"Open Source" Transit

Greater Greater Washington, in "Zimmerman urges Metro to embrace "beta testing"" is not too happy with WMATA's closed-mindedness about testing new computer-related information services.

I'm with GGW, but maybe with a slightly different set of reasons. The difference in opinion between WMATA and willing participants is the difference between authoritarian vs. participation in software development, and is the difference between a more distant "representative democracy" to the point of autocracy, vs. participatory democracy. That might be a heavy-handed way of referring to the arguments laid out in Eric Raymond's paper, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," but that's what it comes down to.

It's also the difference between the traditional kind of large scale software development or "rational planning" model vs. the more iterative model of "rapid prototyping" or the "design" model. The difference is that in the latter model there are more rounds of feedback and prototyping, more opportunities for user participation, and more opportunities to correct for problems or improve the overall product, through the participation of greater numbers of able participants.

I have written about this in terms of government programs more generally in these entries:

-- Social Marketing the Arlington (and Tower Hamlets and Baltimore) way
-- Dispuptive innovation (once again)
-- Prototyping and municipal capital improvement programs

and on WMATA and transit marketing in:

-- More on Metro and rethinking transit marketing

and about transit camps and the need to have an annual Transit Advocates conference in the region, see:

-- We need a transit users conference, now!

Design Method


Rational Planning Model -- lacks a step for prototyping and feedback before final implementation


This comes up because the Chicago region is taking up a distinctly "open source" orientation towards engaging participants. The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce created a contest seeking proposals from the public, aimed at growing transit use to 1 billion rides a year in the Chicagoland region. See "Chicago transit: Ideas to reach 1 billion rides a year," from the Chicago Tribune.

Fellow blogger Aaron Renn of The Urbanophile won the contest and the $5,000 offered for first place. (I met Aaron a few weeks ago when I was in Chicago for the National Main Street Conference. I joke that Aaron's blog is one of the few with regular entries that are much longer than the entries I typically write.)

From the article:

The goal of the competition was to generate new ideas for the CTA, Metra and Pace to help them increase transit trips in the region and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from autos, said Lance Pressl, president of the Chicagoland Chamber Foundation. The contest was conducted with InnoCentive, a network that works with companies and groups to solicit creative thinkers around the world for ideas to solve challenges.

The competition generated more than 125 entries from as far as Kenya, Australia and Japan. Renn and three runners-up who received honorable mentions are all from Chicago. ...

Renn also said a priority must be placed on vastly improving the experience of riding transit, and he challenged decision-makers to set a clear role for transit in the region, create performance criteria and provide incentives and funding to help ensure success.

The values of mass transit are in conflict because of disagreements over the role of transit today and the absence of a game plan for what it should be in the future, Renn said. Transit is seen as a public service, a social service for the poor and the disabled, a solution to traffic congestion and pollution and a tool to revitalize urban neighborhoods, he noted.

"Programs today that may provide some boost to ridership—free rides to seniors or using transit to link the inner-city transit-dependent with suburban jobs—do so at the cost of creating a societal view of transit as primarily a social service," Renn wrote. "But to achieve significant market penetration, transit needs to be seen as a public service."

His proposals, while perhaps representing a successful blueprint to attaining 1 billion transit rides a year, are clearly controversial. First, they suggest changing the habits of transit riders, as well as drivers, using strong incentives and disincentives. In addition, Renn's plan isn't likely to please suburbanites. It relies heavily on directing new investments mostly toward the CTA's core service zones, with only limited service available elsewhere. His argument: " … to boost ridership, you need to go where the riders are. This means the CTA, not Metra or Pace," he wrote.

(For another take on user involvement in transit, see "Tech savvy teenager takes Lexington transit in new directions" from the Boston Globe.)

Similarly, in the DC region, much of the intellectual energy (in addition to the work of the elected officials and professionals in Arlington County, see the Commuter Page and the Arlington County Transportation Plan, and the planners at WMATA) about extending and improving transit comes from blogs such as Greater Greater Washington, BeyondDC, Track Twenty-Nine, Washcycle on bicycling, and my own.

Where my writing tends to differ the most from the others is the attempt to build the understanding of the system through extension of "theory" -- such as my concepts of the national transit network and the metropolitan transit network ("The (Meta) Regional Transit Network and transportation "vision" maps" and "The DC Transit Network"), as well as the concepts of the mobility shed ("Updating the mobilityshed concept") and the transit shed -- and thinking regionally instead of parochially.

For example, in April I will release my version of the 2009 DC Transportation and Mobility Vision Plan. It will be more structured than the first edition of last year's version in terms of the organizing framework, but pretty similar to the final version from last year, based on six organizing principles and six implementing principles.

Organizing Principles

1. Complete Places (this is an extension of the "Complete Streets" concept to include livability in a broader sense)

2. Transit First/Mode Shift away from SOV trips (TF is enshrined in the municipal charter of San Francisco, primary focus on shifting away from SOV trips is in the Arlington County VA transportation plan)

3. Transit City, no one should be disadvantaged by not owning a car (this principle of equity in transportation is being implemented by the City of Toronto).

4. Linked transportation and land use planning paradigm.

5. Green infrastructure going forward.

6. Life cycle costing/100 year investments/do it right the first time.)

Implementing principles

1. Urban design

2. Accessibility planning (i.e., Utrecht, where uses are rated for transport demand, and places are rated for their transport capacity, and uses are directed to the locations where demand can be met, with a focus on shifting away from automobility)

3. Metropolitan transit networks (this is regionally focused, Metropolitan transit networks connect and are subsidiary to regional [multi-state] and national transit networks)

4. Mobility shed planning (optimal mode utilization within neighborhoods, districts, transit station areas)

5. Transit shed planning (mobility planning within the catchment area of local and metropolitan transit networks)

6. Transportation demand management planning to implement mobility and transit shed planning principles (based on what is done in places like Arlington County and the Travel Smart programs in Australia)