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Buses aren't popular. I rode a light-rail line in Germany and it was far far better than a bus. Buses are cheap, flexible, and routes can be added and dropped overnight. But the rail has a more comfortable ride, the cars are larger and can be extended. Use rail for high density, high ridership areas and let buses handle the lighter, sparser routes. I see buses as a half-ass solution. If you are going to do it, might as well do it right the first time.
Just an aside, but I think Busways can have some advantages over light rail in the right circumstances. For one thing, you can have buses go local through a neighborhood then hop onto the Busway for an express run, whereas with light rail you would need to run a shuttle bus to a station and then have people make a transfer (our bus route to Downtown does what I am describing, and it is great we don't need to make a transfer). In general, you can also run the Busway only where you need it to bypass congestion, whereas with light rail you have to keep running it after you have passed the congestion zone, unless you are going to use feeder buses, but that again introduces a transfer.
Now if you have enough anticipated demand within walking distance of the proposed light rail route, it may make sense to go with that approach anyway. But in cases where your target population isn't going to be clustering right along the route, the Busway approach is an interesting alternative. And in fact due to Pittsburgh's complex topography, it makes sense that we would have fewer cases in which you could plot out a rail line and expect a lot of development directly along the line.
I see buses as a half-ass solution. If you are going to do it, might as well do it right the first time.
Brian has some points, but notwithstanding I tend to agree with you - why settle for half a loaf. Unfortunately at the moment, we're not even likely to get stale crumbs.
Just an aside, but I think Busways can have some advantages over light rail in the right circumstances. For one thing, you can have buses go local through a neighborhood then hop onto the Busway for an express run, whereas with light rail you would need to run a shuttle bus to a station and then have people make a transfer (our bus route to Downtown does what I am describing, and it is great we don't need to make a transfer). In general, you can also run the Busway only where you need it to bypass congestion, whereas with light rail you have to keep running it after you have passed the congestion zone, unless you are going to use feeder buses, but that again introduces a transfer.
Now if you have enough anticipated demand within walking distance of the proposed light rail route, it may make sense to go with that approach anyway. But in cases where your target population isn't going to be clustering right along the route, the Busway approach is an interesting alternative. And in fact due to Pittsburgh's complex topography, it makes sense that we would have fewer cases in which you could plot out a rail line and expect a lot of development directly along the line.
But my personal feeling and general impression is that people take the bus...if they have to. People choose to take rail transit. It would be great if people liked to ride buses but they don't. They do however like rail. Cities prefer to show off their rail transit more than their buses for a reason.
The problem I see with commuter trains sharing tracks with freight trains is that more and more freight is being shipped by trains these days due to the high cost of diesel. The trucking industry's loss is the freight rail industry's gain, and the train tracks are busier than they've been in a long time. This will make it much harder for commuter trains to have the right of way on freight lines, especially since the freight companies own them.
Another thing is, I think that if Allegheny County is going to expand its rail system, then they should should stick to light rail because they already have the T. Heavy rail is good for extra-large metropolitan areas like New York, Philadelphia, and even Atlanta, because they have far more people, cover far more area, and have decent-sized satellite cities as well, so the trains need to move at higher speeds to efficiently move the extra people the extra mileage. Pittsburgh is more compact, so light rail can do the job just fine. Heavy rail would be overkill. Besides, Allegheny County seems to have a lot of half-baked ideas, with busways to the east and west, the T to the south, and absolutely nothing to the north in spite of the fact that the northern suburbs are the wealthiest and fastest-growing suburbs in the Pittsburgh area.
As for buses, they should be a supplementary form of transit for use between train stations, and also to help people in lower-density areas make it to the job and commercial centers. It's nice that Allegheny County has efficient busways and an overall comprehensive system in spite of recent cuts, but buses still should not be the bread and butter of any transit authority.
But my personal feeling and general impression is that people take the bus...if they have to. People choose to take rail transit. It would be great if people liked to ride buses but they don't. They do however like rail. Cities prefer to show off their rail transit more than their buses for a reason.
The problem in relying on your current impression is that in the United States today, transit authorities mostly provide high-end rail service and low-end bus service. There are very few cases of high-end bus service (or for that matter low-end rail service), so you aren't getting a fair impression with respect to whether high-end bus services can compete for riders.
Interestingly, Pittsburgh is one of the few cases in which there is in fact a fairly high-end bus service--the East Busway routes--which we can compare to a local light rail service of moderate extent, the T. And in fact the East Busway gets a comparable number of riders to the T, despite the T having many more miles of track than the East Busway. So in terms of riders per unit of fixed infrastructure investment, the East Busway is dominating the T, despite the fact that it uses buses and the T uses trains.
The bottomline is I think people are much more pragmatic than you are suggesting--they will take any transit service that competes well with their alternatives in terms of practical issues like cost and convenience, regardless of whether the vehicles in question have steel wheels or rubber tires.
And ultimately, we don't have unlimited funds to spend. So if we insist on only providing rapid transit in the form of very expensive new rail routes, what will end up happening is that we will have an artificially small rapid transit system, and a lot of people will have no rapid transit services to choose among at all. If we instead focus on using our resources to maximize rapid transit coverage and capacity--which will mean using a mix of technologies as appropriate given the practical circumstance--I think the much larger system we would create would as a whole get many more riders.
The problem I see with commuter trains sharing tracks with freight trains is that more and more freight is being shipped by trains these days due to the high cost of diesel. The trucking industry's loss is the freight rail industry's gain, and the train tracks are busier than they've been in a long time. This will make it much harder for commuter trains to have the right of way on freight lines, especially since the freight companies own them.
