Silicon Valley Could Offer a Public Bus Commute That's Quicker Than Driving
citylab.com
citylab.com
With all of that said, it will be interesting to see how the LRT changes things. Right now it is causing headaches, so the proof will be once the line is up and running.
Generally, yes, driving will always beat a bus. Train is always the way to go, as there is no traffic on the tracks (a majority of the time).
To me, it's a common misconception that driving is quicker. In Chicago, driving is almost never quicker (due to traffic), and regardless, it's always wasted time. You can't DO anything while you're driving. Taking the bus or the L, at least you can work on what you need to work on.
Come on, that's not even the slightest bit true.
You can get in a car and be almost anywhere interesting in 20 minutes without traffic, whereas you would need 5-10 minutes just to get to a CTA stop and wait for the bus/train.
Public transit is only ever faster than driving during rush hours in heavily trafficked areas.
Parking got quicker in Chicago since the metered fares went through the roof, but it can still easily dominate the total travel time, as leaving and entering large multi-floor parking structures downtown takes a really long time.
Or visit a friend in Wicker Park by car and try to find street parking somewhere near their place.
You must just be really lucky or really skilled at parking.
I don't have much experience with going to the zoo on Saturdays, but I have been to Lincoln Park during Chipotle Cultivate, and again, parking was a few blocks away on Clark.
Call it bullcrap if you like, that's been my experience.
The point is, bus shouldn't need to share traffic with cars. A bus system should always flow in a dedicated lane, except for the most capillary streets in low-traffic areas.
Not doing so is inefficient and, of course, will always hinder public transportation.
A bus ride just takes longer: walking to the stop,
waiting for the bus, picking up passengers, all while
toughing out the same traffic as cars. But when transit
is done well, the time gap shrinks, and when it's done
really well—with frequent service, all-door boarding, and
exclusive lanes—the gap can disappear entirely.Sadly the rest of the US considers buses to "be working solutions." (For shuffling around poor people)
No. The big advantage of driving is reliability: I know that my means of transportation will be there, where I left it, at any time that I want it. How many of us have missed the CalTrain by a few minutes, only to have to wait an hour till the next one comes by?
Unfortunately, underutilized transit options are subject to a vicious cycle wherein it's impossible to justify running more frequent service for low ridership, and lack of frequent service suppresses ridership. Once you do have a strong public transit culture, it builds on itself and makes investment in frequency an obvious choice (not just for convenience but because you need more buses/trains to fit more passengers!)
Most likely none will be on your bus route. Suburbia in the US is built for the car, not for walking or public transport. So most likely the (right) grocery store won't be near your house (nor your place of work). The restaurant or bar where you'd want to meet your friend will most likely be in another town nearby (but not on your route). And the (movie) theatre will be in the outskirts, next to the highway.
Good luck changing all that.
VTA's rapid bus (the 522) runs every 15 minutes at rush hour, and the non-rapid one runs every 11. Off-hours is every 20-30 for each, but that's still 2-3x as often as Caltrain.
Work completed a year after I moved out of Benicia the second time when I was 16. Originally estimated to cost $286 million, the final tally was $1.3 billion.
I do, however think a road diet on El Camino would be nice. As someone who lives within 2 blocks, it's really unpleasant to have cross 84'+ of asphalt to get to the other side of the street. 10' traffic lanes and separated bike lanes would go a long way to making it more livable.
As it is, the 522 doesn't stop anywhere close to my house, so would require biking to a stop. I believe the BRT stops are the same as the 522?
I'm a member of the autonomous vehicle church. I think a fleet of self-driving cars absolutely blows away any bus system. And that's without roads specialized for the self driving car. Once you start custom crafting intersections it just gets even better.
* Time. Lets be optomistic and say they are perfected in 5 years time AND can be added to new cars for minimal cost then then it'll be say 2030 before all the cars on the road have them (assuming laws outlaw manual cars when 90% of people are using driverless ones)
* Now at that point we are going to assuming that driverless cars are so good that they get twice the efficiency on your local road and highways resemble NASCAR races (without the 5% chance of a crash each trip)
* The problem is that now since driving is so easy the amount of traffic goes up so you are back where you were previously. Anywhere with enough traffic to have problems already has a tonne of latent demand just sitting around ready to generate more journeys.
Note:
* 5 years is really optimistic for driverless car perfection
* 10 years is to ban all manual cars?
* Ever tried crossing a NASCAR raceway on foot?
* Your assuming driverless vans/buses won't also happen. Share your rid cost with a dozen others, semi-fixed routes (easier to survey/programme), fleet management.
This is one of the interesting advantages a public transit system has over a self-driving fleet of cars (which, incidentally, I also look forward to). Mass transit depends on the concept of "stops" or "stations". The way people get between destinations (like their home, the shop, etc.) and the transit station is largely by walking. Thus, mass transit necessarily builds in pedestrian friendliness.
This isn't true for cars, which do not have such nexi. (Indeed, this lack is generally agreed to be an advantage.) This means that such designs will have to deliberately include pedestrian friendliness in order to have it, rather than being forced into it by the facts of the design requirements.
I'm not saying it's a sufficient advantage for one or the other, but it's a definite thing.
I don't think that's true. This is likely one of those problems whose solution accelerates after introduction.
Let's assume that 99% of the problem is solved (probably not, but we're worst-casing here). The problem is that you need to stumble on a 1% case and fail in order to fix that bug. At this point, I suspect that we're probably limited by the fact that buggy cases just aren't coming up often enough for the small number of autonomous vehicles that exist.
Look at what happened in the DARPA challenge. The first year, nobody got anywhere. It didn't take very long until that challenge went from nobody completed to worrying about things actually moving too quickly.
Now, you could postulate that we'll go smaller with AVs, or we'll develop ways to reconfigure vehicles on demand to synthesize a larger vehicle. But those things are not as clearly on the horizon as an immediate post-AV situation where traffic patterns remain roughly the same(ease of trips encourages more trips per day, cancelling efficiencies), but per-vehicle usage rates are up(due to better sharing). In that situation, we get better safety and convenience, and future zoning will require less parking...i.e. you get a global spike in density, which motivates better transit.
2 years ago, I would have advocated ripping up el Camino and putting BART underneath, all the way from San Jose to Millbrae.
Now, we can do the same route with BRT for much less money. Why would I advocate this? It's still a waste, but much less money than something like light rail, which is a disaster.
So, go ahead, spend some small millions on BRT, but at least make it cheap to rip out in ten years.
Relaxing the constraints on time and distance will (my guess) vastly increase the number of people that want to go on a similar route as me. Therefore depending on how many people get matched up the system can intelligently assign the right type of vehicle (small car, SUV, small bus, big bus).
My plan for 2040 was to step outside and not see a single freaking personal use car, or bus (stop|lane). Surely we'll have figured out a sane solution by then to commuting?
In the BEST CASE it could OCCASIONALLY beat cars 26 years from now. Is that some kind of joke? I mean seriously now.
I don't know if they have plans to expand to San Jose.