BusRidingDaddy

$11 for a canvas shopping bag. They're not on this planet.

Amazed like many to find there is a thread on here called "Beer". Shameless plug for a "Bus Brew Crawl" event I aim on running twice a year at this rate, next one on May 18th. Find it on Facebook or if you're not on there at all, drop me a line for more info. The inaugural event was small but it proved the concept, we visited seven breweries and one pub using nothing but The Rapid from start to finish. Next one will be eight plus one.

There's no parking scarcity in East Hills. It's an unwillingness to walk half a block from a strange street along another strange street to arrive at a destination. We seem to be conditioned to prefer walking just as far if not further at a mall or megamart than such a harrowing experience.

Two or three times a WEEK? Isn't that a ridiculously under-used piece of real estate?

If time allows for me to develop it and there is enough support, yes I would like for it to be more than just me saying my thing.

I've never been to one, but from the menu it looks like they are doing "chain" right. Local beers are pushed, locally sourced food is pushed. It looks like it's a bit more quality than the stuff we had at BWW.

Businesses in my opinion need to do more to provide their customers with two forms of information: 1) Where to park if you need to arrive by car - even if there is a parking garage two doors down, people don't know this if they are not frequent visitors to your area (such as the RPC parking thing mentioned above). As a prime example I would cite the parking shown on the CityFlats' website. Before I moved to downtown-ish GR I was someone who was unaware of many parking options and tricks. GR is very poor in general at getting commonly known information to those who need it. 2) Where the nearest bus stops are and where those routes go, plus where to check schedules. This would make it appear that arriving by bus is perfectly normal. Example bus info for Grove:

My next addition to the map will be the addition of P&R facilities. One example location would be the East Beltline stop, conveniently located right off I-96 and M-44/37. I am planning a full website dedicated to this "project", including detailing locations of stations, impact on surrounding businesses, residences, facilities, etc., sample timetables, etc. Once that site is basically in place, I will post a link here for everyone. The site will be a subdomain of the rapidriders.net site I run, where I am currently just posting occasional blogs about using the bus in GR.

Well, there's no way I'm going to read all 132 pages from 6 years right now, maybe I'll take it in instalments. Here's the transit map Veloise alluded to. For the first three and a half years of living in Grand Rapids I lived in Belknap Lookout. I would often think a local train serving a stop on Lafayette at the corner of Bradford would be a great addition to the area, and then I saw that tied in with what the Area Specific Plan was trying to put together. So I set about looking on Google Maps aerial views and also went out looking at some stretches of rail, and put together a plan for a three-line "metro". It uses existing tracks or places where tracks could be relaid, and I recently adjusted it to take into consideration the new location of the Amtrak station. The initial plan had lines from Coopersville to Ada, Sparta to Byron Township, and Hudsonville to Cascade Township. I then reduced it to stay within the boundaries of the six cities of the ITP. My map is based on the style of Harry Beck, something I grew up with as a Londoner. I chose the Corbel font as a very "transit" looking font. My initial lines were red, blue and green; but I changed the green one to yellow to match the GR city colours. I added the Silver Line to the map, and also some of the more important Rapid bus connections. I feel bad leaving my 6 off the map completely, but it doesn't cross the lines at all, except at Central Station where everything meets anyway. FYI: I haven't worked a day in planning, cartography, local authorities or transit agencies in my life. This wasn't even done using vector graphics, so it's a little crude. But I think it gets the point across: That GR would benefit greatly from another form of mass transit to coexist with our already excellent and blossoming bus service.

Thanks to Veloise for pointing me in the right direction. 132 pages of posts? Eek. See you in a week.