Taking Public Transporation into the Future

1
Taking Public Transporation into the Future
Solutions!
In developing areas, this is of the utmost
importance. Rather than creating a poor
infrastructure now and dealing with the problem
later, some of these ideas need to be implemented
before the problem begins!
The World is becoming a busier place everyday.
As population increases, and technology becomes
more advanced, there is an ever-growing need to
keep up and create faster, and more efficient
transportation techniques, especially in the area
of mass transit.
With the increase of automobile ownership, more
single occupancy vehicles on the road, little
change in use of transit, and capacity not able
to keep up with demand, road congestion has
worsened over the past years. The reliance on
autos has contributed to increase in urban
roadway congestion.
Like the EU, we need to focus more on
administration, management, and marketing of our
transit options.
The first thing that needs to be done is
increased funding by governing bodies to these
areas of public transportation as most new
innovations prove costly in the short run, and
funding has been a contributing factor as to why
not much has been done to date.
New roads and technology arent the only solution
to the congestion problem--in fact, we can fix
the problem by improving already existing
technology.
As far as marketing Buildings, from bus shelters
to corporate headquarters, play an important part
in defining the place of transit in the
consciousness of the community... they believe
that if a transit system can incorporate its
distinctive designs into the communitys
identity, it has a greater chance of being seen
as an essential part of the community.
As far as an administration idea, the Netherlands
have decided to train their personnel to operate
buses and trainsan attempt to have more
efficient, skilled, and flexible workers. They
believe this has significantly increased
morale. Doing something like this in the US and
elsewhere may have the same effect.
Also, the average travel time by workers who
drove alone was 24.1 minutes, while transit
travel time was 47.7 minutes Public transit
takes nearly twice as long! If public
transportation could become more efficient, it
would reason more people would take it and less
vehicles and therefore congestion would follow!
In the United States, the mean travel time to
work increased from 21.7 minutes in 1980 to 22.4
minutes in 1990 to 25.5 minutes in 2000. This
increase amounts to over 16 hours lost yearly,
and thats just for work related travel!
Because of congestion in a measured 75 city
areas, nearly 70 BILLION dollars was lost in time
and fuel, an average cost per person of 520
The wasted fuel totaled about 6 billion gallons,
just think about the impact worldwide!
Advertising, increased funding, and teaching of
workers are only a few ways to possibly increase
public knowledge and efficiency of our roadways.
The more people embracing public transit, the
less vehicles on the road, and with that, less
congestion and lost time will follow. As
dependence on oil is trying to be decreased,
public transportation will definitely be a large
part of the near future, but this will only
happen if public transit becomes more efficient.
More ways than the above are needed, and this
will only happen when there is more focus placed
on this pressing issue. Too much time and money
is and will be lost in the future if something is
not done now.
http//www.uwm.edu/Dept/CUTS/bench/innof.pdf