Public Transportation: Rubber tires vs. Steel Wheels

[Ban my account ffs!]

One of the biggest debates about public transportation revolves around buses vs. rail.

Pros for buses:

Cheaper up front.  They don't require the expensive capital investments in laying rails.  Bus stops can be built relatively cheaply.

Flexibility:  Buses are flexible.  If it turns out a route has 50% more passengers than expected, more buses can easily be added to the route... especially if another route is under used.

Cons for buses:

Loud/Noisy/Smelly:  Riding a bus is never as pleasant as riding a train.  They jostle around, they're loud.  They have smelly exhaust.  In short, they're a way to get from point A to point B... but that's about it.

Flexibility:  A big part of transit development is the potential for development and densification along the routes.  Businesses are more reluctant to invest along a bus route because bus routes can easily be moved in the future.  There is a certain "foreverness" component to plunking down rails.

Labor costs:  Buses hold fewer passengers per unit, and unlike trains, which can be driverless, each bus has to be operated by an experienced driver who can deal with the unforeseen "surprises" that crop up operating among regular traffic.


With that said, new technologies that make buses quieter, less smelly, and smoother have greatly improved the bus riding experience.  And dedicated lanes (like carpool lanes) along relatively fixed routes in Bus Rapid Transit can be very successful... especially if there is investment to make it much like a rail line... but on rubber tires.

In any case... buses are going to remain an integral part of any transit system.  How do you think they could be improved?

What would make them more desirable for middle class commuters?

And last, but not least, how do we adapt bus and rail networks to account for the greatly increased suburb-to-suburb commuting that takes place nowadays when nearly all transit systems focus on getting people from the suburbs to downtown?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

BART should probably be made driverless. The frequency of the trains should be increased, and BART spends 10 times more on labor costs than energy.

[Likely Voter]

One helpful solution is "busways" which is a kind of hybrid of light rail and bus. An example is Los Angeles' Orange Line
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/27/local/la-me-orange-line-20120628
The line is very popular and they are currently extending it and trying to figure out ways to increase capacity (possibly with giant buses or bus convoys).

[muon2]

Buses present two challenges for suburban commuters. You've touched on the perception differences that cause resistance to bus rides compared to trains. The bigger problem is that both residences and jobs tend to be at too low of a density to support public transit for enough years to build a real sense of ridership. BRT has the possibility to do that, but suburban circulator service with app-based on-demand service may work better.

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

One helpful solution is "busways" which is a kind of hybrid of light rail and bus. An example is Los Angeles' Orange Line
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/27/local/la-me-orange-line-20120628
The line is very popular and they are currently extending it and trying to figure out ways to increase capacity (possibly with giant buses or bus convoys).

The Orange Line worked well because it was a redevelopment and beautification project. It gobbled up a large swath of ugly industrial/mixed properties in the Valley and replaced them with trees, shrubs, lighting, a running path, bike lanes and of course, the bus line itself. It takes up a lot of room.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Buses present two challenges for suburban commuters. You've touched on the perception differences that cause resistance to bus rides compared to trains. The bigger problem is that both residences and jobs tend to be at too low of a density to support public transit for enough years to build a real sense of ridership. BRT has the possibility to do that, but suburban circulator service with app-based on-demand service may work better.

Suburbs are also ripe for transit oriented development which would benefit from more "permanent" lines like Bus Rapid Transit.  Also, with infill and denser projects having become more popular in recent years it wouldn't be a bad idea to get the buses on the ground now even they are being subsidized.

Obviously what suburbanites want to see is congestion relief... not sitting in stop-and-go traffic on the freeway while they watch fancy buses with nobody on them go racing by.

This idea that we need to force people into transit by purposely making driving difficult and inconvenient is wrong.

Roads/freeways and transitways should be developed simultaneously... and yes.. technology should be used to maximize ridership.

You can run suburban bus service pretty cheaply even if it is still subsidized because it basically just works as a feeder to the potentially profitable central lines.  (That's how transit agencies did things before WWII)

The thing is:  People nowadays demand that every line be profitable.  That's simply not possible.  Some will always be money hogs... but they will be the feeder routes for the bigger, more productive lines.

[muon2]

You can run suburban bus service pretty cheaply even if it is still subsidized because it basically just works as a feeder to the potentially profitable central lines.  (That's how transit agencies did things before WWII)

But in many suburban areas there are more workers going to another suburb instead of needing a central line to the city core. That's where feeder/spoke systems have failed when they work on fixed routes.

[DC Al Fine]

One problem with inter-suburb transit is the conflict between transit as a profitable commuting service, and transit as a social service for the poor, elderly, and disabled. The former requires relatively few stops and direct routes, while the latter requires more stops and meandering routes. This conflict is muted in downtown transit.

To use a personal example; it takes me 15 minutes to drive to school downtown or work in another suburb. It takes me 20 minutes to bus to school and over an hour to bus to work.

The reason for the difference in times is quite clear. The downtown bus takes a direct route downtown and only stops a few times at major intersections and "Park & Rides". It's designed to get relatively well off people (who can drive to bus stops if need be) in and out of downtown as quickly as possible.

The inter-suburb bus takes an indirect route, goes through several out of the way poorer neighbourhoods, stops by seniors' homes etc. This makes for a much longer commute. Now I have no problem with municipalities trying to help the needy with transit, but creating routes like the one I just described is not going to get middle class commuters out of their cars.

Perhaps a good solution would be reducing the number of stops and/or changing the inter-suburb routes to be more direct during rush hour to move commuters, and then go back to the slower way in the middle of the day and at night.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

False dichotomy.

[pbrower2a]

You can run suburban bus service pretty cheaply even if it is still subsidized because it basically just works as a feeder to the potentially profitable central lines.  (That's how transit agencies did things before WWII)

But in many suburban areas there are more workers going to another suburb instead of needing a central line to the city core. That's where feeder/spoke systems have failed when they work on fixed routes.

That's why one needs concentric rings of mass transit to connect the spikes. Such would work better in America if we had the Russian-style wheel pattern for our streets. The gridiron is the American norm even in places in which it is pointless. Even San Francisco is on a gridiron  
Retailers do not like to be on bus routes. Bus passengers are low-end customers -- or worse.

http://deadmalls.com/malls/prestonwood_town_center.html

I have done much shopping in that mall -- before 1992.
  

[angus]

What would make them more desirable for middle class commuters?

more frequent buses and more frequent stops.  I have only ridden the local bus one.  The nearest stop is probably a ten-minute walk from my house, which isn't bad, but it would be nice if it were closer.  On the other end, it drops me off within a block or two from my office, which is good, but I'd have to change buses downtown at the main station.  The bus comes once every hour, so if I miss one I'd have to wait a long time.  

suburb-to-suburb is hard.  I'd have to go into the city, then back out, like on spokes of a wheel, in a journey lasting a little over an hour, just to get to a point two miles west of me.  Ring routes would alleviate some of that problem.  

The buses themselves are not bad.  They're fairly clean, they stick to the schedule, they are not too smelly or noisy or crowded, and except for the one driven by a Don King lookalike who never smiles, the drivers are very helpful.  At least the only driver I ever dealt with was extremely helpful.  (Don King has a reputation among all bus riders hereabouts and his sour mood is apparently well known, although I haven't met him yet.)