[Cole]

I liked the third one as well. The second one (maximizing ridership) would have to improve frequency and trip times to be enticing. The whole reason people like the 4 over the 2 is because of how slow the 2 is.

BTW, did you notice that Jarrett Walker + Associates is stamped on the maps? It’s kind of cool that Human Transit was involved for the planning.

[Cole]

Coremodels said:
I don’t actually dislike this list apart from the pizza thing.

But seriously, Hounddog’s pizza is my favorite in Columbus.

[Cole]

I miss title.

[Cole]

theEdwardian said:
Does anyone know if these are mapped anywhere? Or if the city has some kind of program going on? Consider Biking? MORPC? I was on the Olentangy BT the other day and blew a tire, had to walk from Broad to Battelle. Many kind hearted bikers offered help but had a Schroeder valve tube. Would have been nice to have one of these stands on the BT.

The City does maintain a list of stations with amenities. You can visit there website below:

http://publicservice.columbus.gov/bikeparking/

And the map is here:

Next time I would recommend taking up fellow bikers offers for help. Most people offering would likely have a patch kit with a portable air pump. Mine is for Shrader and Presta valve types.

Alternatively, I recommend always riding with a spare tube and a portable pump. Patching with a vulcanizing kit takes time and using a new tube means you should have no worries.

[Cole]

Check out a recap of the January 2013 Year of Yay ride on our website:

http://yaybikes.com/2013/01/year-of-yay-13-1-recap/%5B/url%5D

[Cole]

bucki12 said:
Helped someone move and they were throwing out a Nintendo 64 with Super Mario 64. I just wanted to see if it worked and spent an hour playing it. The graphics are surprisingly good considering how old it is – 15 plus years.

I started replaying Metroid Prime. It’s *only* 10 years old but it looks amazing. Oh, and the game itself is amazing. After I beat it I’ll be onward to Metroid Prime 2 and 3 because I never played them that much for some reason.

[Cole]

Walker said:
http://www.humantransit.org/2010/02/the-power-and-pleasure-of-grids.html

I think a grid-system could work well for much of Columbus on the major arterial roads.

Xing Columbus did a recent post on this, too: Is Columbus Ready for a Frequent Transit Grid?[/url]

InnerCore said:
COTA has about 60,000 weekday unlinked passenger trips. Austin, a comparable size MSA has 123,000 weekday unlinked passenger trips. And Miami has 245,000.

Speaking of grid, Austin has a better grid system. It’s probably more CBD-centric than Portland, but it seems well thought out with connections throughout the system:

http://www.capmetro.org/uploadedfiles/Capmetroorg/Schedules_and_Maps/System_Map.pdf

Speaking of Austin, it appears that their transit system also covers UT whereas OSU has its own service. I wonder how appropriate it is to include campus area circulators which I assume is included in Austin’s ridership. There are 5 million CABS rides a year so that would increase COTA’s annual ridership (~12 million) by ~40%.

Still, it would seem that we are underperforming and a new design of COTA would be a good start.

[Cole]

Walker said:
What argument? I’m not arguing that COTA shouldn’t expand later hours for routes that serve students.

I was just pointing out that OSU foots the COTA bill for the students, not the tiny fee they pay.

Are you sure OSU provides any additional revenue to COTA? Xing Columbus did an overview of costs OSU students pay based on rides[/url].

Average Student Fare per Ride: $0.94
Average Rider Fare per Ride: $0.79

%Trips made by Students: 9.7%
%Revenue made by Students: 11.5%

Note: the numbers may be mixing years. Students were based on Sept 2010 – Sept 2011 and general COTA was based on 2009.

It seems like a good partnership because OSU is a large employment center .

[Cole]

For more information about the Columbus repair stands, check out my post:

The Dero Fixit comes with the following :

Main body: 2” pipe, 6” x 2” 11g tube.
Feet: 8” x .25” steel.
Tool tethers: 3/16” stainless steel cable.
Manual air pump.

