FTA Privitization Program Hunts School Buses

Oh the places they will go...with their ideology. More tales of the Bush administration transferring wealth to private corporations. The FTA has decided to make it a requirement to allow charter services to bid for event transport that is now provided by the transit agency such as for baseball games and other special events. And now they are trying to make school bus service. But who is going to serve kids in downtrodden districts that no private entity wants to serve?

In the East Bay, about 30,000 schoolchildren use AC Transit buses to get to and from school, paying $15 a month for discounted youth passes. While many of those trips are on regular routes used for nonschool commuters, some of them with route numbers between 600 and 699 are specially scheduled and routed to serve specific schools. Local officials fear that the change sought by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) would ban those special routes.
...
"If this came to pass, it would be a disastrous development for Oakland and for many school districts in California," said Troy Flint, spokesman for the Oakland school district. Flint said it would be "a huge financial burden" for the district to pay for private contractors, and that it wasn't clear whether private companies would even be willing to serve all of the areas covered by AC Transit.

I'm not sure what to think of this, but at first thought, its the stupidest thing I've heard yet. Especially from the FTA spokesman who when asked about AC Transit situation had this to say: "Federal Transit Administration spokesman Paul Griffo said that because the regulation process is under way, the agency cannot address specific concerns such as those raised by AC Transit." That's probably because they didn't think of it, as usual.

Gimme-Gimmeism & Employment Sprawl

As I was reading accounts of the new Microsoft Bus service which is an obvious nod to the famous Google buses which grace one of the streets by my house every day, I was struck by a comment made to the Seattle Post Intelliger about the transit system:

This is something that the county bus system should be doing and they're not," said Stephen Gerritson, executive director for Commuter Challenge, a Seattle non-profit. "To some extent, Metro is dropping the ball here."

Really? Well I guess the question is what is a good corporate citizen? Obviously Microsoft chose to locate their campus in a sprawling area instead of in the city which has the most commuting options. To me it doesn't seem to be a problem of the county bus system but rather of businesses that decide to locate in unsustainable locals. I have this same problem with Dell in Austin or Chevron in the Bay Area. They located out into nowheresville for cheap land but what they really did is transfer transportation costs onto their employees, specifically employees who wanted a different lifestyle than the auto-oriented trash that we see today. Does anyone wonder why young professionals flock to certain cities like San Francisco, New York, or Seattle? I'll give you a hint, its not to live in Redmond Washington or San Ramon California so they can be closer to their work campus.

This same idea can be applied for people who live in sprawl. Cheaper house? Well pay more for transportation. A study by the Center for Housing Policy showed that for every dollar saved on moving further out, a 70 cent transportation increase was had. We don't seem to let those folks off the hook for their choices so why should we let Microsoft off the hook for theirs? While hard to do now because of their entrenchment in Redmond, what would really help is a move closer to the transportation spines of the region or the creation of a new dense city like center with light rail access to Seattle. People shouldn't blame the County bus for not wanting or being able to incur $2.4 million in operating costs to serve one company, specifically a company who chose an inaccessible area.

Design, Shelters, & Riders

A recent competition was raised in San Francisco to design transit shelters. Apparently the idea is something that architects can get into, and by some of the shelters looks, can overdo. But its an interesting exercise in design. My questions would be, can good design keep away the vandals? Will the shelter actually keep the wind out? Will it put maps on many sides so you don't have to ask someone to leave their seat to look at them? Will the advertising be a tasteful size in order to not feel overwhelmed by a product at a bus stop? Those are a few of the questions I would have about these stops. Yes it's nice to worry about aesthetics, but hopefully they are heavy on function.

I would like to make a request to Muni as well. Please put a shelter at my stop on 24th and Church. And a map would be nice. You would think that a handicapped accessible stop on a Muni Metro line would at least have a map and perhaps nextbus. Now that would be great!

