1 post tagged “penalosa”
Jim Cunradi gave a presentation on how the project he is managing—Bus Rapid Transit—is progressing. At this stage, it is about half-way through the planning process, and the draft environmental impact report is now open for public comment. It is hoped to be operational in 2011.
Bus Rapid Transit is a way to move more people more quickly by having dedicated bus lanes in the centre of the street next to a median strip with boarding platforms that have ticket vending machines and which are flush with the floor of the bus. People can board and disembark more quickly and easily, shortening the time spent at each stop. The stops are further apart, and traffic signals respond to the approach of a Rapid Transit bus by turning or staying green.
The next speaker was BART Board President, Lynette Sweet, on the topic of transit-oriented developments, which combine living and retail spaces near to BART stations. That morning’s San Francisco Chronicle had included an article by its architecture critic panning one of those developments, which somewhat dampened the effect of the nice photographs in the handout we were given. Sweet acknowledged that along the way, they’ve learned some lessons.
[Caption:] Stuart Cohen, Executive Director of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition, relies on a sidekick and some boxes to create a bar graph of household costs in the Bay Area. Here, he is illustrating how a significant chunk of household income could be saved by not owning a car. TALC was one of the co-sponsors of the event.
The star of the show was absolutely the economist and former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, Enrique Penalosa. During his time as mayor, the city spent money that had originally been earmarked for yet more motorways on miles and miles of pedestrian walkways, cycle paths, parks and plazas instead. If you can’t provide your citizens with equality of income, he said, you should at least provide them with equality in the quality of their experience of the city.
