Orphan Road

I was working up a response to Matt Rosenberg's piece in Crosscut on buses, but Erica Barnett got there first and says what needed to be said.

Ron Sims says fork over another $.25 to help offset increased fuel costs. Yet another reason why relying exclusively on buses as a long-term transportation solution is a fool's game.

God forbid we build more light rail, which carries 5x the passengers as a bus and runs on renewable hydro electric power. That would be crazy, right Ron?

If you've been wondering what's up with the new bus-only lanes on Elliot Ave W, This week's Getting There column has some answers.

I've also noticed that SDOT is paving the area of the street where the bus stops with concrete, instead of asphalt. This is being done at Metro's request, they tell me.

Paul Weyrich opines on bus rapid transit:

"In any case, the two biggest costs in running a transit operation are labor and fuel."

And thereby hangs a tale....h/t to MattY

The concept of having busses travel to recreational locations has been covered elsewhere, so I'll be brief.

I heard about Marymoor's concert in the park series, and found the King County web site. It's a very green-oriented site, encouraging all kinds of carbon-footprint reduction and recycling. There are even compostable beer cups.

But I noticed despite asking us to bike there or drive a hybrid (they'll still charge you $5 for parking, but you can park closer), they didn't encourage me to take the bus or provide any bus information.

I guess that's because the bus doesn't go there. Sure, it'll leave there in the morning on weekdays and return there in the evening. So if you live in the park and work downtown you're ok. But if you live in Seattle and want to visit and not stay the night you're apparently out of luck.

Richard Layman, at Rebuilding Places, blogs about improving bus service and quotes James Hamre, a transit manager in the Washington DC area:

"According to Mr. Hamre, to run the bus line, if it ran on time, would require 22 buses, to provide the current level of service. Instead, they have 42 buses in service on the line daily, to provide the service required."

IOW, this bus line, if intensively managed, could cut equipment requirements almost by a half. Surely that is a goal to aim for!

*Somewhere else* on the internet today is a post about a student in Portland who, as an experiment, acted as a dispatcher for one bus line in Portland, and managed to maintain on-time performance by having empty buses leapfrog full buses on the route.

It might seem extreme to detail one person full time to dispatch one route, until we compare it with saving the costs of twenty drivers and twenty buses.

And this stuff will matter, eventually. Eventually, we will reach the $6-7/gallon gas prices that will supposedly make people "change their behavior", and from what we've seen so far, "change their behavior" in this context will mean "a tsunami of new ridership swamping already overloaded buses". It's time for the transit systems to start thinking outside the box.

You know the dozens of Metro buses that sit outside Husky Stadium and Safeco Field after the games? The ones that decrease traffic by providing other transit options? Well, the Bush Administration doesn't like them, because they're taxpayer-supported, and therefore make it hard for private bus companies to compete for the business.

It should come as no surprise that the FTA wants to terminate this arrangement: it makes government look too good! If people see government doing good things, they might -- God forbid -- want more government!

Oh, and remind me never, ever to book Starline Luxury Coaches for anything:

Gladys Gillis, head of Starline Luxury Coaches who was on the rules committee for the new law, said her company is eager to bid on many of the shuttle operations, such as the Mariner games and the Flower and Garden Show.

She cheered the new rules. "Agencies supported by tax dollars could drive private businesses out of business," she said. "It's always been illegal for tax-funded agencies to compete with private business, but there's been gray areas. This will give us an opportunity to do the work."

She also said that the 55 buses in her fleet are cheaper to operate than Metro buses because she doesn't pay union wages to her drivers.

Knife a public agency in the back, and get some union-busting thrown in as a bonus! It's a Republican double-whammy.

Neat story in the NY Times about DIY efforts to spruce up L.A.'s bus stations:

But scores of bus stops around town, especially in the areas south of Interstate 10 and close to downtown, not only are trash-strewn and barren but also offer no place to sit. Old women press heavily against their walkers, peering down the street to see if the bus is coming, and children cling to the bus stop sign, often perilously close to the street, as their mothers beckon them sharply to stand back.

So, armed with grant money, hammers and some technical help, residents around the city have gone about spiffing up bus stops, among a number of other outdoor spaces, into something known as community living rooms.

Matt Yglesias's post about yuppies riding buses attracted a lot of comments about how people perceive riding the bus, from all over the country. Food for thought. My general conclusion from what I've read so far is that people are more concerned about whether and when a bus will come than they are about who will be on it.

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.