Buses

How Advocates Won Bike, Bus And Pedestrian Improvements

November 26, 2024 Maylin Tu, Next City. Strategize! Bikes, Buses, California, Los Angeles, Pedestrians, Road Safety, Transportation

Think people won’t vote for safer streets? Think again. In March, Los Angeles voters passed the Healthy Streets LA ballot measure with over 65% of the vote. What’s the story? L.A. already had a plan — Mobility Plan 2035 passed in 2015 — to create a network of safe routes for biking, driving and walking. There was only one problem: The city had implemented only about 5% of it. In 2020, StreetsLA (a.k.a. the Bureau of Street Services) was taking advantage of the pandemic shutdown to rapidly repave city streets. The transportation advocacy organization Streets For All saw an opportunity to implement complete street improvements during repaving.

Bus Drivers Strike With Climate Activists In 57 German Cities

April 9, 2024 Berit Ehmke and Yanira Wolf, Labor Notes. Resist! Buses, Climate Justice, Germany, Strike, Transit, Worker Rights

Public transit workers across Germany have broken new ground by coordinating our contracts—nearly all of them nationwide have expired over the last four months—and shutting down bus systems with strikes in 57 cities. To add to the pressure, we’ve done something new for our union and for Germany: we’ve formed an alliance between local transport workers and climate activists, including the students who have been leading massive school walkouts. The devastating effects of climate change are already rocking Germany: major heat waves, flooding, and water shortages.

Guerilla Bus Benches Are Spurring Berkeley To Step Up For Bus Riders

February 4, 2024 Maylin Tu, Next City. Create! Buses, California, Infrastructure, Mutual Aid, Transportation

By day, Mingwei Samuel works as a software developer. Also by day — together with urbanist and writer Darrell Owens — he builds and installs benches at bus stops around Berkeley and Oakland that have no seating. It’s a tale as old as social media: In November, Owens tweeted a photo of his 64-year-old neighbor sitting on the curb at a bus stop to draw attention to the lack of seating for bus riders. “Which stop?” replied Samuel. “I can put a bench there.” A month later, he had placed a wooden bench, built based on a template from the Public Bench Project, at the bus stop in downtown Berkeley.

Transit Agencies Are Taking Small Steps Toward Family-Friendly Systems

February 28, 2023 H. Jiahong Pan, Next City. Create! Buses, Immigrants, Transportation, Women

In 2006, a transit agency serving the communities adjacent the Sacramento and San Joaquin River Delta claimed to be the first in the U.S. to provide a dedicated space for people to park strollers as they rode a bus. Tri Delta Transit, which serves northeastern Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay Area, created the zone because it noticed more families riding with strollers. “We recognized the difficulty they encounter when required to fold their strollers and felt there was more we could do to make their experience easier and more enjoyable,” said the agency’s outgoing CEO Jeanne Krieg, herself a parent, in a press release issued that year.

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