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Comment by wwweston | Hacker News Reader

> it's only benefit is bragging rights since it can never be faster than ordinary traffic

Since the author is including LA's rail system in his stats, I'll just say that this is not correct here. Metro Rail lines are frequently faster than surface traffic along close parallel routes and often faster than with-flow freeway traffic, which is not particularly surprising considering that at most crossings they're either given bridges, tunnels, or signal-protected right-of-way.

You could argue that we could do the same thing with buses, but to the extent that a bus line requires special infrastructure to support the more efficient travel, any cost-efficiency advantage is likely to narrow or disappear.

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I think all that matters is if a transit system has exclusive right of way lanes that doesn't interference from the general road network is what would make it fast. If it uses busses, light rail or heavy rail, the difference is only throughput.

For many people although LRT means a train sharing the road, sometimes, which make them as slow as busses, for a lot more money for something that doesn't have the same throughput demands, which I agree when I've tried out sf muni.

Agreed. Portland's light rail is quick until you get to downtown, where it shares the road with cars. Where I lived at one point, taking the bus was much faster. Additionally every train line has to cross one particular bridge, which is a massive choke point. A subway or elevated would be much quicker.

I'm staring at an Orange Line train outside my window that crosses the Tilikum but doesn't cross the Steel, but yeah, Red/Blue/Green are bottlenecked there. The contrast between the lines that go over the Steel bridge and the lines that don't are kind of my point, though.

The orange line becomes the yellow line, which also crosses the Steel bridge.

But the Orange line still terminates at PSU, and it also sometimes becomes the Green at PSU. You also don't have to stay on the train past city center, and Steel Bridge raises don't affect the intended Orange Line service to and from city center; trains just circulate at Union to minimize delays.

That's by design, which is my point. The Yellow and bus lines across the Steel are always affected more than the Orange line, and the ability to terminate at Union on a bridge raise allows for bus transfers over other bridges—it's integrated to play to the strengths of combining bus, streetcar, and LRT, and minimize the weaknesses of the Steel bottleneck. It's also why it's not just a Yellow line extension south.

Actually Los Angeles cut bus service for light rail expansions (which some say severely hurt ridership). So it's a perfect example supporting the author.

Regarding being stuck in traffic: there's plenty of downtown streetcars without dedicated lanes stuck in traffic built around 2010s.

> Los Angeles cut bus service for light rail expansions (which some say severely hurt ridership).

Are we talking about cutting bus routes along light rail routes, or are we talking cutting bus service connecting to / or outside of light rail routes?

> So it's a perfect example supporting the author.

If true, it can support the author's point that past a certain municipal density a good public transit system needs robust bus service as much or more than it needs rail backbones, which I agree with.

It doesn't speak to the central point of my comment above, however, which is that rail is not merely a luxury, it's often much more efficient in terms of the speed with which it moves its passengers, and necessarily so unless the same sort of infrastructure built to support it is built to support a bus, likely approaching similar costs per passenger mile.

> Regarding being stuck in traffic: there's plenty of downtown streetcars without dedicated lanes stuck in traffic built around 2010s.

I assume this is not LA talking about LA any more.

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