Tag: subway

Bikes on Seoul subway

June 3, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Brandon found this photo on an irritating website called ffffound. Why irritating? Because there’s no respect for attribution and authorship. I have no idea who took this awesome photo.After a little investigation on Twitter, I determined that the language is Korean. Then I searched for “bikes seoul subway” and found that the Seoul Metropolitan Rapid Transit company was testing bikes on trains in 2009. I couldn’t find any more recent information, nor information in English about bringing a bike on the train on the MTR website.

Anyway, if you ignore all that you’ll agree that what you see in the photo is pretty cool. I’ve been writing about how Americans put their bikes on trains for quite some time now, and I love seeing how other transit systems accommodate passengers and their bicycles.

More good transit news:

Michigan Department of Transportation and Amtrak will begin roll-on bike service on three of their Amtrak lines, the Wolverine, Blue Water, and Pere Marquette in spring 2012. That means I can take my bike with me next year to the 2012 Movement Festival (or Detroit Electronic Music Festival).

Same bad news as last year:

The South Shore Line to Indiana still doesn’t allow non-folding or non-boxed bikes aboard. So you can’t bring a regular bike on the train to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

Travel grief

September 1, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I came back to Chicago today after a trip to New York City.

The first thing I did when I arrived was imagine all the things that I want to change based on what I saw and learned in New York City. Someone told me this is travel grief, states of emotion and motivation in order to effect change.

What was the first thing I saw?

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has three types of ticket vending machines (TVM) in the O’Hare Blue Line station. One is the common TVM that can create cards with cash value, add value to existing cards, or add value to Chicago Cards (with cash). The second TVM did all of this and accepted credit cards. The third TVM issued single or multi-day passes (I don’t remember if it took credit cards).

The vending machines in the New York City subway perform the functions of all CTA three machines AND all accept credit cards. Since 1999.

There’s more. I tried to keep a list. As I process my 500+ photos, I’ll be reminded of the ones I forgot to write down.

Circle Line brings out the public’s comments to the CTA

January 6, 2010 / / 0 Comments

The public should always be involved in city and community planning. It can be a difficult exercise, though, but morally, and legally, we must do it. I got my own experience with dealing with the public by setting up and running, from the venue to the content, a public meeting about bicycling in Chicago in summer 2009 (reports and documents, photos).

Participants at the Mayor’s Bicycle Advisory Council public meeting on Wednesday, June 17, 2009, discuss relevant bicycling topics.

What’s unfortunate, though, is that public participation tends to turn into meeting theater.

The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) has just released the public comments from the third “screening” of the Circle Line Alternatives Analysis study. Screen 3 presented the Locally Preferred Alternative (LPA), including route alignment and new station locations. I’ve collected a handful of some of the irrelevant or humorous comments members of the public submitted to the CTA after the open houses in September 2009. I’ve also included a selection of thoughtful, serious, and relevant ideas and questions (these ideas comprise the majority). Download the entire collection.

Irrelevant

These comments are recorded by the CTA study team, but not addressed and thrown in “Topic Area 23, do not pertain to the Circle Line.”

  • Nobody builds 1890s technology like Chicago!
  • What would Daniel Burnham think of this “LPA?
  • The connection for regular service to the Old Orchard Mall has my support.
  • These comment cards are meant to constrain public debate. RTA does not use these. Why does CTA need to control the public? [Note: If the commenter feels the need to say this, a comment card is the wrong outlet; also, an open house is not an opportunity to debate anything]
  • What is this “future plan? [Note: It seems that the commenter is unsure of their presence at the open house, or they don’t understand that the Locally Preferred Alternative includes only a small part of the Circle Line vision]

Serious

  • Tonight I was handed a flyer from LVEJO claiming that MidCity is cheaper than Circle even though it is 20 miles longer. CTA’s study says the opposite. Which one is more accurate? [Note: I would also like to know the answer]
  • The material provided on the CTA web site (the presentation slides and display boards) do not seem to be sufficient for public comment except at the most superficial level. Especially for those citizens who were unable to attend one of the three public sessions, the web materials are all that are available, and I do not believe they are adequate to meeting your requirements for public participation.

Common Topics

While the team who puts on the public meetings categorizes the comments into distinct topic areas (in order to more quickly address them), there are at least three major topic areas I saw prudent to discuss here. Read these after the jump. Continue reading