One thing I wish were discussed more are smaller vans. In NYC, these "dollar vans" run on routes that are either underserved by the quirks of the subway and bus map, or where people just need cheaper, more reliable service. They carry 10 or 12 passengers at a time, and crucially, when they fill up they don't stop for more passengers. Now, the drivers are probably not making anywhere near as much as an MTA driver, they're not accessible to the disabled, etc. But what if you just licensed them in general at a pretty reasonable rate, required some vehicle and sobriety checks, and made their maps official?
Matt, would it be possible for you to open your article "Fancy stations make quality mass transit harder" to the public? I shared this one in the Brookline Town Forum FB group and would love to be able to share that article as part of that discussion.
Urban transit and buses in particular are best viewed as a necessary public utility that is useless for most people's transportation needs but necessary for some. The argument for designing core routes with frequent buses fails on many levels. It basically ignores the transportation needs of people off these routes who do need it. As far as bus stop spacing goes it also ignores the needs of riders who have mobility issues. Four hundred yards may seem like a snap to a young able person but is quite daunting to someone using a walker to get there. Accessibility for such people I beg you to note is enshrined in law.
I actually think more time needs to be spent explaining and diagramming the "geometry problem" part, because I think in a country like the US (and we could actually include Canada and Australia as well), most places are so low-density and car-oriented (for generations), that the typical person might not have an intuitive sense of this, and so can be distracted by shiny objects like Elon Musk's Loop concept, which purports to solve this problem but does not and most likely worsens it. I even think the top commenter glossed over this point which is why he asked the question he did.
"How close should bus stops be? The best practices drawn from Europe suggest 400 meters (about a quarter of a mile)"
This is very grade dependent. Steep grades require closer stops. In San Francisco, neighborhoods like Nob Hill, Russian Hill, and parts of Pacific Heights have stops every two blocks because there are a significant number of people who cannot walk far on very steep hills.
San Francisco is a mostly bus city, and the system works fairly well. The metro is limited to Market Street, and street cars are more extensive but much more limited than the bus system. Many buses are electric with overhead wires, so they are quiet and have no exhaust. Yes, it is easy to complain about Muni, but it works pretty well.
While this is overall a great article, I’m disappointed you did not address the fact that the bus is supposed to serve poor people with limited mobility. They probably can’t drive or afford a car, they can’t afford Uber, and they can’t hop on a scooter. THOSE are the people who need more stops, because they can’t walk very far.
This issue was raised in San Francisco when all the newfangled “last mile” transport options showed up, because they siphon off bus ridership. For the record, I absolutely adore our ebikes, which are integrated with our public transportation system. But I’m relatively young and fit.
It seems like you should have local buses with many stops for those who take the bus because that’s literally their only option, and express buses on the same line.
Reading this, it's a very obvious solution and I'm kind of surprised that Matt's original post doesn't really address a mix of express and local service...
Many of the ideas in this article have been around a while. I took a transportation economics class that discussed max ridership vs coverage and congestion pricing. The analysis is mostly worked out. Decisions though are largely based on politics and values.
For example, why choose coverage vs max ridership. How about access by all ages and abilities (a phase used often in multi-modal transportation)? If you believe strongly in this kind of access you fund a lot of public transportation in low demand (but by people who are seen as underprivileged) parts of the demand distribution.
I’m increasingly believing we need more intellectual diversity in our political leadership. Sure have the person who believes in “all ages and abilities” but also have the data driven person.
The challenge is people arguing values often use their arguments to shut up the data people. Basically, if you don’t agree with me it’s because you’re a bad person.
Getting the diversity and inclusion community to accept intellectual diversity would be an improvement and help get people like me (and I would imagine others who subscribe to Matt) onboard. And the people they bring on board would help make things work better.
I love your work. I had to look up the meaning of ADU. Would having Marc The Intern spell out acronyms like this detract from the Yglesias authenticity (Ygthenticity) of the articles?
I've had some discussions in NYC about the frequency and coverage of the routes. I often get the response that it's motivated by easy access for senior citizens. To what extent is this true?
I think we should consider solutions for senior citizens, but presume that optimizing commuter routes for them will make them ineffective for almost everyone else (frequency of stops, over-broad coverage, door-to-door service).
