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Comment by mulmen | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a transit engineer but I think this is because we are asking buses to do too much. When a route sends a bendy bus every 10 minutes it's no longer a bus route and is now a really expensive train. The Rapid Rides are packed at rush hour as well. What we need is something like light rail that can go between neighborhoods and then let buses move people within those areas.

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"Expensive trains" seem in style, for whatever reason. There are routes that run buses every 4 minutes here. There are other routes that run every 10m, with electric buses on caternary wires. I'll take a good bus line over a non-existent rail line any day. I love trains but if bus lanes and BRT infra are politically expedient, good enough for me.

Because a bus lane is actually a really cheap train. Construction costs are minimal, your "stations" are generally unmanned, and cheap, and if you need to reroute for construction it generally is much less a big deal. There is basically no point at which subway tracks are cheaper than BRT.

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.

How much does the road repair cost, compared to the tracks? My perception is that tracks last decades with minimal maintenance.

The manned stations are not a distinct factor, by the way. Tram stations are usually not manned either.

Tram tracks last about 35 years here in Zurich, but some of the hotspots have to be redone every 8 years. It also heavily depends on the type of trams you‘re running.

But you have to run a lot more buses to move the same number of people. What is the cost per passenger mile on a bus vs a train?

Trains are going to beat buses on cost per passenger mile on any decently trafficked route, generally to the point of covering their own operating costs.

You don't have to go straight to subway. Surface light rail can use the same stops as buses. All you need is to lay rails on the street, and you get transit that is vastly more comfortable and inviting than buses.

Setting up dedicated lanes and then running a bus on them is just a waste.

Right of way is the majority of the cost, but grade separation is really, really important. If you don't grade separate, every grey crossing is 1 dead person a year, and likely 2 or 3 car crashes[1]. Idiot drivers just can't be trusted around trains, and billing them damages doesn't prevent the issue from recurring (usually just drives people to bankruptcy).

What we can do is steal some of Portland's better ideas, and put up a green wall on either side of the tracks with shrubbery, bollards at every grey crossing (and gates on the pedestrian crossings) to separate the tracks cost effectively.

We can keep the body count low and trains timely, if we change minor things to effectively separate the rail from other modes of transit.

1 - http://www.king5.com/news/local/suv-crashes-into-sound-trans...

A bus every 4 minutes is still generally cheaper (and lower capacity) than a tram or high frequency commuter rail.

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.

We're getting there. Slowly. The 545, the route he mentioned, is the downtown-Seattle-to-Microsoft bus, next in line to be replaced with light rail.

That's a very long route for a bus to serve. Light rail makes the most sense there. What is the ETA on the eastside expansion though?

2023: https://www.soundtransit.org/eastlink

That's really sad since the tracks already exist on the Eastside (it's the "Eastside Rail Corridor") which Sound Transit is bound and determined to pretend does not exist.

> which Sound Transit is bound and determined to pretend does not exist

I think you mean "which Kirkland is bound and determined to ensure never carries trains ever again."

There's a reason why "South Kirkland Station" is actually in Bellevue and the Kirkland City Council is it.

Yet all the candidates for Kirkland City Council talk about their dedication to transit.

They never specify what type of transit. Amazing that.

The line extends from Renton to Bothell. Kirkland is only part of it.

In all the articles in the Seattle Times about light rail, the Sound Transit public relations materials, etc., the Eastside Rail Corridor is never, ever, mentioned. How is it that Kirkland has managed a conspiracy of silence about it?

Kirkland is in favor of what the other cities are doing, which is ripping out the rails and replacing with park amenities (so-called "rails to trails"). They even managed to help defeat an effort by the Ballard Spur Railroad to keep rail service on the corridor.

The city council there has been opposed to rail on the ERC ever since Sound Transit 3 was a gleam in the eye. They've wanted BRT, over Sound Transit's objections, because they deem it more compatible with trail uses and not taking up as much space in the corridor. (And able to be located on the eastern edge of the corridor, preserving views to the west. So, yet again, needed infrastructure takes a back seat to scenery.)

