Given Metro Detroit's... ahem... spotty track record with developing alternative transportation, maybe we need to bring up the sex appeal of walking, biking, and rail. Atlantic Cities has a great piece on how transit needs a better branding campaign. Personally I like the idea of fruit-shaped bus shelters.
Excerpt:
"Can we make people look longingly at mass transit? Can we give biking and walking the aura of cool that has long been the province of the automobile? Or are buses doomed to be the butt of jokes, along with the city of Cleveland?
Nordahl has a raft of suggestions, many based on real-world efforts of transit officials and planners to lure people out of their cars. Some are whimsical (like slides in train stations, something they’ve actually tried in the Netherlands, or fruit-shaped bus shelters, which have popped up in Japan). Some are more substantive, such as making transit stations into great civic spaces, as in the case of the Transbay Transit Center, scheduled to open in San Francisco in 2017:"
Read the rest
here.
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