Tag Archives: buses

Trying to make suburban mass transit more attractive by offering private rides and vans to reserve

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Pace has tried for decades to increase bus ridership in the Chicago suburbs. Here are two new strategies:

Photo by Vlad Cheu021ban on Pexels.com

Commuters can reserve a $2 ride in a small bus that typically stops at train stations and travels on major roads…

On-Demand service runs from early morning to evening with zones in Aurora, Batavia, Hoffman Estates, Naperville, Round Lake, St. Charles/Geneva, Vernon Hills/Mundelein, West Joliet and Wheaton/Winfield. Rides need to be booked at least an hour in advance.

Another experiment is the VanGo program that lets people reserve a Pace van at the Lake Forest or Lake-Cook Metra stations and drive to employment centers such as Baxter International. An expansion to Palatine is under consideration.

“We give you a code for the vehicle, it unlocks the door, it unlocks the key, you can take it to work and back at night to the train station” along with co-workers, Metzger said.

VanGo drivers must have a credit card and a good driving record, plus meet other requirements. A round trip is $5.

These are mass transit options – still mass transit because the vehicles are operated by a transportation entity and because they are hoping there are multiple riders in the vehicle – that try to adapt to suburban sprawl. A lack of density in the suburbs means that traditional railroad and bus lines cannot reach enough people and the ease of traveling by car means that many people will choose driving. These options offer more flexibility to individual users and specific locations.

Will it work? Can Pace compete with ride shares companies or companies that offer access to vehicles? I am skeptical that it will be effective in the long run given the current nature of suburbia.

Trying to revive buses in American cities

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A new book looks at how buses could become more viable transportation options. From the author of the book:

One of the statistics that is telling in the book is that when you look at bus ridership in a place like Germany, the people who ride the bus have the same median income as the average German. In the U.S., they’re much poorer. At the same time, it’s not a service that actually serves low-income people well at all. So is it really for them? It’s really a system for people who don’t have alternatives…

One of the biggest omissions from federal policy is that federal transportation programs are almost always about building things. But the biggest problem [with public transit] in most cities is that we don’t run enough service. You could use federal transportation funding to buy a bus, or stripe a bus lane, but you can’t use it to hire a bus operator, or dispatchers, or people who are planning bus priority projects. In the book, I write about this really bizarre set of affairs in the [2008] stimulus package, where cities all over the country were using federal stimulus dollars to buy buses. At the same time, they had to lay off all of their bus operators. That’s not really doing anything to further equity for people on the ground…

There’s a cycle between culture and reality. We design bus systems that are really inconvenient, and that only people without great alternatives will use, and that colors how decision makers think about who bus riders are. And that’s really important to disrupt.

One of the promising things you see in places that are improving bus service is how quickly it can turn around. You just provide more service in a route, and upgrade the shelters, and you see ridership increasing. We have this terrible conception of the so-called captive rider in transportation planning, when all the actual data shows that basically everyone has choices, and sometimes those choices can be pretty inconvenient, like having to get a ride with your friends, or having to walk four miles to work. Transit service can always deteriorate to the point that people are going to choose something else. But as you make bus service better, more and more people start gravitating towards it. It’s a very natural thing.

There a lot of issues to overcome in addition to the ones cited above. In my mind, buses have one major advantage over other forms of mass transit: they utilize existing roads and highways to provide mass transit. It would take a lot to reverse the American preference for driving and all that comes with it. Of course, as the article notes, buses that crawl along in traffic like cars and trucks may not be very attractive to riders and may require dedicated lanes. Similarly, buses in sprawling areas may not work as well if people are not willing to start at a common location and give up some freedom of mobility. (The discussion in the article revolves around cities but there are denser suburbs – and suburban like areas of some cities – where buses might work.)

The discussion hints at a related issue: there has to be enough bus service to be attractive but getting people to ride the bus in the first place is difficult when driving a car is a culturally preferred option as well as the option that best suits the existing infrastructure. How many local governments are willing to stick with busing even when it might not be successful at first? Furthermore, would increases in service be accompanied by changes in development policy that would seek to create housing and jobs along bus transit corridors?

Reading the full discussion, it does seem it might not be too difficult to revive bus transit in big cities. On the other hand, bus transit is a hard sell in many American communities and a long-term commitment from all levels might be needed before significant change occurs.

