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Silicon Valley Could Offer a Public Bus Commute That's Quicker Than Driving
- timjahn 12y ago"The big advantage of driving to work over taking the bus is time. A bus ride just takes longer: walking to the stop, waiting for the bus, picking up passengers, all while toughing out the same traffic as cars." Generally, yes, driving will always beat a bus. Train is always the way to go, as there is no traffic on the tracks (a majority of the time). To me, it's a common misconception that driving is quicker. In Chicago, driving is almost never quicker (due to traffic), and regardless, it's always wasted time. You can't DO anything while you're driving. Taking the bus or the L, at least you can work on what you need to work on.
- aylons 12y ago"all while toughing out the same traffic as cars." The point is, bus shouldn't need to share traffic with cars. A bus system should always flow in a dedicated lane, except for the most capillary streets in low-traffic areas. Not doing so is inefficient and, of course, will always hinder public transportation.
- greglindahl 12y agoYou're making the same point that the article, which of course you read before commenting, makes. The quoted text is from the intro, and the next sentence makes the suggested solution clear: A bus ride just takes longer: walking to the stop, waiting for the bus, picking up passengers, all while toughing out the same traffic as cars. But when transit is done well, the time gap shrinks, and when it's done really well—with frequent service, all-door boarding, and exclusive lanes—the gap can disappear entirely.
- monksy 12y agoWell this is true except for what happened last week: Rare occurrences can disrupt the train. Oh well, I'll still commute via train/bus. I don't miss commuting by car.
- selectodude 12y ago>In Chicago, driving is almost never quicker Come on, that's not even the slightest bit true.
- timjahn 12y agoNot sure where you live but I'm off the Kennedy and its absolutely true.
- faitswulff 12y agoThat is my least favorite stretch of highway.
- psychometry 12y agoOK, so that's a conclusion you've reached from a sample size of one. Try commuting on one of the LSD buses and you'd come to the opposite conclusion.
- selectodude 12y agoI live downtown. The Kennedy is a nightmare but I just take Elston during rush hour.
- faitswulff 12y agoAgreed. Driving in Chicago is generally twice as fast as taking public transit within or near the loop. The difference grows when you have to go further. You can get in a car and be almost anywhere interesting in 20 minutes without traffic, whereas you would need 5-10 minutes just to get to a CTA stop and wait for the bus/train. Public transit is only ever faster than driving during rush hours in heavily trafficked areas.
- larsberg 12y agoDo you not have to park? Or are you assuming Uber? Parking got quicker in Chicago since the metered fares went through the roof, but it can still easily dominate the total travel time, as leaving and entering large multi-floor parking structures downtown takes a really long time.
- jtlienwis 12y agoI used to use the Silicon Valley bus system back in the 80's. On rainy days when you most needed the bus system to work all the Grumman buses they had then had a feature that when it rained, the electrical system would short out and the buses would stop running. Hopefully they have fixed that.
- Patrick_Devine 12y agoOr, alternatively, you could pump all that money into the Caltrain electrification project which runs roughly along the same route between the exact same destinations. I do, however think a road diet on El Camino would be nice. As someone who lives within 2 blocks, it's really unpleasant to have cross 84'+ of asphalt to get to the other side of the street. 10' traffic lanes and separated bike lanes would go a long way to making it more livable.
- greglindahl 12y agoI believe that the expected total passenger volume is higher than what electrified Caltrain can support by itself... and many trips from some point on El Camino to another point on El Camino will find the BRT to be faster.
- Patrick_Devine 12y agoI haven't seen the figures for passenger volume, but given you can more easily take your bicycle onto Caltrain than on BRT, my strong preference would be for more frequent train service. As it is, the 522 doesn't stop anywhere close to my house, so would require biking to a stop. I believe the BRT stops are the same as the 522?
- greglindahl 12y agoThe plan for Caltrain is to have more frequent train service.
- mistakoala 12y agoDoes it account for performance artists sitting down in front of the bus to protest about something or other, though?
- iandanforth 12y agoIf you've never lived in a city that does busing well you probably think this is a silly idea. I did before I lived in Ottawa. They have tons of busses running all the time with dedicated bus roads along many stretches. It's just such a sensible system, but until you've lived it's a hard sell.
