So I’m wondering if anyone out there has seen the DOW Rail system ad? It’s not online yet but it’s airing on National Geographic Channel. It involves the Inkspots Whispering Green Grass song and a group of people whispering that make up a train traveling across country. The ad is great. The point is that the technology commonly used in Europe’s rail system to provide a quieter rail option is now available here in the U.S. That’s DOW’s claim, not mine, and if you’re curious here’s more information…from DOW.

Starting this week COTA is hosting four meetings to get your input and insight regarding service on Cleveland Ave. If you’re not familiar with the more than 10 miles that span from Westerville to E. Broad St., you might say, so what. So I’ll cut to the chase and give you the what.

Faster service. And here’s more; fast service on a line that’s currently carrying nearly 5,000 passengers everyday. Line #1 is transporting people that are coming and going to St Ann’s Hospital, Columbus State Community College, Columbus College of Art and Design, and people transferring to get to Ohio State or Easton, and the Linden community in between. And then there are the other people who say they’d take the bus if it was only…what’s the word? Faster.

COTA is following the FTA’s Very Small Starts process and there are a variety of tactics to create faster bus service that will be shared at the public meetings.  Visit COTA’s site for more information or follow @COTAbus, hashtag #NECAA on Feb 7 at 7 p.m. 

Tuesday, Feb. 7
7 p.m. 
Columbus Baptist Temple 
5075 Cleveland Ave. 
Columbus, OH 43229 

Wednesday, Feb. 8 
6 p.m. 
St. Ann’s Hospital – Board Room 
500 S Cleveland Ave. 
Westerville, OH 43081 

Thursday, Feb. 9 
Noon 
Linden Branch – Columbus Metropolitan Library 
2223 Cleveland Ave.
Columbus, OH 43211 

Thursday, Feb. 9 
6 p.m. 
COTA Linden Transit Center 
1390 Cleveland Ave. 
Columbus OH 43211

People love to talk about it. Maybe that’s because it’s so much easier to talk about than experience. But now there is a body of research that is all about the experience of public transit through the eyes of, get this, the customer.

Recently a friend, Meredith Joy (Yay Bikes and How We Roll) shared with me Zen in the Art of Travel Behavior: Using Visual Ethnography to Understand the Transit Experience. It’s a body of research from UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies that uses photos, travel logs, and notes along the way to document the transit experience Las Angeles.

In Columbus, and in other mid-sized midwestern towns, citizens are quick to compare local transit to the experiences in larger cities, and in a not-so-hot way. What I like about this ethnography is that it’s research from a big city, and yet when you click on the experiences, you see that some transit experiences, both positive and negative, are universal.

Take the entry entitled, “Big Blue Bus 12/Big Blue Bus 5” for example. The caption reads “the bus hasn’t arrived yet still waiting.”

And yet, in the very next slide he makes a simple observation; transit brings people together. People that we would never meet otherwise, with interesting lives and stories.

The study identified key themes including, the physical space (at the stop and on the mode of transportation) matters to customers, way-finding can make or break a trip, and customers are paying attention to their surroundings (i.e., anything from your cell phone conversation to what’s going on out the bus window).

It’s not every day that we think about the impact of our built environment on our health. That is, unless, you’re Dr. Richard Jackson. Dr. Jackson is a leader in public health issues that now includes how built environments affect our health. Built environments? Yes, how we plan our communities, Jackson presents, determines our quality of life, or lack there of. 

Now there is a four part series, Designing Healthy Communities airing in some PBS markets (hopefully WOSU will pick it up) that explores the idea of retrofitting suburbia, designing communities around transportation, and making communities more walkable and bike friendly.

Follow the link to catch a preview.

Who’s tweeting from the #APTA Conference in New Orleans?