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Dozens of electric yellow school buses are scheduled to roll on city streets as early as next fall, officials announced Tuesday. The city is using an $18.5 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency with funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill to purchase 51 electric school buses. It’s part of an effort to meet the city’s and the state’s shared goal of converting all New York’s school buses to run on electricity by 2035. — Gothamist
In April, New York Governor Kathy Hochul agreed on a $220 billion state budget with legislators, which included a plan to make New York State’s nearly 50,000 school buses 100% electric by 2035. It’s estimated that the state currently has just 36 electric school buses. New York City currently... View full entry
In March 2020, Los Angeles’ public-transit agency, Metro, stopped collecting fares on its buses as a COVID-19 safety precaution. For the next 22 months, Metro waived fares for anyone who wanted to keep riding its buses, anywhere they wanted to go (as long as they wore a mask, of course). And people did keep riding. — Curbed
A spokesperson from the agency estimates that from April 2020 to December 2021 there were approximately 281 million fare-free rides, reaching about 80 percent of pre-pandemic ridership, making it the largest free-transit experiment in U.S. history. Fare collection, however, restarted last week and... View full entry
French start-up EasyMile is to be the first transport provider to run a fully autonomous vehicle on a public road in Europe. The company has been authorised to run a driverless bus at the Oncopole medical campus in Toulouse, in partnership with French engineer Alstom. — Global Construction Review
The bus will operate at “Level 4,” meaning no human attendant will be on board. The authorization was granted by France’s Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Ecological Transition, on advice of the Minister of the Interior and local authorities. The bus arrives ahead of the implementation... View full entry
BIG has unveiled updated plans for a new transportation hub in the heart of the Swedish city of Västerås. Named the Västerås Travel Center, the 17,000-square-meter structure will bring together all of the city’s transport infrastructure in one continuous landscape, under a dramatic, curved... View full entry
New York's public transportation system isn't perfect, but its proper, punctual functioning is critical to the city's existence. Flaws and all, millions of New York natives and visitors log over 1 billion trips on the subway and bus systems each year. On Monday, the Metropolitan... View full entry
The Japanese retailer MUJI, known for their minimalist home furnishings and micro-apartment designs, has designed an autonomous vehicle. Teaming up with Sensible 4, a Finnish startup working on weatherproof technology for autonomous vehicles, the two companies have collaborated on a sleek new... View full entry
Tallinn, known for its digital government and successful tech startups, is often referred to as Europe’s innovation capital. Now celebrating five years of free public transport for all citizens, the government is planning to make Estonia the first free public transport nation. — Pop-Up City
Pop-Up City's Regina Schröter interviews the Head of the Tallinn European Union Office, Allan Alaküla, about Estonia's plans to expand the successful fare-free public transport model from the capital to the entire country on July 1: "Before introducing free public transport, the city center was... View full entry
The Hunan city of Zhuzhou is currently testing out an unmanned train that doesn't run on rails. You know, like a bus.
The Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit (ART) is being dubbed by Chinese state media the "world's first smart rapid rail bus," whatever that means. The train/bus (trus?) was first shown off in June this year. It uses sensors to determine the dimensions of the road and make a virtual track for itself to ride along.
— Shanghaiist
At first glance, Zhuzhou's Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit system that's currently being tested promises to enjoy a brighter future (and less ridicule) than the Traffic Elevated "car-eating" Bus that the City of Qinhuangdao announced to much fanfare last summer — only to find it stalled and... View full entry
Partly in order to help pay for a transit fare freeze, Sadiq Khan has halted the order for the double-decker, triple-doored Thomas Heatherwick-designed "New Bus for London," which would have replaced the old fleet of Routemaster buses. Much like Heatherwick's troubled Garden Bridge proposal, the... View full entry
China's once-celebrated Traffic Elevated Bus (TEB) has been left abandoned in the middle of a Hebei city road, not having moved once in over two months. Originally touted as the futuristic solution to urban traffic jams, the "straddling bus" is currently causing them.
A local reporter recently checked up on "the future of public transportation" at its testing site in Qinhuangdao, only to find it forgotten in a rusted garage, covered in dust.
— shanghaiist.com
"To test its invention, the company actually leased part of a city road in Qinhuangdao. Since the bus now remains exactly where it was abandoned , it continues to block three lanes of traffic, annoying residents to no end."The 'road-straddling bus' previously in the Archinect news: Public transit... View full entry
Just months after its spectacular design was unveiled, the Transit Explore Bus had its inaugural run this week on 300 metres of specially constructed test track in Qinhuangdao [...]
The vehicle, which goes up to 60km/h (37mph), runs on tracks with passenger spaces standing two metres above the road so that two lanes of cars can pass undisturbed underneath, helping to alleviate the notorious traffic jams of China’s biggest cities.
— theguardian.com
More transportation News on Archinect:China plans to build an underwater "space station" in the South China SeaTake a look at the rapid urbanization of China's Pearl River Delta'Jet-like' maglev pods are coming to Abu Dhabi's Yas IslandBjarke Ingels Group + AECOM join forces with HyperloopAerial... View full entry
[London Mayor Boris] Johnson, who uses the city’s bike-share system to commute to work most days, told the Guardian that he would welcome the quieter, greener buses on his city’s streets, saying current buses are like “throbbing, belching machines that emit their fumes like wounded war-elephants”. — qz.com
Since 2008, London Mayor Boris Johnson has introduced over 1,300 hybrid buses onto city streets, and all-electric single-decker buses have been in use since 2013. It was previously thought that all-electric double-decker buses weren't feasible – their size makes them too difficult to efficiently... View full entry
Nashville’s bid to build its first high-capacity transit line is dead, the Tennessean is reporting today. It’s a victory for the Koch brothers-funded local chapter of Americans for Prosperity and a defeat for the city’s near-term hopes of transitioning to less congested, more sustainable streets.
The project, known as the Amp, called for a 7-mile busway linking growing East Nashville to downtown and parts of the city’s west end.
— streetsblog.org
Thousands of bus stops in Brazil completely lack signage to indicate which buses actually stop there. The nation-wide inconvenience has finally been tackled by one of the biggest community projects in the world.
‘Que Ônibus Passa Aqui?’ (‘Which Bus Stops here?’) is a resident-led initiative which has taken Brazil by storm.
— popupcity.net
Before the buses became a symbol for San Francisco’s gentrification woes, they were just a fleet of several hundred private coaches that whisked some seventeen thousand workers around San Francisco and to and from the Silicon Valley campuses of such companies as Apple, Google, and Genentech. [...]
San Francisco is deep into a second tech boom—and, with it, many less affluent workers are getting priced out of the city.
— newyorker.com
