I love the bus because it runs express from my Chicago neighborhood directly into the loop.
I get on, play with my phone, and get off 25 minutes later. I don't have to fight traffic driving myself and I can multi-task if I choose.
The problem comes when trying to take the bus to any other part of the city. It's slow, stops at every block, and is unpredictable when it arrives. It's a mode of transport that supports everyone and that inherently makes it less useful to the individual.
Personally I'd like to see bus systems get more fine-grained about their routes, timing, and size of vehicle. We should be able to model some optimizations that improve service while remaining accessible for everyone.
It'd be a shame if over the last several years major cities haven't been collecting the required data to make this possible. If not, now would be a good time to beging recording this data.
When I moved to Portland (from NYC, unfortunately), I hoped that I would have access to the MAX, but if not then I'd be able to take the bus to work. I ended up being about 20 blocks from the nearest MAX stop, but there was a bus stop right outside my apartment. I took the bus maybe a dozen times before I realized that it really is a non-option; what takes me ~15 minutes (20 on a extremely rare bad day) in a car takes me at least 45 minutes (to an hour) on the bus.
It's really all about what bus route you're on, and your ability to find housing on the bus with the most direct line to your office (in a city like Portland). That's usually not super easy. I have coworkers that have 15-30 minute bus rides from farther out because they're on efficient bus routes.
Part of Portland's problem is that its transit is built to move people into and out of downtown. Very little of it is built to move people between neighborhoods or across routes. That's somewhat understandable since downtown is the most common destination, but plenty of people (like you) end up without many options.
Some cities I've lived in have a star model. In Munich I'd take the subway downtown, change trains and head into a different suburb. Because the train was quick and the stops reasonable spaced resulting in a decent experience. In Portland the MAX stops so frequently downtown that taking it for example from the west side to the airport is way too slow. You spend way too much time just slogging through downtown. It starts to suffer from the same problem like most US buses that stop every fucking block. What's up with that insanity?! The T-Line in SF suffered from the same problem and I ultimately stopped taking it in favor of a kick scooter.
Yep, the MAX is sluggish enough downtown that it's often faster to bike to the other side of downtown to catch it. Say you want to get to Beaverton from the South Waterfront: you could take the Orange from there to Pioneer Square, then the Blue to Beaverton, but it would be faster for you to just bike to the Goose Hollow station. All because the Orange Line takes 12 minutes to travel the 1.5 miles from the South Waterfront to Pioneer Square. It takes 25 minutes to traverse downtown.
I've long been an advocate to bury the MAX downtown (via cut-and-cover, not tunneling), but obviously even that could cost billions of dollars.
>It's slow, stops at every block, and is unpredictable when it arrives. It's a mode of transport that supports everyone and that inherently makes it less useful to the individual.
I wouldn't say that it's inherently less useful to the individual.
In lots of the UK we have dedicated bus lanes. Usually there's some leeway over who can use them, but it's often just buses/taxis/cyclists/motorbikes. They're often only restricted during peak hours, and there's cameras set up which will send fines to drivers who misuse the lanes.
This works fantastically because it actually makes the bus faster, or a similar speed, to driving. Therefore people use it more, which puts less cars on the roads, which makes every form of transport faster for everyone.
Also, express buses. Split the city up into zones, have local bus routes within the zones (maybe with some overlap) and have one or a few stops in the zone be feeder stations that let you transfer to inter-zone buses that zip around post-haste. Set it up sensibly and you'll have a quick transit for everyone. Take a hint from zoning (one bus zone covering an area with a lot of office parks) and you'll be able to scale bus volume more accurately during different times, i.e. less buses there on weekends and after seven or eight.
I get on, play with my phone, and get off 25 minutes later. I don't have to fight traffic driving myself and I can multi-task if I choose.
The problem comes when trying to take the bus to any other part of the city. It's slow, stops at every block, and is unpredictable when it arrives. It's a mode of transport that supports everyone and that inherently makes it less useful to the individual.
Personally I'd like to see bus systems get more fine-grained about their routes, timing, and size of vehicle. We should be able to model some optimizations that improve service while remaining accessible for everyone.
It'd be a shame if over the last several years major cities haven't been collecting the required data to make this possible. If not, now would be a good time to beging recording this data.