- noarchy 12y agoIf you don't live along Ottawa's Transitway, though, your experience may be quite different. It is popular for Ottawans to beat up on OCTranspo. With all of that said, it will be interesting to see how the LRT changes things. Right now it is causing headaches, so the proof will be once the line is up and running.
- revelation 12y agoUmm, by 2040? My plan for 2040 was to step outside and not see a single freaking personal use car, or bus (stop|lane). Surely we'll have figured out a sane solution by then to commuting?
- myhf 12y agohttp://longbets.org/ http://longbets.org/
- Bahamut 12y agoI actually haven't had a bad experience for the most part with the 522 on El Camino going westward - I'd make it from Sunnyvale/Mountain View to Downtown Palo Alto in ~20 minutes, which compares quite favorably to driving. Then again, I often am leaving for work around 6:30 - 7:30, so I rarely see the traffic issues that are typical around 8 am.
- craftkiller 12y agoyou shut your mouth, I want a faster commute :-)
- ulfw 12y agoYou'll have it. In 26 years from now!
- forrestthewoods 12y agoI think a pre-requisite to a "good" public transportation infrastructure is a shitty road infrastructure. To me asking for better public transportation is, to quote Henry Ford, asking for a Faster Horse. I'm a member of the autonomous vehicle church. I think a fleet of self-driving cars absolutely blows away any bus system. And that's without roads specialized for the self driving car. Once you start custom crafting intersections it just gets even better.
- gtremper 12y agoI agree, in places where there is already extensive road infrastructure, a "public" transportation system using a fleet of autonomous vehicles is much more better use of existing resources.
- slyall 12y agoSome problems with autonomous vehicles: * Time. Lets be optomistic and say they are perfected in 5 years time AND can be added to new cars for minimal cost then then it'll be say 2030 before all the cars on the road have them (assuming laws outlaw manual cars when 90% of people are using driverless ones) * Now at that point we are going to assuming that driverless cars are so good that they get twice the efficiency on your local road and highways resemble NASCAR races (without the 5% chance of a crash each trip) * The problem is that now since driving is so easy the amount of traffic goes up so you are back where you were previously. Anywhere with enough traffic to have problems already has a tonne of latent demand just sitting around ready to generate more journeys. Note: * 5 years is really optimistic for driverless car perfection * 10 years is to ban all manual cars? * Ever tried crossing a NASCAR raceway on foot? * Your assuming driverless vans/buses won't also happen. Share your rid cost with a dozen others, semi-fixed routes (easier to survey/programme), fleet management.
- saraid216 12y ago> * Every tried crossing a NASCAR raceway on foot? This is one of the interesting advantages a public transit system has over a self-driving fleet of cars (which, incidentally, I also look forward to). Mass transit depends on the concept of "stops" or "stations". The way people get between destinations (like their home, the shop, etc.) and the transit station is largely by walking. Thus, mass transit necessarily builds in pedestrian friendliness. This isn't true for cars, which do not have such nexi. (Indeed, this lack is generally agreed to be an advantage.) This means that such designs will have to deliberately include pedestrian friendliness in order to have it, rather than being forced into it by the facts of the design requirements. I'm not saying it's a sufficient advantage for one or the other, but it's a definite thing.
- dmishe 12y agoI like how it takes the tech center of the world 3 years to add a bus lane and then another 22 to make something of it
- saryant 12y agoI first moved out of California as a kid when I was six. Work had just begun on the new Benicia bridge over the Carquinez. Work completed a year after I moved out of Benicia the second time when I was 16. Originally estimated to cost $286 million, the final tally was $1.3 billion.
- ulfw 12y agoIf you ever lived there you'd know that those times are optimistic 'best case' scenarios. Most likely it won't even happen at all.
- dmishe 12y agoYeah I've moved here 6 months ago :)
- discardorama 12y ago> The big advantage of driving to work over taking the bus is time No. The big advantage of driving is reliability: I know that my means of transportation will be there, where I left it, at any time that I want it. How many of us have missed the CalTrain by a few minutes, only to have to wait an hour till the next one comes by?
- whyenot 12y agoCalTrain is decent unless there is a breakdown or as happens on average more than once a month, someone is struck by a train. If either of those things happen, the whole system shuts down and you can easily be two hours late. I don't know how to solve the problem, but it really sucks and keeps CalTrain from being a dependable form of transportation.
- ulfw 12y agoBy building infrastructure new rather than utilising something that is not from 1863. I mean I am shocked the line isn't even electrified yet. Something that happened across Europe fifty years ago.
