Browsing by Subject "Bus rapid transit"
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Item The feasibility of transit-oriented development at the bus rapid transit stations in Austin(2013-12) Kniejski, Lauren Katharine; Kahn, Terry D.The population of Austin, Texas is projected to reach 1.6 million people by the year 2040, which doubles the city’s current population. The populations of cities in neighboring counties, Hays and Williamson, are projected to experience even more growth within the same time frame. For the first time in history, over half of the world’s population lives in urban areas, so sustainable development is currently relevant for urban planning. Until 2010, Austin lacked a mass public transportation system. Currently, Capital Metro, Austin’s main public transportation operator, operates the Red Line of the MetroRail, a commuter rail system. The Red Line only serves a specific subset of the population in Austin and its northern neighbors, running from the city of Leander, through northern Austin, before its final stop in downtown Austin. Because of this, Capital Metro will begin operations on a new method of rapid mass transit: a bus rapid transit system called MetroRapid. With two lines opening in 2014, MetroRapid will function as a mass rapid public transit option for two of the busiest north-south corridors in the city. The opening of MetroRapid will provide opportunities to stimulate growth in areas focused around this transit system. Transit-oriented development can be a method of guiding Austin’s future growth that will theoretically facilitate and encourage public transit use. The benefits to such growth would be reduced congestion, less dependency on automobiles and fostering communities that are vibrant and self-sustaining. This paper defines Transit-Oriented Developments (TODs), Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), and analyzes the MetroRapid stations themselves as Austin moves toward becoming a sustainable city.Item Ideologies of the everyday : public space, new urbanism, and the political unconscious of bus rapid transit(2012-12) Zigmund, Stephen Michael; Mueller, Elizabeth J.; Sletto, BjornThis research uses the recent development of bus rapid transit (BRT) on Cleveland, Ohio’s Euclid Avenue corridor as a case-study to explore the links between public transit, public space, and urban planning. Using Fredric Jameson’s (1981) method of textual analysis from The Political Unconscious, I explore the ways the BRT provides access to a buried class consciousness in the city as well as a “symbolic resolution” between conflicting agendas of development and equity. Contextualizing the new spaces of the BRT using a synthesis of Jameson’s (1984) theorization of postmodernism, Mike Davis’ (1990) militarization of public space, and Michel de Certeau’s (1984) spatial practices, I discuss the ways these spaces are remade by individual users as a vital public space despite the BRT’s embedded market ideology and repressive security apparatus. Additionally, I explore what BRT’s ‘ideology of form’ can tell us about the ideology of the dominant paradigm of planning today, New Urbanism, and use it as departure for a closing discussion of Utopian desires in planning.