Last month MTA Metro-North Railroad (NY) joined NJ TRANSIT to launch First In, Last Out, a program to designate quiet cars on commuter rail trains serving Hoboken station. If that experiment works out, Metro-North will begin a quiet car trial on the New Haven, Harlem, and Hudson lines. While quiet car programs tend to beRead… Read more »
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is considering a proposal for location-based audio advertising on its buses. As buses drive by a particular business, the vehicle’s GPS system would trigger a brief advertisement that would play over the loudspeaker. The proposal comes from Commuter Advertising, which has introduced similar systems in Ohio and Illinois. To minimizeRead… Read more »
Cincinnati (OH) officials are considering a battery-powered system for the city’s planned streetcar line. A wireless system would be cheaper to build and operate than a conventional streetcar system, and eliminating overhead wires has significant aesthetic advantages. But the battery-powered vehicles need a charge every five miles and they face a challenge on hills. “IRead… Read more »
Governing paid a visit to the personal rapid transit system in Morgantown (WV). Serving the West Virginia University campus and downtown Morgantown, the 71 blue and yellow cars carry about 15,000 passengers on a typical day. Boeing built the $120 million system in 1975 with federal funding. Now that Boeing is out of the transitRead… Read more »
Caltrain (CA) plans to mount cameras on the front and back of every train to record accidents and suicides. There have been nine suicides along the commuter rail tracks so far this year, and 11 in 2010. “I had one last year,” a veteran engineer told the San Francisco Chronicle. “A guy jumped off theRead… Read more »
Metra (IL) may have double-charged some of its riders last week according to a statement on its website. Up to 1,500 customers who used a credit or debit card at station ticket windows on June 27 may have affected. The Chicago-area commuter rail provider is working with the credit card processing company to reverse theRead… Read more »
The Toronto Transit Commission (ON) wants to start charging customers for using its next-vehicle text-messaging system. TTC proposes to charge customers 15 cents per message when the system expands from streetcars to buses this fall. Under the proposal, the first two texts within a 24-hour period would be free; customers would only pay if theyRead… Read more »
Mashable offers three simple technology strategies for making cities greener. First on the list is offering WiFi on transit. Chris Taylor writes: That’s the major advantage transit has always had over driving — you can do other stuff while you’re on it. And in today’s hectic work world, extra time online during the day isRead… Read more »
New York Times reporter Corey Kilgannon happened to catch the Google Street View car in action and tried to document the encounter. “It does not come around often, but when it does, the Google Street View car is hard to miss.” he wrote. “It has also gained near-mythic status in towns and cities around theRead… Read more »
When Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority customers lose their cool, they start tweeting. Passengers have begun to tweet information about cars with broken air-conditioning to the MBTA’s Twitter account (@mbtaGM) to get quick results. The tweets are forwarded to workers who can find the car and pull it out of service, if necessary. And Twitter getsRead… Read more »