It is undoubtedly the case that you can run into fundamental capacity issues on the existing rail lines. We're actually already addressing that in part by doing a bunch of projects that together will allow more double-stacking (e.g., CSX's "National Gateway" project). But the bottomline is that if a line we would want to use for commuter rail couldn't handle the extra traffic without becoming congested, then we would have to consider adding another set of tracks on that ROW.
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Another thing is, I think that if Allegheny County is going to expand its rail system, then they should should stick to light rail because they already have the T. Heavy rail is good for extra-large metropolitan areas like New York, Philadelphia, and even Atlanta, because they have far more people, cover far more area, and have decent-sized satellite cities as well, so the trains need to move at higher speeds to efficiently move the extra people the extra mileage. Pittsburgh is more compact, so light rail can do the job just fine. Heavy rail would be overkill.
As I noted previously, you can do light rail on existing freight lines. The only real difference between that and "commuter rail" is whether the vehicles are FRA-compliant. But using non-FRA-compliant vehicles means there may be more issues with sharing lines.
So I don't think you can take a categorical approach to these issues. If you can use non-FRA-compliant vehicles on existing lines without causing problems, then OK. But if to use light rail you would have to run entirely new tracks, whereas you could share with commuter rail, now that makes light rail the "overkill" technology.
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Besides, Allegheny County seems to have a lot of half-baked ideas, with busways to the east and west, the T to the south, and absolutely nothing to the north in spite of the fact that the northern suburbs are the wealthiest and fastest-growing suburbs in the Pittsburgh area.
Partially that is because in general, we haven't invested much in transit infrastructure lately--and note that the one big project we have done lately, the North Shore Connector, does in fact expand the system northward. But also, at the moment at least, we don't have the same congestion issues heading into the North Hills as we do in other directions.
Incidentally, every major city uses a combination of different technologies when providing transit, and this is particularly true of European cities of comparable size to Pittsburgh with better public transit. Insisting on a common technology doesn't really get you much, provided you have an integrated fare system.
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As for buses, they should be a supplementary form of transit for use between train stations, and also to help people in lower-density areas make it to the job and commercial centers. It's nice that Allegheny County has efficient busways and an overall comprehensive system in spite of recent cuts, but buses still should not be the bread and butter of any transit authority.
I really disagree with this categorical hierarchy of transportation technologies. To sum up, rail can be the right technology in some circumstances, but under other circumstances you can take the same pot of money and provide rapid transit to a lot more people/neighborhoods with the Busway approach. And specifically with regard to shuttle-to-train buses, that is an inferior approach to the same end because it requires transfers, which are a known killer of rider demand.
Again, it is not that we have to use an all-bus system either. But we should expect to use a variety of different rapid transit technologies to provide the maximum coverage, with a common fare system uniting them from a user perspective.
Interestingly, Pittsburgh is one of the few cases in which there is in fact a fairly high-end bus service--the East Busway routes--which we can compare to a local light rail service of moderate extent, the T. And in fact the East Busway gets a comparable number of riders to the T, despite the T having many more miles of track than the East Busway. So in terms of riders per unit of fixed infrastructure investment, the East Busway is dominating the T, despite the fact that it uses buses and the T uses trains.
I think the East Busway is a high-use public transportation route anyway. To me that falls under "they have no choice". I don't think a busway would be successful along routes where you are trying to convince the public to leave their cars and take the bus. In slightly more upscale areas the public can be lured by the train/tram but not the bus.
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The bottomline is I think people are much more pragmatic than you are suggesting--they will take any transit service that competes well with their alternatives in terms of practical issues like cost and convenience, regardless of whether the vehicles in question have steel wheels or rubber tires.
No, i see it in Atlanta. You see business men and women driving to rail stations to take the train. You don't see them on the buses.
We do have express commuter buses from the outer suburbs to downtown (non-stop) that is almost exclusively ridden by suits and the buses only run to cover the rush hours. A very small number of people considering the Atlanta population and traffic. There is a strong push for RAIL to extend out in all directions of Atlanta but politics and I'm sure cost really hampers it. The express bus system is our easy and cheap half-ass solution for now. But transit proponents want rail. And I agree with them that rail offers the best solution.
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And ultimately, we don't have unlimited funds to spend. So if we insist on only providing rapid transit in the form of very expensive new rail routes, what will end up happening is that we will have an artificially small rapid transit system, and a lot of people will have no rapid transit services to choose among at all. If we instead focus on using our resources to maximize rapid transit coverage and capacity--which will mean using a mix of technologies as appropriate given the practical circumstance--I think the much larger system we would create would as a whole get many more riders.
I think the East Busway is a high-use public transportation route anyway. To me that falls under "they have no choice".
Of course many people riding the East Busway have a choice. A lot just choose the bus because it is more convenient and less costly than the alternatives. This just shows what I noted above: this is really about practical issues, not what technology you use.
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I don't think a busway would be successful along routes where you are trying to convince the public to leave their cars and take the bus. In slightly more upscale areas the public can be lured by the train/tram but not the bus.
First, people in "upscale" areas like Shadyside and Regent Square are using the East Busway. Second, trains won't lure many people either if car commutes offer a better practical proposition.
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No, i see it in Atlanta. You see business men and women driving to rail stations to take the train. You don't see them on the buses.
The park and rides along the East Busway fill rapidly.
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But transit proponents want rail. And I agree with them that rail offers the best solution.
Smart transit proponents want to use the full tool box of available transit technologies. People who fixate on one technology to the exclusion of others are not really transit proponents, they are fans of that particular technology.
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So, you'll be pulling back for support of HSR?
That's a non sequitur. First, we have been talking about local transportation policy, not intercity transportation policy. Second, if you had asked me about intercity transportation technologies, I'd give you the same answer: we should use a mix of technologies, including HSR where appropriate.
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