Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
Individuals make decisions on a whim sometimes but this all averages out when you're talking about thousands of people. If you build a convenient (fast, reliable, high frequencies, goes to necessary locations) and comfortable system people will use it. In fact, in big cities they gladly use transit that is fast and reliable but NOT comfortable -- the bar for getting people on transit is actually quite low.
Metro Transit's #1 problem by far seems to be that the buses are slow. They sit in the same traffic cars do plus they have low frequencies so they can never be competitive. In the absolute best case buses are still somewhat slower than a car because they have stops. The only people willing to waste an hour to get across town are those who have no alternatives.
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That's a very good point. Part of the reason people dislike the C-train here in Cowtown is because of the 7th avenue corridor and the fact the trains are stuck dealing with traffic lights. They don't get priority; it's a standard light cycle; so if something happens that the train starts to move out of a station on a yellow light - they have to wait it out until it's their turn.
I wonder if maybe the way to proceed with any widening is to strategically pick areas to widen that would be more beneficial to buses. So say widen the road space around the Romans intersection to get the buses out of the way and provide a queue jump for buses to get ahead? Then they merge back into traffic as they close in on the ramp outbound to the bi-hi? The same on the inbound, the lane is created as they come in from the burbs, then queue jump at the intersection and have an indented bus stop and then merge back into traffic as they continue up Bayers?
Small strategic improvements that benefit transit, versus cars? This way if you combine that with no parking on the main road during rush hours, you might not have to widen the road?
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