Yo'.
Check this out:
Public transportation has a huge impact on how a city is experienced by visitors and locals alike. The ease of mobility is important, and many cities lack an effective system for people to use to traverse the urban and suburban environments. Austin has made a couple of admirable attempts at providing transportation to the public, although there is still a long way to go before the dominance of the car is diminished.
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| Austin traffic (youngmanblog.com) |
As for the rail system, I personally don't know anyone who utilizes the light rail yet. The rail is still new, and still expanding, but there are obvious complications to putting a rail system in place when a city is already at an established density. Here's a map of the stations active now.
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| http://www.capmetro.org/metrorail/stations.asp |
There's also the Car-2-Go system that allows people to pick up and drop off cars only as needed. These nifty little cars are tiny enough to park anywhere, good on gas mileage, and come free of all of the responsibilities of car ownership. Apparently Bevo likes them too.
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| Bevo likes these little guys too. Apparently. (theirearth.com) |
Less obvious but still present is the Yellow Bike Project of Austin. YBP offers free bike repair and even free bikes to people who volunteer their time for the cause. A few points of their mission are to get more people to use bikes for getting around rather than cars, to increase safety for cyclists, and to provide accessible service for cyclists.
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| Austin YBP service HQ (atxbikeshowposters.com) |
So back to that video up top that I wanted you to watch...
My studio professor sent us this clip of a new public transportation system in Germany. A similar but more widely explored concept, Mo' Mobility in Munich, offers a variety of options for the Mo' users to get around wherever, whenever via bike, car, bus, or rail. The ease of switching between modes of transportation makes this system really convenient and attractive. And the best part? There's an app for that. :)
Mo' seems like a great idea because you don't have to sacrifice choices of transport type if you spontaneously decide to switch. Normally people would avoid biking to the store because they would have no way to get their purchases back, but the cargo bike solves that problem. I can't help but wonder if they track your speed to keep you from just putting your bike in your car to rack up points though :)
ReplyDeleteThis Mo' idea seem really great. All I used in when I lived in NYC is the subway, and to be able to get "reimbursements" back would have been great! It was pretty expensive already to get a monthly unlimited pass, but still its cheaper than gas and car maintenance. Though my question is, who pays for this? Nothing in this world is free, and with an already broke economy, this just doesn't seem possible right now.. sadly. One day!
ReplyDeletegreat blog post! Thanks for sharing the pictures and video!
ReplyDeleteI used to think that Car 2 Gos were absolutely ridiculous, but I see them more and more, and hear about similar car-sharing things like Zip Car, and the idea has grown on me. I just wrote about how I love driving on Mario's blog, and how I would still prefer driving even if Austin had the best public transportation in the world, but I think I would consider using Car2Go, for a run to the grocery store or something like that you know? the only thing is I would worry about being flattend by a big truck or something...
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