Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Can Buses Ever Be Cool?
Recently, at The American Interest, Walter Russell Mead highlighted a UK think tank’s efforts to persuade the government that buses are superior to trains. “The great train fantasy” is, he argues, preventing us from generating sensible solutions to transportation problems. Trains seem fancy and futuristic, but in reality are expensive and lower-capacity than buses. Also, buses are more flexible. When urban development and demographic changes alter people’s travel needs, you can just change the bus routes. It’s much harder to reroute a train.
Despite all that, buses still seem déclassé, which is presumably a major reason why trains and light rail continue to streak their way through the dreams of liberal urban planners. Trains seem sleek and streamlined and their doors make that cool whoosh noise. Is the coming technocratic paradise going to run on buses? Yeah, right.
For the record, I personally hate mass transportation. As a mom with several small kids, it’s fairly useless to me, and I hated everything about St. Paul’s recent light rail project (which, as far as I could tell, was motivated entirely by the argument, “Hey, Minneapolis has light rail, and we’re just as wasteful and technocratic as they are”). Meanwhile, the people I know who lobby for more and better mass transport are childless urban professionals whose claim that it’s “a quality of life issue” mostly seems to boil down to a demand that we all help offset their transportation expenses so that they’ll have even more money for sushi bars and snorkeling trips. (What? No, I’m totally not bitter.)
Nevertheless, as a reasonable person, I realize that mass transport can, in some circumstances, be practical, and open employment possibilities for more than just childless hipsters. Insofar as we’re going to have it, then, can we at least do it efficiently?
To that end, I’m trying to think of ways to give buses a makeover so that people will decide that they’re cool. One component, obviously, is just good upkeep. The Silicon Valley commuter buses appear to have comfortable chairs and, of course, Wi-Fi. Do many people want Wi-Fi on regular city buses, or is that just a commuter thing? For city buses, it also seems to me that the double-decker would still be more appealing to most Americans (partly because it seems quaint and British), and might be even more so if the top deck had large windows or retractable roofs, making it easier to enjoy pleasant weather on the bus. Pleasant lighting and other small design measures can signal class and comfort in a way that most bus designs currently don’t.
Are there other things that might help? Again, my only interest here lies in figuring out how to persuade people to give up on really stupid mass transport projects (like light rail), in favor of possibly justifiable ones like more efficient bus systems. Redesigning buses would probably be worth a little trouble and expense if it could defuse the allure of high-speed rail.
Published in General
Ah, but you misunderstand his intentions. The goal is to make motorized transportation more miserable so that you will give it up and walk or bike. Then you and Mother Earth will be more healthy. Of course, the Bloomergs and city planners have probably never tried carrying a couple cases of Coke home a couple miles on foot. Wait a minute! That’s part of the genius, too! People shouldn’t be drinking Coke, anyway, they should be drinking tap water. Killed two birds with one stone.
You are obviously far more forward thinking than I.
Well then airports or healthcare or houses or a thousand other things….
Subsidizing transportation so the urban poor can get to work probably isn’t the fight we should be picking.
Here’s a cool one.
Dizzouble Cool
I was thinking more like this. You need an atomic power plant, a bowling alley and a piano bar.
Which if great if the subway’s destination happens to be the place you’re trying to get to.
As with so many things in this world, real life has exceeded past parody:
(Ok, no, it’s CGI, but I had you going for a sec, didn’t I?)
An interesting hybrid solution is to use buses that use designated roadways — either separate lanes, elevated routes, or tunnels — to get through dense areas and then join “normal” highways elsewhere.
The advantage is that you can use existing infrastructure where roads are fast, while still moving quickly where regular driving is inefficient. Boston’s Silver Line uses this system to take you through downtown relatively quickly through its (relatively short) designated tunnels, and then out to the Airport on through the Ted Williams Tunnel, which is just part of I-90, and moves quickly.
The catch if you’re using designated tunnels is that you either need an expensive ventilation system or some kind of hybrid/all-electric/dual mode engine on your buses, all of which jack-up the price.
Yabbut, if we accept that urban mass transit is going to be subsidized whether we like it or not, it’s entirely fair to question who benefits from it.
In my town, the money to increase rapid-transit capacity for rich suburbanites who already own cars is raised by cutting routes in low-income areas where people cannot afford cars of their own.
Shouldn’t bus services cater to those who cannot afford to buy cars?
(FYI: Didja know that Karl Marx abhorred public transit, because it allowed rich suburbanites to bypass the impoverished areas of the metropolis in comfort on their way to the financial and shopping districts downtown?)
In my town, we have the Transitway system, one of the most extensive Bus Rapid Transit systems in the world.