 

 

Responding to “white suburbanites are exposed to more racial diversity than ever before”

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One researcher explores the increasing racial and ethnic diversity of suburbia:

The scale of these national changes is too great to leave suburbs unaffected. As a consequence, white suburbanites are exposed to more racial diversity than ever before, a process that compounds annually. In 1980, a majority of white suburban residents lived in areas greater than 95 percent white, according to my analysis of the Census data. Only about one in six lived in a neighborhood where people of color made up at least 20 percent of the population. Fast-forward to today, and the numbers flip: Fewer than one in 10 white suburban residents lives in a neighborhood greater than 95 percent white, while more than half can be found somewhere that’s more than 20 percent nonwhite. Suburbs are now home to most black Americans and Hispanic Americans.

Nonwhite residents skew younger, which means diversity is increasing in schools even faster than in cities and neighborhoods. As that happens, the racial isolation of white children has been broken in spectacular fashion. In 1988, the earliest year with digitized federal data, more than half of white children nationwide attended a school that was more than 90 percent white. In 2016–2017, the most recent school year with data, that share dropped to less than one-fifth. In public districts today, more than three-fifths of white children attend a diverse school where at least 20 percent of the student population was not white; in major metros, nine-tenths of white children do.

Lest the point get lost in a swarm of statistics, these figures represent an inversion of America’s historic racial geography. As recently as a few decades ago, almost all white people in America lived their lives in places where racial diversity was minimal or nonexistent. This is simply no longer true. In neighborhoods and, especially, schools, moderate diversity is now the norm for most white Americans. The America where busing failed was a place where islands of urban diversity drifted in an ocean of suburban whiteness. Today, the metaphor must be reversed: An archipelago of white enclaves is embedded in a sea of growing racial diversity.

And since this discussion is in the context of debates about schools and busing, the author suggests this change in diversity has implications:

By every available demographic metric, those white suburbs are losing ground in 21st-century America. The problem of segregated schools, as urgent and familiar as ever, is embedded in a deeply unfamiliar context. School integration in 2019 means moving children across racial boundaries that are already looking ragged. The communities it risks outraging have ever-shrinking political clout. People should consider whether they have overlearned the lessons of history—whether the antibusing consensus is more robust than the conditions that created it. Integrated schools are more achievable than the political system believes. The missing ingredient for desegregation may just be elected officials with the courage to stop fearing America as it was, and start leading America as it is.

The article takes a pretty optimistic view of racial change in communities. Indeed, residential segregation has decreased in recent years with more minorities living in suburbs and increased immigration.

I wonder if the same data could be interpreted differently:

1. The cutoffs for diversity cited above are low bars. More than 20% non-white is not that much diversity.

2. The article does not discuss social class and its interaction with race and class. What kind of diversity are white suburbanites interacting with in terms of class and race together?

3. The emphasis here is on the public school system as well as communities though there are plenty of white students (as well as other students) in different schooling environments and social ties and networks can operate through many institutions. Diversity by community or neighborhood may not translate into diversity in a school setting or in local government or houses of worship or friendship networks.

4. What is the end goal of such efforts? Is “moderate diversity is now the norm for most white Americans” enough or even be used a way to limit further diversity? Is representation in public schools enough or is the goal similar academic achievement or access to political power or homeownership rates or wealth (all areas with disparity)?

Could Americans be convinced to use buses by new technology?

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Technological advances to buses might make them more attractive…or they might not. Here are the five new features:

Electrification

Autonomy

Minibus/trackless train

Seamless payment

Accessbility

Two things stand out to me from the argument:

  1. Newer technology tends to make things more attractive in society. This does appear to be a general pattern though I am not sure technology alone could overcome misgivings wealthier Americans have about buses.
  2. The shifts described here tend to reduce some of the features that might be less attractive about buses: they would not be as large and they would be less tied to particular routes. This makes them less like traditional buses and more like large vans that have flexibility.

One aspect of mass transit to which I’m surprised there is not more discussion of in this argument is whether these smaller and more flexible buses would be faster for users. If so, this could be a tremendous plus. One of the promises of self-driving vehicles is that traffic flow could be better coordinated and would not be affected by drivers slowing things down.

Bus ridership down in America

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Fewer Americans – 13% – are riding buses compared to ten years ago.

I’ve argued before that Americans perceive mass transit options as having different statuses. For those with more resources, trains and subways are preferable. If those are not easily accessible or the person has reached a certain status in life, driving is a must.

