Public transit

The reason the road map leading to the best public transit system is hard to follow for cities that aspire to greatness is due to the fact that people like M.S. are not speaking in the halls of Congress as a representative. Think about it. Appropritate technology is available but not utilized because of politics.

People like M.S. do not serve in the House of Representatives because serving in a government system that does not represent the needs and the wants of the people is like a bad transit system.

If there was such a thing as public transit that's cheaper, cleaner, and easier to use than private cars,i.e a system that connects counties to counties, weaving through cities where people can board conviently, enabling them to travel from state to state and accross the country, Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation would ruin it, making it user unfriendly, unless you think what they have done to air travel is a blessing of liberty.

Buses are not necessarily more confusing. It all depends on how the lines are set up. In San Francisco, for instance, most of the lines run in a straight line, often travelling only on a single street. Besides having a number, each line is also named after the street consisting primarily of its route. It's always obvious where you are going. The 38 Geary runs the entire length of Geary Street, while the 29 Sunset runs the length of Sunset Boulevard, and so on. That the lines form in a grid also gives the system a measure of redundancy. If you happen to miss a bus, you always know that there's another line going running parellel to the street you're on a few blocks down.

As to the rail itself being a physical promise of service, that's an irrelevant point. An explicit message promising service in the near future is clearly much more powerful. At metro stations, there typically are electric signs showing the expected arrival times of trains and/or the information is broadcasted over the PA system. The same can be done for bus stations, as we see in San Francisco. The drop in price of GPS hardware and blanket coverage of cellular network means such a feature can be cost-effectively implemented.

The trams in the photo look like they are in Vienna - a city with one of the most marvelously well-thought-out and effective systems of public transit to be found anywhere.

Is there anything better on a cool, rainy day, as you leave the cafe, or beerstube, or heuriger, after an enjoyable evening out with your main squeeze and some old friends, than to find a good old reliable red and white strassenbahn car coming up the rails, ready to carry you all, warm and safe and dry, home again to bed...

Wien.
Immer so schon.

What a wonderful, civilized, place to live.

For a more subtle understanding of my views on the aesthetic dimensions of public transport, see my review of Darrin Nordahl's book here: http://www.humantransit.org/2009/04/the-disneyland-theory-of-transit.html

This is Jarrett Walker, author of the book Human Transit and the blog humantransit.org. Please note that I'm a transit planning consultant (jarrettwalker.com) but certainly not an "official."

Thank you for the coverage, but I would have to disagree with your blanket embrace of "massive redundancy."

Massive redundancy works only where capacity demands are so great that all capacity is filled even if it's redundant. But it is a dangerous and possibly harmful message for cities that lack such intense markets, because the redundancy in those places is likely to amount to a tangle of overlapping services none that are all too infrequent to be worth waiting for, and that consume resources that could otherwise be devoted to maximizing mobility opportunities for the whole city. My book Human Transit discusses Sydney as a cautionary tale about exactly the ideology you propose.

Thanks again for the coverage. These are important issues that deserve deeper understanding and wider discussion.

Seven years living in Fremont, CA,the "end of the line" for BART trains, and only once did we drive into SF or Berkeley for an evening event, even on weekends. To drive, we would have had to leave mid-afternoon to get there on time because of the always difficult traffic. Now living 30 miles from Portland, OR, my next home will be near the rapid transit lines; transit is reliable and doesn't have traffic delays (except for the rare incident on the line). When driving either in the Bay Area or around Portland, it is very difficult to predict travel time, on transit, maybe not perfect but much more predictable.

Lets compare: trolleys Capitol cost high Flexibility low
buses Capitol cost low Flexibility high

Have i overlooked anything?

Singapore.

That is all.

What you need to get Americans out of cars is rapid transit. "Rapid" means "faster than cars". That's door-to-door. It includes the time to get to/from the train/bus stop, and the time waiting for the train, but on the other side it includes the time to park the car in a parking garage.

Now busses, by their nature, cannot beat cars (unless they have special lanes that cars can't use). So busses are never going to put a dent in the car culture in America (pun intended), but rapid rail transit might do so.