Some links:

https://seattletransitblog.com/2015/11/16/kirklands-brt-desi...

https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/03/12/kirkland-st-strugg...

https://seattletransitblog.com/2016/11/28/kirkland-in-st3/

Thanks for the links. I didn't know about them. Reading them, it's a sad story.

As for ridership, all you have to do is drive that route on 405 during rush hour, which is all day. Downtown Kirkland is gridlocked during rush hour.

The North Lake Washington communities all blow chunks. Asshole bored cops ready to pull you over at a whim, shitty politicians that fight reasonable proposals, and severely crippled infrastructure (No sidewalks, unreliable power, bad internet (due to unenforced franchise agreements), poor sewer availability, etc), every time I head up there it bemuses me that people pay a premium for such poor living conditions.

There isn't even a consistent scheme to the roads up there, they just deadend, with SR-522 being the only arterial (which is totally wrecked 7 hours a day!). Nevermind the shit many of the people that went to school up there had to deal with, makes Seattle Public Schools look reasonable when compared to the shenanigans administrators at those north end schools would play on many of the students they were supposed to be helping.

I hope for those trapped in that area that things get better, but it seems like so many of the newer neighbors in my area are flooding out of the communities on the north end of the lake.

Are several of those extended buses really more expensive than light rail? There's a lot of upfront cost for light rail and if demand changes, routes are pretty inflexible.

Every bus needs a driver and a vehicle with yet another powertrain. I'm not sure what energy consumption is like on a train but I suspect operating costs of all the buses is higher than a train that can cover longer distances. It seems to me a mix is the best solution.

Upfront costs for a train vs bus have to be orders-of-magnitude apart.

Obviously. My comment was about the operating costs.

I read somewhere that the real benefit of trams or light rail tend to come from the fact that they often come with a redesign of the traffic flows, right of way etc. Whilst busses are often stuck in the old traffic jam.

Bus rapid transit is a great compromise. They have special right of ways with dedicated signaling and lanes. But no need to lay rail so costs are much lower.

Short-term, that is correct.

But long-term the maintenance is significantly higher, as you need to replace the road surface very frequently.

A usual bus stop, or a BRT lane, has to be replaced every 6 months if it’s asphalt, and every 18 to 24 months if it’s cobblestone. That’s a significant expense.

While you can build and use light rail for decades.

What about concrete? US interstates can go decades with high truck traffic if they are concrete.

Pure concrete leads to significant shifts between the plates over the years, leading to the well-known bump every time you pass between plates. This obviously affects the bus’s suspension, and passengers, negatively.

Concrete with asphalt on top of it has the issue of the asphalt having to be replaced frequently.

I’m not sure if US interstates with concrete are different, but these were the only options discussed here in Germany.

  They have special rights of way

... which come at the expense of taking away existing universal-use lanes, worsening all other traffic congestion.

Which then gets people on the bus, easing the congestion. This is a well documented effect, where the opposite happens, adding more lanes increases traffic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand#Reduced_demand_...

  a well documented effect

Not really. Had the "road diet" actually resulted in a shift from cars to transit, the transit agencies would show a corresponding increase in their census and farebox return. They didn't.

Okay, you're right about the Wikipedia article not showing an increase in those statistics for mass transit. However, this paper does show a substitution effect for busses: http://clinlawell.dyson.cornell.edu/InTech_public_transit_ch...

However, there is an induced demand effect where because there are less cars, more people will drive. So in effect an extra lane appears, empty of the people riding the bus.

Bus rapid transit, of the sort you find in South America, has a lot of benefits of light rail without the initial startup cost of putting in rails for the reasons you describe: Dedicated rights of way, signal priority, and a lack of speed-killing sharp turns.

Demand almost never changes. Most bus routes are still virtually identical to the streetcar routes they replaced.

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 development demand is not a guarantee, and it can also come at the cost of destroying local businesses which cannot afford the downturn in customers during construction- many of which are small, minority owned sole proprietorships.

