Chicago unveils wide-ranging transportation plan

[MiRider]

From The Chicagoist:

What is BRT? Think of it as the lovechild of L trains and express buses. Giving large buses dedicated lanes and deference at traffic signals lets them move quickly like trains on surface streets. The concept is popular in cities around the world due to its flexibility and relative cheapness to deploy..... though the Chicago version will be slimmed down comparatively:

Chicagoist Article with a lot of links to more info

Chicago Forward PDF

Sun Times Article

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Looks like a great idea to me. BRT is one of the less appreciated parts of urban transit.

 

[Trogdor]

Biggest benefit to the downtown plan will be to finally replace that surface lot with a bus loop across from Union Station. That's something that should have been done a couple of decades ago.

Hopefully some of the money can be used to replace that horrible connecting tunnel under Jackson next to track 2 so that 1) it doesn't suck so bad, and 2) it has access to the bus loop rather than just the garage.

 

[Anderson]

The biggest problem with BRT, IMHO, tends to be the "bus" part of it: From what I can tell and what I've read, people just don't like buses. A lot of it is an image problem (buses have just had a crummy reputation as being "that thing that poor people use" in a lot of areas for decades), with the rest of it going down to underfunded agencies running broken-down equipment that probably should have been either overhauled or retired long ago...and of course, merited or not, "the dog" doesn't exactly have a shining reputation for good service, either.

Oddly, I think one problem with buses is that the stops tend to be on the street, while train stops tend to be somewhat isolated from street traffic. I'll admit that given the choice between waiting in a train station at night and waiting on the street at night, I'd choose the former over the latter as "feeling" safer as well as at least feeling like I'm less likely to be bothered by a beggar (the presence of a fare gate tends to filter out at least some of those folks).

 

[Trogdor]

The biggest problem with BRT, IMHO, tends to be the "bus" part of it: From what I can tell and what I've read, people just don't like buses.

You'd better tell that to the million people per day in Chicago who ride buses (including, yes, people from some of the wealthiest neighborhoods north of downtown).

A lot of it is an image problem (buses have just had a crummy reputation as being "that thing that poor people use" in a lot of areas for decades), with the rest of it going down to underfunded agencies running broken-down equipment that probably should have been either overhauled or retired long ago...and of course, merited or not, "the dog" doesn't exactly have a shining reputation for good service, either.

The image problem with buses in Chicago is on-time reliability, mainly due to traffic congestion. That's what BRT is supposed to address. Even back when CTA was running broken-down equipment that was well past its retirement age, the buses were full and overcapacity (which is part of the reason CTA couldn't retire that equipment). Again, then, just as now, many of the busiest bus routes served the wealthy (or at least, well-off, if not "wealthy" per se) Gold Coast and Lincoln Park neighborhoods. Nowadays, CTA has a much newer fleet of buses (the old junk was retired several years ago) and everything is within the FTA standard for bus life. CTA has already placed an order for new buses to replace the now-oldest ones on the fleet, which are due to age out this year and next.

Oddly, I think one problem with buses is that the stops tend to be on the street, while train stops tend to be somewhat isolated from street traffic. I'll admit that given the choice between waiting in a train station at night and waiting on the street at night, I'd choose the former over the latter as "feeling" safer as well as at least feeling like I'm less likely to be bothered by a beggar (the presence of a fare gate tends to filter out at least some of those folks).

I tend to encounter more "beggars" on the train than I do waiting at bus stops.

Edit to add: I don't know what Greyhound has to do with anything in this thread, either, since transit and Greyhound are two completely different services. That said, as has been mentioned on other threads, plenty of folks are willing to ride Megabus and other discount bus services that would never set foot on Greyhound (and, *gasp* they pick up on the street as well, where "beggars" might be able to interact with you; I don't know how buses have managed to survive for a hundred years).

 

[AlanB]

The biggest problem with BRT, IMHO, tends to be the "bus" part of it: From what I can tell and what I've read, people just don't like buses.

You'd better tell that to the million people per day in Chicago who ride buses (including, yes, people from some of the wealthiest neighborhoods north of downtown).

A lot of it is an image problem (buses have just had a crummy reputation as being "that thing that poor people use" in a lot of areas for decades), with the rest of it going down to underfunded agencies running broken-down equipment that probably should have been either overhauled or retired long ago...and of course, merited or not, "the dog" doesn't exactly have a shining reputation for good service, either.

