New York City squandered a $354M federal grant to begin charging congestion pricing to enter Manhattan and the Big Apple's stupidity is our gain. $153M of that will go to the CTA to test out more bus lanes (possibly on Lake Shore Drive), install signal priority technology for buses (bus riders would get longer green lights at traffic lights) and several other miscellaneous programs. The Tribune has more here. I don't see anything at the CTA website yet, but will add more when I know more.
Additional media reports on this subject: Sun-Times, CTA press release, Crain's and the blog CTA Tattler-- which I check on a daily basis.
I just finished writing up my thoughts on this here (http://reallyboring.net/index.php/?p=1688). My short take, though, given the limited information they've released, is that these are some pretty exciting plans. I just hope someone brings some common sense to the table before they put fare collection kiosks out on street corners, or space bus stops out by half a mile on every route. But the increased bus lanes and signal priority systems sound delightful!
Posted by: Eric | Tuesday, 29 April 2008 at 13:59
Yeah, I'm worried that spacing out the bus stops will make riding the bus more inconvenient. Folks already have to walk from their home or work to the street with the bus route and then if you have to walk a couple more blocks on top of that, that'll seem like a long way to some people.
Eric's blog article talks about the fare collection kiosks a little more. One thing that could be really handy is if the kiosks sold day passes. It's very convenient in Austin TX, for example, to buy a day pass for a dollar on the bus, but that would slow things down too much here. I'd suspect that Chicago day passes would cost $5, but if you could buy those in the Loop, tourists and occasional riders would find that pretty handy, I'd bet.
Posted by: withrow | Tuesday, 29 April 2008 at 14:11