In an op-ed in the Albuquerque Journal, the Antiplanner argues that transit agencies in medium-sized cities such as Albuquerque should experiment with “bus-rapid transit lite”–meaning increasing bus frequencies, reducing the number of stops so as to speed schedules, and prepayment of fares to speed loading of passengers. But dedicating traffic lanes to buses and giving them signal priority will harm far more people than it will benefit and shouldn’t be done.
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The op-ed also mentions that the large, articulated buses often used for bus-rapid transit may be the wrong choice. In fact, these buses are about the least cost-effective, in terms of dollars per seat, of any buses available. They take a huge amount of space on the street, are difficult to maneuver, and slow to accelerate. Transit agencies that think they have enough demand to justify large buses such as these should consider instead running smaller buses more frequently. Transit riders are known to be frequency sensitive, but they aren’t particularly sensitive to the size of the vehicle they ride in.
What’s the difference what share of travel transit carried in the whole city, this is about a specific road. What share of road users were transit riders? How many hours (minutes?) a day would a loss of a lane cause moderate or severe congestion on the road in question? Are there nearby roads that could handle overflow from drivers if congestion is worsened on central? Who cares if the bus is empty at midday? You need enough seats during peak hour, just as you build roads wide enough to handle peak hour traffic. If an articulated bus is full at rush hour you’d be replacing it with two standard length buses. Isn’t a driver more than 50% of bus costs? You’d be paying him for a full 8 hours wouldn’t you? Even if most of that shift is spent sitting around doing nothing so you can say that the bus you run at midday is less empty? Few hundred bus riders? What are you talking about? Doesn’t Central host closer to 10k bus riders per day?
@ ahwr:
If the bus lane has a setback – it ends before the junction, allowing general traffic to use all of the lanes at the stop line – there is no reduction in stopline capacity, and hence no congestion from the bus lane. I’m not sure that I understand why Antiplanner believes that bus priority causes problems – if merely adds a small amount of time to a junction approach, and if it isn’t done too often, isn’t an issue.
There is no reason why the bus service should not run more often during busy periods. Who are the customers? In the UK, the elderly are big customers, whereas working-age people go by car, and so the trip profile is reasonably flat across the day. If more working age people use buses, as one would hope, then more buses will be required in the AM and PM period.
The number of bus drivers is often a major problem. Driving buses is not well remunerated, as least in the UK, and so they use articulated buses in order to maximise the number of passengers per driver – not to be difficult, as Antiplanner suggests. There is a limited market of people prepare to work for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon – perhaps the local council could find some staff to help out.
Increasing stop spacing offers a good chance to mix bicycles and buses – bicycles for short journeys and for the last mile links to the bus stops.
There’s a good reason why bus services don’t work properly, and Antiplanner demonstrates this very clearly. Instead of trying to provide the bus service that the limited financing will buy, it’s a case of ‘Down with this sort of thing – Steady, now’. And people then reject the half-baked bus alternative in favour of their cars. Cue Antiplanner, stage right, to explain that people were always going to use the car, all along.
“Transit agencies that think they have enough demand to justify large buses such as these should consider instead running smaller buses more frequently. Transit riders are known to be frequency sensitive, but they aren’t particularly sensitive to the size of the vehicle they ride in.”
Which would result in a massive increase in operational costs. I preform transit agency need assessments all over the country. Every transit user in every city wants more frequent service covering a larger geographic area. Alas, that costs money. What transit customers are most sensitive to is consistency and professionalism. 1 hr. headways are acceptable in many systems (particularly smaller cities) as long as the bus isn’t late, or even more importantly, isn’t early. The most cost effective and productive transit systems in America are also the systems that pay their drivers the most and have the lowest turnover of vehicle operators. Professional, experienced and savvy drivers can dramatically increase productivity and ridership even on basic linear fixed route services.
ahwr said: “Who cares if the bus is empty at midday?… If an articulated bus is full at rush hour you’d be replacing it with two standard length buses. Isn’t a driver more than 50% of bus costs?”
Many savvy transit operators use high capacity transit vehicles, which cost marginally more to operate, during peak hours and switch to smaller vehicles during off-peak hours. Even BRT services can have different size vehicles for different times of the day.
Also, consistent frequency may require more buses during peak hours. For example, in Santa Fe the main trunk bus line runs on 15 minute headways throughout the entirety of the weekday service hours. During peak hours there is double the vehicles compared to off-peak times but the headways don’t change.
