively but only if the city also makes it easier to get to and from bus stops... preferably with shelters!

One of the most thorough discussions of the pros and cons of free buses in a North American context.

I travelled by local bus from London to the Cotswolds for under £40 Wending his way from the city to the countryside on the UK’s local bus network, Gabriel Stewart found an authentic slice of Cotswolds life, away from the crowds

More of this kind of travel writing please.

“On the whole, travel by public bus was a joy.”

“En route to Little Compton in Warwickshire, I found myself the sole passenger on the bus and the driver told me she was happy to drop me anywhere, as long as it was safe to do so”

And it's done! 6 days, 9 provinces, 6 time zones, and 20 buses later, we've made it to the end of the Trans-Canada Highway!!!!! Thanks so much to everyone who followed along on this insane adventure across this amazing country!

People lacking good public transport more likely to feel lonely, UK study finds Research finds correlation between car dependancy and loneliness, particularly in rural towns

Interesting new study from @smfthinktank.bsky.social finds a correlation between car dependency & loneliness, particularly in rural towns.

This might be due to there being “fewer ways to reach others” and space given to cars creating “barriers in what might have been walkable neighbourhoods.”

This is a brave endeavour considering the current state of bus connectivity between provinces:

Brighton & Hove where I am currently living just received $29m of capital funding for transit from the UK government, spread over four yearshttps://www.gov.uk/government/p... St John's received almost double that in 2024 - mostly to electrify its network. But... www.stjohns.ca/en/news/fund...

This sounds very much like St John's Council, most of the Transportation Commission and Metrobus management itself...

Transit leaders here in Canada could learn from this - for starters, we should be regularly benchmarking and trying to improve our transit systems' inclusivity too!

Equally applicable to the Canadian federal government and provincial and municipal governments across the country.

The draft plan for Metrobus' electrification called for just four fully electric buses this year and 49 by... 2032. And it's clearly not even keeping to that schedule.

We're still big fans of buses, but if you believe it takes light rail to get passengers on board, maybe this lower cost construction technique has a role to play!

When Driving Is Not an Option

Today is International Day of Persons with Disabilities. For those in the transportation ecosystem, drop some coins on fellow @islandpress.bsky.social author @nondriver.bsky.social “When Driving is not an Option”.

islandpress.org/books/when-d...

How Did This Suburb Figure Out Mass Transit? Transit ridership is off the charts in Brampton, Ontario, despite its typical low-density suburban layout. Here’s how the city got residents to get on the bus.

Brampton, ON (pop 700,000) has 226,500 bus riders on an average weekday. How? Simple. The core bus network runs every five minutes and secondary routes run every 30 well into the late evening. Ridership went up 288% (!) between 2004 when they started and 2018 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

It looks sturdier and more comfortable than anything on offer in Newfoundland!

Here in St John's it's not even that people fight against these things - many just don't fight for them. The status quo is so poor people need to take an interest in better transit now before they discover they are no longer comfortable driving and don't want to have to nag their friends and family.

Terrible. But also here in Newfoundland and Labrador a reminder we don't have a publicly supported, scheduled, inter-community bus service at all! (unless you count the meagre local St John's/Mt Pearl/Paradise route)