Charge drivers more.
Fewer people drive.
Buses get faster.
More people use buses.
More investment in more buses.
Fewer people bother driving.

The fact that every transit bus in America does not have contactless credit card readers ought to be embarrassing to a lot of people.

3️⃣ 1/4 MILE STOP SPACING

Before consolidating stops, agencies should prepare with real-world, stop-level data showing exactly where riders with mobility impairments are boarding and exiting. Usually the data show exactly where an extra stop is needed. Don’t be afraid to consolidate the rest.

3️⃣ 1/4 MILE STOP SPACING

People hate this one, because it’s always going to make someone walk farther. Sometimes it’s someone who has trouble walking, although there are strategies to prevent that.

But I promise you: there is no way to get people to leave cars for a bus that stops every 1-2 blocks.

Most people in NYC don't own a car. The percentage of people driving into lower Manhattan is a fraction of those who just use public transit.

Now that we've had congestion pricing for a week, buses now are no longer trapped in gridlock traffic and I can no longer WALK faster than cars move.

Transit will never improve as long as agencies are controlled by boards made up of non-riders.

The core problem with transit governance in America is that it puts the interests of lots of other groups—car drivers, contractors, suppliers, unions—over those of actual and potential riders.

Gotta say that the bus speed improvements people are reporting as a result of NY congestion relief tolling are beyond my wildest expectations.

I've always taken a "just separate the buses, don't waste your time trying to remove cars" approach and these results are making me re-evaluate my priors.

Artwork for TransLink's 99-B line including the words "99 B-Line" in bold yellow font, accompanied by a cartoon image of a bumble bee flying quickly.

🚨 Bus Lane Alert 🚨 (Vancouver, BC)

🎶 Where oh where should the bus lanes be?
🎵 Maybe just maybe on the 99-B 🐝

The BUSIEST section of the BUSIEST bus line in Canada or the US deserves all-day bus lanes! Vancouver is considering a half-baked solution. Lets make them bake the whole cake 🎂
1/10

1. With cars banned for personal usage, city buses flow not just much faster, but also more smoothly and with higher ride quality, providing service quality comparable to that of the better light rail lines.

I might have to add “congestion relief pricing” as a 9th tool for making buses faster.

A lot of bus drivers make unsafe turns. If you read accident reports involving pedestrians, a strong pattern of hasty and unprepared turning comes into focus.

In my view, learning to turn on trolley wire teaches discipline about turns in general.

2️⃣ STRAIGHTER ROUTING

A safely made turn adds 30s to a route even before adding time to slow down to turning speed & speed back up. And a turn is rarely alone: a true deviation requires 4.

In other words, straightening out that deviation will save every human on the bus 2 minutes—an eternity.

2/2

2️⃣ STRAIGHTER ROUTING

Buses can't make turns fast. It's just how it is.

Outside the bus, bus turns are usually in busy places with lots of peds and bikes. The driver has to have time to see the turn from every angle.

Inside the bus, fast turns throw passengers around, especially in front.

1/2

Flooding Market Street with cars is bad policy.

✅Buses are up to 4 min faster (an unheard of improvement in transit!)
✅Collisions are down (Market is already one of the most dangerous streets in SF)

Cars won't bring back business, but they will slow down buses and make the street more dangerous

Bus Priority lanes will deliver more bus service with the same number of buses and drivers

I think the current high-end Manhattan version of a bus - limited stops and electrified and with dedicated lanes and running every 5 minutes at peak - is enough of an upgrade over what everybody imagines buses are like that it could win over a lot of well-to-do riders if it becomes more prevalent.

1️⃣ MORE FREQUENCY

So a 15-minute schedule—what most US agencies call "frequent"—will still send people to cars. They won't wait half an hour or more. When they do once, on the day when everything goes wrong, they'll stop riding.

But 5-minute or better scheduled frequency is a different story.

2/2

1️⃣ MORE FREQUENCY

Here's why very high bus frequency is so important.

The real frequency isn't what's on the schedule. It's what riders get in the worst case: when a bus gets delayed to bunching, when it breaks, when it disappears. In other words, it's 2x or even 3x the scheduled frequency.

1/2

Very pleasant take the bus as well

Stretch hummer parked in bus lane

No boarding rear door of bus

“Why are our buses so slow?”

An MTA bus, of course.

This is what a magic toll avoidance key looks like. You can find them all over Manhattan for much cheaper than the toll. Stick it to The Man and use one.

Congestion Pricing Program in New York - MTA

Congestion Relief Zone tolling is now in effect.

Learn more: congestionreliefzone.mta.info

Perhaps (whispers) priority for north-south avenues should be reexamined to the extent it allows for faster buses. 10 mph is possible. Lots of cities achieve it in the city center.

NYC should do whatever it takes, from the congestion charge to hyperactive bus lane enforcement to designing new bus pathways, to get average speed of crosstown buses to 10 mph. It would revolutionize transportation inside Manhattan.

Performing arts major, large US public university. Slightly more than half my required credits were in major. Of the rest, there were only a few core requirements, and I had flexibility to choose most of the courses.

No number of billions of dollars will allow everyone traveling inside a city to use taxis. That's just geometric reality which can be understood with a bit of simple arithmetic.

Yet companies and investors keep acting as though they can bend urban space/time.

Does anyone know of a US or Canadian transit agency that has a governing board with a majority of regular transit riders?

I'm not aware of one but I could well be missing something.

New Year’s resolution for every transit agency: plan and design your facilities for the benefit of your own services, not that of your area’s car drivers.

The right atmosphere for any bus stop this time of year.