Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee
I think he's asking though why couldn't someone in Manhattan just take the subway instead of the bus. I'd say they would take the bus for why most people would, that the entry/exit point is closer than the subway station would be, no?
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Because the subway doesn't serve the 14th street bus riders. Again, they're traveling to/from the LES/East Village. There's no subway entrance east of Ave. A., even on 14th (and that Ave. A entrance is brand new). But these riders don't live along 14th, for the most part. They live in the eastern fringes of Manhattan, with no subway.
I used to date a girl who lived on 2nd street, between B & C. She would use the bus to head to Union Square. She was too far east for the subway, and her nearest subway (F) heads north-south, not east-west, and serves the West Side only. Once the SAS opens in the East Village, this issue will be somewhat ameliorated (but that will take many years; I think that's the final SAS construction phase).
And, yeah, busways make a lot of sense. But they'll never replace high capacity subway corridors like the SAS. Sometimes you gotta build high capacity rail, even if the costs are obscene. The costs of not providing such rail are far higher (as we see now with NJ, which has become the chronic underperformer of the NE Corridor, simply because Christie cancelled the new Hudson rail tunnel, basically harming all west-of-Hudson commuters).