Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I just call things like they are. Much of what we have is dumb public transportation that has no reason to exist, which is why the private car is more energy efficient than most public transportation in this country. That's disgraceful, especially since we don't even drive fuel efficient cars to begin with. I've always been a proponent of transportation that make sense. One of my biggest criticism of dumb transit is it makes TOD impossible. No one is going to build around a public transportation system that is uniformly awful everywhere versus one that offers good service in a subset of the urbanized area.
I don't recall you ever having this opinion, but for the most part I agree with this statement. It is good to see I am wrong.
There's not really that much difference functionally between a completely grade separated busway and light rail, but most BRT isn't that. And at the cost of a completely grade separated busway, you're approaching light rail costs.
This cannot be emphasized enough!!!!
Usually when BRT is chosen over light rail to "save money," they end up saving *too much* money and doing things like regular limited stop service with fancier busses and fancier bus shelters, sometimes without even using dedicated lanes, or they end up running express busses on the expressway and calling it BRT. Too many ways to "cheat" when it comes to BRT....
I know. For the uninformed, facts often are unbelievable. Like the fact that BRT has an actual pphpd of ~41,000. Actual. Not the hypothetical numbers some of the rail junkies like to throw around in these neck of the woods.
There's nothing particularly strong about the statement. Where light rail can stand on its merits, great. It just shouldn't be favored because of false impressions from the too-good-to-ride-a-bus crowd about how rail has any special factors like an ability to carry more than a few hundred passengers per hour, ability to spur development. It doesn't. Those are normal factors.
These ridiculous pax counts are not only suspicious but they're not apples to apples. If you're using double artic buses with a crush load of 270 pax then maybe you can get to those numbers with every bus at crush load. But the double artix are not exclusive on TransMilenio - there are plenty of non-artix and single artix in the mix so if we're assuming that every bus is at crush load then the average is probably more like 200 pax per bus and then you'd need 205 buses per hour per direction to sustain that passenger count. That's a bus every 18 seconds or less . . . which means that the dwell time has to be stupid short. I don't know if you've ever been on a crush load transit vehicle and watched people try to get on and off but it takes longer than a few seconds. I also don't know if you've ever been on a platform at a busy busway station but you have no idea which berth your bus will pull up to until it's in the station so it's also a total crapshow as people run from one of the platform to the other trying to catch their bus - which also significantly increases dwell times.
In other words, the only way you get these ridiculously high pax counts is to have a lot of through running express service that doesn't have to share platform space with the other buses at the terminus.
It's preposterous to rely on these arguments about capital costs.
NYC or LA could probably make great use of a BRT system that took the two center lanes of every freeway. That's how you build BRT on the cheap - by taking existing infrastructure - and that was exactly what was done in Bogota as well as in a few other cities. BRT isn't cheap in the capital sense when it has to be grade separated from scratch. Brisbane is over $1 billion at this point and that's after taking a 5 mile stretch of ROW from the Pacific Motorway and suffering from major congestion at several choke points because it was too expensive to fully grade separate there. It's also silly to compare construction costs in places like Colombia to those in the US.
Further, the reported high capacity of BRT comes at very high operating costs. 205 buses an hour on the Pittsburgh busway would cost ~$18,000/hour. On the LA Orange Line it would cost a good deal more. Moving the same amount of passengers on BART costs $5,125/hour. For the US light rail average, assuming shorter trains, then moving 41,000 pph would cost ~$13,000/hour . . . but then that's the benefit of having a rail system. For a capital investment platforms can be made longer and cars can be added to your train and it will lower your operating costs per revenue hour. Every time you want to add capacity to a busway you're not only making a capital investment but you're also raising your operating costs.
Like I've said, BRT is a good fit for a lot of US cities with low densities and in most cases would be a reasonable substitute for light rail but no one should pretend that in a high a volume situation it's cheaper to operate or that the lower capital costs are significant enough to make up for it.
Last edited by drive carephilly; 02-11-2015 at 04:18 PM..
