Baltimore: For transit to work, it must be a system

Paul Johnson of Bosconet calls our attention to the latest issue of Baltimore's hip monthly magazine, the Urbanite, and its cover story on the state of transit in Baltmore, "THE TAO OF TRANSIT: The bus is late. The light rail is slow. And the streetcar is gone. What happened to Baltimore’s mass transit system?."

I admit, if I go to Baltimore for a weekend, I drive. It's too inefficient to get around by transit. If I am going to do a bunch of things, by myself, in a limited time frame, I will take public transit (subway + B30 bus + light rail) and take my bike, so I can get around reasonably quickly. Note that MTA buses do not have bike racks.

Baltimore has a little subway line and a light rail line that does serve parts of downtown, but doesn't serve enough of other things. And the buses aren't very frequent.

To have the kind of ridership that successful transit cities have, you must have a transit system, one that connects modes and goes to places that people want to go to + has density of destinations (accessibility).

For another good piece about a city and how to improve its transit system, check out this piece from the Philadelphia City Paper from 2005, "Let's Go." The abstract:

33 ways to reinvent, rethink and recharge our beleaguered transit agency. Other cities around the world have cool public transportation systems. Why can't we?