The Buses Role and Roll

While staying in the valley of the sun for a wedding, I needed to get a haircut before the ceremony. Of course where we were staying was not very walkable. The city is sprawl with the exception of the north south light rail corridor that is under construction and even that is a stretch. I looked up a haircut place on Yelp and CitySearch and then decided that I would walk. It was on a main corridor road and it was 101 degrees outside. When I got to the haircut place I was red and needed to cool down a bit. I saw a number of bus stops on my way there but figured it wasn’t really far enough. Well, it was far enough and I decided to take the bus back to the hotel. There were no schedules on the post. There were no route maps and a next bus indicator would have been helpful to know that I would have had to wait 40 minutes for it.

Overall it was a disappointing look into why people don’t take transit. This isn’t a bus versus rail thing but rather a convenience thing. I’m sure that this corridor I was on will be turned into Light Rail when they extend the initial line to the Metro Center, and that will allow a service improvement, but what about all of those other places that aren’t going to get light rail. What are cities going to do about bus service? Are they going to be like Portland and use all the money they saved from operating costs to increase bus service? That should be the main goal of cities building new rail starts, improve the bus system as well, which seems to be the goal of transit agencies who are doing this, specifically in Houston and Seattle. Without it, the only people riding the bus will continue to be the poor and the advocates.

Space Race Timeline Statistics from Ed Tennyson

It's interesting to see this year's transit totals go back to 50 years ago levels. Here's what rail guru Ed Tennyson has to say about it. It's a lot of rail...

From 1984 just after the rail renaisance started to 2004, Light Rail gained 274 %, Regional Rail 57 % and Rapid Rail 40-some percent but buses lost half a percent despite 20 per cent more service, That was devastating for costs.

So Tell Us Why Bus is Better...

The folks at Better Transit Without Trolleys want us to believe a few things below...mainly the 5 points that will be refuted below...

Faster Travel- "Buses Can Provide Faster Service Than Trolleys" is what they say. However we know that diesel engines whether hybrid or not are inferior in terms of acceleration when it comes to moving large loads of people. And with stops short before getting back on the main rail line this will allow greater time savings than a bus. Also, buses going into downtown have to contend with traffic and snow while an LRV will enter the subway system for enhanced people movement. This can even be improved with an rail lane during peak hours and pre-empted signaling. The rails will also be a snow clearing priority...experience from the Silver Line shows that snow is stored in the dedicated lanes after a storm. See picture.

They also complain about cars double parking. Tickets and information can easily take care of that issue. Also the idea of a huge LRV hitting or even just waiting with many angry passengers behind your car is a great deterrent.

Less Waiting- By claiming 17,000 (It's actually more like 14,000 now) passengers they believe that the traffic density does not warrant rail service at increased headways. But the fact is that if bus service continues there will be a continued decline in ridership. If the traffic density of 28,000 from 1988 is to be brought back, this line will need greater vehicle capacity. A band aid simply won't work and neither will limited bus capacity.

More Service - What does more service mean? They mean more frequent service and claim streetcars cost more than buses. Well according to the NTAD this is not true and actually rail is significantly less than buses in terms of expense per rider. This is a ridiculous claim that has been shot down over and over again. They also say that capital costs are less. Well thats not true either given that rail vehicles have a 30 year time frame while buses last 12. That means in order to have the buses you need to buy two for every LRV but then 12 years later you need to buy 2 more meaning you have to have 4 buses for every LRV in cost!!!! And each of those two buses per LRV has a driver meaning even greater operating costs.

Accessibility- They say...can't do it with trolleys...no...we don't know the facts...and we aren't changing our minds. Basically they say it will cost more to apply ADA to streetcars than buses. However streetcars can be low floor and wheelchair accessible also. If it needs to go into the subway and has a certain platform height then neighborhood platforms can be built. They are not that expensive and can easily be created on the bulbouts. Their claim is expense but it should be called an investment. Building and continuing rail operations is an investment, while buses should be seen as a non-returning expense.

Safer Streets for All- this was discussed in the previous post with the bike safety.

What the above excuses tells me is that merchants don't see the direct benefits of rail to them. More riders and greater service means a better situation for them however for some reason they believe buses are the answer. If buses were the answer then all of the rail lines in Boston would have been replaced with buses by now. The proof is in the pudding and the pudding (eg ridership) has dropped by 50% since 1988. They should get it back with rail.