Ok picture this… a man is removed from a train for not holding a valid ticket. Most people would purchase a ticket and be on their way. Not this guy! He takes his pants down and moons the transit staff.  He’s thinking “hah I showed them!”

Only one problem… when the doors closed, his pants were caught in the doors and as the train started to move, he was dragged along the platform with his pants down around his ankles. A passenger pulled the emergency brake which probably saved the man’s life.

From Reuters, “The man — unharmed except for cuts and bruises — now faces charges of dangerous interference in rail transport, insulting the train staff, and may face sizeable a compensation claim for the delays he caused, police said.”

“He was full of remorse when I talked to him,” the spokesman said. “And he advised others not to try the same thing.”

What’s the lesson we learned from this? Don’t moon the transit staff!

Finally!! The transportation authority here in NYC (MTA) has finally decided to realize that it’s a damn pain in the butt to try to haul luggage on a bus bound for the airport. Today they announced a pilot program to test luggage racks on the bus routes that serve both LGA and JFK airports (i.e. M60, B15, Q3, Q10, Q33, Q48 and Q72).  One bus running on the M60 to LGA has the rack installed.

“We believe that the racks will be a great amenity, making things more comfortable for our customers and even helping our bus operators speed their trips. We are going to have our managers out monitoring these buses, asking our customers and bus operators if they are seeing an improvement,” said Joseph Smith, Senior Vice President in the Department of Buses. “If the results are positive, we will expand the installation of the racks to other buses on these routes.”

The issues I see with the luggage rack location are:

• security – placing the racks right next to the rear door allows a criminal to easily exit with your bag
• you must drag the bag from the front of the bus to the rear – my guess is many passengers will just continue standing towards the front with their bag

In any case, good for the MTA for testing out a feature that many other cities already offer on their airport-bound buses. I’d rather see larger and wider buses running on the airport routes rather than the low-floor tiny buses.

Vodkaster has put together a subway map that includes the best movies of all time. Subway lines on the map are organized by film type. Some of the movies on the map include: Godfather, Casablanca, To Kill a Mockingbird and Die Hard.

Download the full movies map here.

The public transportation system in Atlanta is called “MARTA”. This week MARTA decided to change the name of their subway lines and has moved to colors for the rail line names. The updates are as follows:

• Red Line = former North line
• Yellow Line =- former Northeast line
• Green Line = former Proctor Creek line
• Blue Line = former East-West line

MARTA officials say the change is to follow many of the other rail systems that use colors like Chicago, Dallas and Washington, D.C. They also say it will minimize confusion – not sure about that because now all websites and content materials will point to the old names for years to come. Even our Atlanta pages will need to be changed.

If you are traveling to Atlanta, check out our Atlanta Airport Travel page to learn about using MARTA from the airport.

Here’s something from the NYC subway wayback machine courtesy Subchat. Many years ago, there was a special “train to the plane” that operated in NYC. It made only a few stops in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn then ended at the Howard Beach subway stop. From there passengers boarded a shuttle bus which took them to JFK airport. The train ran every 20 minutes and there was an additional fare of $3.50-4.00 which was collected on board.

If you are traveling to/from the NYC airports and want to try using transit (you should!), check out our NYC airport guide. I find that using the subway and the LIRR is much faster and way cheaper than taking a taxi from JFK airport.

Here’s a video with 2 commercials from the Train to the Plane – both look like they were created by the people who made the Brady Bunch tv show.
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Have you ever wondered who would win in a battle — a porsche or a city bus? Wel the video below provides details on which vehicle wins.  As a bonus we have included bus vs. bus shelter battle.

Last week the TFL (Transport for London) group put out a new London Tube map. The map removed the fare zones along with the Thames River. London Mayor Boris Johnson was “furious” over the Thames removal.

Apparently both items were removed for clarity. I think the river is one of the things that makes the Tube map special. For me it “grounds” the map and I agree with the London Mayor that it must be re-added.

The BBC has a story about the map change and notes that the Thames River will be re-added later this year during the next map update. TfL said the Thames would return on future maps following an “overwhelming public reaction”. From the BBC story, “Mr Johnson said: “I hope Londoners will imagine the Thames in place until it reappears on the maps, and will not forget their beautiful river.”"

For us NY’ers, it would be like the MTA removing Central Park from the subway map.

If you are planning to ride the bus in Honolulu, you better make sure you put on another coat of deodorant. And forget about getting some stinky food in a to-go carton. Gordon Pang of the Honolulu Advertiser is reporting that:

The City Council is considering a bill that will make it illegal to “bring onto transit property odors that unreasonably disturb others or interfere with their use of the transit system, whether such odors arise from one’s person, clothes, articles, accompanying animal or any other source.”

Councilman Rod Tam, a co-sponsor of the bill, explained why it is needed:

“As we become more inundated with people from all over the world, their way of taking care of their health is different. Some people, quite frankly, do not take a bath every day and therefore they may be offensive in terms of their odor.”

I like that part – “some people do not take a bath everyday” – maybe Mr. Tam should come to NYC or San Francisco or any city on the mainland. Tam took the language for his bill from the Seattle transportation system.

Over 400 people have left comments on the post on the Honolulu Advertiser and I’ve seen thousands of comments on other posts about this proposed idea.

Under the bill, a person found in violation may be ordered to leave transit property and issued a summons or citation by a police officer. If convicted, a person could be fined up to $500, spend up to six months in jail, or be both fined and jailed. Could you imagine being jailed for smelling on the bus? What do you tell your celly?

The ACLU is now concerned with this smelly bill.

There’s nothing cooler than transit data in a visual form. If you are like me, you will love the site I have for you today. It was created by Sha and takes NYC subway ridership data from 2006 and displays it on a map. You can check out each station and see how many people began their travels at that station. The thicker the line, the more people paid their fare at that station. You can also see the data as dots instead of lines.

As one might imagine, Times Square leads the pack. Other interesting notes:

• 17 million people started at the Main Street station in Flushing
• Beach 105st in the Rockaways only had 80,000 people use the station
• 17 million people also used the 86th street Lexington IRT station

We need more visualizations and frankly more transit data usage to both understand more about how the system works and to help passengers more effectively utilize the system.

It would be interesting to overlay 2008 data as I am sure many of the stations in Long Island City and parts of Brooklyn will probably feature much thicker lines. Imagine a global transit usage directory!

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the MTA going after application developers who use transit schedule data in their apps. It’s still a shock to me that any public agency would have an issue with outsiders trying to help them help their customers (many times for free). I wonder what Bloomberg thinks of this with all of his ads about how he is going to fix the MTA.

David Turner and Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock have put together a meetup for tomorrow evening (Tuesday) to discuss how the MTA and the developer community can best collaborate. You can find all of the details here about the event including a variety of comments about whether Google gets current data for their Maps and Transit products.

I won’t be able to make the event due to scheduling concerns and am very hopeful the group can come out with some good learnings and next steps. If the MTA wants to fix the MTA, talking to the “Internet” could be the first step.