Hacker News Reader

> the bus is a strictly worse version of the car in these kinds of cities

You can change that by giving them their own lane so they don't get stuck in traffic with the cars, let them go where cars may not go, give priority at traffic lights etc. That is what they do where I live.

It will change the habits of some but it’s not enough. We should continue to build out bus infrastructure and enhance bus rapid transit especially in the ways you mention, but those efforts won’t result in the large change we need to shift away from vehicle-based infrastructure.

> their own lane so they don't get stuck in traffic with the cars, let them go where cars may not go, give priority at traffic lights etc

I feel like we are in agreement. It might not be enough but it is necessary. Problem is we don't even have enough political capital to enforce this. Bill deBalsio the ex mayor of New York came on a radio show and said (paraphrasing) he can't order cops to ticket cars and trucks that are loading or unloading in the bus lane. The bus lane is NOT a business' property for loading and unloading, especially not at busy hours. I'd you must do so, do it when there is no traffic in the middle of the night.

How can we do more when we can't even do the bare minimum?

> Problem is we don't even have enough political capital to enforce this.

The problem is that you're proposing a new problem rather than a solution.

Suppose there are two car lanes and they're somewhat congested. You suggest converting one to a bus lane to encourage people to take the bus. The result is to make the remaining car lane disproportionately more congested, because the bus lane gets 10% of people to take the bus and the other car lane is now 105% over capacity instead of 15% over capacity.

Your theory is that this will cause enough people to take the bus to make this problem go away, but that theory only works if it doesn't. If people taking the bus relieves the congestion then the car lane is uncongested and there is no more reason to take the bus.

So let the car lane be interminably congested, you say. Force people to take the bus. Only the bus doesn't service all destinations, or doesn't run there often enough (because if it did it would be empty), so the bus is no option for those people no matter how bad the car traffic gets. At which point they're prepared to boil you alive for making the traffic worse without giving them any viable alternative to it.

You need to make their lives better, not worse, or you can't win.

this entire monologue boils down to “people want cars and public transit is bad, so don’t improve it and prioritise access” which sounds a lot like you work for ford

It's not that public transit is bad, it's that if you try to make car travel worse without providing people with a viable alternative to it, you will lose at politics. And just sticking a bus lane in there doesn't provide an alternative unless the bus comes at short intervals to the places where people actually travel, which isn't compatible with the geography of most American cities, because at least one of the endpoints will be in the suburbs which lacks the density for viable mass transit.

Unfortunately we built those suburbs without factoring in the real cost of transporting people to and from them. Now those homeowners are real used to that transportation subsidy and are not happy when it is threatened to be taken away. Something is going to give, cities can’t afford it any more.

Plenty of suburban homeowners like myself are happy to never have to go into the city and have been granted this due to work from home. I personally haven’t been downtown in like 6 months. A large percentage of the population who commute to city centers from the suburbs for jobs are probably working office jobs that could be done remotely. The ulterior motives I’ve heard for RTO are that commercial real estate prices are plummeting and city revenues are plummeting because of lack of workers. If that is the case then aren’t the suburbs subsidizing the city?

You’re telling us that buses must be empty, because people won’t take buses, because there aren’t enough buses, because buses would be empty if there are enough buses. Can you spot where the logic breaks down?

I'm telling you that buses must be empty because if they only go along the busiest roads then nobody takes them because their route is sleepy road -> busy road -> sleepy road, and a bus that only travels along the busy road can't pick them up or drop them off. Whereas a bus that travels along the sleepy road will be empty, because it's a sleepy road which only gets one car an hour as it is. These can both be true at once because the sleepy roads outnumber the busy roads in regions where most of the land area is the suburbs.

I agree, but want to add that part of the problem here and why this can occur is because of easy and cheap parking. It’s not strictly the induced demand phenomenon but I think your point is the major factor.

From what I’ve seen in my own reading and world travels is that you have to just stop expanding the roads or working on them outside of necessary maintenance and such. Add bike and bus lanes, make the car lanes smaller (safely) and then let people sort out whether it’s worth it to drive. Finding ways to tax the ever living hell out of or zone away surface parking lots should help too.

Whenever a department of “transportation” or city/regional officials get together in a room to discuss these topics, there should be very little if any discussion about how changes affect drivers.

Come to Edinburgh and the Lothians, it's not perfect but it's better than you might think.

A couple of important aspects:

Once buses are frequent enough, people don't need to worry about the timetable and will just get the next one. Edinburgh's main arterial routes have frequent enough buses to achieve this, even if not every bus goes to the same ultimate destination. Some of the busier bus lines have frequent enough buses all by themselves.