There are some cool before/after click-and-drag map things, and it seems like at least some of the principles endorsed on slowboring are being proposed.
Yesterday's post was all dry, technocratic wonkery about race, murder and cops. A big yawn, and my eyes glaze over.
So, in order to get people riled up and yelling at each other in the comments section, Yglesias throws us some juicy red meat transit-blogging. That gets the tempers flaring!
Try to play nice, everyone. I mean, it's a gut-punch, reading about European routing protocols and square footage of lane capacity and all. It's no wonder that people have a hard time sticking to facts and reasoned argument when the subject-matter is so inflammatory.
"Most American cities design their bus networks to maximize coverage — they want to make a map that has lines all over it showing that no matter where you live, there’s a bus for you."
About 15 years ago I interviewed with a software company that specialized in providing analytics to transit companies. One of the big things they emphasized at that time, is that much of this is due to federal requirements that (in order to qualify for certain subsidies at least), the providers have to get within a certain distance of any resident with a disability OR provide some kind of supplemental service that will reach within that distance.
I've since lost all recollection of the details, and it's certainly possible they've changed since then, but probably not towards being more efficient.
The coverage-oriented bus system is a lifeline for the desperately poor. In a city that is left-wing enough to value transit adoption, it is really unlikely that you will be able to take resources from the desperately poor and spend them on convenience for middle- and upper-middle-class commuters. If the bus system in a progressive city gets more money, it’s going to get spent on new lifeline routes for as-yet-uncovered poor neighborhoods. Not alleviating crowding between literati-class neighborhoods and their downtown offices.
One thing I wish were discussed more are smaller vans. In NYC, these "dollar vans" run on routes that are either underserved by the quirks of the subway and bus map, or where people just need cheaper, more reliable service. They carry 10 or 12 passengers at a time, and crucially, when they fill up they don't stop for more passengers. Now, the drivers are probably not making anywhere near as much as an MTA driver, they're not accessible to the disabled, etc. But what if you just licensed them in general at a pretty reasonable rate, required some vehicle and sobriety checks, and made their maps official?
Matt, would it be possible for you to open your article "Fancy stations make quality mass transit harder" to the public? I shared this one in the Brookline Town Forum FB group and would love to be able to share that article as part of that discussion.
Urban transit and buses in particular are best viewed as a necessary public utility that is useless for most people's transportation needs but necessary for some. The argument for designing core routes with frequent buses fails on many levels. It basically ignores the transportation needs of people off these routes who do need it. As far as bus stop spacing goes it also ignores the needs of riders who have mobility issues. Four hundred yards may seem like a snap to a young able person but is quite daunting to someone using a walker to get there. Accessibility for such people I beg you to note is enshrined in law.
I actually think more time needs to be spent explaining and diagramming the "geometry problem" part, because I think in a country like the US (and we could actually include Canada and Australia as well), most places are so low-density and car-oriented (for generations), that the typical person might not have an intuitive sense of this, and so can be distracted by shiny objects like Elon Musk's Loop concept, which purports to solve this problem but does not and most likely worsens it. I even think the top commenter glossed over this point which is why he asked the question he did.
"In a city with good land use policy (i.e., no actually existing American city) ...."
Oregon cities are American!
"How close should bus stops be? The best practices drawn from Europe suggest 400 meters (about a quarter of a mile)"
This is very grade dependent. Steep grades require closer stops. In San Francisco, neighborhoods like Nob Hill, Russian Hill, and parts of Pacific Heights have stops every two blocks because there are a significant number of people who cannot walk far on very steep hills.
San Francisco is a mostly bus city, and the system works fairly well. The metro is limited to Market Street, and street cars are more extensive but much more limited than the bus system. Many buses are electric with overhead wires, so they are quiet and have no exhaust. Yes, it is easy to complain about Muni, but it works pretty well.
While this is overall a great article, I’m disappointed you did not address the fact that the bus is supposed to serve poor people with limited mobility. They probably can’t drive or afford a car, they can’t afford Uber, and they can’t hop on a scooter. THOSE are the people who need more stops, because they can’t walk very far.