As for demand never changing... well, everything changes.

Source: Personal anecdata from living in an area where local government has been pushing more and more light rail development hard, in spite of never actually delivering any of the promised benefits to traffic congestion, ridership levels, community or business development.

Light rail will create demand to live near and locate businesses near the stations.

This is the claim used to advertise these, but do we really see many Amazonians commuting in from Beacon Hill or Georgetown?

As I recall, Seattle zoning actually worked to prevent increased density and parking near transit stations.

I have seen this happen firsthand. It took a few years but the "rail line to nowhere" built near me around 5 years ago has giant housing complexes surrounding every station. It runs over capacity during rush hour now.

I assume this only happens in places where the roads are overloaded though

Can you name examples where this oft-predicted result has actually happened (in the USA, anyway)? That certainly hasn't been the result in the Bay Area.

Chicago and "El" train stops.

Bethesda, Maryland. It was very sleepy before it became a metro stop. In the last 30 years it had a crap ton of development mostly centered around the metro.

Actually... Can you name a few places in a metro area that didn't experience such a boom after a transit stop was introduced? In the bay area even? I feel like I have only ever seen examples of it being good for retail, restaurants, home values.

Metro considers itself traditional fixed rail, not light rail.

  a metro area that didn't experience such a boom

I was responding to the specific claim "Light rail will create demand to live near and locate businesses near the stations." The point isn't about whether a broad area benefits from rail (vs. no rail at all) but whether adding light rail to a fully built-out environment will drive more dense business development near the added rail and because of the addition of rail. I don't know of any USA data that supports that.

Ok. I thought you meant transit in general.

Take a ride from the Seattle airport to downtown on the light rail sometime, then. You will see a lot of nice looking apartments that didn't used to be there. And you will see some less nice neighborhoods interspersed.

Columbia City is a perfect example of this

Definitely didn’t happen in Houston. There was a spike of enthusiasm but light rail proximity has almost no effect on property values.

Houston is a bit too spread out. Where can you get to on the rail?

Is Houston's light rail actually useful? Last I knew it really only ran from one end of downtown to the other.

Denver. Lots of high density developments near the light rail and A line (technically commuter rail) stops.

It definitely happened in Portland when they ran the Orange line. We were house-hunting a year or two before the new light rail opened, and realtors showing houses along its route were already starting to make a point of mentioning it.

As soon as it actually opened, neighborhoods that could use it suddenly got a lot more desirable (read: expensive).

It's happening in advance of the Beltline transit in Atlanta. The Beltline has been building out park/trail and surrounding neighborhoods are doing very well. The light rail is currently just a promise.

This certainly happens very obviously in European cities. It’s possible that it happens less so in the US for cultural reasons, I suppose.

In Seattle at least, I would expect the implicit suggestion to upzone near a light rail station would be at least as important as greater land value from demand. I'm not sure how much a light rail station induces Seattle to upzone -- I've heard mixed reports.

Busses have higher operating costs per trip/mike/other measures, because there are way more drivers per rider vs rail. They’re obviously less expensive capital cost.

The sad truth is that many cities around the world had light rail 50 years ago, they removed them saying that buses were much flexible and better and now they are bringing them back.

Did they have light rail or did they have trolleys/street cars? Light rail carries significantly more people and is separated from the road.

In places that kept them trolleys/street cars slowly morphed into light rail, some is separated from the road but much of it is still shared. The distinction isn't so cut and dry.

There are a multitude of answers. All require space. And building any of them will spike the problem for a time.

That said, I think we are getting there. I'm somewhat confident that the current problems are the spike.

Agreed, I just wish the light rail expansions weren't going to take 20 years. We need those lines yesterday.

The Eastside Rail Corridor, from Renton to Bothell, has existed for more than 50 years. It even still has tracks on it.

I find it infuriating that Renton asked for nothing in the ST3 bill, and Kirkland was swayed by a small group of activists into asking SoundTransit not to use the Cross Kirkland Corridor.

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