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Comment by melling | Hacker News Reader

No one said it would be easy.

Yes, it will require urban planning. Personally, I’d prefer trains/subways to buses.

The future of mass transit should arrive within a decade or so as China finishes developing low-speed maglevs that travel around 100 mph. Oakland out 50 miles should become commutable.

For now, what’s the subway situation from Oakland to downtown San Francisco? Getting people to commute in that direction would be a good start. As well as getting companies to build in Oakland.

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Technology is not important. The reasons to prefer trains and subways are not the technology so much as most buses are running in the same lane as cars and so they have the same limitations. A bus in a truly dedicated lane would work just as well for most purposes, if only we cared about them.

There are a couple advantages to trains/subways over buses, but for the most part they don't apply.

They can be longer: have more riders, which is only important when they come every 5 minutes. When the bus isn't coming every 5 minutes you should address overcrowding by adding more buses which makes the whole system more convenient for the riders.

They run steel on steel which is more energy efficient. While this is a factor, a bus is so much more better than cars we shouldn't count it.

Even with a dedicated lane, there will still be more delays than with a grade separation (subway). Intersections are a bottleneck.

Intersections aren't as much of a factor when the majority of travel is on a freeway.

Are you thinking of dedicated on-ramps and off-ramps as well? Otherwise, I think stops will take a long time due to lane changes.

Not when buses get signal priority.

Signal priority over pedestrians too?

A bus every 5 minutes carries enough people to be worth that, and leaves plenty of space in between for pedestrians to cross. (Assuming a dedicated lane). For various reasons you should get a bus to come more than once every 5 minutes, upgrade to a train. (with great dispatch you can get down to every 3 minutes, but it is better to put in a non-grade level train at that point)

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