As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, March 3rd:
Do you use public transportation very often? If not, what would you encourage you to use it more? Wireless Internet? More comfortable buses?
The Triangle Transit Authority is asking those questions in a creative web survey currently available on its site at ridetta.org. Folks are given twenty “pennies†to spend on a variety of possible upgrades to buses as the agency makes replacements in its fleet.
Some of the items are pretty cheap. One-penny upgrades include things like expanding the front-of-bus rack to accommodate three bikes rather than the current two or to install 10 bike lockers per year at various stops around the Triangle.
Others are so expensive they will use up almost your entire “budget.â€Â
For instance, putting a rear window on the back of the bus would cost 16 pennies and implementing Sunday service would require all of your money.
I take the bus every day to work in Raleigh at the Sierra Club so I devoted my greatest expenditure of six pennies to fuel the buses using B20 biodiesel.
