Free vs. Faster Buses, Celebrities Want to be Professors, & More
Around the College Towns: Links and commentary related to urbanism and higher ed for the week of July 6 - July 12.
Note: Around the College Town is my weekly links roundup article on urbanism and education. These posts mostly cover news that may have fallen through the cracks rather than the big events.
Free Buses vs. Fast Buses
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has received some heat recently after a hot streak of hosting the World Cup and winning the NBA finals. One story saw him critiqued for leaving out Little Italy from a map of immigrant enclave communities around the city (to which I don’t have much to add until my future The Sopranos article). The other story was about buses, sparking a debate between free buses and faster buses.
One headline in a local paper read, “Mamdani’s push for free buses takes a back seat to faster ones.” Mamdani’s critics say he is breaking a promise to voters for free bases, a central platform during his mayoral campaign. Instead, the mayor of NYC is teaming up with the governor of NY to offer the city faster buses. The plan is to invest millions into dedicated, protected bus lanes, new bus stops, shelters and seating, Automated Camera Enforcement (ACE) to keep out illegally parked cars, and other maintenance. These services will be “modeled after the best rapid bus systems around the world,” according to the report from the mayor’s office.
I’m not mad at the mayor for chasing fast over free. I’ve already come out as being against free buses. As I wrote before, I take my cue from the East Asian countries where I used to live, South Korea and China, or have visited, Japan and Hong Kong. These places have wonderful public transit (see my video below); none of the systems are free. They are low-cost and reliable. American cities should aspire to their level of service. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
Service Vehicle Size Shouldn't Dictate Our Streets: Lessons From East Asia
Note: I made a full video on YouTube outlining the issue of large service vehicles and wide streets. I cover how our service vehicle size is often used as an excuse to keep our streets wide, especially with fire trucks. I then bring viewers to four East Asian cities of Suzhou, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Tokyo to see better examples.
The juxtaposition between Asia and the US is even starker right when you return home from the former. I have written about doing just that here in LA, but I also experienced a version of it when I moved back from Korea to New York City for grad school.
At that time, I was working as an adjunct at a college north of the city in White Plains. I would take the Metro-North train for an easy ride up. It was nice; the biggest hassle was getting to the station. I had to get from Columbia to the Metro-North Station, going down 125th Street. That stretch was incredibly packed. The bus would often take 45 minutes or more just to creep along that mile. Illegally parked cars, normal traffic, the inefficient system for wheelchairs, the stops too close together—all things that equaled big delays. It was actually just faster to walk, so that’s what I ended up doing most of the time. This is a system failure.
To the city’s credit, they installed dedicated bus lanes and raised stations on 125th, along with a real BRT line that didn’t stop as much. My old trip takes a fraction of the time now. But some of the same problems I faced when I lived there persist in the rest of the city. “Forever. Slowest bus in America,” one local resident told Streetsblog New York City. He typically waited a half hour for his bus, then it crept along Tremont Avenue in the Bronx.
The rest of NYC deserves some reprieve as my old strip got in Harlem. The strategies used to make buses faster on 125th are exactly the right kinds of fixes buses need throughout not just the city but the country. It seems this is exactly what Mayor Mamdani is trying to do—much smarter than free buses.
And yet, people are still mad at the mayor. Probably the dimmest response that I have seen to all of this is the idea that faster, more efficient buses will lead to less overtime for union bus drivers. This is absurd. We can run more buses! Really, we should not be thinking that public transportation is some kind of job program. The top priority should be the actual service.
So I don’t care if Mamdani backtracked on his idea of free buses. Faster and more efficient is the way to go. What do you think? Where do you fall on the free bus vs. faster bus debate? I’m not sure we can ever have both (or am I wrong there?).
Links I’m Reading This Week
Education
In a sign of the times of our national greying and birthrate drops, some schools that shuttered due to low enrollment are getting new life as senior housing. Some residents attended the school when they were kids!
BYU is building more family housing for married students and those with kids. Universities really should be considering these kinds of options more, as the stereotypical 18-year-old college student is no longer the norm.
San Jose school district is looking to buy an apartment for staff housing. It’s sad that our teachers can barely afford anything in this state.
