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Comment by joe_the_user | Hacker News Reader

Buses have many advantages over subways, especially over trains running at street level (since these can't go much faster than traffic). The main advantage of subways is ironically that they are inflexible - they can't be gutted in times of budget deficit.

And I would suspect this is how Toronto differs from the average American city. American city governments experience periodic budget squeezes that force politicians to gut every service which is gut-able and buses are always a logical target.

And this leads to both buses being abandoned due to unreliability and for the bus lines that do exist to, uh, worthless, run at too infrequent intervals to pick up significant ridership. And this lead to buses having a terrible reputation, reinforcing the cycle of poor ridership.

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Buses have many advantages over subways, especially over trains running at street level (since these can't go much faster than traffic).

That's not necessarily so. Trams (streetcars) in cities, which have old tram networks usually segregate the lines from the parts of the street where privat traffic runs. Very often they also receive signalling priority and while blockage by cars can happen (especially on intersections) trams can run with a quite reliable time table.

I live in a city with one of the - arguably - best public transport systems at least outside of Japan. If anything runs in unreliable intervals (as you learn over announcemets while sitting in a tram) it's bus lines.

Now, if you just build some light rail on an existing road as often happens because public transport is chic nowadays then you run exactly into the problem you describe. But dedicated tram networks are very different and quite reliable.

I read this argument last time so the passage you quote actually take your argument into account. Sure, street level trains can go somewhat faster than cars but not a whole lot. Contrast that Elevated or underground lines, which can go much faster, have express trains and so-forth.

The OP makes a great argument that buses plus medium rail/subways/etc is much better combination to add to a city. I think that argument has to be made more loudly, for the other reason - US planners are bad, if there's a to force them to be better it should be taken. Maybe really smart people do light rail well but the US city doesn't deserve to be trusted to do that.

Houston, a city proud to be without zoning, and where being a "city planner" is barely a notch above a registered sex offender (I wish I were joking), has just voted for the third time to expand LRT transit, and expand Rapid Bus lines, and improve the quality of its bus stops, in a $3.5BB bond measure.

https://www.khou.com/article/traffic/metro-houston-approves-...

On the other side of things, Austin may get a third crack at approving an LRT system next year, but the last two times Austin voters disapproved of LRT. As a result they have a weird heavy commuter rail that runs on a strange schedule, goes almost nowhere, and does not serve the people well.

Buses are slower than getting your car. Metros are faster.

Buses are slower than a car by some amount. A well designed express bus system isn't much slower than however, for longer distances.

Sure an actual Metro-type system, like BART in the SF Bay area, Toronto (apparently) or the various marvelous French systems that exist, these are faster than a car. But you might not have experienced the worthless, pathetic hunks of junk that Americans build and call "light rail", these can manage to be slower even than buses and more expensive and less reliable. The San Jose light rail system is a prime specimen, a "transit system" that barely manages to be faster than walking.

Of course, when I lived in San Rosa, the bus system also had an expected arrival times identical to walking - I tested this often on Google maps in off-hours. Where I live now, the bus comes twice a day so it's a further world of impractical.

Anyway, in America, it's not just that not much money gets put into public transit. it's even just that cities were created around the car. It's that the state, civic fathers, the ruling/managing group, doesn't really think public transit is necessary so much of the money that's allocated can be passed to the rulers' friends since "no one" expects public transit to work.

> especially over trains running at street level (since these can't go much faster than traffic)

Why would trains at street level be limited in speed by traffic? Trains in the UK run at street level and regularly go over a hundred miles an hour.

I mean street cars, trains that run on streets behind and in front of cars.

Many "street cars" have dedicated lanes, and some sometimes run in tunnels and bridges with no intersections with cars at all. So it's worth explaining what you mean up front.

Dedicated lane street cars still can't run >100mph, as chrisseaton seems to suggest.

I live in a city with streetcars with dedicated lanes. They constantly stop and honk at cars that are illegally blocking the dedicated streetcar lane.

There are also "bus only" lanes, except the buses can go around blockages sometimes.

That’s called “streetrunning”.

If you check out YouTube you can find some freight trains that have to do that from time-to-time.

About a hundred years ago, when Toronto’s streetcar was implemented, they made their gauge slightly narrower than train gauge to prevent “trains” from running along streetcar tracks.

They pay for it to this day as it means new streetcars need to be designed for a gauge that nobody else uses.

Turning radii is also an issue. Possibly by design or not...

Pedantic correction: Toronto streetcars and subways are actually slightly wider than standard gauge. The rest of your point is unaffected.

The streetcars are not discussed much in the article, but they may be a large part of both Toronto's moderate transit success and its slowness to adopt real light rail transit.

Streetcars are seen as similar to buses but a bit faster, more comfortable and more reliable. Which suits them well for the busy downtown routes. But plans for suburban LRT routes have been dismissed as "glorified streetcars", even though they would be much faster due to less frequent stops and more signal priority. Since relatively slow downtown streetcars are the only surface rail people know about, they don't get excited about LRT.

It would seem that the geometry of using bogeys/trucks under carriages/cars requires higher radii for wider gauges. But I haven't worked the math.

Are you sure that was the reason they did that? I don't have any evidence, other than that I always assumed it was either cheaper or more practical to have narrower gauges in cities. It seems to be the case for most streetcar networks I've seen...

I think what they mean is what's usually called light-rail or trams--train systems that have at-grade intersections with streets.

I think they mean urban trains, or trams and the like. Intercity trains can of course go as fast as they can.

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