>"Diesel buses are very energy efficient. Electrified rail is surprisingly inefficient." I would really like to see a citation, because I find that extremely hard to believe.
That article lists a number of problems that are almost purely US-specific. In actuality and outside of those artificial limitations, rail is one of the most efficient forms of transport we have, especially electric rail.
Not really. You are underestimating the massive energy efficiency advantages of modern diesel engines, across many contexts. It's the same reason why water pumps and freight locomotives and all kinds of other equipment that could theoretically be electrified isn't.
Going by the descriptions here, riding the bus in the US is worse than riding one in India. In Germany, smoking on a bus is unthinkable, and the bus drivers (and other passengers) will throw you out pretty much immediately if you lit a cigarette. I've also never heard of people peeing in the bus, let alone encountered that, even though I regularly use public transit at all times of day and night.
>Going by the descriptions here, riding the bus in the US is worse than riding one in India. You seem to be under the impression that the US is an advanced country full of civilized people like Germany, Norway, Japan, etc. You've obviously never been here.
I've been there once in 2004. My memory is a bit hazy, but I have definitely never travelled more distance by car in a single week.
>Going by the descriptions here, riding the bus in the US is worse than riding one in India. You seem to be under the impression that the US is an advanced country full of civilized people like Germany, Norway, Japan, etc. You've obviously never been here.
I've been there once in 2004. My memory is a bit hazy, but I have definitely never travelled more distance by car in a single week.
Yeah, this shows the other problem in your biased perspective: it sounds like you never actually used the buses here. Coming to the US and driving around in a personal car (esp. if you just go on road trips to remote places like western national parks, as a lot of European tourists seem to do here) is absolutely nothing like what you'll see if you try to take city buses for transit in cities, especially in the poorer sections.
Here's a possibly dumb proposal: don't support wheelchairs on buses, instead give them a city/state-run uber-for-wheelchairs service. The problem is that supporting wheelchairs adds an inordinate burden to buses and makes sticking to a schedule completely impossible even if there is no traffic. If you want to take the bus 3 miles, a wheelchair user getting on could double your ride time. So would giving the wheelchai…
instead give them a city/state-run uber-for-wheelchairs service The San Jose area has that: "Paratransit". It was supposed to serve mobility-impaired people who have difficulty using buses (although all buses have lifts). As it turned out, they just let anybody ride who has the gall to call them. 90% of their trips amount to a taxpayer-subsidized cab service for the self-important. The award of the contract was suspe…
That's unfortunate. However this sounds a lot more like corruption and a shady business issue "fulfilling" a contract, or a /very/ poorly written contract.
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…
>"Where I live, the focus on buses is driven by a political agenda - basically the environmentalists and the left have defined buses as "good" and cars as "bad"" That's a bit of a strawman argument, but nevertheless there are strong and indisputable benefits to public transport over cars. One is the pollution. Per passenger, even diesel buses pollute a lot less than cars, and electric buses are being phased in. There…
Large vehicles certainly causes dust from the additional wear.
And I'm not questioning reduced pollution in fully laden busses or reducing congestion in crowded routes in the rush hour, but I haven't seen anything about total system effects in "saturated" systems where the total seat factor is low, and where additional "conversion" will require more buses that will run emptier.
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.
If it's fully separated from traffic why/how isn't it just regular ("heavy") rail?
The "light" refers to the weight and capacity of the rail vehicles themselves. Light rail vehicles are typically smaller and carry less passengers per car than heavy rail.
Light rail systems don't share track with heavy rail (which can include freight services, etc), so the regulatory requirements for things like crash safety are often reduced.
All of this reduces the cost of the light rail systems compared to heavy rail.
I've seen this same argument about buses only taking up the amount of space as a handful of cars, but I think it's based on an incorrect assumption. Namely, it's only true in a static picture. If you look at the dynamic picture, cars and buses in motion, then buses take up a lot more "room." They're slow to accelerate. They stop frequently. They block traffic when they stop. They're huge, and people can't get around…
These all sound like more reasons to put buses and cars into separate paths.
I would love to see separate lanes for buses and cars. In Hawaii, where I live, there was a proposal for an elevated, bus-only, viaduct that ran the length of a major freeway. This would have enabled buses that run as frequently as trains and are unimpeded by rush hour traffic, and are cheaply and easily scalable with demand. Instead we're getting an elevated train that has disrupted traffic already with its construction, that has blown through its budget with no end in sight, will be stopping short of its original end point due to cost overruns, and is only expected to reduce parallel car traffic by 2%. Ugh.
I've seen this same argument about buses only taking up the amount of space as a handful of cars, but I think it's based on an incorrect assumption. Namely, it's only true in a static picture. If you look at the dynamic picture, cars and buses in motion, then buses take up a lot more "room." They're slow to accelerate. They stop frequently. They block traffic when they stop. They're huge, and people can't get around…
What you bring up stems from two things, infrastructure needs to prioritize busses, and second comparing busses to single car does not work. Since we are obviously talking about rush hour. At a traffic light in a busy intersection where I live there will be max 15 people in cars, 50-400 people in busses, and about 100 more on the streets walking and bicycling. I think 5 times more people in busses is a pretty good ad…
I don't disagree (infrastructure should prioritize, or at least accommodate) buses when they're used. But it currently does not. Also, your example seems to be from a dense, urban center, but of course not everyone on those buses started in the city; a lot of them had to get there from somewhere else, and there the advantage is less pronounced the case for dedicated infrastructure harder to make.
>"Where I live, the focus on buses is driven by a political agenda - basically the environmentalists and the left have defined buses as "good" and cars as "bad"" That's a bit of a strawman argument, but nevertheless there are strong and indisputable benefits to public transport over cars. One is the pollution. Per passenger, even diesel buses pollute a lot less than cars, and electric buses are being phased in. There…
Large vehicles certainly causes dust from the additional wear. And I'm not questioning reduced pollution in fully laden busses or reducing congestion in crowded routes in the rush hour, but I haven't seen anything about total system effects in "saturated" systems where the total seat factor is low, and where additional "conversion" will require more buses that will run emptier.