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Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

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Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#71

Post by Johnny555 »

jstanley wrote: post #46
peterwwillis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> buses and bikes were wonderful. But, they do not stop at my door, and they do not stop at where I want to go. Welcome to planet earth. It doesn't revolve around you.

"You're not important enough for buses to cater to your needs" is not a very strong argument for using buses.

But it is a strong argument to people to take the initiative to live where transit is feasible rather than live where it's not and complain about it.

I live a 10 minute bike ride from a park-and-ride bus stop where I have several bus line options to get to work, my bike+bus commute is faster than my driving commute because the bus takes the express lanes (and can legally drive on road shoulders in some places). I do a full bike commute some days, but it takes about twice as long by bike as it does by bike+bus, so I don't do it all the time. If I didn't want to bike to the bus, there's a local bus that runs a block away from my house that I could take to the park and ride.

But I didn't end up with this transit accessible commute by accident, I purposely chose where I live so I could take transit.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#72

Post by reaperducer »

Endama wrote: post #5

I suspect the uncomfortable truth behind a lot of the problems regarding public transit isn't the transit itself, but the passengers. If you had the choice of riding a public bus with a large collection of the public or paying a few bucks and selecting a preferred subset of the ridership (e.g. chariot in SF, uber, lyft, etc.) I think most will choose the non-bus option to feel comfortable during their ride. I'm not s…

Sometimes it's not even the passengers... it's the driver.

Riding the 152 in Chicago one snowy night (about seven years ago), the bus suddenly stopped and the driver made everyone get off into the snow because it was the end of his shift. When we asked when the next bus was, he said there wouldn't be once because he was the last bus of the night.

I ended up walking about a mile to the nearest Blue Line subway station, since the Blue Line runs 24/7.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#73

Post by tathougies »

jessaustin wrote: post #65
tathougies wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently moved to Marin county and use the bus to commute to SF. The Golden Gate Transit buses are pretty amazing. They come on time, the seats are clean and comfortable, and they have (usually fast) wifi. The clientele is clearly professionals commuting to the city in the morning and evening, and it works. Honestly, if more bus systems simply got wifi and nice seats, that would be a huge step forward. I've taken t…

Comparing those buses to those that serve other areas seems a little bit like admiring charter schools that only accept rich smart kids...

Why? Golden gate transit buses are public buses paid for by tax payer dollars and fares, like every other bus system. They are not private systems. What an odd time we live in, when being proud of our public civil infrastructure gets one labeled an elitist. Should I be ashamed of our schools as well?

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#74

Post by cgy1 »

I find it much more intimidating to take buses versus rail. For example, unlike most rail systems, buses will skip stops unless a passenger requests that the bus make a stop. Well, when I'm riding the bus for the first time or at night, it's quite easy to miss when I should request a stop. Meanwhile, if I take a train, I know the stations will stop at every station in its route and their are prominent signs at each station so it's much easier to figure out when I should exit the train. Plus often the same bus line may have different types of routes, such as an express route, so if I'm not careful making sure whether the bus has an X at the end of its name, I sometimes end up taking the wrong route that skips my stop.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#75

Post by munk-a »

maxharris wrote: post #6

I love light rail, not the bus: http://setosa.io/bus/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_bunching

Light rail is... well terrible. Build a real rail system separated from car traffic to avoid slowing down public transit to match the speed of private transit.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#76

Post by dllthomas »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #9

The bus system has to make pretty aggressive tradeoffs in order to be useful to commuters. You can't make it stop at every block in order to make it take less walking to get to the bus stop. Similarly, you can't have parallel lines a block apart. You have to limit the service area so that you can afford to run busses every 5-10 minutes. And you'll want to improve streets so that busses can run down the center and pic…

I used to take the bus into the city (NL line), and while it's a little slower I found it a much nicer experience than BART.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#77

Post by munk-a »

reaperducer wrote: post #72
Endama wrote: post #5

I suspect the uncomfortable truth behind a lot of the problems regarding public transit isn't the transit itself, but the passengers. If you had the choice of riding a public bus with a large collection of the public or paying a few bucks and selecting a preferred subset of the ridership (e.g. chariot in SF, uber, lyft, etc.) I think most will choose the non-bus option to feel comfortable during their ride. I'm not s…

Sometimes it's not even the passengers... it's the driver. Riding the 152 in Chicago one snowy night (about seven years ago), the bus suddenly stopped and the driver made everyone get off into the snow because it was the end of his shift. When we asked when the next bus was, he said there wouldn't be once because he was the last bus of the night. I ended up walking about a mile to the nearest Blue Line subway station…

That story sounds like it goes against intended policy, similar to complaining about a Barista throwing your coffee in your face isn't a really good argument against a chain of coffee shops.

If you reported the incident, do you know if the driver was reprimanded?

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#78

Post by dsfyu404ed »

reaperducer wrote: post #69
stefan_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the problem, buses can never match that. They can't have too short a route or too fast an interval, it doesn't work when you have huge variance due to personal cars, lights etc. impeding them.

>They can't have too short a route or too fast an interval, it doesn't work when you have huge variance due to personal cars, lights etc. impeding them. Lots of cities have found ways around this. Express buses with dedicated rights-of-way in Pittsburgh, for example. Or Chicago's 146 Outer Drive Express and J14 Jeffrey Jump routes are also good examples. Too often the biggest problem with buses getting around isn't t…

Which itself is a symptom of infrastructure not meeting capacity. If there were enough parking people wouldn't park illegally.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#79

Post by munk-a »

evo_9 wrote: post #15

Nah how about we all work from home 2 or 3 days a week. People will actually do that and it saves not only the city but whole bunch of other things for the employee and the employer.

People remoting might have a detrimental effect on cities. Some business (especially restaurants) make the majority of their money off of regular customers during business hours, these are extremely healthy businesses for a city economy.

I don't disagree that we should probably all remote more, but don't think it it all up sides.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#80

Post by dsfyu404ed »

s2g wrote: post #39
SilasX wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can do bus-only lanes though. Ideally, also toll the roads high enough so that the traffic is never backed up. (And, even more ideally, have no toll when when the road is below capacity.)

Force the middle class out of the city, give them shitty transit options, then tax the hell out of them when they decide to drive. Wonderful.

You're gonna get flagged for that because it's in direct contradiction with the beliefs of most here.
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