Categories
transport

What’s the population of a city?

Definitions can be important when looking at things such as statistics. A simple comparison of city populations can result in quite different figures. For example, what is the population of Seattle? The Wikipedia article opens: Seattle is a seaport city on the west coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County,  ... [More]

Categories
transport

What makes cities work: The restaurant tram

I was thinking about what makes good cities work effectively, and it occurred to me that a prime example is the Restaurant Tram. That day we took the Restaurant Tram, we made our way from the train at Southern Cross Station to the pick-up point next to Clarendon Street. The convention centre (Jeff’s Shed) was  ... [More]

Categories
Melbourne transport

How much ground level parking is there in Melbourne’s CBD?

What’s the ultimate waste of space in a city centre? Ground level, single level parking. Along with the access space required to get cars in and out, it’s wasted space because apart from perhaps $20-30 per day in revenue, it isn’t used for anything. This post from Gordon Price compares a few cities — the  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Phoenix changing

When I visited Phoenix, Arizona in 1996, it appeared to be the archetypal car-dominated city. I was told pretty much the only PT was buses once an hour. The freeways were packed at rush hour. Nobody walked anywhere. The downtown area was (especially on weekends) so deserted that they had to have signs saying “Welcome  ... [More]