The image problem with buses in Chicago is on-time reliability, mainly due to traffic congestion. That's what BRT is supposed to address. Even back when CTA was running broken-down equipment that was well past its retirement age, the buses were full and overcapacity (which is part of the reason CTA couldn't retire that equipment). Again, then, just as now, many of the busiest bus routes served the wealthy (or at least, well-off, if not "wealthy" per se) Gold Coast and Lincoln Park neighborhoods. Nowadays, CTA has a much newer fleet of buses (the old junk was retired several years ago) and everything is within the FTA standard for bus life. CTA has already placed an order for new buses to replace the now-oldest ones on the fleet, which are due to age out this year and next.

While I've no doubt that some wealthy do indeed get on a bus, Anderson is still somewhat correct that many perceive the bus as being for the poor. And as Conservatives William Lind and Paul Weyrich found when they did a study in Chicago, the median income for train riders is higher than for the buses, indicating that it is indeed true.

 

[stntylr]

Oddly, I think one problem with buses is that the stops tend to be on the street, while train stops tend to be somewhat isolated from street traffic. I'll admit that given the choice between waiting in a train station at night and waiting on the street at night, I'd choose the former over the latter as "feeling" safer as well as at least feeling like I'm less likely to be bothered by a beggar (the presence of a fare gate tends to filter out at least some of those folks).

BRT doesn't stop on the street but instead has stations much like a commuter train station out of the traffic flow.

 

[George Harris]

BRT is also know to be the wonderful alternative brought up by teh anti-rail crowd as an alternative to almost any and every urban rail transit proposal that comes out. Many are completely inappropriate or inadequate to the job for which they are being proposed. Whether that is true or not about this one, I have no idea.

 

[Trogdor]

While I've no doubt that some wealthy do indeed get on a bus, Anderson is still somewhat correct that many perceive the bus as being for the poor. And as Conservatives William Lind and Paul Weyrich found when they did a study in Chicago, the median income for train riders is higher than for the buses, indicating that it is indeed true.

Do you have a link to that study?

While I don't doubt the facts the study provides, I don't know if one can necessarily draw any conclusions from it. For one, were the "train riders" in the study CTA rail riders or Metra riders? If Metra, that would be obvious, because Metra serves suburbs which tend to be, by and large, wealthier than city residents (except for the Gold Coast folks).

The other factor when considering "median" incomes is that there are a lot more bus routes, which serve many very poor areas of town that are not served (at least, not directly) by rail.

A more relevant comparison would be the demographics of riders on the Brown Line vs. those on the 156 bus. There's a certain stereotype in the US regarding transit bus riders and the demographic to which they belong, and based on my experience of commuting daily on those buses for several years, the ridership on the North Lakefront buses in Chicago breaks every one of those stereotypes.

Nonetheless, that's only tangentially related to this topic, because the proposed "BRT" service will not serve any of those corridors. The downtown circulator BRT would serve Navy Pier, and routes to the west side of Chicago, and the Jeffery BRT is just replacing an existing express bus route with slightly fancier bus stops.

 

[AlanB]

Do you have a link to that study?

Sadly, no. It was on my home computer which died on me a while ago and I've been too lazy to reload things so far.

However, Mr. Lind does talk about the study a bit in this recent news story. I do note that he is indeed looking at Metra. However, he doesn't state if the buses he's comparing to are the CTA's or PACE's, or to whom they belong.

 

[Trogdor]

Well, if you're including Pace buses, then that will definitely drag things down. Pace's service is so thin and useless to most people that you basically have to be almost entirely transit dependent to find much of their service to be useful.

The reality, as I see it, is that while there is a perception/stereotype out there that folks won't ride buses in the US, I think it is more a result of transit systems providing really crappy bus service to areas that are not designed in such a way as to promote transit use. When you have good transit service in densely populated areas, then people will use it.

 

[Anderson]

The biggest problem with BRT, IMHO, tends to be the "bus" part of it: From what I can tell and what I've read, people just don't like buses.

You'd better tell that to the million people per day in Chicago who ride buses (including, yes, people from some of the wealthiest neighborhoods north of downtown).

A lot of it is an image problem (buses have just had a crummy reputation as being "that thing that poor people use" in a lot of areas for decades), with the rest of it going down to underfunded agencies running broken-down equipment that probably should have been either overhauled or retired long ago...and of course, merited or not, "the dog" doesn't exactly have a shining reputation for good service, either.

The image problem with buses in Chicago is on-time reliability, mainly due to traffic congestion. That's what BRT is supposed to address. Even back when CTA was running broken-down equipment that was well past its retirement age, the buses were full and overcapacity (which is part of the reason CTA couldn't retire that equipment). Again, then, just as now, many of the busiest bus routes served the wealthy (or at least, well-off, if not "wealthy" per se) Gold Coast and Lincoln Park neighborhoods. Nowadays, CTA has a much newer fleet of buses (the old junk was retired several years ago) and everything is within the FTA standard for bus life. CTA has already placed an order for new buses to replace the now-oldest ones on the fleet, which are due to age out this year and next.

