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Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

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Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#221

Post by magduf »

majewsky wrote: post #210
clumsysmurf wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially if you are a germ-a-phoebe like myself. My friend accidentally sat in a seat soaked in urine by the previous passenger, and had to go back home to change clothes of course. I decided ... nope. And then there is the occasional smoker, so if you have asthma ...

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.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#222

Post by magduf »

sho wrote: post #151
mmanfrin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> BART has a carriage shortage so they try to shave off cars from longer routes This is just crazy. Compared to the cost of new track some additional rolling stock should be almost insignificant. You couldn't come up with a better example of penny wise, pound foolish...

The rolling stock is actually a very significant cost of the system. In DC, they spent $886 million for Kawasaki to build them 428 railcars in one contract, which comes out to just over $2M per car (and a single train normally has 8 cars). According to Wikipedia, they now have 500 of these 7000-series cars in service; that's $1B.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#223

Post by jschwartzi »

StudentStuff wrote: post #168
jschwartzi wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of those in Seattle and King County. They even close down an entire avenue during rush hour and turn it into a bus-only street.

Dedicated lanes and roads help, but light rail is significantly faster than buses & more reliable. It is a huge reason why we're investing in building Light Rail out to the outer reaches of Seattle. With Light Rail, you are essentially buying people part of their lives back in the form of a shorter commute. That is quite important, as time spent driving in traffic is pretty well wasted.

Which is why I'm really excited about the light rail stop at Northgate, because it will cut my travel time into the city by 20 minutes.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#224

Post by maoistinquisitr »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #196
maoistinquisitr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diesel buses are very energy efficient. Electrified rail is surprisingly inefficient. Building bus rapid transit lanes makes more sense than spinning up a light rail infrastructure almost any way you measure: capital costs, energy, maintenance, flexibility... I also wonder how much sense intercity rail even makes for most trips. If you could set aside a lane for buses only on I-95 Boston to DC (for example), you coul…

>"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.

http://energyskeptic.com/2016/why-is-passenger-rail-so-damne...

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#225

Post by labcomputer »

nordsieck wrote: post #118
wool_gather wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. That's only true if the lane is as full of busses as other lanes are full of cars.

> That's only true if the lane is as full of busses as other lanes are full of cars.

1) The density of people per unit road area is about 10 times greater than with cars. A bus lane only needs to carry 1/10th as many buses to come out ahead (and a bus occupies considerably less space than 10 cars).

2) The relevant metric isn't people (or vehicles) per unit road area. It's the lane's flux of people per unit time. On that metric, an free flowing carpool lane will beat a congested regular lane every time (even when the carpool lane appears empty to the layman).

You can do your own back of the napkin calculation, but vehicles have to packed roughly 5 to 10 times denser in the congested lane to achieve the same vehicle flux per unit time.

That means a free flowing carpool lane (>=2 people) only needs about 1/20th the vehicle density per unit area to come out ahead of a congested single-occupancy lane.

It's just no contest with an uncongested bus lane: Buses will win on a people per time metric with only 1% as many vehicles per unit area. To visualize this, 100 closely packed cars (remember, they are not touching!) is about three city blocks long.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#226

Post by icc97 »

pc86 wrote: post #193
icc97 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, London buses are in a much better state than American in general. But then you should be comparing them with NY. The main issue of London buses is that they can be slower over long distances. But over shorter distances, you are normally less crammed in, have a view with sunlight rather than tunnels, don't have to go all the way down to the tube and back up.

I wasn't aware London had sunlight.

Perhaps it sounds ridiculous, but it can be quite pleasant riding on the bus. My trip used to be up the Kings Road.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#227

Post by komali2 »

test1235 wrote: post #174
komali2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, is this a reverse no true Scotsman? What fallacy is this? Just to instantly dismember your argument, which hinges on the word "they all," I'll put my hand up as a "I'd ride next to homeless every day if it saves me transit money."

No you wouldn't. When people say 'homeless', they don't care about the residential state of the individual, but the physical state. I couldn't care less if a fellow rider is homeless as long as they don't stink and are not rude or violent. I don't even care if they're drunk as long as they don't interact with me. I take the bus to work everyday here in UK and besides some people squashing too close to me when they si…

Haha, it's wonderful when people speak for me so confidently, because it's the only time in my life I get to justifiably completely negate what is being said to me.

So once again: yup, I would. Pissy, shit covered insane people. Whatever.

I hope you remember before trying again that people exist that clean up blood and shit for a living and are unfazed by it. There's also the homeless outreach teams that have already "seen it all."

For the record, I do already ride the bus and Bart when it's the convenient option, and I've already had to deal with all the shit those above are claiming are impossible to handle.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#228

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#229

Post by gascan »

jboles wrote: post #123
gascan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric buses and CNG buses are already here, and they are quieter. It might take some time for Sydney to retire old diesel buses, but they won't be that loud & fumey forever.

CNG buses don’t seem to do as well as diesel with hot weather and lots of hills, two things Sydney has an abundance of. A few have also caught fire. That said, Sydney’s CNG buses are pretty old now so maybe the tech is updated.

Ironically, that makes it sound like Sydney is a great place for cable trolley. No engine whatsoever, works great on hills.

Re: Buses Need Our Love More Than Ever

#230

Post by KozmoNau7 »

abainbridge wrote: post #219
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come to Copenhagen and see how a unified public transport system is supposed to work. My tickets work for all buses and all trains equally. Don't blame public transport as a concept, blame private profiteering and corruption.

I've been to Copenhagen. I noticed you have a lot of cyclists! But no, I agree with your point. I think that is the main problem.

I've been told by a US expat that we must have "the fittest fat people in the world", since everyone bikes here. Young, old, fit, fat, everyone bikes :-)
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