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NPR

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Eclipse, the solo bus-riding dog of Seattle, has died : NPR

Eclipse, the Seattle dog known for riding a city bus herself, died on Friday. The news was posted on her owner-run Facebook account.

She was 10 years old and died in her sleep, according to the account. Prior posts shared that she had been diagnosed with cancerous tumors.

Eclipse gained attention in 2015 when she began to take the bus alone. Her owner, Jeff Young, says the two of them would regularly take the bus to visit their local Belltown Dog Park. One day, he was still smoking a cigarette when the bus arrived — so, she boarded without him.

Within weeks, the black lab-bullmastiff mix was a consistent commuter in her signature red harness. Bus drivers recognized her and she knew her stop by looking out the window, her fellow passengers told Seattle's KOMO News in 2015.

Within 1000 ft of a CDTA Bus Stop

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Most of the City of Albany is within 1000 feet of a bus stop, but that is less true in Schenectady and Troy. Albany for the most part has pretty good transit around it's interior parts, although some of the routes run less frequency.

Albuquerque starts a zero-fare bus system for 2022 – Marketplace

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Albuquerque starts a zero-fare bus system for 2022 – Marketplace

It’s following the lead of cities like Missoula, Montana, Olympia, Washington and Richmond, Virginia. Boston is next in line, with a plan to make some bus routes free in the coming year. But with more than half a million residents, Albuquerque is the largest U.S. city to experiment with zero-fare transit at this scale.

In recent years, Albuquerque’s bus system provided about 9 million rides and derived only 7% of its revenue from rider fares. During the pandemic, both numbers took a nosedive. Sena said the hope is that switching to zero-fare will get riders back on the bus and give them a financial break.

I think it could speed boarding and not cost that much for transit authorities. Like it or not, transit authorities only get very little of their revenue from fares - there is a lot of time when buses operate below peak capacity outside of rush hours.
 
Transportation is almost always a money looser - even toll roadways - the New York Thruway south of Newburgh has always subsidized the rest of the system, that is when taxpayers aren't putting money into the system through ways often well hidden.

The real story behind the demise of America’s once-mighty streetcars – Vox

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The real story behind the demise of America’s once-mighty streetcars – Vox

The decline of the streetcar after World War I — when cars began to arrive on city streets — is often cast as a simple choice made by consumers. As a Smithsonian exhibition puts it, "Americans chose another alternative — the automobile. The car became the commuter option of choice for those who could afford it, and more people could do so."

But the reality is more complicated. "People weren't choosing to ride or not ride in some perfect universe — they were making it in a messy, real-world environment," Norton says.

The real problem was that once cars appeared on the road, they could drive on streetcar tracks — and the streetcars could no longer operate efficiently. "Once just 10 percent or so of people were driving, the tracks were so crowded that [the streetcars] weren't making their schedules," Norton says.