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Weekend Links

» This week’s big news. Open thread in the comments.

Follow my Twitter account (@ttpolitic) to get news in real time.

On The Transport Politic:

Fun

Bikes and Pedestrians

  • Next American City: Are pedestrian malls the future or the relic of antiquated thinking? http://bit.ly/ac8V8q
  • After millions spent, Toronto bus bike racks criticized as being infrequently used: http://bit.ly/covoY1
  • London reveals more details about its Cycle Hire scheme, which will bring 6,000 of Montréal’s Bixi bikes to the U.K.’s capital: http://bit.ly/9lnWMj

Buses, or Something Else

Funding

  • Jarrett Walker on Human Transit: Should fares be higher during peak hours? (Disagreeing with my own article on the subject earlier this week): http://bit.ly/cwL5gt
  • San Francisco Bay Area transit agencies need one billion dollars a year to survive: http://bit.ly/atfj3U
  • $1.4 billion transportation improvements for Virginia’s Tysons Corner, both roads and transit, could come from a new set of taxes: http://bit.ly/cdLqdR

Intercity Rail

  • California High-Speed Rail Blog: Getting Caltrain and high-speed rail right: http://bit.ly/dhogT0
  • CSX freight rail continues to hold up agreement on how fast to speed trains between Buffalo and Albany: http://bit.ly/9i07iE
  • Brazil plans 1,500 km of high-speed links in addition to Sao Paulo-Rio line, which is to be ready by 2016: http://bit.ly/cns1CY
  • Wisconsin picks a downtown location for Madison station along new intercity rail corridor: http://bit.ly/94L7LR

Image above: London Cycle Hire scheme, from Transport for London

One reply on “Weekend Links”

In response to your Tweet about Tel Aviv canceling its light rail, all I can say is that the writing’s been on the wall since the beginning. Israel decided to get private investment for Tel Aviv’s subway (downgraded to a subway-surface line), in line with the Anglo-American PPP notion. As soon as the financial crisis hit, the private funding dried up.

Even when I last visited Israel, a few months before the crisis, people who I told about the history of Second Avenue Subway shrugged and said it’ll be finished long before the Tel Aviv subway. They were probably right.

(Honestly, I’m not even sure the cancellation is a bad thing. The plan was rotten: the proposed route missed the city’s Central Bus Station, and served marginal corridors. And the subway-surface solution is dumb for the capacity Tel Aviv needs – either build it elevated, or keep it underground.)

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