Shout about your frequent-service routes!

Does your city have any public transport routes that guarantee high-frequency throughout the day? Are they metro/subway routes? Are some on buses?

If any of those services are bus routes, are they highlighted as special, or do they seem like any other bus service?

The Human Transit blog highlights the importance of being very clear which routes have high-quality, frequent service (regardless of technology):

Berlin, for example, presents its system this way:

• Rapid transit, consisting of U-bahn and S-bahn. (These have numbers starting with U or S. Both are fully grade separated rail transit. ... )
• Frequent local-stop transit, called the "Metro-Netz." Metro-Netz service is identified by a route number starting with M, and this supposedly guarantees service every 10 minutes or better for 20 hours a day. Metro-Netz service can be either streetcar or bus.
• Less-frequent local-stop transit, which is identified by a route number without an initial letter.

Obviously the important point here is the Metro-Netz definition, which focuses on the quantity and type of service -- promising local-stop service that runs very frequently all day and evening. Both buses and streetcars/trams can provide this service, and they encourage you to focus on the service, not the technology.

Human Transit calls Berlin's Metro-Nezt a Frequent Network brand.

Digging into Parking in Asia

[Update: Looking for more parking policy information?  

Try Reinventing Parking.]

Ground floor living-room parking in Hanoi.

I am busy starting up a very quick 13-city/country study of urban parking policy and outcomes around Asia.

Maybe you can help?

It is an exploratory study aiming to find out what parking issues are important in each place (so that follow-up research can dig deeper). The focus is mainly cars, but other vehicles are relevant too, especially motorcycles. I want to know about off-street parking AND off-street. I am keen to hear about residential parking AND work-based parking AND short-term parking at other places, like shops. A bit ambitious perhaps but I want it all.

The study is also aimed at finding out if any of the major parking policy debates in Western cities are at all relevant anywhere in Asia. Can other places learn from how parking is done in any Asian cities?

So, if you have a view on parking and how it works then please drop a comment below! If you know of great studies or information sources then likewise, please do tell!

I am especially keen to hear tip-offs for parking policy or parking debate or parking phenomena in cities in the following places (since certain cities in each of these places are the case-studies for the project):

• Bangladesh
• India

• Mainland China
• Hong Kong
• Taiwan
• South Korea
• Japan

• Thailand
• Malaysia
• Indonesia
• Philippines
• Vietnam, and
  
• Singapore (where I am based).