This issue was raised in San Francisco when all the newfangled “last mile” transport options showed up, because they siphon off bus ridership. For the record, I absolutely adore our ebikes, which are integrated with our public transportation system. But I’m relatively young and fit.
It seems like you should have local buses with many stops for those who take the bus because that’s literally their only option, and express buses on the same line.
Reading this, it's a very obvious solution and I'm kind of surprised that Matt's original post doesn't really address a mix of express and local service...
Many of the ideas in this article have been around a while. I took a transportation economics class that discussed max ridership vs coverage and congestion pricing. The analysis is mostly worked out. Decisions though are largely based on politics and values.
For example, why choose coverage vs max ridership. How about access by all ages and abilities (a phase used often in multi-modal transportation)? If you believe strongly in this kind of access you fund a lot of public transportation in low demand (but by people who are seen as underprivileged) parts of the demand distribution.
I’m increasingly believing we need more intellectual diversity in our political leadership. Sure have the person who believes in “all ages and abilities” but also have the data driven person.
The challenge is people arguing values often use their arguments to shut up the data people. Basically, if you don’t agree with me it’s because you’re a bad person.
Getting the diversity and inclusion community to accept intellectual diversity would be an improvement and help get people like me (and I would imagine others who subscribe to Matt) onboard. And the people they bring on board would help make things work better.
Somehow I doubt that “I’m gonna get you out of your car and onto a bus” would be a winning campaign theme for a local politician.
I love your work. I had to look up the meaning of ADU. Would having Marc The Intern spell out acronyms like this detract from the Yglesias authenticity (Ygthenticity) of the articles?
I've had some discussions in NYC about the frequency and coverage of the routes. I often get the response that it's motivated by easy access for senior citizens. To what extent is this true?
I think we should consider solutions for senior citizens, but presume that optimizing commuter routes for them will make them ineffective for almost everyone else (frequency of stops, over-broad coverage, door-to-door service).
I don't much care about this, because I don't ride buses, but I received an email about this yesterday:
https://www.miamidade.gov/global/transportation/better-bus-project.page
There are some cool before/after click-and-drag map things, and it seems like at least some of the principles endorsed on slowboring are being proposed.
Enjoy!
Yesterday's post was all dry, technocratic wonkery about race, murder and cops. A big yawn, and my eyes glaze over.
So, in order to get people riled up and yelling at each other in the comments section, Yglesias throws us some juicy red meat transit-blogging. That gets the tempers flaring!
Try to play nice, everyone. I mean, it's a gut-punch, reading about European routing protocols and square footage of lane capacity and all. It's no wonder that people have a hard time sticking to facts and reasoned argument when the subject-matter is so inflammatory.
"Most American cities design their bus networks to maximize coverage — they want to make a map that has lines all over it showing that no matter where you live, there’s a bus for you."
About 15 years ago I interviewed with a software company that specialized in providing analytics to transit companies. One of the big things they emphasized at that time, is that much of this is due to federal requirements that (in order to qualify for certain subsidies at least), the providers have to get within a certain distance of any resident with a disability OR provide some kind of supplemental service that will reach within that distance.
I've since lost all recollection of the details, and it's certainly possible they've changed since then, but probably not towards being more efficient.
There's a close connection to the "Defund the police" debate as well. Someone was shot to death on a bus near Seattle recently (https://www.king5.com/article/news/crime/one-dead-everett-bus-shooting/281-b9532ec6-0fba-4fee-9f61-c25a95610768). That kind of thing makes it harder to choose taking the bus! Crime generally makes it harder to pool resources; it's poison to all aspects of a decent society.
I'm not even looking for these, but now they stand out. An old man just got stabbed in the chest on a bus near Seattle: https://komonews.com/news/local/60-year-old-man-stabbed-in-chest-on-king-county-metro-bus
The coverage-oriented bus system is a lifeline for the desperately poor. In a city that is left-wing enough to value transit adoption, it is really unlikely that you will be able to take resources from the desperately poor and spend them on convenience for middle- and upper-middle-class commuters. If the bus system in a progressive city gets more money, it’s going to get spent on new lifeline routes for as-yet-uncovered poor neighborhoods. Not alleviating crowding between literati-class neighborhoods and their downtown offices.