Usually when BRT is chosen over light rail to "save money," they end up saving *too much* money and doing things like regular limited stop service with fancier busses and fancier bus shelters, sometimes without even using dedicated lanes, or they end up running express busses on the expressway and calling it BRT. Too many ways to "cheat" when it comes to BRT....
That tends to be my biggest issue with BRT. We are looking at it here in Portland over putting a streetcar line in, but the BRT they want to do would be basically a glorified bus route rather than an actual BRT.
I have to say, I'm a little shocked that Pittsburgh's system only rates BRT Bronze. It has dedicated bus-only roads, which means that by definition three of the five basic characteristics of BRT are fulfilled.
The only elements it does not have is fare collection off bus (although we've now gone over to a fare card system here, which has sped up boarding considerably), and platform-level boarding.
I don't think the average person knows or cares about bronze or silver vs gold level BRT or knows or cares about the difference between BRT and regular buses. To the average person bus rapid transit is just another bus but with a fancier name. Planners can always make marginal improvements to buses and they have their place in the transit mix but in the end its still a bus and the only ones who seem to be much impressed by BRT are other planners and those who follow transit issues. They can put lipstick on a pig but don't expect to fool anyone.
I don't think the average person knows or cares about bronze or silver vs gold level BRT or knows or cares about the difference between BRT and regular buses. To the average person bus rapid transit is just another bus but with a fancier name. Planners can always make marginal improvements to buses and they have their place in the transit mix but in the end its still a bus and the only ones who seem to be much impressed by BRT are other planners and those who follow transit issues. They can put lipstick on a pig but don't expect to fool anyone.
Yeah, it's mostly the experts and people that use transit that care. Nobody expects the too-good-for-a-bus contingent to be impressed. How much decisionmakers should factor in their opinion is up for debate.
I don't think the average person knows or cares about bronze or silver vs gold level BRT or knows or cares about the difference between BRT and regular buses. To the average person bus rapid transit is just another bus but with a fancier name. Planners can always make marginal improvements to buses and they have their place in the transit mix but in the end its still a bus and the only ones who seem to be much impressed by BRT are other planners and those who follow transit issues. They can put lipstick on a pig but don't expect to fool anyone.
So do you think that the "bus stigma" doesn't go away when it's a BRT? I'm just wondering if those who look down on using a bus would look down on using BRT. Most of these people are okay with a train but not the bus.
So do you think that the "bus stigma" doesn't go away when it's a BRT? I'm just wondering if those who look down on using a bus would look down on using BRT. Most of these people are okay with a train but not the bus.
In most cases they are BRT in name only. The number of true BRT systems can be counted on one hand. But even with true BRT the bus stigma doesn't go away. Why would it? A BRT bus looks feels and sounds no different than any other bus. Unless they are a transit expert the average person won't know or care that there's supposed to be a difference. They just see another bus passing by.
In most cases they are BRT in name only. The number of true BRT systems can be counted on one hand. But even with true BRT the bus stigma doesn't go away. Why would it? A BRT bus looks feels and sounds no different than any other bus. Unless they are a transit expert the average person won't know or care that there's supposed to be a difference. They just see another bus passing by.
This can be curbed with more modern buses, running them as electric or hybrid buses. The stigma only really exists in areas that lack a good public transportation infrastructure. I know here in the Northwest, Seattle and Portland. When buses are clean, safe, and run on time and on a regular schedule with very short wait times, they tend to be more attractive to people to ride.
In most cases they are BRT in name only. The number of true BRT systems can be counted on one hand. But even with true BRT the bus stigma doesn't go away. Why would it? A BRT bus looks feels and sounds no different than any other bus. Unless they are a transit expert the average person won't know or care that there's supposed to be a difference. They just see another bus passing by.
A BRT is (or at least should be) faster and more reliable than a normal bus. Normal people don't care if a BRT is labeled "gold" or "bronze". They do care that it doesn't take four minutes at a big stop because the passengers are fiddling with cash, or has to wait for traffic to clear to pull out of the stop. Or if the traffic signals change green when a bus approaches. And a full bus way or near separated lane is very obvious visualizes to even the least observant person.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