This does mean that there are lots of empty buses off-peak, this may seam wasteful but it's a necessary component of a functional transit system.

We also have a number of "bus gates", as well as bus lanes, with cameras to prevent other vehicles from using bus-only lanes. This lets buses go through residential areas without making them rat runs for car drivers.

Buses and trams (especially trams!) can take a lot more people than cars. If everyone who gets the bus tried to take a car instead then no-one would get anywhere.

And we also give free bus travel to young people, old people, and anyone with a medical condition that means they can't drive.

A combination of a smartphone and free bus travel gives my disabled daughter a lot more freedom than she'd otherwise be able to enjoy.

A city next to me (L.A. area) has some dedicated bus lanes and bike lanes. Unfortunately, they dont have one of the other benefits that you mention, like banning cars in some areas. There are also connections to the train to go farther, but the buses are still mostly empty except for students and laborers who live outside the city. The buses themselves are typically faster and decent, as I ride them a lot. Meanwhile, the other traffic lanes are jam packed during rush hours. It is the L.A. area, so there's just a ton of people/drivers anyway.

The last time I went through there driving, it took almost 20 mins to go 2-3 miles due to traffic (and stop lights), obviously during rush hour. The buses were still nearly empty (I wished I didnt have to drive that day). At a non-rush hour time, it takes me maybe 20 mins for my whole trip home which is about 9 miles.

My point, I guess, is it's not always just having a free bus lane. There are a lot of people that need convincing to take buses and alternative transportation. A few of my coworkers wish they could take the bus/train, but having kids in school and other things make it a bit harder for them.

Maybe one day...

Culver City?

Yes, exactly! Lol I take it you've been or live there? Afternoon traffic is ridiculous and even in surrounding areas like Palms and Mar Vista, which I think are people avoiding Culver City. Just way too many drivers here in general.

You are not wrong - this is where personal, private, transportation excels. And why Culver city desperately needs a quality network of safe, protected, bike infrastructure. Cars don't scale, but bikes do.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. If there was safe and protected infrastructure, I feel a lot more people, including myself, would bike, especially with all the new e-bikes available. I will give Culver City some credit because they do have some dedicated bike lanes but they're not really protected.

When I lived in Santa Monica it was supposedly building a great network of bike lanes. That was twelve years ago…

Santa monica has the best bike network in socal honestly

Well the bar is pretty damn low. There's nowhere I'd really feel safe letting an 8 year old bike to school.

> but the buses are still mostly empty except for students and laborers who live outside the city.

You take the bus so this goes without saying but, let's say a bus is mostly empty and has 8 people inside. If you were to put those 8 people into individual cars, you'd make the road a lot more crowded. I think a lot of folks look at these mostly-empty buses and don't realize that most cars are mostly-empty also (average 1.5 occupants / car in most of the US, honestly probably lower in the LA area due to its sheer car centricity.) But of course if you're in a car you're more likely to view another driver as "someone like you" while you look at the bus and think of it as a waste of space and taxpayer money.

That only makes the bus beat the car if theres traffic on the roads. Cities like columbus don’t gridlock outside osu football games. Highways flow full speed even during rush hour which is actually less than an hour. Its a different planet than socal traffic where both sides of a highway are moving 20mph between 3-7pm

Columbus is one of those cities where the car experience is too nice, highway system built out and roads hardly congest (save for osu football games) . Say you live in worthington and work near downtown perhaps. You will probably be taking 315 or 71 there in like 15 minutes. Even if there was a train line 15 mins walk from your house that took you to downtown, it would probably double your commute at least. Not to mention when its raining or snowing that starts looking not so nice compared to your heated car a ten second walk from the door.

You’re not wrong! What I’m concerned about is with the new developments and population increases (I think it’ll be higher than expected) we should get ahead of our transit needs before we start to have really bad problems. This isn’t accounting for “political” concerns either like climate change.

> the answer lies at least partially converting surface parking lots in downtown areas into economically productive assets like housing or businesses which are also not extractive to the local economy. This density makes it easier to walk and bike as well.

That only answers where new development should go. It does nothing whatsoever for the people who already live in neighborhoods with no (useful) access to public transit.

The increase in appropriate density tends to make public transit solutions more viable [1] and you also (with good zoning practices) can make small businesses more viable too so you walk 5 minutes down the street for your local cafe instead of driving 15 minutes to Starbucks to send profits to Seattle instead.

[1] Car-only infrastructure isn’t viable economically but it’s hard to make that argument in this context because it’s the default and the costs are hidden.