Anatomy of a new dollar van route: Informal transport and planning in New York City

Despite nearly eight million rides per day on formally planned and legally sanctioned buses and subways, dollar vans provide service that shadow some of the busiest bus lines in Brooklyn and Queens. Dollar vans are an informal transport service that occupy an awkward liminal space between legal and illegal—some are licensed and some are not, but all dollar vans operate illegally. It is this legal confusion that renders them informal. It is because of this informality that dollar van operators and drivers can also adapt their routes and service as they deem necessary. This “generative” mode of planning introduces a second dimension of informality; however, I argue that dollar van operators follow a similar logic as formal transportation operators when planning service. I demonstrate this by examining the case of a dollar van operator in Brooklyn developing a new route. I juxtapose his method with that of bus planners from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to show how both groups of planners rely on prompts they encounter, be it anecdotal stories about West Indians in Flatbush moving away or an angry letter from a state legislator, rather than a systematic approach that is taught in classrooms. By examining the planning of a new dollar van route in Brooklyn, I trace the operator's planning process and compare his data against quantitative datasets to show that his generative planning process is supported by the quantitative data and deepens its meaning when combined with his local knowledge. Seen in this light, it is clear that the distance between informal and formal transit is artificial rather than inherent.