Even a place like Abilene, Texas, is facing a “rental crisis.” The university there is now looking to ease off-campus demand with more on-campus offerings.
Harvard is getting into the layoff game. If even Harvard must shrink its workforce, what hope do the rest of the universities have? Tough times.
After a University of Oregon student was killed by a driver during a bike ride, Eugene officials look to road diets. The dangerous driver was reportedly doing 50 MPH on a residential street next to campus. It’s sad that local officials need a death to happen before slowing down cars and making cities safer for bikers and pedestrians.
In some international ed news, India’s top university is set to open a branch campus in New York. The Age of Conquest knows no bounds.
Yaqi Li at New China Literacy chronicles 50 years of Chinese college entrance exam essay questions. Cool idea for research connecting education with politics.
In more China news, the country has successfully launched and landed a reusable rocket. This will just heat up the space race even further (a good thing!).
Urbanism-ish
Poland is planning to build a massive national rail network, including almost 1,700 miles of high-speed rail. It seems like a lot of exciting things are happening in Poland these days.
India is also getting into the high-speed rail game, with an added seven new corridors recently announced.
Likewise, the UAE is also getting into the high-speed rail game, along with their very own Sphere. I guess if I want to take a train to the Sphere, I’ll have to fly to the Middle East first, since the LA to Vegas one seems like it is never happening.
Feeling the success of hosting the World Cup game, LA is confident it can make its Olympics car-free after all. I, though, remain very much not confident!
Christian Britschgi has a post on how officials in LA are hindering the rebuilding efforts from last year's fires. Only 28 of the 5000 homes have been rebuilt so far, and the city seems more interested in catching rogue contractors than speeding up the process.
You can now kayak through the infamous LA concrete river. Another insane and wasted space that is finally coming to some use.
Here’s a cool real estate opportunity for any readers down in Australia. Live in the bell tower of an old monastery! Less than half a million USD.
Ok, if you are in the US, I have you covered. Here is a church conversion up for sale in Buffalo, NY. Only $500K (admittedly, not quite as “converted” as the one from Australia).
Tokyo to add a 3% tax on hotel stays. I was there last summer, and I certainly understand the overtourism issue, especially as the Yen continues to depreciate.
In self-driving car news, Waymo is expanding to Tampa, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Denver. I am personally excited for the San Diego expansion, which means I am sandwiched between Waymo service in LA and SD, just waiting for it here in OC.
Of course, humans are trying to find ways to sabotage the self-driving movement: Teens use Waymo to shoot water guns at other cars.
In other car news, Fiat to bring tiny golf-cart-like car to the US. Not sure about the market for these, but I welcome companies making cars smaller, not bigger, for once.
Closing Time… Celebrities Wish They Were Professors
This week, fellow faculty in the r/professor subreddit were debating a clip between Mindy Kaling and Amy Poehler. The two comedians were discussing what it would be like to be a professor. Poehler convinces Kaling that it would be a nice life:
I don’t think I want to teach at a college. -Kaling
You don’t know that! Don’t rule that out. -Poehler
Think about coming in, like a beautiful sweater, like Dartmouth, let’s say. Drive in at 10 o’clock in the morning. Have your coffee… the door creaks open and there’s like 150 kids staring at you and you start your class. Nobody gets to interrupt. You’re done in an hour. -Poehler
That does sound good. -Kaling
I’m a big fan of both The Office and Parks & Rec (along with SNL and countless other performances by Poehler). So it was fun to hear them romanticize my profession. The subreddit got a kick out of it, too. Well, some faculty were annoyed (and overly sensitive), but others thought it was a pretty funny perception of the profession by the celebs.
If only it was that easy
this is how many people picture the job
Amy doesn’t get it. The class starts at 10:30, not 10:00.
Guys, just goes to show that the grass is always greener on the other side. Once you know how the sausage is made, no job is that glamorous.
I’m going to become a stand-up comedian. That sounds good. You just show up at 10 at night with your bourbon, there’s like a 150 people there, no one gets a grade, you’re done in five minutes. That does sound good
I wonder who will be grading all those exams 😂
Poehler even answered that last question in the podcast episode, which wasn’t in the clip. She said robots and AI can just take care of the work. Again, there is a good sense of humor about this. Fellow professors, do not take it so seriously! Enjoy it.