Transit and the 2015 budget: a letter to Regional Council

News, Transit, TriTAG March 4, 2015 Mike Boos 1 Comment

Dear members of Regional Council,

Over the past several years, transit has been squeezed to meet arbitrary cost-recovery targets. Now that GRT has achieved those targets, TriTAG is pleased to see that the proposed 2015 Regional budget does not include any more painful cuts to transit, but instead focuses on continuing to prepare for integration with ION light rail and adapted bus rapid transit service.

We hope that 2015 also marks an end to the sharp fare hikes of the last few years. As the Region develops its new Strategic and GRT Business Plans, it has the opportunity to set fare and cost-recovery policies to satisfy concrete goals for transportation, ridership, social equity, and the environment. We encourage council to be proactive in considering these goals when deciding on fare and service changes. (more…)

Weekend reading

News, Transit March 15, 2014 Mike Boos

Two articles caught our attention this week that we thought worth sharing.

How Design Can Help Build a ‘Transit Culture’ – Eric Jaffe, The Atlantic Cities

Increasingly, transit agencies are realizing the importance of the user experience and public perception to ridership. TriTAG has long maintained that bus-wrap ads not only make taking transit unpleasant, but they also severely dilute GRT’s brand into rolling advertisements. We’re hopeful that wrap ads never appear on the ION, and that the Region eventually realizes how much brand-value is lost by covering up entire sides of their buses. (more…)