Bloggers Help Metro with Service Strategy

Can we dispense with this empty-buses-in-the suburbs bullshit? Those of us who ride daily on the Eastside haven't seen a bus that isn't full for a long time now (during the extended commuter hours). It started even before gas prices shot up this year.

Of course it costs Metro more per mile in less congested areas. But those suburban buses are taking thousands of cars off the road, many of which would be traveling a lot more mile than those in the Seattle core.

Focus on efficiency, not on this tired, urban-vs.-suburban catfight.

Name one 'virtually empty' bus these days. Yeah, I thought so. Not one you took like 5 years ago, when you were bored and decided to cross the bridge for kicks.

Buses aren't meant to be profit centers. They are meant to move people.

Using this logic, school buses shouldn't exist either.

I was thinking about this the other day. Why do they need to send big buses out to the 'burbs where they are half full? if there are only a dozen people who take the bus on a route, then get a smaller bus. It seems obvious to me, but maybe there is some good reason I just don't of why they don't do this...

matt_g1 - aren't a lot of king county buses running on biodiesel (which certainly has its issues) or some sort of hybrid?

[matt_g1] Yeah, I sure can see what you're saying. That's why I'm not claiming there's any easy answer.

I think in the long term there just have to be better answers, and right now we need to concentrate on just making it to the long term.

[bilco] I struggle with the concept that cheap suburban buses are really that good for our world. If we load, say, half of the drivers onto buses then the roads would be clog-free. But wouldn't that encourage more people to move out to the suburbs? People generally live half an hour from work, and if you reduce the time to work they move farther (because land there is cheaper). The end result would be that the roads would be just as clogged, but now more of them are 3mpg buses. And there will be more houses filled with more carbon-intensive goods from china and more nitrogen-eating lawns, and more pets eating more pet food (etc.).

All this being said, it feels like cheap suburban buses should reduce carbon. I just can't come up with an argument that in the long term it will.

More and more I feel like the question we should be asking if we want to produce less carbon is how do we convince more people to move into the city.

(sorry about the tangent)

I think the problem is that there are some Eastside busses that are empty and then there are others, like the 218 that I ride into Seattle every day that is standing room only all of the time.

This is a tough one - my instinct is to say "charge those eastside bastards by the mile, if Metro wants to account by the mile". On the other hand, the benefit to the area of removing each long-distance commuter is actually pretty large. That's where the big carbon savings comes in. Just glad I don't have to make these calls.