“I’m not sure that I understand why Antiplanner believes that bus priority causes problems”
Because it does.
Another problem occurs during non-peak times when stupid Seattleites, who are supposed to be highly literate, don’t or can’t read the signs about when they can and can’t be in the bus lanes. They jump into the traffic stream in a panic, often going 20 mph below the pace.
“Because it does.”
Not if you design it properly – please note the importance of a setback on the bus lane.
I agree with the Antiplanner that more frequency would be better than having larger buses but where is the extra operating funding going to come from to pay for higher driver and maintenance costs for having 2 drivers and 2 buses instead of one?
Saying articulated buses are more expensive on a dollars per seat basis is clearly incorrect, if ridership can justify large buses. Articulated buses often have 57 seats, while regular buses have 38, so operating an articulated bus allows you to spread the cost of the driver over 57 seats instead of 38.
If you expect 38 or fewer seats to be filled yes, then the slight additional operating cost of the articulated bus and the higher capital cost would make it more expensive. Vehicle and mode selection needs to be made based on corridor characteristics, and articulated buses shouldn’t be bought just because everyone else is doing it.
As for the Aurora example, not enough information is provided to determine if it will “cause problems”. While it may cause delay for car drivers, the time savings it creates for bus riders may result in an overall time savings. We need to move away from thinking of moving vehicles along a corridor and start to think about moving people along a corridor.
“While it may cause delay for car drivers, the time savings it creates for bus riders may result in an overall time savings.”
While it may cause delays for a vast majority of commuters, the time savings it creates for the small minority bus riders MAY result in an overall time savings. It WILL result in more congestion, more pollution, and more wasted time for the vast majority of commuters.
“We need to move away from thinking of moving vehicles along a corridor and start to think about moving people along a corridor.”
Sounds like you should be a city planner! Seattle’s planners seem hell bent on making driving so difficult that people will have no option except lousy public transit that takes 4x longer than driving.
Oh, and I thought moving vehicles meant moving people. Silly me!
That was an old article Frank, one that talked about what could happen. How’d it pan out? If you know that some people turn onto Aurora and don’t realize which lane they can be in then either stay in the left lane, or drive at or below the speed limit to minimize the issue. Not so hard.
Moving vehicles does mean moving people. But moving a bus with 50 riders is much more important than moving a single car.
“How’d it pan out?”
Like shit. I challenge you to move to Seattle and afford a median rent for a two-bedroom apartment of $2200 a month so you don’t have to live 30 minutes out to pay more affordable rent.
We’re not talking a single car here. We’re talking multiple cars, asshole.
The bus lane made rents skyrocket?
You said bus priority causes problems and linked to an article worried that would happen on aurora. So, what specifically happened on Aurora? It’s been a while since it was introduced, if it’s been the disaster you seem to think I assume there have been studies supporting your assertion?
“The bus lane made rents skyrocket?”
Did I say that? No. And you either know that I didn’t and are willfully distorting or your reading comprehension is abyssal low.
Traffic in Seattle is so terrible, and it’s made so by city planners. We have some of the worst roads in the nation and some of the worst traffic congestion in the nation. And then Metro goes and takes 1/3 of the lanes on 99N.
Rent in the city is expensive, and not everyone can afford to pay a median $2200 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. Therefore, many people who find work in the city must commute. They can take a bus for two hours or drive for one. The city keeps intentionally making their commute longer and longer and more difficult. Accident investigations last last for seven hours don’t make it any easier.
Studies are readily available that show that Seattle has some of the worst congestion in the nation. Taking away lanes certainly won’t make it any better. I live here and experience the Mercer Mess and experienced 99 pre- and post-bus lanes. It is MUCH worse now. Come visit and try it for yourself.
I asked how the bus lane worked out, you brought up rents. If you didn’t mean to imply they were related why did you mention them?
Not everybody can afford the median rent? You only need half to be able to, so what’s the big deal?
So no, you don’t have any studies to support your assertion that the bus lane made congestion worse? Your experience is anecdotal and statistically irrelevant.
Comrades, very interesting article and comments and proof once again that state owned monopolies with careful 5 year plans are the way to maximize production for consumption by the glorious proletariat. Of concrete boots.
Once again, why are private buses not encouraged, nor even allowed?
On a moral level, why should tax eating bus riders go ahead of tax paying car and truck drivers?
I’m with Fred_Z on this. Why don’t we require public transit buses to use square wheels? That way the ride is slow and bumpy enough to force the maximum humiliation on these parasites.
