a bit more about the transit maps book

I was amused to see further detail on Calgary's CTrain, particularly that it is apparently run on wind power! Perhaps no one else finds it hilarious that in the middle of Canada's fossil fuels patch, the main city has a mass transit system running on wind power. Totally appropriate, of course, and quite sensible, which one would expect of Canada. Nevertheless, it made me laugh.

Also, again, should have expected my friend A., who loves trains and knew from her time in Germany what mass transit can and should be, to move to a town with train service, but I hadn't realized that she picked one of BART's termini. Smart!

My pile of requests has shown up at the library and my daughter A. and I went to pick them up. I was annoyed the whole time I was driving over there. I didn't dare take A. on the bike (we were going right next door to town hall, which seems like a bad place to be defying state law on age-of-child-on-bike, also she was about to fall asleep and her bike seat is not set up for that, finally, bit stack of books) but really wanted a bike ride today. I had hoped to have child care, but she canceled due to illness today. In any event, because of construction on 27, I could almost certainly have made the trip faster on the biked -- but A. fell asleep on the trip over, so I definitely made the right decision.

Fortunately, she was okay with being woken up, carried in, returned to her car seat, brought up to bed when we got home and nursed back down for her nap. Cooperative baby, altho perhaps I should be calling her a toddler, now that she is walking. And climbing the stairs if you turn your back on her for a few minutes, so R. installed a gate at the bottom last night.

jitneys and smartphones

R. notes over on FB that jitneys come back whenever there is a public transportation strike. Passengers offer money to cover gas and mileage and hold up signs indicating where they want to go. They behave well and dress well in an effort to convince drivers to stop for them, which drivers are extra motivated to do if that means they get to use the HOV lanes.

I spent a lot of time thinking about jitneys, between when I posted last night and when I read my husband's comment on FB around noon today. And I have to say, I really think there's a huge opportunity here for a smartphone app to match people looking to go from point A to point B leaving after time C and arriving before time D with other people looking to meet the requirements of HOV lanes, carpool only parking and/or recoup their gas and other operating costs on their vehicle. Phones let you communicate, a lot of them have GPS built in and an app could apply any number of matching algorithms, plus supply directions to the driver to locate the passenger-to-be. I imagine a service could be provided to confirm the ID of the driver/passenger and manage checking in when joining up (maybe get photos served up from the DMV). You wouldn't have to have a smartphone to participate, if you could use an ordinary phone or other service to call in with your request, altho the see-a-pic-to-confirm-id feature wouldn't work then. Over time, the service would have some wisdom about routes along which jitney rides were available all the time, so you would know to walk over a couple blocks or whatever to improve your odds of a pickup. And it could arrange things like work-carpools in advance, to coordinate arrive/depart among a larger group, as well, so no one got stranded in an office park (altho once this thing was up and running, having to call a cab occasionally would not be the end of the world if you didn't have to own a car anymore). You could imagine subscribing to the service, or a micropayment system per use via the cellphone billing system, possibly.

Hey, maybe google (they've got the maps, they've got Android) will put this thing together for us. We know they can afford the lawyers to take on the anti-gypsy cab laws, too!

jitneys in SF, and a new word: paratransit

www.uctc.net/scripts/countdown.pl?252.pdf is referenced in:

http://missionlocal.org/2009/08/a-small-empire-built-on-jitney-history/

I hadn't been thinking of this in terms of job creation, but setting up jitney service to move a lot of people over from single-driver to shared-vehicle would almost inevitably create a lot of jobs.

ETA: econ grad student encounters jitneys in Lima, Peru and wants some back home in Houston

http://www.ricethresher.org/media/storage/paper1290/news/2009/08/21/Opinion/Minibus.System.Can.Aid.Mass.Transit-3755586.shtml