9 messages in com.googlegroups.googletransitRe: Any plans for Washington DC area?| From | Sent On | Attachments |
|---|---|---|
| DCSk8bdr | 28 Aug 2007 20:28 | |
| Scott Gunsaullus | 03 Sep 2007 12:14 | |
| perkinsms | 18 Sep 2007 17:32 | |
| Chris Luth | 18 Sep 2007 17:42 | |
| Chris Luth | 18 Sep 2007 17:42 | |
| perkinsms | 18 Sep 2007 17:45 | |
| Chris Luth | 18 Sep 2007 18:05 | |
| perkinsms | 19 Sep 2007 18:14 | |
| Nick | 20 Sep 2007 19:51 |
| Subject: | Re: Any plans for Washington DC area? |
|---|---|
| From: | Chris Luth (chri...@gmail.com) |
| Date: | 09/18/2007 06:05:55 PM |
| List: | com.googlegroups.googletransit |
Perhaps, especially if capital costs go up with additional equipment and additional or upgraded stations. I'm not intimately familiar with WMATA issues, but I doubt that an increase in ridership would hurt the agency more than help it (although I will admit I've ridden it enough to see that some trains are indeed jam-packed full; don't know about the buses). But especially for any agency that constantly has to justify funding and even its existence--say, LACMTA or agencies in other car-centric communities--more ridership is a good thing, and Google Transit is a cheap way to at least try for it.
Most agencies aren't in the position WMATA, NYC MTA, MBTA, or even BART are, where the services are viewed by the politicos and populace as essential services to the community. I would bet that few people in my hometown of Anchorage would endure hardship if the PeopleMover bus system closed down. (Most probably wouldn't even notice.)
Once the entire Bay Area is linked up to Google Transit (or if we have another suitable large-scale multi-agency deployment, such as the NY/NJ/CT area), it would be interesting to do a study to see if ridership rises--perhaps even a random survey could ask people if Google Transit had anything to do with their decision to use public transit to fully see the ramifications of this service.
How's the Japan thing working out? That might be a good study, since it integrates national/express/local trans and maybe even local bus services (I don't know for sure--I have a hard time playing with it, as it's all in Kanji characters, I believe). Has it resulted in increased transit utilization? (I assume the public transit utilization rate is already pretty high in Japan, though.)
On 9/18/07, perkinsms <perk...@gmail.com> wrote:
I think the problem is that it's a big return for the riders, but not for WMATA. Remember that for WMATA, increased ridership just means more costs, and they're running at a 40% loss.
MSP
On Sep 18, 8:43 pm, "Chris Luth" <chri...@gmail.com> wrote:
(P.S. My numbers are completely uneducated guesses, but my point remains valid, I believe.)
On 9/18/07, Chris Luth <chri...@gmail.com> wrote:
I hope they do consider it a priority in the near future, then. Funny that even with "multiple" (however many that is) requests each and every day, they don't care. Think: if there are 10 or even 5 people who are requesting it each day, that's perhaps 2-3,000 people each year (well, if you figure they're all new requests and not repeats). If you figure that for every 1 person who is requesting it, there are 10 more who would like it but don't bother to ask, that's an audience of 30,000 people per year that could potentially be convinced to switch to public transit if they discovered that it was easy enough.
That's not bad for a few hours of a programmer's time. I have a hard time understanding why, if the tools have been made to make it relatively easy, any agency wouldn't jump on this without a moment's hesitation. Even if the conversion process takes longer because of database snafus, it's still a cheap investment with a big return.
On 9/18/07, perkinsms <perk...@gmail.com> wrote:
The WMATA employee stated that they get multiple requests per day to publish data in GTFS, but that it's not a priority for them right
now.