While I've no doubt that some wealthy do indeed get on a bus, Anderson is still somewhat correct that many perceive the bus as being for the poor. And as Conservatives William Lind and Paul Weyrich found when they did a study in Chicago, the median income for train riders is higher than for the buses, indicating that it is indeed true.

Well, let me also point out, for another example, that The Tide in Norfolk has been a smash hit with wealthier residents who have probably never been on a city bus. It's somewhat telling that a lot of folks who were anti-rail back in the 90s have changed their tune. Mind you, this is a lot of what I'm drawing on (experience-wise), but the impression I've picked up in VA is that if people have the option, they'll park-and-ride at the train station rather than taking a bus to the train (be it in Northern Virginia or in Norfolk)...VRE, for example, likely picks up a lot of riders that even a BRT operation wouldn't.

A decent case-in-point is that, at least down here, Norfolk makes up about half of the transit ridership despite only making up something like 1/6th or 1/7th of the population in the relevant jurisdictions. Of course, some of that is down to service density (the half-hourly or hourly buses in Newport News just don't cut it for a lot of folks), but it says something that Virginia Beach is close to twice as large as Norfolk but has 1/3 the bus ridership. Virginia Beach is both more suburban and wealthier than Norfolk, generally-speaking.

Now, I have no doubt that the situation is a bit different in Chicago because of the degree of urbanization there versus in Hampton Roads...but looking at NoVA, I've always gotten the feeling that there are a lot of folks who will choose to take the DC Metro, VRE, or MARC who wouldn't be caught dead on a bus. Illustrative of this, I believe, is the fact that one of the biggest blocks the VRE has run into as far as daily ridership goes is a lack of parking spaces at their stations (and that the solution is to build more lots around the stations where possible, rather than [for example] looking at some system of satellite lots further out, even as a stopgap).

 

[PerRock]

Here in A2 we don't have train service but comparing Bus to Car; I find that most people will talk down Buses (even tho we have a great, clean nice Bus System here). Even those who ride the bus tend to 'insult' it. I think it's mainly this perceived image of the bus over other means of transportation. While it may be true that a bus service is used by many, it is perceived to only be used by "bums".

That being said I've always thought Chicago should get a Tram system in the downtown area. A while back I even drew up a proposed map of the line. I figured they'd use the Seimens Ultra Low Floor Trams, as they require less infrastructure to build then regular trams, because their floors are level with a standard sidewalk, eliminating the need for a ramp-up to floor level for ADA com-pliancy.

Wiki on ULF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Low_Floor

My Map: http://g.co/maps/jj5ss

peter

 

[saxman]

While I've no doubt that some wealthy do indeed get on a bus, Anderson is still somewhat correct that many perceive the bus as being for the poor. And as Conservatives William Lind and Paul Weyrich found when they did a study in Chicago, the median income for train riders is higher than for the buses, indicating that it is indeed true.

Do you have a link to that study?

While I don't doubt the facts the study provides, I don't know if one can necessarily draw any conclusions from it. For one, were the "train riders" in the study CTA rail riders or Metra riders? If Metra, that would be obvious, because Metra serves suburbs which tend to be, by and large, wealthier than city residents (except for the Gold Coast folks).

The other factor when considering "median" incomes is that there are a lot more bus routes, which serve many very poor areas of town that are not served (at least, not directly) by rail.

A more relevant comparison would be the demographics of riders on the Brown Line vs. those on the 156 bus. There's a certain stereotype in the US regarding transit bus riders and the demographic to which they belong, and based on my experience of commuting daily on those buses for several years, the ridership on the North Lakefront buses in Chicago breaks every one of those stereotypes.

Nonetheless, that's only tangentially related to this topic, because the proposed "BRT" service will not serve any of those corridors. The downtown circulator BRT would serve Navy Pier, and routes to the west side of Chicago, and the Jeffery BRT is just replacing an existing express bus route with slightly fancier bus stops.

It's in the book "Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation" by Paul Weyrich and William Lind. It's a good read. Basically the conclusion they come to is that people that have a choice, are attracted to transit that is of "high quality." High quality, in most cases means fast commuter trains, subways, and light rail that run often. But he also says express commuter buses, such as those that run in dedicated lanes are also high quality. In other words, people that have a choice between driving or taking transit, will often choose transit. Let's face it. It's not much fun to drive a BMW to work if you're just sitting in traffic.