- jackowayed 12y agoThat's another advantage of Bus Rapid Transit over trains. It's much cheaper to run one bus than one train, and the vehicles are generally smaller, so they run more of them for the same usage, meaning you generally aren't scheduled to wait as long. Of course, things can still go wrong. VTA's rapid bus (the 522) runs every 15 minutes at rush hour, and the non-rapid one runs every 11. Off-hours is every 20-30 for each, but that's still 2-3x as often as Caltrain.
- cauterized 12y agoThen that's a poorly resourced and underused rapid transit system. A heavily used subway line can run trains every 3-5 min during rush hour (and on some lines, ridership is high enough that they'd run them even more frequently if safety allowed); a bus route, every 2-3 min; and commuter rail every 10-15 min. Even at 3am, my nearest subway line runs trains 2-3 times per hour. Unfortunately, underutilized transit options are subject to a vicious cycle wherein it's impossible to justify running more frequent service for low ridership, and lack of frequent service suppresses ridership. Once you do have a strong public transit culture, it builds on itself and makes investment in frequency an obvious choice (not just for convenience but because you need more buses/trains to fit more passengers!)
- Animats 12y agoThis proposes a bus line parallel to the rail line. That's kind of pointless.
- greglindahl 12y agoThere's already a (slow) bus line parallel to the rail line. Demand is high enough to justify both.
- ac29 12y agoSome places along the route the distance from the Caltrain tracks to El Camino would take 20+ minutes to walk.
- wmobit 12y agoI live on El Camino and frequently take the bus. It's a 40 minute walk to the nearest caltrain station
- stl_guy_1885 12y agoHere in Saint Louis riding the bus is an efficient way of getting robbed by basketball Americans. Public transportation would work in America if the country was more racially homogenous.
- TheCoelacanth 12y agoI will be impressed if they actually manage to build BRT. BRT projects in the US tend to suffer from "BRT creep". Although the upfront cost is significantly lower than rail, it is still much more expensive than normal buses, so most localities don't have the political will to build BRT without removing most of the features that make it rapid.
- greglindahl 12y ago... in this case the lane already exists. We're talking platforms and re-striping. The biggest cost is the political argument about making some car journeys take more time.
- TheCoelacanth 12y agoThat helps, but the cost of the other features is still significant. I would still expect them to get a lot of complaints about why they are spending so much money on "bus stops" and why they can't just put up a pole with a little sign on it.
- OmarIsmail 12y agoMy guess is that a near term local maxima is the combination of Lyft/Uber and a bus - or Uber Pool on steroids. It's very rare that I need to leave now, usually if I leave sometime in the next 30 minutes that is sufficient. Furthermore I don't mind walking a minute or two to get to the car/bus, or from the car/bus to my final destination. Relaxing the constraints on time and distance will (my guess) vastly increase the number of people that want to go on a similar route as me. Therefore depending on how many people get matched up the system can intelligently assign the right type of vehicle (small car, SUV, small bus, big bus).
- hw 12y agoA dedicated lane for buses seems like quite a waste if there aren't many buses sharing that same route. Dedicated lanes on a road like El Camino Real with plenty of traffic lights won't help too much either. I've lived in a city where there were dedicated lanes for buses and it was a nightmare if you were driving, especially if you had to make a turn that takes you across these dedicated bus lanes. There's also issues of bottlenecks where the bus lanes end and merge into regular lanes.
- stevep98 12y agoMy understandings is that the plan calls for the bus lanes to be in the median. And the traffic lights will be synchronized so the buses won't have to stop.
- rgovind 12y agoI wonder if it is possible to rent out (motor)bikes or mopeds so people can commute short distances without needing to wait for a bus. For example, it would be great to have a (motor)bike from great mall to other parts of milpitas or nearby places in San Jose
- tricolon 12y agoDuring a recent visit to SF, I noticed some red scooters with the Scoot logo on them: http://scootnetworks.com/ http://scootnetworks.com/ I don't know if they have plans to expand to San Jose.
- ulfw 12y ago"In the plan's best-case scenario, the El Camino BRT would travel the corridor almost as quickly as cars by 2018, when the line hopes to open, and occasionally beat them by 2040." In the BEST CASE it could OCCASIONALLY beat cars 26 years from now. Is that some kind of joke? I mean seriously now.