Quote:
Originally Posted by Build.It
I was trying to think of a better more efficient way to use infrastructure that already exists.
My back of napkin math is obviously wrong, but my thought process was that existing transit is borderline useless for the majority of people who both live and work in the suburbs. So isn't there a better more affordable way to get people to where they're going that doesn't require a personal car?
In terms of cost you'd be looking at somewhere between a city bus and a cab for it to work. I'm curious if there is a market for something like that - especially once driverless buses become possible which would bring thr cost down even further.
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Driverless buses could certainly reduce labour costs and thus overall operating costs significantly, but we have no way of knowing when that will be ready for real world applications. So I personally wouldn't place much focus on it at this point. So the question I have is, if "existing transit is borderline useless" for people in the suburbs, what specific problem or problems is causing that uselessness? And how could replacing it with something totally different help to address these problems more easily then simply improving existing services?
From my experience with transit and with suburbs, the main things that make transit a less appealing option in suburban areas are:
1) the (usually) lower density which means there are fewer potential customers relative to the length of potential routes,
2) built form that often isn't transit friendly with buildings set back behind large parking lots, lawns, etc., and winding culs-de-sac that either force bus routes to be longer or the distance people need to walk to get to the bus longer all adding extra, often unpleasant walking time to trips.
3) competition with cars since people choose the mode they find most convenient. So even if the transit service was equally good, when there's plentiful - often free - parking and roads designed to make car travel as fast and easy as possible (wide roads, rounded corners, slip lanes, long stretched between intersections, etc.) then transit won't be as appealing by comparison. And if full automation does become a thing, that might make buses more appealing than they currently are, but it will also make cars more appealing so buses won't be any further ahead in competing with them.
Unfortunately I don't see any of these issues being addressed by the type of transit vehicle. Vans may be more fuel efficient than buses, but labour costs are a bigger part of transit expense than are fuel costs. Plus, unlike fully automated vehicles, electric buses are already on the market.
The thing is, transit is a collective activity. It works best when there are lots of people going to and/or from a common destination at the same time. So transit is at its best in cities, gets worse in suburbs and is very difficult in rural areas. On the other hand, cars work best when there are small numbers of people all going different places at different times. So it makes sense for people in rural areas all to have their own vehicle so they can choose their own routes and schedules. So cars work very well in rural areas, ok in suburbs, and poorly in urban areas where they get mired in congestion. In cities there are just too many people going the same places at the same time for them all to do so individually as it's terribly inefficient.
These are large scale structural biases that can't really be overcome while operating within these structures. That's not to say that we shouldn't design the best bus service possible for suburbs, but it will still never be as good as the best bus service you can design for an urban city. That's a problem with the design of suburbs as it relates to the provision of shared services. Any shared services, not just public transit. It's also generally more expensive and less efficient to provide various utilities like water, sanitation, power, internet, trash collection, roads, and so on. There was a study by Greater Halifax maybe a decade ago that showed the comparative cost to provide city services in areas of different density and it showed how much costs rose as density dropped. So it isn't that the buses aren't being used efficiently in suburbs; it's that they're being used in an inefficient setting.
So if you want to increase transit usage, the most important thing you can do is to improve the setting to make it easier for the service to operate. In the meantime, you just need to make the service as frequent, clean, safe, reliable and direct as possible - same thing you should be doing in the city. It will require greater subsidies than in the city and you probably won't get the ridership you would by doing those things in a city but you will attract more riders. And the more riders you have in a community, the more people will be open to bigger changes to further improve transit. And there's also car-pooling which can take car trips off the road saving money and helping the environment.
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