September 22, 2009 | 4 Comments

MetroLinks for 9/22/09

Here are some links to transit and urban planning-related items from around the internet that you may have missed.

You may have noticed that our posts have been a little light these last few weeks; we have been working hard to develop some great content, and have been holding it back for our “official” launch. (Did you know you’ve been reading the beta?) We are anticipating that “official” public launch of the blog very soon, which essentially involves emailing all of our friends & contacts and talking to some folks in the media to let them know we’re blogging. Once that happens we kick into high gear around here so keep your eyes open, and help spread the word about NextStop to your friends.

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Author:Jennifer

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  • RTBones

    Only recently found this blog. Beta or not, it is nice to have some place to discuss transit issues.

    Skimmed through some of the recent links. I have a question I keep returning to: what is the fascination with BRT? You can make the argument that BRT is nicer than regular buses. In the end, though, it is still a BUS.

    I offer the following link for discussion. Lots of discussion on various light rail systems and comparisons to BRT.

    http://www.lightrailnow.org/facts/fa_brt_2006-08a.htm

  • http://www.metrostlouis.org/ Jennifer

    Fair question, RT. My personal “fascination” with BRT probably stems from the discussion going on across the internet – if a certain number of transit-related posts and articles any given week are about BRT, chances are I’ll be linking to something BRT-related. The question then becomes, why is the transit-advocacy community suddenly fascinated with BRT? I think that’s worthy of a future blog post. Keep an eye out for it and I’ll try to get to it this week, or (better yet) get one of our planners to guest post about BRT technology and why it may/may not be great.

  • Jazzy Jeff

    I was originally not “hip” to BRT. But after seeing and being inside it in person when they were on “demo” here in STL (last year) I changed my mind. Plus K.C. is doing some lines! As well I heard that Federal transit $ are more likely to go to BRT than to light rail.

  • RTBones

    I don’t mind nice buses as feeders to rail/streetcars. That’s the thing to me that gets lost in BRT — it is still a BUS. I think it is fair to say that it is an established fact that trains draw more riders than buses (everything else being roughly equal).

    From Wiki…
    “In contrast to BRT, both Light Rail and rapid transit require the placement of rails for the whole line. The tram usually avoids the high additional costs for the engineering structures like tunnels that need to be built for metros. Rail tends to provide a smoother ride and is known to attract significantly higher passenger numbers than road-based systems.”

    I have ridden the Maxx in KC. It is nice — but I dont consider it RAPID transit; it is public transit.

    I also saw the demo when it was here last year (it was parked outside the Scottrade for a little while.) Thanks, but no thanks.