Are Clean Buses the Answer?
Decatur Metro | July 10, 2009 | 10:06 amThrough all our talks of transportation solutions in Atlanta, we often sneer at the lowly bus, and talk with the greatest enthusiasm about rail. We envision an intricate web of hard steel, stretching across our metro-landscape, allowing cheerful residents to jump from trolley, to train, to trolley and back again. There’s an undeniable nostalgia attached to the train and trolley, but is it the best and easiest solution for a city’s transportation problems of the 21st century?
On it’s front page this morning, the NY Times profiles the new, extensive bus service in Bogota, Columbia called the “TransMilenio” and deems it an undeniable success. In response to fears of global warming, smog and congestion, the paper writes…
“Bus rapid transit systems like Bogotá’s, called TransMilenio, might hold an answer. Now used for an average of 1.6 million trips each day, TransMilenio has allowed the city to remove 7,000 small private buses from its roads, reducing the use of bus fuel — and associated emissions — by more than 59 percent since it opened its first line in 2001, according to city officials.”
Could such a system – which according to the Times article costs 30 times less than a subway to build and requires a third of the budget to operate – be the answer in the U.S.? Despite the praise the given to Bogota, the Times reporter hedges his bets when it comes to native soil.
But bus rapid transit systems are not the answer for every city. In the United States, where cost is less constraining, some cities, like Los Angeles, have built B.R.T.’s, but they tend to lack many of the components of comprehensive systems like TransMilenio, like fully enclosed stations, and they serve as an addition to existing rail networks.
Huh? So, buses aren’t the answer in cities where it’s not executed properly? That doesn’t really exclude anyone, except those municipalities that suffer from genetic incompetence. It sounds to me like if you really went whole-hog on a B.R.T., it could work anywhere. That entails things detailed in the article like fully enclosed stations and dedicated bus lanes. And to appease the aestetic crowd, we could buy cool, iconic buses.
I haven’t completely sold myself on the idea that this could be implemented anywhere successfully, but this article’s example gives me more reason than ever to doubt my own “train-skewed” vision. In an era of record debt, maybe it’s time for the U.S. to swallow it’s collective pride and take a lesson from the second and third world.
Similarly, in Curitiba, Brazil they have a wonderful BRT system.
Part of the success is due to the design of the bus stops — http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashobbs/2416642260/ The bus stops feel more like rail stations. Most of MARTA’s bus stops are a stick in the ground with a sign on top.
What Lain said. The mode — BRT, light rail, heavy rail, etc. — is less important than the infrastructure. Buses alone bring no added value beyond transportation because their routes are so easily changed. The market is not inclined to invest in an area to take advantage of a bus route if it could disappear tomorrow.
BRT, with dedicated lanes, rail-like stops, synchronized service, etc., is more likely to instill confidence. That’s when you start to see a domino effect from transportation dollars spent. Just as with light rail, it’s about the permanence of the service.
Ah right. I forgot about the permanence argument. I can see how that’s absolutely critical.
So, do you think that something like permanent walled-off bus lanes along with high-quality bus stops and stations are enough to encourage development? Because if it can, it seems like a much less-expensive version of the trolley.
I won’t speak definitively, DM, because I don’t have the data in front of me. Long story short, though, it’s hard to really gauge the difference in cost between light rail and BRT because both sides have their advocates and have their own ways of evaluating cost. For example (made up), light rail advocates might present a study that shows higher ridership on a rail line than a BRT line, so that may be used to offset higher initial expenditures.
The only thing I’m sure of, because I assumed the same thing as you, is that the costs between the two are a lot closer than you would think. I think part of this has to do with the fact that a BRT vehicle maxes out at two segments long, while a train can have greater capacity, requiring less vehicles and operators. Don’t quote me, though.
I just came back from a vacation to Colombia and yes, the Transmilenio is impressive. When I last went to Bogota, before the Transmilenio, I quickly developed a respiratory infection from the pollution and was sick during my entire visit. This trip, the decreased smog was immediately noticeable to me. We rode the Transmilenio often, and it’s clean & efficient. But sadly, I don’t see such a system being effective here. I think the reason why it works so well in Bogota is because truly, the majority of people there use public transit daily. Cars are discouraged. First of all, they’re just not affordable to the average person. Bogota also has a system called pico y placa where drivers can only drive certain days of the week based on the last digit of their license plate. So, even if one has a car and is willing to brave the traffic, they can only do so on certain days of the week and they have to find alternative transportation on the others. Any politician who’d even dare recommend that for Atlanta is sure to be skinned alive!
Another thing that I found impressive, and wished I could import to Atlanta, was their Cyclovia. Every Sunday, the main arteries of the city are closed from 7am-2pm to allow bicyclists, skaters & joggers access. It’s wonderful!
It seems that effective changes to an entrenched behavior (like using single passenger gasoline automobiles) takes a carrot and stick approach.
London did it with a congestion fee. Amsterdam did it with infrastructure design, Columbia is doing it with restrictions. What they have in common is active governmental authority to impose or restrict a set of rules and options to favor rational transportation options. A political climate that is not averse to providing amenities and favoritism for public transportation options is required.
I agree, Ridgelandistan. The masses in Atlanta don’t use public transport because the network is limited (in terms of destinations and frequency), but the state (or whoever) won’t expand upon the network because people don’t use it.
I’d like to see a congestion charge applied in Atlanta, but we all know that’s not going to happen. No elected official is going to dare infringe upon the public’s love affair with the car! Gradually eroding the convenience of the car and expanding the desirability of public transport is probably the only way forward.
There was a proposal to build what would have become a not-entirely-genuine BRT system here in Atlanta. It would’ve been part of the same project that was planned to widen I-75 on the Northwest to 23 lanes.
The plan was not to give the buses dedicated lanes, but to have them travel in the HOT lanes. And when there’s traffic, the BRT would’ve become what some of us call BST — Busses Stuck in Traffic.
That’s not to mention the really awful (and extraordinarily expensive) station designs they were considering.
And the routes they thought up were circuitous and illogical. Let’s face it: with GDOT and GRTA working on the project, it would’ve been destined to fail.
I would hope that should we ever try BRT in Georgia in the future, we take some lessons from Bogota. If I recall correctly, the Transit Implementation Board’s plan for transit in the Atlanta region does not include any dedicated BRT, per se, but would use buses to accomplish much of the suburb-to-suburb service they are planning.
Closer to home, Orlando has a free, dedicated-lane, signal-prioritized bus service in their downtown area, called the Lymmo.
Some irony, methinks, in the photo-header of the City of Orlando Transportation site for Lymmo — I counted at least five lanes of one way traffic there, around 15 cars visible, no real hint of a bicycle lane, and no buses nor lanes for them.
Welcome to Orlando. Please bring you car and enjoy driving our wide, wide roads uncluttered by unsightly rail lines, buses, bikes, or actual people. (Two walkers glimpsed in the distance, surely . . . tourists.)
Barry, you’re right. That photoheader with the text “Orlando” over the tailpipes of cr%p spewing cars couldn’t be a worse choice…unless its a Freudian slip and really represents what Orlando is about. …Since killing cyclists is a popular pastime in Florida, the latter is probably true.
http://www.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2009-05-10/story/florida_the_most_dangerous_state_for_bicyclists
That’s quite ironic. Having been to downtown Orlando, I can tell you the photo there is not very representative of what I experienced when I was there. I mean, yes, they do have one-way streets, etc., but the downtown area is decidedly not like most of the rest of Florida.
I’ll be going there again later this month and plan to take photos. The photos I took last time I was there are admittedly not that great.