dpa

That I don't know.

They aren't limited to NYC connections. GSP will route to NYC initially, with a second direct flight to Boston following shortly if numbers meet projections.

JetBlue's current plans include flying into GSP by the end of 07. They could change their mind, or face a downturn, of course, but their plans and much of the arrangements are made.

sounds right. likely too little traffic to justify the effort.

One thing about the east-west shuttle notion: it would be, essentially, an Airport shuttle. The point wouldn't be primarily to link the campuses to each other, or even to downtown, but to connect the campuses and the downtowns to the airport (and secondarily, to the bus terminals downtown). It's true that Furman and Converse students are fairly likely to have cars, but our two more international, less expensive, schools - Clemson and Bob Jones - have a high percentage of students without cars. Clemson, in addition, is a significant origin/destination for GSP traffic, as are, the downtowns, center for business travelers who might not otherwise need or want a rental car. Just as important as who is served, though, is that the schools, and perhaps even the downtown hotels, might defray the operating costs of such a service. All that said, I don't know if it would work, or even be a good idea. Only a thought.

I wouldn't take my napkin math too seriously, but my numbers would indicate 3 riders on each bus, on average, at any given moment, not over the whole route.

This yields some interesting figures: GTA runs 11 routes through an average of 22 trips, 6 days a week. That's 264 trips per operating day, and, adjusting for non-operating holidays, about 81,000 trips a year. Average GTA loop length (out and back) is 17 miles, so trip length (out or back) is 8.5 mi. A million passenger-boardings spread through 81,000 trips is 12 passengers per trip. Average (nationwide) city bus passenger trip length is 2.2 miles, and if Greenville passengers are similar, a GTA bus, at a given moment, has an average of about 3 riders. That number also passes a gut check - it is reasonably similar to what I observe when in Greenville. At the same time, a million passenger-boardings yields about 1600 round-trips per operating day. Assuming most trips are round trips and that one-way passengers and more-than-one-round-trip-per-day passengers roughly balance each other out (I'm guessing, but that seems plausible), GTA serves about 1600 individuals a day. If the average "regular" GTA rider makes 2-3 trips a week, there are something like 2400 to 3600 regular users of the system. That also seems plausible. By way of comparison, Jesse Jackson townhomes has about 800 residents. GTA's impact on traffic and the environment is likely to be, at this point, about zero. Given American city car trips carry an average of 1.4 passengers, we could suppose we were keeping about 1100 cars of the road per day, which is insignificant to traffic when reduced by the number of car-trip-equivalents the bus system itself adds to the road. Environmentally, it is also a wash: city bus fuel efficiency is about a third average city car efficiency (4-6 mpg vs. 15-17 mpg). Given ridership is only a little more than double private-car ridership, GTA's environmental impact is likely to be a net negative compared to the same trips being taken in cars, but not big in relative terms. The GTA's present purpose, therefore, is unsuprisingly twofold. First, it provides limited transportation options (and therefore limited shopping and employment options) to a few people who cannot afford to drive themselves, are unable to drive themselves, or are not allowed to drive themselves. It is, in other words, a positive element of Greenville's rather stingy benevolence to the poor and infirm. It probably makes something like 1500 to 3000 Greenvillians' lives more livable - and these riders, 2-4% of the city's population, are likely to be among our most elderly and otherwise needy. By comparison, 16% of the city lives in poverty. Second, the GTA is a placeholder for a future, more useful, transit system. A fare increase or an assessment, or both, are in order. $1 is substantially less than the national average for city bus fares, and our tax assessments in Greenville are similarly low. Not even NYC pays for its buses through fares, so any suggestion that increasing services would solve the revenue problem is unlikely, though service increases might solve other problems. One opportunity, and a simple experiment, would be an east-west shuttle extending from Clemson to Spartanburg as follows: Clemson U to Easley via 123 Easley to Furman via 123, 124, and 25 Furman to Downtown Greenville via 276 Greenville to Bob Jones via 29 Bob Jones to GSP via 29 and 14 GSP to Spartanburg and Converse via 85 and 29 and, of course, back around again. The point is to connect the best unserved users of public transportation - business travelers and students - to the primary desired points: downtowns and the airport. Every 45 minutes during the day would probably suffice. The trip for college students on the western leg would be fairly long, but college students are more tolerant of trip-length. Business travelers would be getting to go point-to-point faster than any choice other than a private car. A combination of funding sources (universities, etc.) would be available to the GTA for the service. Obviously, you'd charge a special fare, maybe $7. Make it part of GTA, and you'd change both its image, and Greenville for the better. At least, worth a try.

Count me bewildered at negative reactions to Allegiant Air, a smart young company with a profitable track record. Count me doubly bewildered since their expansion into Greenville, flying MD-80s, will help demonstrate whether the current local market can support larger planes on our most traveled route (to/from Orlando). JetBlue is unlikely to exapand into GSP with its large planes until the current direct flights on small planes between us and NYC are regularly filled. Presently they are not. Until they are, nobody should be hankering for more air travel, the most energy inefficient form of transportation, even when planes are full, to enter a market while routinely empty seats would simply exaggerate the environmental effect locally, and our oil-dependence globally.

You will be accepted here if anywhere. And you are welcome! My junior year in high school (Riverside, admittedly, a school with many excellent newcomers) one of my teachers asked out of curiosity how many of us were originally from SC. Two of us raised our hands. And how many from Greenville, she asked. Just me. Greenville is built, more than most cities, from people who come our way. Even our most conservative major institution - Bob Jones University - is highly national and international. I hope you'll have fun and get out and see the whole area, take friends, make friends. Part of what makes Main Street so great is it is in the middle of so much that is more and different. Buy boiled peanuts on highway 11 (bring a wet napkin), hike in North Greenville, eat a hotdog at Skin Thrashers, have some chicken at Steakhouse Cafeteria (the best Southern food in SC, run by an Iranian). See the art at Bob Jones, find the octagonal church in Conestee. Find out who Max Heller and Tommy Wyche were and are. Have a patty melt at Waffle House. Find our Frank Lloyd Wright home, one he loved so much he tried to buy it back. Then go to the South Carolina room in our library and ask about what you've found. A couple of hours later, you'll have put down the kind of mental roots that make Greenville more than a place, and our Main St. make sense. I could go on. My family, both sides, have been in the upstate for more than 200 years. I've lived in Manhattan, I've lived in two Cambridge's, and I'm coming back.

Just to confirm how articles like this - and by extension a baseball team - make a difference well outside the area. Living in Metro Boston I've had a handful of people come up and say in reaction to the Boston Globe article, more or less, "Aren't you from there? Cool place!".

I like it, too, though travertine-clad late brutalist international style isn't for everyone -- it is a highly urban style, usually found in much larger cities, and often disliked. It reminds me of a cross between the New York State Theater (the column angles) and the Julliard School (the overhangs) at Lincoln Center in Manhattan, and I've always thought it somehow evoked the folds and creases of stacked newsprint. There's no question that 1) it needs some sprucing up, and 2) if it were torn down, the generation that allowed its demolition would be castigated for their shortsightedness by future generations of urban planet'ers.

As a native of Greenville, I really appreciate the pics and the forum, and want to let you know to keep it up.