It's the other buses that just carry riders who have to ride it. Some of those buses that run once per hour around the strip malls in my area come to mind as low quality transit. Most of those riders probably don't have a car.

 

[PRR 60]

One area where the concept of Bus Rapid Transit seems to work well is Pittsburgh. There are three dedicated busways radiating from downtown Pittsburgh. In at least some of the cases, the busways used abandoned rail rights-of-way.

An advantage of using bus is that one-seat rides can extend beyond the busway to multiple final destinations. Routes can service local communities, office parks, and retail complexes without the need for a shuttle bus or van. The Route 28X bus between Pittsburgh International Airport and downtown is an example of that utility. That bus leaves the airport and uses the existing interstate highway system for 12 miles to access the West Busway at Bell. It then uses the busway to downtown Pittsburgh. If the busway were a light rail line instead, the trip downtown would require two vehicles - bus to the rail line, then rail to downtown. Extending a rail line directly to the airport (tripling the length) would be costly and, for the ridership out of PIT, would have minimal additional value over and above that provided by the bus. Plus, on the other end, it would require building the rail line into the central business district, a huge cost. As it is, the busway ends, and the bus routes use downtown streets. The airport bus dropped me at the door of my hotel.

Just as I think rail is a good solution in many cases, bus rapid transit also can be an effective solution done correctly.

 

[fairviewroad]

What if Bay Area Rapid Transit adopted bus rapid transit? Would the service be called the "BART BRT"?

:giggle:

BRT doesn't stop on the street but instead has stations much like a commuter train station out of the traffic flow.

Not necessarily. That's true in some cases, such as Los Angeles' Orange Line which operates (IIRC) on an exclusive

busway with "stations" for virtually the entire route. OTOH, the Silver Line has both dedicated stations

as well as standard street-curb bus stops. (Coincidentally this is also true for Silver Line in Boston.)

The point is, there is no standard definition of Bus Rapid Transit. In some places it's effectively a light rail line on

rubber tires. In other places it's little more than a standard bus route with a few advantages such as a dedicated

lane or preferential traffic lights.

 

[Anderson]

Saxman,

That more or less describes my bias. One thing I would note, at least anecdotally, is that trolleys and/or streetcars seem to have an attraction that buses operating on the same (or similar) routes lack. I would note that the useless "once per hour" buses are what I am (painfully) familiar with. When I visit a friend up in DC, I often get stuck trying to make a once-every-30/60 minutes bus (weekend schedule) to her house. As I've said to many people...I may swear by the Metro, but I'll swear at the buses.

Also, I'd note that in more than a few older downtown areas, it would probably be possible to shut down a few cross streets to traffic (or heavily restrict them) to run either BRT or light rail. As an example, I would suggest a substantial surplus of "numbered" streets in Virginia Beach where there are no businesses opening exclusively onto them.* The same can probably be said for Richmond, VA; Norfolk, VA; and more than a few other cities. In Newport News, you could probably resurrect the streetcar line that once ran to Hilton and just directionalize it downtown...or, again, you probably wouldn't lose much by doing everything short of shutting down either Huntington or Warwick south of where they split. Of course, THERE the issue is going to be getting anyone uptown to let a line going "down there" run into their neighborhood, even if the shipyard would be a major customer base (and even if the buses run there already).**

The biggest problem is the amount of interaction with traffic that BRT may or may not have. If the interaction is at a bare minimum, then you're probably going to be fine...but if you even just have lots and lot of surface crossings, it seems that there's room for a hangup, while if you're going to be building bridges, you may as well just put in the train. In a lot of cases, BRT strikes me as a weak half-measure: It will likely lack the capacity of even light rail, to be useful in any way besides being a glorified bus line it requires a decent-sized capital spend on the busways and/or closing off lanes to traffic, and its presence is likely to preclude actual rail development.

*Hell, you could probably pull the dedicated lanes off of Atlantic, return it to two lanes in one direction and one in the other with a turn lane, make Pacific one way, and run something down the middle of Pacific...or direct traffic over a block to Baltic/Arctic. But I digress.

**And of course, the only solution I could think of would be to agree to run two sets of services: One set that runs most of the time, and which includes a de facto service break around Mercury (i.e. have a major transfer point somewhere like Huntington Park, where downtown, uptown, and Mercury services would all meet), forcing a transfer; and a second one that "runs through" but which only operates around commute hours. Naturally, that would peeve EVERYONE. Midtown would probably still see an issue, downtown wouldn't like the attempt at a firewall (even if every attempt to gentrify or at least clean up the area over the last 30 years has collapsed and downtown consists of lots and lots of high crime public housing), and so on.

