16

Web of Public Transportation

Opening context:
City Country Fingers, Local Transport Areas

Conflict

The system of public transportation — the entire web of airplanes, helicopters, hovercraft, trains, boats, ferries, buses, taxis, mini-trains, carts, moving walkways — can only work if all the parts are well connected. But they usually aren’t, because the different agencies in charge of various forms of public transportation have no incentives to connect to one another.

Resolution

Treat interchanges as primary and transportation lines as secondary. Create incentives so that all the different modes of public transportation plan their lines to connect the interchanges, with the hope that gradually many different lines will meet at every interchange.

Give the local communities control over their interchanges so that they can implement the pattern by giving contracts only to those transportation companies which are willing to serve these interchanges.

Closing context:
Interchange, Mini-Buses