Perhaps a good idea to increase ridership would be for businesses to give their employees bus passes as MSU and the student housing companies have for their people. I think this could work well for a lot of downtown businesses state and city offices and the big hospitals in the area. Getting people to leave their car at home and taking CATA to work would help in so many ways, from reducing pollution to fewer vehicles on the streets, that would equal less damage to the pavement, and we could build new buildings with reduced needs for parking space. If a lot more people were riding CATA they would demand better and more service.
It is great to see progress compared to other cities in the US. I welcome improvements, new ideas and sound management. However looking at the larger picture of mode use shows transit is very low. This document shows about 85% of trips in Lansing are in motor vehicles. I do not know what the transit goals of the area are but transit looks to be about 1-3% currently. I know there are many factors that lead to this number but I remain critical that this rate is acceptable. Maybe the new push for a sustainable city manager will work on reducing the emissions from transportation which is the biggest share of emissions nationally.
It's just so easy to use a car in Lansing, I'd never consider using mass transit here unless I had to. To me the solution is density. With increased density will come increased mass transit use, but without the density it's hard to justify a much more comprehensive transit system than we have. There's a real need for something like BRT or light rail on route 1 and I'd bet there's demand for some routes out in Delta Township but besides that I don't see a lot of obvious holes in CATA's services, increased frequency on a lot of routes would be nice but probably impractical.
I believe I heard MDOT is thinking that this is a great time for roadwork due to the lack of traffic and that they were keeping workers protected. They noted the heavy traffic is a much greater danger to workers and they could keep them working at a distance from each other.
I came back from my hideout cabin yesterday with very light traffic and noticed the new lights installed on Wood Road. It seems like I have a memory of this route being the old trolly line to Lake Lansing. I guess this will take some traffic off of Lake Lansing Road but I don't know enough about this area, where is the new road-going? I think some sort of each trip road tax should be paid by Granger and all the cement plants around this area, it's their trucks that destroy the roads around there.
Yeah I can see why this is a good time with less cars on the road, as well as we need the roads to be in good condition for transporting of medical supplies. But it's also a good time to be extra cautious and prevent injuries that would increase demand on clinics and emergency rooms.
If they were a city work crew I would write or call, the Connect-Lansing website gets a response very quickly, and I would write or call the Mayor he always responds in some way. It's great to get some work done but they should be safe or staying home. I went through a similar event out east in the '80s which lasted much longer than this will I hope, and the lessons learned are that you have to take precautions and be safe every time!
Yeah, I think there's a lot more work that could be getting done right now with minimal risk of increasing the rate of the virus' spread, if we have to go through this again in the fall they should have a much better idea as to which measures are necessary to keep the infection rate where they need it at. One thing I can say is that as a country we're going to come out the other side of this pandemic infinitely better prepared for the inevitable "big one" that will come eventually.
This is a great sight to see. Next, we need the downtown stretch rebuilt. Yesterday even though there was very light traffic, someone flipped their car at the Grand Ave exit. It seems like a lot of accidents happen right in that same area. I wonder if the highway could be made safer there when the rebuild it. An obvious answer would be to lower the speed limit, but I wonder if there could be some sort of reconfirmation that would improve safety.
This is good news. That section of Aurelius will be seeing more traffic when the new hospital and housing developments open. They are also working on Forest Road. I hope they also get to Collins next.
Comments
I came back from my hideout cabin yesterday with very light traffic and noticed the new lights installed on Wood Road. It seems like I have a memory of this route being the old trolly line to Lake Lansing. I guess this will take some traffic off of Lake Lansing Road but I don't know enough about this area, where is the new road-going? I think some sort of each trip road tax should be paid by Granger and all the cement plants around this area, it's their trucks that destroy the roads around there.