I don't understand why road taxes aren't used to pay for free public transport. The more people on public transport the more room for cars.
Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021
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Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021
#12As usual, this looks like a half-baked implementation of BRT. They get many things right, including articulated buses, off-vehicle ticket purchase, and raised platforms. However, like most BRT systems in the US, it fails on the most important metric: dedicated lanes. Only half of the route is in exclusive lanes, which means the half the time buses will be fighting traffic.
Instead, we should be aiming to build more BRT like the Orange Line in Los Angeles[0], which operates completely in dedicated lanes.
Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021
#13Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021
#14"Free" AKA paid for with your taxes.
Like "free" roads then, or "free" police, or "free" non-polluted air.
Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021
#15I don't understand why road taxes aren't used to pay for free public transport. The more people on public transport the more room for cars.
Because outside of hyper dense cities roads are "public transit." Making them free to use (if you've already paid the costs associated with a car) has benefits to all that are large enough that increasing cost beyond what it takes to upkeep them at some subsistence level is not in our best interest (except in a few dense cities).
Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021
#16A deeply red/Republican and relatively low-density state might seem like a strange place to find a functional public transit system. Utah is an interesting place. The geography of the Wasatch Front lends itself to public transit in ways that less geographically-constrained places do not. The region is mostly a north-south corridor, with occasional off-shoots to the side, which is how the transit network has developed…
I thing a larger factor is the Mormon Church/Mormon population. Utah has some strangely progressive economic policies like housing-first solutions to homelessness. Utah is a red state for sure, especially when it comes to social policies, but has the 'community' orientation that another commenter mentioned that public transit falls neatly in to.
A lot of Christians talk a big game about charity and such. But once I started becoming familiar with LDS folk, I was really impressed. They’re Christians in ways many other denominations only claim to be.
KSL-TV (LDS-owned NBC station) has an AppleTV app, and watching the SLC local news is far more interesting than I thought it would be. And there’s far less needless murder and mayhem plus more “good” news than is available in my market.
Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021
#17A deeply red/Republican and relatively low-density state might seem like a strange place to find a functional public transit system. Utah is an interesting place. The geography of the Wasatch Front lends itself to public transit in ways that less geographically-constrained places do not. The region is mostly a north-south corridor, with occasional off-shoots to the side, which is how the transit network has developed…
Salt Lake City is not a very conservative place. Yes, it is crazily Gerry mannered by pie slicing into a bunch of red congressional district, but SLC itself is fairly left of center just like any other big city in the west.
Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021
#18As usual, this looks like a half-baked implementation of BRT. They get many things right, including articulated buses, off-vehicle ticket purchase, and raised platforms. However, like most BRT systems in the US, it fails on the most important metric: dedicated lanes. Only half of the route is in exclusive lanes, which means the half the time buses will be fighting traffic. Instead, we should be aiming to build more B…
Pittsburgh has this, too. A dedicated transitway from downtown to the airport. It was a pretty efficient ride when I used it about ten years ago. But at the same time it seemed kind of wasteful.
Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021
#19Re: Utah expands public transportation with rapid bus transit, free until 2021
#20As usual, this looks like a half-baked implementation of BRT. They get many things right, including articulated buses, off-vehicle ticket purchase, and raised platforms. However, like most BRT systems in the US, it fails on the most important metric: dedicated lanes. Only half of the route is in exclusive lanes, which means the half the time buses will be fighting traffic. Instead, we should be aiming to build more B…
This isn't downtown NYC. The point here isn't so much to use space more efficiently as it is to provide a means for people to get around without cars and get a foot in the door for mass transit so that when they do need more mass transit it's easier to do politically (expanding an existing thing vs creating a new thing).