 

[Trogdor]

That more or less describes my bias. One thing I would note, at least anecdotally, is that trolleys and/or streetcars seem to have an attraction that buses operating on the same (or similar) routes lack. I would note that the useless "once per hour" buses are what I am (painfully) familiar with. When I visit a friend up in DC, I often get stuck trying to make a once-every-30/60 minutes bus (weekend schedule) to her house. As I've said to many people...I may swear by the Metro, but I'll swear at the buses.

This basically gets back to what I was saying earlier. Within the city of Chicago, CTA doesn't run 30/60 minute service (except on overnight routes). It's more like 10-15 minute service (and 2-3 minute service, or better, on the really busy corridors). The main reason for some folks to have an anti-bus bias, that of poor (nearly useless for anyone but the most desparate) service, doesn't apply to Chicago and the corridors being studied for BRT.

If Chicago does BRT properly, it will do really well. If not, then BRT won't do any worse than the rest of the bus service in those corridors, which, compared to most of the rest of the country, is still pretty good. The downtown corridors being looked at for transit improvements already have crowded buses during rush hours that, between the half-dozen or so routes that share those streets, run every couple of minutes. If this works to improve overall transit traffic flow, the service will just be that much better. The more "BRT-esque" corridor already has an express and a local route, and the BRT plan is basically just converting the express into a BRT route with even wider stop spacing when it's on local streets on the south side.

 

[Anderson]

That more or less describes my bias. One thing I would note, at least anecdotally, is that trolleys and/or streetcars seem to have an attraction that buses operating on the same (or similar) routes lack. I would note that the useless "once per hour" buses are what I am (painfully) familiar with. When I visit a friend up in DC, I often get stuck trying to make a once-every-30/60 minutes bus (weekend schedule) to her house. As I've said to many people...I may swear by the Metro, but I'll swear at the buses.

This basically gets back to what I was saying earlier. Within the city of Chicago, CTA doesn't run 30/60 minute service (except on overnight routes). It's more like 10-15 minute service (and 2-3 minute service, or better, on the really busy corridors). The main reason for some folks to have an anti-bus bias, that of poor (nearly useless for anyone but the most desparate) service, doesn't apply to Chicago and the corridors being studied for BRT.

If Chicago does BRT properly, it will do really well. If not, then BRT won't do any worse than the rest of the bus service in those corridors, which, compared to most of the rest of the country, is still pretty good. The downtown corridors being looked at for transit improvements already have crowded buses during rush hours that, between the half-dozen or so routes that share those streets, run every couple of minutes. If this works to improve overall transit traffic flow, the service will just be that much better. The more "BRT-esque" corridor already has an express and a local route, and the BRT plan is basically just converting the express into a BRT route with even wider stop spacing when it's on local streets on the south side.

Trog,

I'll take your word for it. It sounds like Chicago may well have the best bus system in the country (and it's certainly going to be in the top five or six) to supplement Metra and/or the El. A lot of the problem with buses is that even in a number of major cities, there just aren't good bus options (or at least, half-decent options are restricted to a few hours out of the day).

 

[Trogdor]

I never said Chicago had the best system in the country, but service-wise, it's up there. And in Chicago, the bus system doesn't supplement Metra or the "L", as buses carry far more people than either mode. But, the problem with other major cities and their pathetic, borderline unusable bus systems isn't really relevant to this thread, because this thread is about Chicago.

The anti-bus bias may very well have relevance in other cities, but it's not the vehicle type that causes the bias, it is the very poor service that can't get you where you need to go, when you need to get there, without taking a day and a half to do so.

It's kinda like...well...Amtrak to most of the country. But then there's Amtrak in the NEC and in California (and parts of the Midwest), and the rules and biases that apply to taking the train from Atlanta to Cincinnati don't apply to taking the train from New Haven to Philadelphia or San Diego to Los Angeles.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

It is absolutely true in most areas of the country that the bus is used almost exclusively by the poor. And naturally, it would be. The buses near where I am run at best hourly on weekdays. They run inconvenient schedules with terrible stops. Their reliability is abysmal. Nobody in their right mind would use this system if they can avoid it. Those that can't avoid it are generally quite poor.

Contrarywise, rail systems tend to be more reliable, more comfortable, and use nicer stops. They are inherently better because they are only used in systems where their existence is wanted- most bus systems are legacy items replacing old street cars that too many people need to use for it to be politically wise to kill it. So they remain alive- but terrible.

Trust me, in a system with good buses, a useful schedule, well thought out stops, and good connectivity, people will use it. People want to get where they are going in reasonable time for reasonable cost and little to no hassle. Most train services happen to provide this. Most bus services happen to not provide this at all. If the bus was a comfortable, effective option, it would be used.