Hand tools:

1. Philips and flat head screwdrivers
2. 2.5, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8mm Allen wrenches
3. Torx wrench
4. Headset wrench
5. Pedal wrench
6. 8, 9, 10, 11mm box wrenches
7. Two tire levers

[Cole]

Just a reminder, if you know any OSU staff or students who are interested in learning the roads of the road in a fun, instructor-led tour of Columbus, How We Roll[/url] is still being offered. My understanding is that riders have really enjoyed the route and it teaches them to ride in traffic, stop at lights, and follow all the rules while seeing cool spots of Columbus.

Plus, it’s a cool logo!

http://howwerollosu.com/

[Cole]

johnwirtz said:
I think so. Certainly Smart Cards can be used as monthly passes or as a way to pay for individual rides. I don’t think I’ve seen one that can do both at the same time, but it seems possible.

In order to have a card that could do both monthly/7-day/3-day passes and individual rides, I believe there would have to be some kind of input for the user on the bus or a smart phone would be necessary. Otherwise there’d be no way to reflect the user’s preference to the farebox.

[Cole]

lifeontwowheels said:
Only sticking point I can see is how the card gets used. Is the technology available that I can put $50 on to cover 25 single rides but add/purchase the discounted multi-day pass options when needed?

At the public meeting, there was a woman who had passes from San Jose or San Diego telling a story about how easy it is to use them. Go to the farebox, tap the farebox, you’re done. She mentioned that as people get older and lose some of vision clarity that it was hard to swipe a card as COTA’s farebox.

One of my biggest pet peeves regarding COTA and public meetings is that a lot of things have to be looked over by the financial department which appears to be code for saying “no, we can’t do that.” A year ago when I asked about the two-trip tickets, I also asked about a 10-trip ticket or some variation because if a farebox can tell the difference between a one-trip or two-trip ticket, why not 10? They told me that they would have the financial department look at it; there have been no changes since.

In response to the woman talking about the RFID technology, COTA representatives told her that the financial department would look at it.

[Cole]

Walker said:
Yeah, but why get an iPhone 6 when the iPhone 7 will be along shortly after that. And while we’re waiting, we might as well wait for the iPhone 8. ;)

That’s something you should ask COTA at the Short-Range Transit Plan public meetings. I plan to.

[Cole]

bjones7 said:
Interesting, COTA will be holding 3 meetings to update their Short- Range Transit Plan that they updated in 2011.

http://www.cota.com/Public_Comment_Meetings.aspx

I heard that they are going to implement COTA ticket vending machines as soon as January. I bet they will only be available at the Transit stations and the COTA building downtown.

I attended the January 2013 public comment meeting which you can see more of here:

http://xingcolumbus.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/proposed-2013-january-cota-changes/%5B/url%5D

While I was there, I asked about the 2011-2015 Short Range Transit Plan regarding the “Smart Card” system for fare payment. They told me that it would be on the agenda for the October public meetings.

After the meeting, a COTA employee told me that the investment is very high and that they have been reluctant to pull the trigger on any capital projects which would lock COTA into the current technology. The analogy would be why get an iPhone 5 when an iPhone 6 is around the corner.

Do you have any more details on what you heard? When I hear the term “ticket vending machine,”I imagine that it would mainly sell day passes, 7-day passes, 31-day passes and trip tickets like an automated lottery ticket machine sells scratch offs. I don’t see any of those being sold at a higher rate unless they were sold at a discount to entice people to pay off-board.

[Cole]

Taz Devil said:
I just got back from Chicago, and I can tell you why I hate the cyclists in the THAT city. They don’t obey the law. Like it isn’t bad enough to drive through downtown with all of the traffic and distractions and they having bikes blaze through red lights and on sidewalks. It is nuts. Follow the law! Drivers have to.

You meant to say “I can tell you why I hate cyclists riding illegally.” I will not argue what percentage of cyclists are law-abiding but you are conflating the term “cyclists” with “law-breaking cyclists.”

The big picture is that a person breaking any law is usually annoying. I guess we just see traffic infractions more than other illegal activity.

[Author]

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