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Comment by conroy | Hacker News Reader

As usual, this looks like a half-baked implementation of BRT. They get many things right, including articulated buses, off-vehicle ticket purchase, and raised platforms. However, like most BRT systems in the US, it fails on the most important metric: dedicated lanes. Only half of the route is in exclusive lanes, which means the half the time buses will be fighting traffic.

Instead, we should be aiming to build more BRT like the Orange Line in Los Angeles[0], which operates completely in dedicated lanes.

[0] https://www.metro.net/riding/paid_parking/orange-line/

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Dedicated lanes are a requirement when there's a lot of congestion (and that congestion would block public transport). It's completely unnecessary for most rapid bus lines, especially outside of cities proper.

> Only half of the route is in exclusive lanes, which means the half the time buses will be fighting traffic.

Half dedicated is enormous. How much traffic is there to fight in Utah outside of SLC?

For LA, separate bus lanes make a lot of sense. For Utah (really only SLC), it's really not necessary. When I was in SLC for work, "bad" traffic was when I had to tap the brakes on the freeway at 4pm.

From the article:

> Features like real-time electronic station signs, dedicated bus lanes and traffic signal priority will be added as construction continues.

The question is whether dedicated lanes for 100% of the route is a launch blocker. Remember that portions of the route are more rural and may not have any congestion to deal with.

From what I see, where there is a lack of dedicated lanes the roads are typically quite narrow--very little room for expansion for even a single dedicated lane (aside from the two lanes of regular traffic).

One section of the route is wide enough, but iirc, the residents along this particular segment in Provo fought against the dedicated lane (and won, afaik).

I live in Provo and drive frequently through the construction for the BRT. There will be dedicated lanes where there is typical congestion.

> Only half of the route is in exclusive lanes, which means the half the time buses will be fighting traffic.

Last I heard, the main segment that will not be dedicated in the end is a road used almost exclusively by students who now have free passes.

I don't remember why but I got the impression this last segment was a combination of nimby and challenges of retrofitting an area not meant for it.

My concern for this road isn't the lack of dedicated lane but it probably has the most dangerous behavior, things like impatint jaywalkers cutting into traffic and cars turning onto the road at bad times.

Yes, this is even an issue in places where there is good public transit like Zürich, Switzerland. There are sections where buses share the road and during rush hour it causes the busses to be off schedule. There is even talk to remove the fixed schedule for buses as this happens so frequently.

Sadly a new law passed that forbids the removal of roads in order to provide more dedicated bus lanes. As there is so little place it will be impossible in most places. However buses are sharing light rail space now as well which can be paved yet not allow regular traffic in it.

Pittsburgh has this, too. A dedicated transitway from downtown to the airport. It was a pretty efficient ride when I used it about ten years ago. But at the same time it seemed kind of wasteful.

A good functioning bus lane will feel very wasteful only if it's working as intended and the buses are free-flowing. The entire point is that the buses flow quickly past traffic; you could open up the lane to HOV or cars, but then traffic times would just degrade.

https://la.streetsblog.org/2014/07/08/balancing-cars-cash-an...

> In May 2014, Streetsblog L.A. began to receive tips that Silver Line BRT service along the 110 Freeway was experiencing some problems. So many drivers were taking the toll lanes to the point where the mix of buses, carpools and paying drivers resulted in congestion.

> In some cases, traffic in the express lanes was moving slower than the rest of the 10 Freeway. This congestion impacts all the busway users including buses, carpools, and toll-paying drivers.

The tolls should be raised until a lower amount of cars are around

Which is an efficient economic solution that basically ignores that we have a terrible public transit system and pervasive inequality which would result in the tolls being primarily on the backs of the poorest among us who travel the furthest to work in City centers to be paid the least.

So use the surplus to lower taxes on poor folks?

Like, you can't fight the laws of economics. We don't have to like them, but can't we work within them rather than coming up with economically inefficient solutions which are bad for everyone?

If you read the article I linked, they raised the tolls and used the money to pay for more frequent bus services, and those bus services also ran faster due to the tolls decreasing congestion. So in the end it was pretty equitable given that higher tolls directly funded public transit improvements.

Well many cities have implemented express lanes which raise and lower prices depending on traffic patterns. metro Atlanta has added them with a new reversible express lane; I believe it is elevated its entire length; coming online in a few months.

the problem with any well designed road system is that the people who need it cannot guarantee their needs don't change. this is especially true where both parents work. where a residence might have had a good commute when bought changes in work location can upset the whole process.

Of course, you can't really beat the congestion offered by zero cars in your bus lane.

It may feel wasteful if you're used to seeing packed roads, but if you compare to the common alternative (a train track) it no longer seems so bad.

Look at a line of 60 cars with 1 person each, taking up quarter of a mile. One car every two seconds.

Then look at a bus with 60 people taking up 20 yards. One bus a minute.

Then look at a train 200 yards long with 1000 people every 3 minutes.

Which is more wasteful?

> One bus a minute

The dedicated bus lane we're talking about here appears to have one bus every 30 minutes (GP said it was a line out to the airport). So it's natural to look at a dedicated road lane that sees two vehicles an hour and think "what a waste, would it really hurt to let some cars drive here too?".

But nobody looks at a train track the same way since you're used to seeing train tracks without a bunch of traffic on them.

And yet an extra lane is cheaper to build & maintain. So it's understandable to look at the dedicated lane and think that it's inefficient, when in really it isn't.

> The dedicated bus lane we're talking about here appears to have one bus every 30 minutes

The West Busway doesn't go to the airport and has buses serving the communities it runs through ever few minutes.

> Pittsburgh has this, too. A dedicated transitway from downtown to the airport.

This has never existed. I'm not even sure what you could be thinking off. The West Busway is an old rail-bed, but it only goes a short ways from the city and servers a couple of communities, after that the airport bus uses the highway.

Yes. The west busway ends around halfway between downtown and the airport. It ends just shy of I-79, and uses the parkway (I-376) for the rest.

https://www.portauthority.org/rt/28x.pdf

This has never existed. I'm not even sure what you could be thinking off.

I guess I’m having my first “senior moment.” I remember this quite vividly. I sure hope I’m not confusing it with another city.

I used to keep pretty good expense records back then, so I should have a record of the fare. If not, where do I go to collect my Crazy Old Man badge?

I remember when the Orange Line launched. We used to call it the "Black and Blue Line" because the buses got hit pretty often at intersections. I guess it was confusing for some.

It's also only one single bus route.

This isn't downtown NYC. The point here isn't so much to use space more efficiently as it is to provide a means for people to get around without cars and get a foot in the door for mass transit so that when they do need more mass transit it's easier to do politically (expanding an existing thing vs creating a new thing).

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