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Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

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Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#101

Post by stevejb »

fratlas wrote: post #84
stevejb wrote: post #82

One thing that seems to have not been addressed here is noise. I was just on a quick walk in downtown Sydney, Australia. It was so loud on the sidewalks, with buses seeming to contribute a huge portion of noise. Additionally, the diesel exhaust can be stifling particularly in these urban corridor situations where the buildings trap the fumes. I would much rather be walking next to 50 Prius/Camry taxi cabs and a few p…

Were you in the CBD? I'd say the downside of the noise is worth it. The amount of Sydneysiders driving in to work solo is staggering.

Yeah, CBD. I can deal with the noise, but the diesel fumes get to me. It was more just thinking "if this noise and exhaust wasn't here, this would be a much more pleasant experience."

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#102

Post by tathougies »

dragonwriter wrote: post #97
tathougies wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the government funding these systems is the same -- the state of California. Also, the Marin system still deserves commendation. First of all, while it is a rich county, there is still a large wealth gap. There is a substantial number of obviously poorer people on the buses as well. Some routes mainly serve disadvantaged areas. Yet, the buses serve everyone, and people still want to ride them. And they're still p…

> But the government funding these systems is the same -- the state of California. No, it's not the same, and though the State of California is among the indirect funders of both, it's not the government directly responsible for either. The government funding GGT is the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway, and Transportation District. The government funding Muni is the City and County of San Francisco.

The City and COunty of San Francisco is really friggin rich.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#103

Post by Reason077 »

munk-a wrote: post #75
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.

Proper light rail systems are fully separated from traffic.

You're probably thinking of trams ("streetcars" in North America), which don't have a fully segregated right of way.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#104

Post by tathougies »

stevejb wrote: post #100
tathougies wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the government funding these systems is the same -- the state of California. Also, the Marin system still deserves commendation. First of all, while it is a rich county, there is still a large wealth gap. There is a substantial number of obviously poorer people on the buses as well. Some routes mainly serve disadvantaged areas. Yet, the buses serve everyone, and people still want to ride them. And they're still p…

http://time.com/money/3014512/richest-wealthiest-highest-inc... It seems that there aren't many counties richer than Marin. And, a large wealth gap may just mean, there are some rich people, and some really rich people. Are the "obviously poorer people" still on iPhone 6's and 2015 MacBooks? (ok that part is sarcasm). The point is, if you are getting the bus in Marin county, you are getting on the bus with others who…

> Are the "obviously poorer people" still on iPhone 6's and 2015 MacBooks? (ok that part is sarcasm).

No... Marin has some really poor parts.

> The point is, if you are getting the bus in Marin county, you are getting on the bus with others who are also in Marin county. That is going to heavily bias the experience because of the people, not the quality or cleanliness of the bus.

But this still doesn't explain why the buses in Santa Clara and San mateo county aren't up to par.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#105

Post by techsupporter »

sudosteph wrote: post #64
prostoalex wrote: post #34

> such as L.A. and Denver, are watching transit ridership decline across the board, in part because investment in buses has trailed so far behind the commitment to trains That's not completely true for LA (and for the record, train ridership in LA is on decline as well, while the population is growing). Here's the actual reason http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-metro-homeless-2018... "People looking for warm,…

Seattle is in a similar situation. Ridership is growing still, but mostly due to driving and parking being very expensive and inconvenient. We also have a program where major employers (including Amazon) will provide cards for unlimited transit use, but not re-imburse or provide for the full cost of parking. Even so, it's very common for people to get on the bus without paying and make everyone else uncomfortable. I'…

It's funny that you mention Amazon when referring to the ORCA card program since Amazon's outreach to other cities to kick in for transit improvements if its HQ2 is located there has caused one of the latest flare-ups of kerfuffle about Amazon's impact on Seattle. (The angst, for those unaware, is that while Amazon is offering private dollars to add transit stations or make service improvements in cities like Atlanta or Baltimore, it isn't making the same offer to Seattle / Sound Transit even though two of the new light rail stations are being built to serve the area that is effectively its campus.)

I would like to also mention that my experience doesn't match yours. I ride the bus almost exclusively (there's no light rail near my house and never will be) and have only, rarely, encountered what you describe. I'm certain it exists, but not to the extent of calling it very common. Two routes, RapidRide E and route 7, stand out as being the most likely "culprits," which is, I think, less of a function of riding a bus and more of where those two routes happen to serve. The streetscape of the part of Aurora that the E runs down looks a lot like the inside of the E's bus.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#106

Post by Reason077 »

kpil wrote: post #98
busterarm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God I would love it Manhattan banned Uber and all non-commercial traffic (exile all civilian traffic to the highways and parking garages alongside them) and upped the number of buses. Clean new yellow cabs too and tougher requirements to drive them (raise the fares, I don't care).

It kind of works for Venice, it's so nice to be in a car free town with a slow but nice public transport (the vaporettos) so I started to dream about if it would be possible to a similar thing with buses, combined with the existing subway and trams, and just exile all cars. The thing is that where I live, the bus network is heavily funded and I'm suspecting that it's probably operating already with too little efficie…

"Further, large diesel engines running heavy start-stop duty cycles like buses probably generates unproportionally more particles than just about everything else."

The good news: electric busses are coming. City busses will be huge winners from electrification, both for economic and environmental reasons. Greatly reduced fuel and maintenance costs, improved ride quality, less noise and pollution.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#107

Post by wool_gather »

paulgerhardt wrote: post #36
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.

Citylab's push here is in response to South American cities doing exactly that with great success[1]. Initially developed in Curitaba, follow on initiatives in Bogota have been very popular[2]. Basically, treat the bus like a metro. Give them their own lane. Make sure the platform is level with pickup. And you've got a massively cost down subway system. For an inspiring documentary you should check this[3] video out.…

I recall reading an article a few years ago about Bogotá's transit, where the mayor (I think) said something very interesting. Among other arguments, he made a moral argument about the dedicated lane for transit. Roughly, there's 40 or 50 people on the bus, vs 1-2 per car, and you get, what, 3? 2? cars in the space of a bus. He found it completely unjustified to let the convenience of those 45 people be outweighed by the convenience of the 4 or 5.

I'm not sure that it stacks up perfectly logically, but it's an interesting way to think about it. And it looks like they have a pretty good system.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#108

Post by wool_gather »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #78
reaperducer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Close...the infrastructure to focus on here is still transit; if the buses were sufficient, the parking issue would be solved simply by fewer cars on the road.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#109

Post by JansjoFromIkea »

mmanfrin wrote: post #27
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…

Like, I take the BART every day into work. It's fantastic. I walk for five to ten minutes to get to the station, a train comes every 5 minutes so I don't have to worry about the train schedule, then I walk another five to ten minutes to get to the office. If the bus experience could match that, it'd take over a lot of commuting. For what it's worth, this is only the case if you live near a station with overlap (or li…

Had the same experience when I lived over there too. Was pretty surprised West Oakland was as cheap as it was relative to anywhere North Oakland/Berkeley considering how much more access it had to everything.

The price of places under ten minutes from a BART station further out were sharply different to further out in the same area too. You could shave some time off by cycling but then you're the guy with a bike on the packed train.

Seem to recall 20+ minute waits for trains in Berkeley on weekends too (it'd be handy if they let you know this somewhere in the station before you pass the ticket point, but that's another thing), with a transfer required to get into SF?

SF is far from the worst area for public transport, but it'd never come near my best.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#110

Post by wool_gather »

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 have a point, even though I disagree in the long view. It is a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. Making transit really good is very hard until cars are deprioritized. And until transit is really good, deprioritizing cars screws a lot of people over.
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