It’s worked great since the 1970s.
It’s currently being replaced by light rail, because Liberal politicians.
(Another benefit that Bus Rapid Transit has over light rail is that emergency vehicles can use the bus lanes when necessary. It’s quite handy when one is having a heart attack and the ambulance can bypass almost all the surface traffic.)
That’s why the Transitway uses trenches rather than tunnels, for the most part.
As a part time resident of SoCal, I have certainly taken advantage of the carpool lane, but there is not a “one size fits all” solution for every American city. Some cities drive and others can’t because of the pure density of space and population. The borough of Manhattan is appx 23 square foot miles but attracts nearly 12 million people a day. LA County on the other hand, is far more geographically expansive at over 4,000 square foot miles.
Milwaukee had a downtown street car system that ran on tracks about a hundred years ago. It became obsolete with the advent of buses, and there is nary a relic of the old trolley system’s existence anywhere to be found.
Last week the Milwaukee City Council passed a resolution to authorize the construction of a track based street car system. Recent estimates are somewhere in the $125 million range (it will cost twice that), because of course the city government is swimming in cash and has very few pending infrastructure costs in other areas. The route will circle the downtown area and the near north east side, possibly the only two majority white sections whithin the city limits.
Progressives are all about science and technology and compassion and helping the poor and stuff.
I would like to see this, but then I’m a fan of exposing all costs. We have an out-of-sight-out-of-mind mentality about the cost of lot of things, not just transportation. I’ve used the example before of my state that mandated through legislation large, divided highways to all 95 county seats. Many of these roads get very little traffic, and there’s no way the cost could be justified without subsidization. But people are far more comfortable subsidizing roads, which are perceived to be “conservative” versus other forms of transportation which are perceived to be “liberal.” I’ve still never quite understood the distinction.
One issue with the gas tax approach is that cars are now more efficient, and other means of powering cars (electricity, hydrogen, natural gas, fuel cell, etc.) are becoming more prevalent, so that it increasingly makes sense to scrap the gas tax and go to a toll or miles driven type of direct cost assessment.
Bingo. Alternately, if something happens to the bus lane — a breakdown, or what have you — you can just re-direct its traffic to the main roads.
Absolutely.
Rachel: “I personally hate mass transportation. As a mom with several small kids, it’s fairly useless to me”
Rachel, that’s because, like most Americans, you don’t really know the potential. There’s nothing better for moms with kids than safe, vibrant cities with good mass transit. Throughout much of the civilized world moms are freed from continual taxi service and carpooling for their kids. Kids are freed from the constraints of having to have a ride wherever they go. This is all very liberating for both moms and kids. (Not to mention, liberating to those too old, too handicaped, too poor, or too drunk to drive.)
And so many of you here keep emphsasizing the fact that mass transit doesn’t pay for itslef while ignoring the fact that roads for cars don’t either. When neither cars nor mass transit operate within a free market, it’s virtually impossible to compare costs.
EDIT: Yeah, I know. You hear a phrase like “safe, vibrant cities” and say, huh? Well, Main Street and Downtown were killed, basically, by massive subsidies to cars and massive subsidies to suburban living. Fortunately, despite the subsidies, there is a movement to return to vibrant town and city living. The more conservatives ridicule that movement, the more they will – once again – miss the boat on important cultural trends.
This could simply be the result of regional differences, but there are a lot of married, bourgeois, kid-raising people who use the MBTA. Not a lot of stay-at-home-moms, but plenty of their husbands.
Self driving cars are going to solve this issue on the side of cars once and for all.
Mass transit will not be needed with you have self-driving uber cars. With a central control grid, cars can all move at high speeds close to each other. Networking the cars will result in much better traffic flows. In the long run, I won’t need to share space with someone else, as I will be in my own bubble.
Gosh, are you back on that old note again: Cars don’t pay for the roads, therefore you cannot attack Mass transit for its subsidy.
Hogwash. I defy you to explain to me how my taxes for light rail trains is the same as my taxes for roads. After all, trucks that bring all my food to my stores do not use light rail, they use the roads. Same for my gas. Same for every last thing that I order in my life. It all comes to by road, or commercial rail, NOT by light rail. Roads do far, far more than just move people around. Light rail and buses (which use the roads btw) do not.
I get it. You want a world where when I go to the store, I cannot buy many things, because I have to carry them all in my hands, so I have to go many times. You want a world where I am dependent on buses and trains, not one where I can get in my car and drive to the mountains. You want a world where Home Depot is useful only for small things, because I can only leave with what I can carry.
