Who has examples of good small urban transit systems? I mean communities under 100,000, probably mostly bus-based. What is it that makes them work well? Is it land use patterns? Management?
Who has examples of good small urban transit systems? I mean communities under 100,000, probably mostly bus-based. What is it that makes them work well? Is it land use patterns? Management?
Would this include college towns or not? The only examples I can think of are college and tourist towns which obviously have a different dynamic than your average small city.
Going to side with Blide. My fair city (population of 45K) has an excellent transportation system, but it is an outlier due to being a college town. The town i work for is around 30K and has a sub-par transit system.Originally posted by Blide
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Port Huron is not a college town (besides a county community college) and has an excellent transit system. Certainly one that stacks up against anyone. They were early adopters of bike racks on buses and have a near complete fleet of CNG busses and their own fueling station.
http://www.bwbus.com/
We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes - Fr Gabriel Richard 1805
Port Huron is a good example. The routes look well thought-out although the headways seem long.
As a Boston native, I love the small cities' route numbers (1,2,3,4, etc.) Makes it seem so simple.
And I agree that the college and tourist towns have a leg up.
One interesting approach to small town transit I've seen is the Clemson Area Transit system. The hub of the system is a university but it still enables a couple of small towns that don't have significant student populations to have public transit. The other nice is feature is the system is completely free to ride since it is supported by the university and federal subsidies. If I recall, it's the largest free system in the country.
That's the only thing that makes the road and highway system capable of functioning, so there's no shocker there.
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