By Frank on September 15, 2008
Take away street parking, and businesses in the Bronx get salty. This highlights a big difference between Seattle and New York. In Seattle, there would have been a lengthy comment period, and ample time for the businesses to kill the BRT route before it ever got off the ground. Overall, community input is a positive thing for urban development, but we have to acknowledge that it imposes certain costs.
More importantly, these costs to local businesses tend to be ignored by BRT advocates who claim that bus is “cheaper” than rail.
Posted in rail transit
By Frank on September 9, 2008
New York’s MTA tries it out on the Bx12:
The route, which goes from 207th Street in Upper Manhattan across the heart of the Bronx along Fordham Road and Pelham Parkway, was revamped in July as part of an experimental program known as Select Bus Service. Riders pay their fare using machines at sidewalk bus stops, which allows them to board more quickly through either the front or the rear door of extra-long articulated buses.
Buses travel in red-painted lanes that are off limits to other vehicles during busy times of day, and additional police officers are deployed to keep the lanes clear. Traffic signals along Fordham Road have been equipped to communicate electronically with the buses, allowing, for example, a green signal to be extended for a few seconds to let a bus through or shortening a red signal’s time.
Another major innovation: Drivers were told not to worry about keeping to a schedule, but to drive off as soon as they picked up passengers. That has eliminated the often frustrating delays at stops while drivers whose buses are early wait to get back on schedule.
This is basically the full BRT monty: off-bus fare collection, dedicated ROW, and signal priority. I do hope Metro is able to salvage at least some of Seattle’s planned BRT routes in the midst of this budget crunch.
Posted in rail transit, taxes
By serial catowner on July 26, 2008
The Switchback looks at the current effort to build Bus Rapid Transit in Boston:
“If the Silver Line were a rail project – as basically every public-transit using citizen would prefer it – the MBTA could simply reactivate the rail tunnel leading from Boylston Station down Tremont to the Church of All Nations, and build a portal at Eliot Norton Park. There are already platforms for it at Boylston Station. That would make most of the tunnel work unnecessary.
The current plan calls for the state to spend several hundred million dollars of taxpayer money to dig a new tunnel down Boylston, then down Charles
to the Church of All Nations site at Eliot Norton Park.”
And at Seattle Transit Blog a commenter looks at fast buses in Seattle:
“During the campaign, it was emphasized that buses could be brought online in terms of months, not years (a dig at light rail construction times). So, the measure passes, and we find out that RapidRide wont see the light of day in Ballard or on Aurora until 2013. Thats seven years out from 2006.”
What do these items have in common? That’s right- BRT is neither cheaper nor faster to build. No matter what you might say about a mixed system or buses needed as feeders or matching the traffic requirements with the market, at the end of the day, BRT is most likely to be a fraud.
I’ll let other people be “reasonable” and concede that, if you grant a lot of things that never will happen, BRT “might” work. When I look around at all these existing BRT implementations and find delay, financial ruin, and angry riders, I’ve had enough. BRT is a fraud.
Posted in book, calculation, rail transit, time
By Frank on April 18, 2008
Clearly, it’s the Mercedez-Benz of buses. And, of course, they’re huge in Europe. Whether they’re better than the current ST and Metro buses, though, I have no idea.
Posted in policy, rail transit
By Frank on February 14, 2008
The new Metro RapidRide buses vs. The Oscar Mayer Weinermobile
(via STB)
Posted in alternative commute, rail transit
By bgtothen on February 1, 2008
I wasn’t able to attend the ST workshop but I did look through the pdf that STB has on his page (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2008/01/31/2004157186.pdf). I wasn’t really surprised by most of it. There was one glaring omission though.
In ST2 there was money to do a study for HCT from the UW to Ballard via NE45th. I don’t see anything about that. Everyone know that getting East/West in this city is a nightmare and ST and Metro really need to address this. I think that they should have at least 3 high quality E/W BRT routes that help people get from one side of the city to the other and allow them to transfer from LINK to RapidRide or other local service. If we aren’t going to have light rail for a while we have got to have a good BRT network.
(Full size http://students.washington.edu/adambp/mytake.jpg)
I have done a quick little overlay (see above) of what this would look like on their map. All of these routes exist so service hours could be taken from those routes. Also with LINK some current bus service can be redistributed to help pay for this. Possibly on busy streets like denny the buses could go a block or two north and use bus only streets.