In short, your idea is a urban environment where everyone walks to the local market, and takes a bus or train someplace to work.
I don’t want to live in that world, and I resent the likes of your trying to reshape the world into that horrifying mold. By all means, live in your high tax, “walking city” full of hipsters with no kids, no yards, where the working class has to be on buses for 2 hours just to come serve your coffee. It is not for me, and it is not for the majority of voters who seek to live outside the city, with the freedom of their own cars.
There will be advantages to self-driving cars, but they still have to negotiate the same road system that was designed primarily to put consumers in close contact with shopping centers and not necessarily to move traffic efficiently. Self driving cars also don’t do anything for the issue of parking, which can be a real problem and expense in cities and increasingly in crowded suburbs.
The thing car companies really fear about self-driving cars is that they may eventually reduce the overall number of cars owned by individuals. For a lot of people, if they can summon a car when they need one, why go to the expense of owning and maintaining one?
That’s not really a big fear for them – they would just make money selling different cars. Even automated cars wear out and need replaced. If anything, they might find a way to make more money through fleet sales and leasing.
Except that this is not really what is happening. Some people like cities, many do not. Younger families may like city living, but once they can afford it they still want to book it to the suburbs.
Main Street was killed not so much by subsidies to cars but by large-scale stores who could drive prices down while offering more goods. Downtowns have been killed by much the same, coupled with stupid city taxes and regulations, the rise of mail order shopping and internet shopping, and businesses (and I don’t mean retail) themselves moving out of downtowns. If I moved my manufacturing business to a city core I’d be forking over a substantial portion of my income to city taxes, city meddling and bureaucracy, and city zoning. My transportation costs would jump too as it would be much harder to get deliveries in and out. Why would I want to subject myself to that?
Yes! That is a point I was getting at. Well put
A University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute study found that since driverless cars can return home, the current 2.1 cars per household could drop to 1.2. Or, from 42% of households needing two cars to 15%, and from 26.5% of households needing 3 cars to less than 2%.
One could also imagine that home delivery of groceries and other items might become feasible since no driver need be employed, thus reducing the necessity for the second car at home. Sure, that would mean the purchase of delivery cars by someone maintaining the fleet, but the assumption would be that each delivery car could replace many home vehicles maintained for the purpose of such trips.
Yes, those self-driving cars are certain to change things. If we could make all the transporatation options free market, they would work themselves out in the most rational way and self-driving cars would certainly be a major part of the mix.
Bryan, why do you keep “resenting” me for things I’m not doing! We’ve been over this many times. I’m not trying to take away anyone’s car or tell anyone where or how to live. I’m only saying, let the market work its magic. You do that, and there will be a multiplicity of options in both transporation and organization of communities.
Skipsul, you’re certainly right about city regulations. But downtowns and the interurbans that made them viable were, in fact, killed by subsidies to cars and suburbanization. That’s history. Googel “interurban.” And those large-scale stores are a great addition to our society, but their number, location, and mix are certainly influenced by the subsidies.
The market would shift, that is certain, and the auto makers would respond in kind as all markets do.
Bryan, we are happy that you like your life and where you live but it would be dishonest to say that you’ve made your choice in a free market. That’s the main point.
In fact, it is almost impossible to find an area of life that is not manipulated today. From my point of view it is unproductive to attack the other for specific things we don’t like. Rather, we ought to attack the concept.
However, when we attack the concept and win, both you and the hipster will lose what you like. The free market doesn’t look like this.
The downtowns I know best all failed because people did not want to live in them – the big city corruption, taxes, crime, etc. drove them out. Same with the businesses. You just cannot have a viable manufacturing plant of any scale in an urban area (which is why they moved out), and large scale offices went obsolete with the computer. You don’t need an office with 200 secretaries, typists, clerks, copyists, etc. today. Old city core buildings do not serve the needs of modern workers, are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, and expensive to rent. The only large scale businesses in downtowns anymore are insurance companies, banking firms, government agencies, and other forms of work which are still people-intensive.
Doing away with what you call subsidies would not bring people back downtown again, they do not need to go there, and there are few jobs. Manufacturing will not go there. Office work will not go there.
You blame subsidies as if they were the main driving factor, but what kept people in city cores was work. This is just not the case anymore except in rare circumstances. The only businesses which stay in city cores are either those who cannot move, or those can afford to stay. The only people who live in city cores are those who can afford the very high costs and like the settings, or those who can’t afford to move out.
So the “free market” answer to trucking food is to make the trucks pay the full cost directly?
By they way, I have never been sold on the whole “The roads are subsidised too” argument. Got the data to show the taxes per mile, other than gas taxes, are similar to Mass transit?