At the same time, bus service is relatively cheap for cities and communities to provide. Because American cities are often planned around cars and have spent decades trying to efficiently move vehicles around, adding or subtracting buses to adjust service levels is doable. In contrast, constructing new trains or subways can be incredibly costly and require years of work. It may be that in the long run trains and subways are better options to plan around but that requires a long-term commitment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ride the bus for a safer transit experience

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A recent study of bus travel in Montreal suggests that it is a much safer experience compared to driving:

By perusing police reports from 2001 to 2010, they found motorists on these routes had more than three times the injury rate of bus passengers. Buses were also safer for people sharing the road. Cars were responsible for 95 percent of pedestrian and 96 percent of cyclist injuries on these arteries, they write in a presentation for this month’s meeting of the Transportation Research Board.

During the same time period in Montreal, nobody was killed while riding the bus, though 668 people were injured. (It’s unknown if that number includes bus operators, who are powerful magnets for abuse.) Meanwhile, auto occupants suffered 19 deaths and 10,892 injuries. Cars were linked to 42 pedestrian and three cyclist deaths, while buses were linked to four and zero, respectively…

In the United States car occupants have a fatality rate 23 times greater than bus passengers, while it’s respectively 11 and 10 times higher in Australia and Europe. They suggest getting more people on public transit could make a large impact on public health.

In terms of public health, the safety argument is compelling: without having to go all the way to self-driving vehicles for all, buses could be an important tool in reducing deaths. Yet, I’ve discussed before that I don’t think many middle- to upper-class Americans would choose to travel by bus in denser areas if they can afford to drive. I don’t know if the safety argument could overcome either (1) the stereotypes of riding the bus and (2) the inconvenience of the bus schedule as opposed to driving a car.

Perhaps what we need is for a city or two to experiment with a public campaign to boost bus membership with a safety campaign. Would residents find it compelling?

Like many cities, Cincinnati once had a thriving streetcar system

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Cincinnati was one of numerous big American cities that once heavily relied on the streetcar:

They were everywhere. For nearly a century — from the 1850s through the 1940s — streetcars were the most common way for Cincinnatians to get where they were going.

According to a report to common council in 1887, Cincinnati City Clerk Edwin Henderson said council had filed more than 70 ordinances relating to “street railroads” to date, and Henderson’s report detailed 25 routes in service at the time.

At their peak, Cincinnati’s railway companies offered commuters dozens of streetcar routes with nearly 250 miles of track.

Compared to other transportation options of the time, streetcars had numerous advantages: more consistent and producing less visible waste than horses, they were less noisy and followed street patterns compared to trains, and were faster and offered a larger range than walking. Streetcars opened up all sorts of new areas to development as residents could travel further on their daily commutes or regular trips.

Outside of the occasional attempt to revive a streetcar line, often for tourism purposes, most cities today do not contain visible evidence of the popularity of streetcars. Cincinnati is a city that is trying: a plan is in the works for a 3.6 mile loop that connects employment and residential areas. Still, across the broader city and region, cars reign supreme with their ability to go anywhere and offer drivers individual choices.

Pace wants to “change the suburban transit environment” with new bus routes

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Pace has an ambitious proposal intended to link important areas in the Chicago area via bus:

A wide-ranging network of suburban bus routes could transform the way people commute and shop, connecting people to job centers in Naperville, Elgin and Elk Grove Village, according to an ambitious $2.3 billion plan shared by Pace on Tuesday.

Express buses with high-tech amenities would take riders from the south suburbs to O’Hare International Airport. Or from McHenry south to Oswego via Randall Road. Or from Evanston to O’Hare along Dempster Street.

And buses would travel on the shoulder of the Jane Addams and Edens expressways, bypassing car traffic…

Pace has submitted its plan for an innovative suburban Rapid Transit Network to Congress, which asked for candidates for a program called Projects of National and Regional Significance. The agency revealed details of its proposal to the Tribune on Tuesday…

The network is composed of two service types: arterial bus rapid transit and suburban expressway service.

Mass transit that connects suburbs is sorely needed in the Chicago region. The current system of buses does little to add on to the existing hub-and-spoke railway system that connects the suburbs to downtown. New buses provide a flexible form of transport compared to railroads; rather than having a fixed track and sunk infrastructure costs, buses can take advantage of existing important roads and highways.

