Transportation
Decentralizing Bus Routes in Tallahassee
It sounds like an urbanist's nightmare, but StarMetro's new system makes it easier to get to work
On the morning of Monday, July 11, all 26 of the bus routes in Tallahassee, Fla., were dramatically re-routed, the old lines disassembled, combined, renamed, and redrawn. Not a single route went unchanged, marking the first major overhaul of public transit in the state capital in half a century.
“Some people said this would be a lot like ripping off a Band-Aid,” says Samuel Scheib, a senior planner for StarMetro, the city’s bus system. “I liked to say, ‘No, it’s more like a back wax.’ This was taking something that had been more or less the same way for 50, 60 years, then on Friday, it was one way, and on Monday it was completely different.”