How Seattle Got More People to Ride the Bus

And the required infrastructure for light rail creates more demand for development along the line, as the rail itself signals more permanence to developers: they do not worry about it moving in a decade, like a bus route could.

The big issue with the Cheap Trains of busses is the lack of commitment that is otherwise nice for transit authorities is not an advantage for real estate. BRT just doesn't indicate commitment to the route enough to really boost property. This is why even though tram lines are basically just busses that can't get out of the way they have a much more marked effect on real estate and neighborhood development.

For instance, here there are a couple of bus routes which do every 6 minutes or so at peak times; each bus takes 80 people. However, the tram lines run every 4 minutes at peak times; each tram takes 360 people.

It's because it's a reverse commute, and so while everyone is trying to get into the city I'm trying to get out. The bus would be pretty good if I lived south of Northgate and worked in the city.

After driving for 6 months, I moved across the street from my workplace (literally). Since then, I've moved onto another job in Redmond, which is just 15 minutes down 520. And the traffic on that part of 520 is so good that half of the drivers go 70 until they reach Microsoft.

When I worked downtown in SF, the options were clear. Take transit or deal with ridiculous traffic and costs of close to $600 a month.

Now that work south of SF, I can either take the company shuttle, which takes 40 min and if I miss it, I have to wait another hour. Or, drive my car which takes 20 min and I can arrive/leave whenever I please. Easy decision.

You can't fault people for making a rational choice.

In my area, public transit is something that people who don't use it themselves love to criticize others for not using, either.

It's little used specifically because it is badly planned and operated with an eye toward political positioning, not serving would-be passengers.

Do you pay tolls for all the roads you use? Do you pay to park at the store? Do you pay for other's care for their emphezama? Will you buy their flooded house? Do you pay for the funerals of dead walkers and cyclists? Will you pay for new habitat for the wildlife displaced by roads?

Now, I have significantly better bus service with dedicated lanes into downtown, and for last mile hops it is easy to grab a bike and go.

WRT Transparency, lets pass through all costs to the end user and let people decide! Do you want to pay $1 to cross the Ballard Bridge each way in a car? How about $4.50 for any mass transit mode? Or $1 for a bike for an hour?

Hiding the true cost of infrastructure, whether its through free parking, subsidized roads, or reduced fares is wrong, people should know what it costs and be able to choose freely!

Can you please clarify on how you've arrived on the idea that it's the transit agencies specifically that are causing this? I lived in the Seattle/Tacoma area for a few years back, and acted as both a driver and a transit rider; the traffic was horrible seemingly regardless of whichever you were. Much of I5 going between Tacoma and Seattle was just at capacity, especially heading to Seattle where you're on a raised roadway above the bay - I'm not really sure what you can do to improve this short of trying to find ways to lower the total number of vehicles on the road, which is really only possible if you're moving more people in less vehicles or providing outlet paths that get you to the same destination.

There are just tons of people driving I5, and the effect can be felt as far as Tacoma on the weekends; I'm not really sure that it's a failure of the transportation department or the fault of anything except excess wealth and urban sprawl putting more cars on the road. Even in sections where there isn't an HOV lane, one accident, slow driver, anything put traffic to a crawl. Tacoma doesn't have the HOV lanes (unless this has changed in the last 3 years) in the parts closest to the city and it's still a slog every single day from 0700-1000 and 1530-1730 on I5.

Like, I get in essence what you're saying to some degree - make the full unsubsidized cost transparent, which sure, I agree with that as long as the subsidies remain in place. Removing the transit isn't the solution here, because the overall traffic flow just seems to be inhospitable to the current traffic situation in the Greater Seattle area. More carpooling, proper rideshare solutions (Uber is not ridesharing), or more public transit use is pretty much your only option for reducing such traffic. The current path I5 takes was not chosen well as it doesn't allow for expansion at its choke points.

Says the guy who apparently has no fucking clue how expensive the unsubsidized cost of driving is and is complaining about mere hundred dollar car tabs. Get back to me when you’re paying the $6/gallon gas taxes and $20/day congestion charges and $10 bridge tolls and $8/hr parking costs, and we’ll see how many drivers are left.

The core reason why transit is so heavily subsidized is because we have so many buses running empty, and the reason so many buses run empty is because entitled assholes refuse to take any mode except their single occupancy vehicles and then lose their minds and beat down politicians’ doors any time we suggest raising taxes to pay for all their driving. Transit is literally subsidized because cars are subsidized. Make drivers pay their costs and transit will be way more sustainable.

Is the data behind that available anywhere as an api or anything? I was trying to find a way to parse out some stuff for a project at home, and access to the times in say, json, would be helpful.

Thanks!

I've relied upon the various forms of One Bus service from 2008-present and it is immensely useful.

I notice on onebusaway.org that the system is now used by other cities, including NYC, Washingon D.C., and Tampa Bay. Do other large cities generally use some kind of competing, comparable proprietary system, or do bus riders in most cities have no way of getting real-time bus data online?

It was dishonest at best, at worst it's a fraud.

Just based on my personal experience, I think there may be some correlation, possibly due to the fact that bicycle commuters tend to be from higher income brackets, and that lower-income folks often see efforts to support bicycling as both a symptom and cause of gentrification that does not do anything to help them personally as they are less likely to be bicyclists themselves.

Just my two cents.

Likewise, “flexibility” is precisely the issue here. Why should a train carrying 800 people have effectively the same priority as a car that carries one, maybe two or three people?

I know that it’s tantalizing to think that cheap tunneling can solve this issue, but you are just outsourcing the fundamental problem that traffic exists because people want to go places.

A good example is going to the airport. People need to get off, unload their luggage, and there’s only one place you can do it, at the departures terminal. No amount of self-driving is going to solve the problem that the transport vehicle needs to stop, let these people off with their luggage, and start again.

People don't like taxes either :) Boring is expensive, boring more is more expensive. And to achieve the same throughput of people you'll need something like forty times the number of lanes; just imagine trying to get all these cars entering and leaving the tunnel the same time as a single bus: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3662/3398936283_f32ac7d42a_o....

An alternative would be to have trains with platforms with regular seats, and platforms for transporting cars (like Amtrack's Auto Train, but open). Then people willing to pay for the extra space could do so.

You could give each person a comfortable chair and 5 square feet of desk space and you'd still be vastly more space-efficient than a bunch of cars.

Sure, if the 50 people on the bus all buy used beaters you'll probably come out ahead, but once you start thinking about the real cost of the land in big cities needed to park those 50 cars it gets expensive real fast, and that's before factoring in extra load on the road system and other externalities.

[1] https://londonist.com/2013/05/new-bus-for-london-cost-reveal...

[1]https://www.thoughtco.com/bus-cost-to-purchase-and-operate-2...

It's possible to get incrementally better though. LA is building more and more metro lines, because they're working.

> Maybe some other way of city living can be a great also. Let humanity try it out. There are lots of cities in the world.

Building in a sprawling, car-oriented way has been tried though, and it's resulted in cities that aren't very nice to live in. At what point do we draw a line under it and say the experiment has failed? I'm all for having city design experiments, but at some point we have to put those experiments into practice and use the results to create more livable cities.