“So no, you don’t have any studies to support your assertion that the bus lane made congestion worse? Your experience is anecdotal and statistically irrelevant.”
Sophistry at its finest. Only transit trolls would ask for empirical evidence that removing a third of available lanes during peak traffic periods increases congestion.
gilfoil, dude, I don’t want to humiliate them, I just want to be equal with the damn parasites. First come first served. Perhaps a foreign concept?
I feel the need to interject. I’m a diehard transit advocate. That doesn’t mean that I favor removing a traffic lane for BRT. In fact I oppose it. I similarly oppose making a traffic lane already built using gas tax or money from a municipal general fund into a HOT or toll lane. I also oppose signal prioritization for non-emergency vehicles. I instead advocate for signal coordination and timing to benefit all street users.
Mr. O’Toole is quite correct that more frequency and fewer stops is a great approach to BRT. I would also argue that this tactic is a great was to reduce congestion on InterSTATE (not interblock) highways. Fewer exist would help. I remember when T-REX was being built on I-25 in Denver. The only time there was little to no rush hour congestion on I-25 south of downtown was when the construction was going on and many of the major exits were closed. Once the construction was over, capacity was expanded and the exits re-opened, traffic was back to exactly where it was before. Maybe commutes were shortened by one minute. Yes, there was a lot of latent demand for that added capacity, but CDOT spent oodles of money and commuters got nothing but some extra congested lanes. BRT works better with fewer stops and Interstate highways work better when they are used as originally intended (for interstate travel) and have fewer exits.
+1 bennett
@ Frank:
“Sophistry at its finest. Only transit trolls would ask for empirical evidence that removing a third of available lanes during peak traffic periods increases congestion.”
The real issue is the number of lanes at the stopline. So the lane further back can be converted to a bus lane without changing the capacity of the junction. I speak as someone who designs junctions for a living.
@ Fred_Z:
“First come first served. Perhaps a foreign concept?”
Very foreign and straight out of Soviet Russia. Everyone hanging around in queues, first come, first served. As for ‘public transit’, like a few other words and phrases, it means something different in our two countries. In the UK, public means ‘available to be used by the public’, and all buses, even the ones in London, are privately owned by private companies. In most places, the bus companies run the buses as they see fit. In London, the bus network is allocated on a franchised basis.
“The real issue is the number of lanes at the stopline. So the lane further back can be converted to a bus lane without changing the capacity of the junction. I speak as someone who designs junctions for a living.”
I’m talking about a three-lane highway, Highway 99 in Seattle. There is NO “stopline” or junctions on it for nearly nine miles, although the stretch with the recently confiscated lanes (also known as Aurora Avenue) is shorter.
When you you take away a third of lane capacity on a highway during peak traffic, and everyone has to squeeze into two lanes, then of course congestion is going to increase and travel time is going to decrease.
Speaking of empirical evidence, why is SDOT taking lanes without ANY evidence that doing so will shorten commute times? They simply assert that it will.
From the article (published this May) linked above: “SDOT analysts say the effectiveness of the bus-only lanes is still being studied and some traffic lights need to be re-synchronized before they can measure if the commute has actually improved. …SDOT officials say they are still evaluating how well these dedicated bus lanes work.”
WTF? SDOT didn’t have evidence that bus lanes work, so they just went ahead and took the lanes anyway?
FrancisKing, I am glad you mentioned Soviet Russia, which was absolutely not “first come, first served”, nor did “everyone” hang around in queues.
In Soviet Russia, the hoi poloi, the proletariat, us, we queued and waited for the chauffeured Zil limousines in the dedicated lane to pass by. The Nomenklatura did not queue and they rode the Zils in their private lanes.
The only difference is that we, being insane, propose to let tax eaters have the private lane while the rest of us queue and wait for them.
Up here in Calgary, Canada I see red (Geddit? Soviet Russia and all?) when I am forced to stop to let an LRT train full of tax sucking parasites take priority and go ahead of me. Would it kill them to have traffic lights for their stinking C-Trains and wait their stinking turn where the tracks cross one of Calgary’s busiest streets, Heritage Drive?
“Desmond said the new bus lanes on Aurora Avenue have cut travel times by 19 percent”
http://m.seattlepi.com/local/transportation/article/New-markings-aim-to-keep-drivers-out-of-Battery-5838390.php
Frank was the bus lane on aurora originally a travel lane the whole way, or was it often a parking lane that produced a lot of merging in the adjacent lane, slowing down drivers?
