Ironically, despite greatly increasing its stature and urbanity vis-a-vis Seattle, Bellevue still seems interested in pushing transit out to the hinterlands, rather than have it run where people live.

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* Obviously Seattle’s still the big dog, but in relative terms its unipolarity has declined as the rest of King County has grown in population.

Observations from the audit:

1. The main source of the cost difference is that the ETB’s are claimed to cost twice that of hybrid buses. I can imagine this if they bought just one, since it’s not an off-the-shelf product. But they’d be buying close to 200 – there has to be economies of scale there, and the components of an ETB have to be cheaper than a hybrid.

2. Hybrid fuel efficiency was listed at 5 mpg. This is in direct conflict with Metro statements in the past of observing 3.8 mpg.

3. “Engine overhaul” is listed at 6.7x as frequent for ETB’s vs. hybrids. This just can’t be right, as ETB’s don’t have engines. If they’re talking about the electric motors, these last a long time and shouldn’t cost the same as a engine overhaul.

4. Overall, operating costs are much cheaper for ETBs than diesels or hybrids. It’s really the initial cost of the buses that seems to drive up the price.

I am following up with a list of questions to the auditor, and will report back when I get a response.

[update] The new bus costs and “engine overhaul” data came from Metro. It’s almost as if Metro is trying to kill ETBs (tries to feign shock).

The scheduling spreadsheet also came in. It’s too dense of calculations for me to follow (without a paycheck for such things, that is).

Layover/service ratios appear to be much higher in trolley buses. The auditor’s explanation for this is that they can’t pass each other and they lack flexibility. But flexibility doesn’t mean that they can’t change routes (though this would help in case of an accident), but that they can’t pull double service for two routes.

My comments regarding flexibility:

1. Anecdotally, the reason passing is a large issue is wheelchair loading. The trolleys don’t have a kneeling ability, which can make a wheelchair stop take a long time. Combine a few such stops and you get a line of trolleys waiting for the one in front. If this is costing so much money, wouldn’t the obvious solution is to design in a kneeling ability into the next batch of trolleys?

2. If there would really be an efficiency gained by adding more routes together, couldn’t we just add more wire to create these routes? Why tear out a system that could in all other ways be much more efficient than hybrids? Go all the way and make as many routes electric as you’d need to remove routing inefficiencies. [/update]

I like the intuitive appeal of “I’m at this intersection, what buses are coming my way?” But in practice, there are just too many intersections for the interface design. And most of the time you’re probably really only interested in one or two known buses.

(via)

Despite this there are a few interface issues. For example it sorts by route not arrival time. Also the destination identifier has redundant information that makes it hard to read the important information. I would also like it if you could pick stops using presents, google maps, or neighborhoods.

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.