June 25, 2008
The Surprising Speed of Transit
Yesterday afternoon we were trying to jaywalk across 15th when a #10 bus pulled up. We walked past it, hoping to use it for blocking. Another #10 bus pulled up.
Then we looked down the street. Another #10 bus was pulling up. Thanks to a Metro "more frequent service" upgrade, the #10s run every 15 minutes during rush hour -- or even every 15 seconds, if they all get stuck in downtown traffic.
Over on Crosscut, former secretary of transportation Doug MacDonald is finishing up another three-part bus series. Only in his case the bus is the solution, not something that gets in your way and makes you laugh cynically to yourself.
He argues that rail and light rail infrastructure is too expensive, limiting, and time-consuming to implement -- bus rapid transit is the back-to-the-future future. In short form, for those of you who just suffered a mental sprain running into "bus" and "rapid" right next to each other like that, bus rapid transit (BRT) is where you pretend buses are rail: you get fancy stations with arrival alerts, you pre-pay before boarding, buses have dedicated right-of-way so they aren't stuck in traffic.
It's a fun argument, we've had it before. It's also pointless.
Yes, in theory, BRT is astonishingly fast (set up in years, not decades), cheap (in comparison to rail, millions not billions), and out of control (buses can go just about anywhere). In practice, we've only experienced this once, on the 194 Express from the airport; it was rush hour, the bus had the HOV lane, and we were back in Seattle in about 25 minutes. But even that was not a perfect illustration: the bus still needed to get through traffic before and after the HOV lane.
After thousands of words on how rail and lightrail won't serve nearly as many people as BRT, and why Sound Transit is dysfunctional for insisting on rail at the expense of ridership, MacDonald has managed to duck a historical truth: No one wants to give up a lane to buses without a damn good reason. (Hell, even HOV lane capacity is under attack by morons wanting a "hybrid" bonus.)
Yet nothing about BRT works without dedicated lanes.
Transit and political leadership don't mind looking idiotic when they call for more buses on clogged roads. They don't mind making a multi-billion-dollar show out of light rail right-of-way. But so far they have shown little interest in doing the one thing that offers buses parity with cars: their own lanes.
Now, one-for-one parity might be an ideological bias on our part. But we can't find out what a proportional percentage might be, either. And that's why this argument over modalities misses the point. Voters don't know what's needed.
We argue over "workhorse" buses and Euro-style rail, but we haven't agreed on where we're going. Are we talking about keeping up with population growth? Reducing congestion by some amount? Making sure car-less people can get to work? Or are we talking about removing the need to drive for a certain percentage of the population? When the conversation is primarily about modalities, not strategy, that's when you get three buses at the same stop.
If we had a better idea of where we stood today, we might better be able to predict our future needs, but good luck with that. King County Metro has 1,300 vehicles. One massively expensive 1.3-mile bus tunnel that, when closed, proves that a bus-only 3rd Avenue works out fine. And a page full of stats that doesn't tell you what percentage of Seattle's population relies on the bus entirely, rides the bus regularly, or rides occasionally.
Ridership is up 28%? It's like having your doctor announce your blood pressure is up 28%. What was it before? What should it be?
Well, what should it be?
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Had exactly the same thing happen to me this a.m.
Apparently, there was a problem at the Madrona turn-around where the #2 doubles-back for the return trip to downtown, and FIVE buses got stuck there for about an hour before the problem was resolved. The first in line picked up as many passengers as it could hold, then raced up the hill leaving quite a few perplexed commuters in its wake.
Then another went by, nearly empty, but not stopping.
Then another.
And another.
At that point one of the people waiting at my stop decided to step into the street to force the next bus to stop, which of course it did.
Whereupon the driver admonished the passenger for stepping into the street to "stop" the bus.
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"One massively expensive 1.3-mile bus tunnel that, when closed, proves that a bus-only 3rd Avenue works out fine."
Um, I dunno if you rode the bus when the tunnel was closed, but 3rd does NOT work out fine. I ride the bus every day and am thankful for the tunnel. When it was closed it meant leaving at 5pm via bus often included an additional 20+ minutes to my commute, and even sitting on 3rd or Stewart for 40 minutes on many occasions.
The tunnel makes bus commuting downtown much more feasible and easy. Even now, when taking East side buses into downtown, taking a non tunnel bus adds 10 minutes to the trip, without the extra bus load that the tunnel absorbs. Easily double that when all the buses run above ground.
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I'm kicking all these BRT folks in the shins.
Also, the tunnel was created to bring in a train. It was it's original intent before the Boeing exodus.
That's where most of our transit folks hail from. That era of boom and exodus. They're afraid we're all going to leave again.
But we're not a one company town. We have the best major city high-tech growth.
We're fine. Invest in infrastructure or we won't be in 15 years.
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A #33 driver drove right past me the other day, and didn't stop until I ran out into the street waving my arms. Drove right on by, even though there were about 10 people standing at the bus stop. Then, when we came to my stop later, he said I shouldn't just stand there...but that I should wave to get him to stop.
Isn't that the whole point of a bus STOP? They're supposed to STOP there, right?
UGH!
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See if you back BRT, then you come back later and insist that you need road expansion to make BRT better.
It's a conspiracy by the road-building industry.
I should watch what I say, one of them is in the office right next door.
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pat5000: Okay, I'll take your person-on-the-bus word for it. As you guessed, I don't take the bus through the tunnel very often. I was shortsightedly thinking only of the car traffic being able to negotiate around 3rd being closed. Still, since the tunnel was half a billion dollars to build (and fix up recently), I guess it's nice to hear there's a noticeable difference with it than without it.
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As one of those that is more than a little dubious of how much ridership Seattle Light Rail will see, I have to say that a couple of changes to buses seem to solve alot of the problems that people talk about with buses.
1. A better regulated system so that what happened. Why can't 1 (or 2) of those buses "hang back" for a couple of minutes? Why not take a couple of minutes to transfer the passengers on those later buses to the first bus and "create" additional capacity? Yes, there'd need to be space for the bus to be pulled over for 5 minutes, and there would need to be some sort of "central control" for buses to communicate these things, but that doesn't seem like an impossible obstacle.
2. Bus stops that are further apart. I hate that the bus stops every 3 blocks. If more people were willing to walk a couple of extra blocks the bus would be much faster.
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BigGreenFrank: your first point makes me think of how some cities have switched to saying buses run every X minutes, rather than displaying specific times. That might make it easier for buses to "hang back." And ditto on the stops further apart--I see able-bodied people get on, go one stop, and get off. For god's sake, it's a walkable distance.
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pat5000 + MvB: To be fair about the tunnel, you're actually both right. The reason the tunnel works better is fewer bus stops and no traffic lights. A bus-only Third Ave. still suffers from cross-traffic.