Lest it should seem that I have only bad things to say about Matthew Yglesias and his obviously very excellent blog, let me note that I really liked this post on public busing.
As a devoted bus rider who hates the Bay Area’s commuter rail system (dirty, slow, clearly designed only to serve those going to and from work in downtown San Francisco) and worries about the possibilities for huge amounts of wasted money in putting together the expensive and inflexible infrastructure for commuter rail projects that don’t pan out, I agree with Matt that the fact that public busing is “cheaper, quicker, and more flexible” than rail means that there is very often a lot to recommend it. Buses can also serve much wider areas and stop more often than can rail service, and so can be made to cater more easily to seniors, handicapped persons, and others without the means to get to (and find parking at) train or subway stations.
The central challenge, though, is finding a way to make taking the bus seem attractive – especially in comparison to driving in a car. Having clean, quiet, comfortable, and – of course – sufficiently inexpensive buses is one part of the equation, but there are lots of other things that city planners can do – like reserve bus-only lanes on busy streets, for example – that make a big difference. Here’s Bill McKibben, in his fine new book Deep Economy, talking about the public busing in Curibita, Brazil (read more here and here):
It was [the world's best bus system] not because the fleet used some exotic fuel, but because the buses ran in dedicated lanes and had doors that slid open like those on a train. Spotlights turned green for the buses whenever they approached, and cars were simply out of luck. As a result, passengers could get on and off quickly, the buses knifed through traffic, and soon everyone would taking them. [Mayor Jaime] Lerner had built the equivalent of a subway system at perhaps 10 percent of the cost, and as a result the Curitibanos were using a quarter less energy per capita than other urban Brazilians.
Sadly, the biggest thing standing in the way of implementing this kind of system in the U.S. is that approximately none of the usual interest groups would support it: because it gets in the way of traffic, it would cause a public outcry; because it requires relatively little infrastructure, it wouldn’t generate much support from the development community; because it’s out-of-the-ordinary but still less sexy than light rail, it wouldn’t do much to excite the bureaucrats; and so on. But that doesn’t change the fact that this sort of busing should be right at the top of the list of proposals to revitalize public transportation: I can promise at the very least that nervous, tight-fisted conservatives like myself would be much more inclined toward projects like this one than toward laying down more train tracks. Top-quality busing should, as it’s put in the article Matt cites, be at least a “partner” of rail systems, and not merely a forgotten stepchild.
(Image via Flickrer gmeyervanvoorthuijsen.)
Filed under: transportation, urbanism
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