Posted in airlines, Ford, in other cities, rail transit, regional transit, TRAX
By Frank on January 3, 2008
West Seattle and Bellevue-Redmond are the subjects of Metro’s latest RapidRide announcements. Service will begin in 2011.
As with all BRT, the devil will be in the details. If they can provide good right-of-way, fast boardings, and the like, it will be a good interim solution until we get light rail built.
(via STB)
Posted in rail transit
By Frank on December 12, 2007
It hasn’t gotten nearly as much press as the Seattle Streetcar, but Community Transit in Snohomish County is working on a bus rapid transit system along Highway 99 that could be very successful, and will serve a lot more people. Swift will connect downtown Everett with the Aurora Transit Center, starting in 2009.
It has all the trappings of a good BRT system:
- stations that are well spaced out (so it doesn’t have to stop every 2 blocks)
- real-time bus information
- ticket vending machines (so people don’t fiddle with change and waste the driver’s time)
- dedicated right-of-way
- roomy, low-floor buses (easy wheelchair access, onboard bus racks!)
- signal priority
It’s all possible due to a collaboration between Community Transit and Everett Transit, Today’s Seattle Times notes:
CT and Everett last week transformed decades of struggle — including repeated attempts in the state Legislature to forcibly merge the two bus systems — into a display of harmony as they formalized plans to create a “trainlike” bus system along their shared Highway 99 corridor.
Further south, WSDOT has been building dedicated transit lanes on Aurora Ave in Shoreline. Phase 1 is complete, and Phase 2 will finish in 2012. So, when King County gets RapidRide going, we’ll have BRT all the way from Everett to Seattle along Highway 99.
Will it be as good as light rail from Seattle to Everett? No, of course not. There’s still the issue of crossing the Aurora Bridge, for example, without getting stuck in traffic. And an 80-passenger bus is more expensive to operate than a 400-passenger train. And (presumably) the Swift buses will have to move into general traffic lanes to bypass the slower local buses. And it’s still a bus. And on, and on…
But despite all that, it’s still got the potential to be a solid transit alternative. Sound Transit’s plan wouldn’t have gotten light rail all the way to Everett even by 2027. So having something up and running, even by 2012, is certainly welcome.
Photo “borrowed” from Community Transit’s web site.
Posted in rail transit
By Frank on September 18, 2007
Wired’s Autopia blog has been doing some neat coverage of Bus Rapid Transit. Check it out. In this edition, they talk about the Geary Way bus route in San Francisco.
Posted in nextbus, rail transit, taxes
By Frank on July 26, 2007
Alameda County (Oakland and Berkeley, CA) is looking at BRT. On the plus side, they can get the whole 16 miles up and running in 4 years for just $400M ($25M/mile is dirt cheap for a transit project). The downside is that, to make it work, to make it truly BRT, you need a dedicated lane, meaning you’d have to remove a general purpose lane.
The key point of controversy is the same thing that makes BRT so effective – the dedicated lane. Telegraph Avenue and East 14th would both lose a lane for car traffic in each direction. Congestion on both streets has grown increasingly frustrating in recent years for both automobile drivers and bus riders. With buses stuck in unpredictable traffic, their average speed has declined 10 miles per hour over the past 10 years. Opponents of the project claim the loss of a lane will make traffic unbearable, while proponents note that the increased speed and reliability of the bus will finally create a viable alternative to private car travel. The Draft EIR found that the removal of a lane would not significantly increase congestion, since the new bus is expected to take a significant number of drivers off the road.
And this is where it starts to fall apart. Grade-separated transit (light rail, monorail, subway, etc.) creates brand-new rights-of-way. Buses, usually, do not. They have to either (a) share with cars, which reduces their speed, or (b) build exlusive new rights-of-way, which makes them nearly as expensive as light rail.
Alameda County is trying an option (c), which is to steal lanes from general traffic. As you can see, it isn’t going over too well, no matter that the EIR finds otherwise. Taking lanes is never an easy sell.
But the fissure here is useful in illumnating the various sides of the debate. As Rob Johnson (whom I assume is the same Rob Johnson from Transportation Choices Coalition) wrote in a comment at the bottom of this too-clever-by-half Crosscut article,
It seems as though all light rail critics in this region are quick to support bus service when comparing the two, but their support dissapears when it’s actually time [to] fight for more bus service increases.
They’re all for more bus service, but only when it’s a matter of trying to deflect attention away from rail.
Posted in nextbus, rail transit, taxes
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