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Five key tips for Metro regarding safe bus-bike interactions (Streetsblog LA)

Joe Linton tackles an issue that has been in the news lately: conflicts between buses and bikes on area streets. He offers some safety tips of his own about the best way to pass a bus that is moving to the right to drop off/pick up passengers. He also recommends that Metro get more serious about funding and/or backing more bicycle infrastructure, including bike lanes and a countywide bike share program.

Joe also does not think bus-bike conflicts — i.e. buses cutting off bikes — are isolated events and that they happen more frequently than is reported via social media. Here’s a recent post on The Source about such conflicts with some information on bus operator training concerning sharing the road with bicyclists. It’s obviously an issue of great importance — with or without Metro’s ongoing “every lane is a bike lane” campaign.

Visualizing MBTA data

A pair of grad students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute created this amazing web page filled with charts, animations and other visual goodies based on data from the Boston area transit system. You can track delays, frequency of service, how long it takes to run different trains on the same line, station entries, etc. Really great stuff.

Moscow pledges $83 billion to fight traffic (Moscow Times) 

Even though the city has an expansive subway, officials want to accelerate rail construction, rebuild roadways and do anything possible to get people to consider taking transit more often. The average motorist, says the Times, spends three hours a day commuting. By comparison, the average one-way commute in L.A. is about 29 minutes, according to the Census Bureau.

The existing Moscow Metro.

The triumphant return of U.S. passenger rail (Citylab)

Interesting story about the All Aboard Florida project, a private venture that will run passenger trains between Orland and Miami beginning in 2016. It’s being billed as the first privately run regular passenger train service in the U.S. and will mostly use an existing freight corridor. The rail line says trips will take about three hours between Orlando and Miami — a trip that takes about 3.5 hours by car. Sounds promising and there’s an interesting real estate component, with upcoming development around key stations.