The opposite of BRT

The 10:15 run of Route #2 waiting to turn left

Some cities are putting resources into Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), which tries to overcome the disadvantage of most public buses--they get stuck in the same traffic as private cars, without the convenience of immediate access that cars offer--without the expense of new rail infrastructure. Indianapolis's Red Line is one example. Yonah Freemark (2020) estimates 354 miles of BRT were added to American transit networks during the 2010s, at a total cost of $2.8 billion (albeit a tiny fraction of the efforts towards more roads).

Vancouver introduced the RapidBus this week on four routes; CBC reporter Justin McElroy found the RapidBus went about as fast as his car between a train station and the University of British Columbia--faster, if you count the time he spent parking and unparking (McElroy 2020).

Transit guru Jarrett Walker (2009) identifies three subtypes of BRT:

1. Dedicated lanes and grade separated (no intersections)
2. Dedicated lanes but at-grade with signals
3. Shared lanes, at grade, but with signal priority (and stops spaced widely apart)

Richmond, Virginia's new BRT system is at level #2, with dedicated lanes and signal priority, although there are questions about how well the Transit Signal Priority is working in practice (Gordon 2020).

A city's choice depends on resources, both financial and land-available-for-pavement. A 2001 GAO study found the typical cost of creating BRT was about $15 million per mile (cited in Jeff Speck, Walkable City (Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2012), p. 157), which was about half the cost of light rail, but still... not beanbag. Speck has standards: True BRT systems include not only a separated path, but also signal priority at intersections, level boarding at raised pay-to-enter stations, ten-minute headways, and GPS-enabled wait-time indicators. If you can't do most of those things, don't call it Rapid (Speck 2012: 157). But Walker notes that Los Angeles BRT is at level #3, with shared lanes but transponders which can influence traffic signals--not ideal, but they could create 700 miles of routes in ten years. Las Vegas, where I rode an express bus last summer, seems to be a similar system, but has dedicated lanes downtown.

Even a low threshold for Rapid gives buses some advantage over cars in traffic, maybe in some cases enough to compensate for the fact that your car is available in your driveway to fulfill your every wish without delay.

Smaller cities may not have the density or the space or the budget to add features to their bus systems. I imagine most cities the size of Cedar Rapids have done what Cedar Rapids has done: spread their federal transit dollars across as much of the city as possible. (Even Tulsa, which is three times our size, has only just started dipping its toe into more frequent service along Peoria Avenue, though they've had nighttime service for a long time.) We serve the desperate, wherever they are, while the service level means anybody with options chooses their cars.

Although! The 2017 schedule changes marginally improved service by straightening some of the crookeder routes and adding service to route #5. My impression is that ridership has marginally increased as a result, particularly on the #5. [UPDATE: Elizabeth M. Darnall, transportation planner for the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization, confirmed to me that while apples-to-apples comparisons are difficult because of route changes, ridership on the #5 and the new Hiawatha and Marion circulars increased more than 40 percent in the first two years.]

What cities of any size should not do is disadvantage bus transportation relative to private cars. That is a recipe for making public transportation irrelevant. OK, a "coverage" system like ours is inherently telling most people "Drive if you can." But, to add insult to injury, there are intersections in congested area where buses wait at stop signs while cars go through on the cross street. A particularly egregious example of this is 2nd Street and 12th Avenue SE, which was recently converted from traffic lights to stop signs. Conversion good!--though any future transponders will now do no good there. But the stop signs only exist on 2nd Street, so when the #2 bus comes down it has to wait to turn left until all the cross traffic on 12th Avenue has passed AND then yield to northbound traffic on 2nd. Also, route #6, which goes inbound on 2nd Avenue SE, has to stop for traffic on both 8th and 7th Streets.

Here's the #2 this afternoon, waiting, and waiting, to turn left onto 12th (after waiting through a long line of auto traffic so it could turn left onto 2nd Street from 8th Avenue):







It's the opposite of Bus Rapid Transit... Bus Prolonged Transit? Bad acronym. Bus Interminable Transit Experience (BITE)? Bus Using Left Lane Stuck Here Indefinitely Transit?

Solutions: Make 2nd and 12th a four-way stop. I understand what the city is trying to do with 7th and 8th, and tinkering with intersections creates dangerous levels of confusion, but how about sending the #6 down another street which is not similarly controlled, like 1st or 3rd Avenue?

And then... look for opportunities to facilitate the steady movement of buses on all routes.