[PRCo] of weird headways, the high tech era, and the haves and have-nots

[Derrick J Brashear]

The 55 minute headways and what people do and don't remember has me
thinking a bit. I found this page:
http://www.nextbus.com/predictor/publicMap.shtml?a=MUNI&r=N

(and the other Muni light rail lines have similar pages)

Basically on this site you can view either a "live" route map showing
where the cars are now, *or* you can choose a stop and a line and it will
estimate based on where stuff is now when the next car will be along. I
don't know how well it estimates if there are (known) delays on the line.

Would this sort of thing make weird headways more palatable assuming
general availability? 

Yeah, yeah, you're saying "but I'm not going to dial in just to check when
the next bus will be along" and here's where the high-tech era stuff comes
in. More and more people, though not nearly all of them, are getting
"continuous high speed networking" installed in their homes. For instance,
I have a cable modem, which is a step up from the 56k modem I had before,
and a step down from the fiber optic T1 I had before the 56k
modem:-) Better, or worse, I have a wireless network which covers my
house, and a laptop capable of exploiting it, so I think nothing of
walking out my door with my laptop open and using the network. 

And here's where it becomes local: note that that page is San
Francisco-specific. Even if that system works, it's my perception that it
won't work *here* for some time. The Bay Area is perceived as more
tech-savvy, and as someone with some involvement in that sector, I think
that's true, but isn't the entire problem.

Recent Census data which was summarized in the Post-Gazette claimed "We're
poor, but housing's cheap". I don't think that's conducive to such a
system working here, because people who can afford "always on" network
don't heavily overlap with likely transit users. 

Also, Allegheny County has the 2nd "oldest" population of any county in
the country, and at least circumstantially it appears that the older you
are the less likely to be "tech-savvy" you are... taken broadly and for
now, anyhow. 

To now reduce this to a problem of managable scope, if the Port Authority
(whose web site is one of the crappiest I've used, because they made it
ADA compliant but gave no thought to interface beyond that) were to do
something like this for *just the light rail lines* would a 55 minute
headway on 52 Allentown then be acceptable? How about 28 minutes on
42L Library?

-D





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