For many years Cleveland's Regional Transit Authority (RTA) and its predecessor Cleveland Transit System offered "Football Flyers".

People could park at the designated area - malls, Park-n-Rides, etc - and take the bus to and from the football games, and in the late 90's to the baseball games (especially playoff games). The buses left to the games 1.5 hr before the start and left the stadium area 45 min after the game.

The RTA receives monies from the Federal gov't. A few years back it was written into the renewal of law that the transit systems could not receive monies if it was being used for the benefit of a singular business.

So the "Football Flyers" were removed, and now we have to take the regular bus system or drive.

Last time I used the regular bus system a drunk with a bottle got on board the bus I took home. That was after he pestered everyone at the downtown stop for a smoke. Not a pleasant experience.

Regards

Chicago's CTA GPS-based tracking is a terrific feel-good and time-saving initiative. Knowing (either via the internet, or via an app on a smartphone connected to the internet, or by texting a number given at every bus stop with a code) when the next bus will arrive helps riders know if it's worth waiting or it's better take a cab or walk to the closest train station. I feel I am not waiting for naught.

@MS and San Fransisco,

I think I found a way to satisfy both the pro-bus rationalists and the pro-trolley romantics. Here.

What are you on about "Ironclad guarantee"??

Half a mile from my house is a perfectly serviceable rail station, platform,and waiting roomF. Trouble is there has not been a train there since 1932. It closed because it was uneconomic.

I take your point about the fixed nature of rail lines providing security to the passenger that it won't deviate from the line.

I believe in Sao Paolo, Brazil, they run buses in fixed corridors like railways. You wait at platforms like a light rail, but it has the advantage that each bus is only one carriage long and can leave the lines if necessary.

I think most people prefer rail to buses because of the speed. In fact, in NYC, buses are probably more reliable. Buses can drive around road problems. Trains can't. But nice attempt at justifying trolleys which are essentially pretty buses that can't go anywhere else.

As for complex routes, that's a product of convenience. There are lots of bus routes. If you want something simpler, you can eliminate bus routes. Interesting twist trying to make inconvenience a positive.

Basically what I'm saying is that trolleys are entirely about aesthetics and that was all nonsense.

The other issue is one of driving economic growth. Properties are listed for their proximity to rail lines, not bus routes. Why? Because if the going gets tough, it is much easier for a city to cancel a bus line than a rail line. Rail routes are a commitment - albeit an expensive one - to providing access to a certain area, therefore spurring growth along their routes. New express bus routes do not have the same effect.

Having lived in Toronto for forty of my adult years I can say that streetcars a very nice to ride but streetcars run on rails. It is the voice of inexperience that tells us that something is certainly going to come down that line. When one becomes disabled all of those behind it cannot proceed. I have very often seen a dozen streetcars waiting in a line for things to get back to normal. There are two other issues that are often neglected in discussions of trolleys. They are very heavy; Toronto's run at about 37,000 lbs empty. Even the slightest variation in the tracks (and there is always variation in the tracks) sends a shock wave up into the trolley. After all, this is a steel-on-steel situation, not rubber on the road. Old trolleys were bone rattlers but new ones solve this problem by directing the shock down into the ground. Tracks that can take this pounding are significant works of engineering. The shock still proceeds into the "earth" which in fact is shared by the foundations of all of the buildings along the way. There is also the issue of stopping a trolley. In Toronto the solution has always been, and still is, sand. Silica, sprayed under the wheels to give them traction. It works quite well but the result is that the sand is reduced to a fine airborne powder. The location where the application of this sanding occurs most frequently is at stops...where people are waiting to get on...in a cloud of silica dust.

"A rail map is limited; there are only so many lines, and that helps to organise the city at a schematic level that can be quickly understood".

This can be done with buses though - why more bus stops dont have an easily understandable schematic maps showing you which routes you can take from that stop and roughly how they correspond to the actual direction you are going in doesn't seem hard, and most bus stops in London have such maps, one of the reasons why I am more than happy to take a bus when I'm in London and loathe the experience when I have to take a bus in most of the rest of Britain.