However, I suspect this plan has a lot of hurdles to overcome even beyond the federal funding they are seeking.

1. How do you get suburbanites to consistently ride the bus? Trains are one thing but buses seem to have a different status.

2. Can schedules between mass transit options be lined up?

3. Can the buses actually get people to places rather quickly and at most times of the day? The current bus system tends to take long amounts of time compared to driving.

4. Perhaps the most important question: is there enough density along the proposed lines to have consistent numbers of riders who need to go where the buses are going? Density contributes to riders which leads to more buses which leads to more options. Going to the airports makes sense – both Chicago airports are busy (O’Hare may just be the busiest in the world again) – as does more highway buses to Chicago but linking residences and businesses is a more difficult task. Downtown Naperville may be lively but how many live near there who would commute by bus elsewhere? Are there concentrations of people living along Randall Road? I wonder if there is any way to encourage denser developments – apartments, condos, townhomes, rowhouses – near such bus lines to help provide more potential riders.

Driverless buses could improve mass transit

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Discussion of driverless buses in Britain highlights the efficiency they could offer, leading to improved service:

Claire Perry, the Transport Minister, said that operating buses without drivers could help companies provide “better and more frequent” services, particularly in rural areas.

She also revealed that work is already under way to identify any problematic “regulatory issues” which could prevent the vehicles being rolled out on roads across Britain.

Speaking at the Driverless Vehicles Conference at Thatcham on Wednesday, Mrs Perry said she could “see a future where driverless buses provide better and more frequent services”.

“A major component of rural transport is the cost of the driver – and so a truly driverless bus could transform rural public transport in the future,” she said.

Driverless cars offer safety and commuting convenience but this is a twist: mass transit could be more frequent and cheaper without drivers. It would be interesting to know how much cheaper this could be. Would this mean a 20% increase in bus service for the same price or is it something even more drastic? If so, perhaps this could make buses a lot more attractive, particularly in rural or suburban areas where riders may not necessarily want to ride with a lot of other people and want service that doesn’t inconvenience them much.

Urban streetcars may primarily serve tourists

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Streetcars once ruled American cities but more recent projects in many cities may primarily be used by tourists:

Some new figures further strain the connection between streetcars and core city mobility. Florida State planning student Luis Enrique Ramos recently led a comparison of ridership factors on U.S. streetcars versus those on light rail. (The work, not yet published, was presented at a recent conference.) What he found was that streetcar ridership was unrelated to service frequency, bus connections, and job proximity — the very factors that make light rail attractive to everyday commuters.

In other words, streetcars serve a completely different population of travelers than light rail does. Which population is that? Ramos and collaborators can’t say for sure, but they have a theory: tourists. Just look at the hours of operation for the Tampa streetcar — beginning at noon on weekdays? — and ask yourself who rolls into work after lunch. (And please do let us know, because we want that job.)

None of this is to say that streetcars aren’t necessarily worth it. Commutes make up a fraction of total travel in metro areas. Trolleys can operate very effectively in dense cores by running along a dedicated track, and when they arrive frequently they can promote a lively pedestrian culture. When paired with mixed-use zoning, trolleys can also lead to significant economic development (though arguably less than other modes, like bus-rapid transit).

That leaves emerging streetcar cities with a mostly-tourist attraction they hope will generate business — an amenity that feels similar in spirit to a downtown sports stadium. Again, sometimes city taxpayers conclude that an arena is worth it, and many cities no doubt feel the same about trolleys, cost overruns notwithstanding. But residents who hope the streetcar will improve mobility should be careful to consider whether they’re paying for a ride, or getting taken for one.

Some interesting factors to consider. Tourism is often seen as a significant force in many cities as it is a way to increase tax revenues as well as improve a city’s image. Streetcars can often be viewed in nostalgic terms, something that often fits a community’s appeal to tourists. Yet, if the streetcars aren’t an integrated part of a larger transportation system that serves residents and tourists, is the money spent worth it?

When streetcar use exploded in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was a driver of sprawl: it opened up development in new areas because it could cover more territory than railroads by using roads. In other words, the streetcars were pioneers. Today, building new streetcar systems also requires modifying roads and the neighborhoods already exist. The article suggests buses may be a more appropriate modification to the existing streetscape because they are more cost-effective and might better serve residents. At this point in time, streetcars serve very different purposes and it requires work to implement them into a community.