Fred_Z, I don’t know about Calgary, but in Seattle, according to this:
http://commuteseattle.com/2012survey/
two-thirds of Downtown Seattle commuters are worthless parasitic takers, while only 34% were heroic Galtian job creators.
“Desmond said the new bus lanes on Aurora Avenue have cut travel times by 19 percent”
I’d like to see the evidence. Excuse me for not taking the general manager of a transit agency at his word.
And bus lanes cut travel times for whom? Bus riders? More people drive on Aurora than take the bus.
“Frank was the bus lane on aurora originally a travel lane the whole way, or was it often a parking lane that produced a lot of merging in the adjacent lane, slowing down drivers?”
Parking in the right was not allowed during peak hours. And there was never parking in the stretch south of 73rd to 50th.
Frank wouldn’t people use the right lane to make right turns? Doesn’t that lead to a lot of merging?losing that as a travel lane might hurt less than you think.
Are bus riders 1/3 of peak hour road users in either direction? Do those counts exist? Daily numbers don’t matter much if the bus lane is part time. Even if it was full time if you have free flowing conditions in two lanes would things improve with a third? The 19% figure referred to bus riders. I don’t know if they’ve published much on E, it’s still relatively new.
You mentioned earlier that because rents are so high many have to live far away and have a long drive into work. What about those with even less who can’t afford to drive? Don’t they deserve better accommodations?
“Are bus riders 1/3 of peak hour road users in either direction? Do those counts exist?”
Are they? Do they?
“Daily numbers don’t matter much if the bus lane is part time.”
Who is talking daily numbers? What really matters is travel during peak times.
“Even if [bus lanes were] full time[,] if [there are] free[-]flowing conditions in two lanes[,] would things improve with a third [lane]?”
Irrelevant because the bus lanes are restricted during peak times. During peak times, before the bus lanes, and unless there was an accident, traffic moved much more freely with a third lane available. This is particularly true of the parts where there are no hard-right turns, which is quite a long stretch on Aurora.
“What about those with even less who can’t afford to drive? Don’t they deserve better accommodations?”
Deserve? Everyone deserves. Right? Everyone deserves a mansion and a Lamborghini and millions of dollars. And…and…
We’re not talking millions of dollars, we’re talking an equitable share of a public ROW. Transit ridership is often much peakier than car use. It might be closer to a third of road users than you’d think.
“Transit ridership …might be closer to a third of road users than you’d think.”
During peak hours from 6 am to 9 am, there are 25 articulated buses that stop at Aurora Ave N & N 46th St on the E Line. Seating capacity is 58, and a document shows that “Standees Space [is] Limited”. Granted, this is an older model, but numbers should be close.
25 x 58 = 1450 in three hours.
So, perhaps 1500 bus passengers use the dedicated bus lane during three peak hours, or 500 passengers per hour.
While possible, it seems unlikely that bus riders are a third of road users on this particular stretch during peak hours.
Are you sure that’s for rapid ride? I thought they had fewer seats to maximize standing room? 20 buses pass there between 7 and 9, transit users may be a larger share of road users then. I may have miscounted but it looks like there are 90 southbound trips per day. If the same northbound then you get 180 daily trips. At 60 riders per trip you’d get 10800 bus riders. 900 less than the ridership in June. I’d assume peak hour buses to be more heavily used than off peak. Might be closer to 100 per bus, or a thousand each between 7 and 8 and 8 and 9.
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2014/07/rapidride-use-is-way-up/
And you’re back to per day. Can you focus on peak? And if you think you can get 100 on a bus that seats 58 and has limited standing space, then you have found some weed in Seattle that probably isn’t legal and probably isn’t all weed.
I mentioned per day as a quick check to see why 60 pax per bus is way too low. Rapid ride buses do not have 58 seats. They have fewer to accommodate more standing passengers.
Frank, dedicated transit infrastructure, often with no established need for the particular item in question, is a real mania in the Seattle area. Notice the multiple HOV/transit only overpasses, ramps, signal prioritization, flyover ramps, and more. Few of these devices/lanes promote free-flowing traffic, and many often do the opposite because of the confusing nature of the system. Many more are being planned. The only bright spot in this mania is the HOT lanes being built on the eastside. Despite progressive hatred of so-called lexus lanes, they will allow those who want to pay a little more to get there faster.
When we ask why these boondoggles are so prevalent here, we find the usual suspects. Religious transit fervor and federal money for creating carpool/transit lanes, but not free-to-all-traffic facilities.