Tag Archives: route structure

Ten Principles of Great Transit Planning

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Some work I’ve been undertaking over the past couple weeks related to a prairie community got me thinking about what the “laws” or principles of transit planning might be. By this I don’t mean the principles of good transit service design: the best practices for designing route networks, schedules, infrastructure, their accompanying plans and so on.  Instead, I’m talking about… Read more »

Going Less Loopy: The Transit Basics Behind TransLink’s SkyTrain Changes

TransLink SkyTrain Change

This past weekend, TransLink’s SkyTrain network in the Metro Vancouver, BC region underwent a pretty sizable series of route and platform changes. The changes are paving the way for the start later this year of service along the new Evergreen Extension and revised supporting bus routes. I thought it would be interesting to look at some of the transit planning… Read more »

Why Your “Just Three Minutes” Request Makes Transit Planners Twitchy

“Oh, but it’s only adds on another three minutes,” is one of those phrases I’ve heard over and over again during my time as a transit planner and scheduler.  And like some evil Pavlovian trigger, I can’t help but get bad flashback twitches every time I hear it. The changes that folks request that “will only take three minutes” sound… Read more »

Rockin’ it New and Old School: Transit Data and Planner Scratch Maps

It goes without saying that changing technology has had huge impacts over the last 20 years, and its impact on how we plan cities and transit systems is no different. This post is about some of the best parts of those changes…and a love letter to the “old school” practice of marking up maps that I still believe is an… Read more »

Curse of the Lollipops (A Route Structure That is Usually Not so Sweet)

I am no fan of lollipops. I’m not talking about the sweet kind, they’re great.  Instead, I mean the route structure that looks like a lollipop: the cases where a bus route leaves an otherwise lovely linear path to take riders on a journey twice.  Up a stick, around a loop, and right back down the stick (or road) they… Read more »