50th Anniversary of Buses on Broadway
Buses on Broadway is not a long running transit themed musical but the #40 Route in St. Louis. Yesterday, the 19th of August, marked fifty years since the line switched from streetcars to bus service.
While I cannot, as this time, prove a correlation between the change from streetcars to buses and the dramatic reduction in residents in the city during the same time period I am convinced this was at least a contributing factor. Transit was and will remain important to central cities and we cannot underestimate the importance of this relationship to perception, population trends general health of the community.
Citizens for Modern Transit Executive Director Thomas Shrout, Metro’s Walking tour guide Melanie Harvey, follow urbanist blogger Joe Frank and myself discussed organizing an event to commemorate (mourn?) the switch from streetcars to bus service bus our busy schedules simply didn’t allow us to get anything organized. Besides, we had doubt that anyone would ride the #40 simply for the purpose of noting the anniversary.
– Steve
Buses ARE transit. The switch from old trolleys to new buses had little impact on ridership at the time. An aging fleet and much greater availability of truly personal transportation (the car) have had a much greater impact over the years.
The perception of transit has changed over time, and most people with the resources to do so will choose the flexibility of a private, single-occupant vehicle over the rigidity of scheduled public transit. The only real exceptions are when the cost and/or hassle of parking and/or driving create enough of a disincentive to get people out of their cars AND transit is no longer viewed as just something for “those people” (the poor and transit-dependent) to use.
Clean vehicles, direct service, frequent service and express service are all answers to get people out of their cars. Traditional local bus (or trolley) service, with a stop every two or three blocks and multiple deviations off the major street just doesn’t cut it if you’re going more than a mile or two and you have access to both a private vehicle and parking at both ends.
Blame sprawl if you want, but our local world today is a lot bigger than it was 50 years ago. Fenton wasn’t a sprawling suburb, nor was Chesterfield or St. Charles County. Most commutes were a few miles, at most, so “local” service was acceptable. Many commutes today are dozens of miles, so taking the local bus on Manchester from Ballwin or Kirkwood into downtown St. Louis is something only a masochist or the truly transit-dependent will do more than once or twice a month.
That’s why you can convince suburban taxpayers that expanding Metrolink makes sense, when funding for an expanded bus system is a much harder sell. Putting lipstick on the pig, by replacing buses with trolley cars (modern or historic) won’t solve the basic time = money equation. Eliminating half of Metro’s current local bus stops would definitely be a good start, but there’s almost always someone who will object to walking a block or two further. Given the short-sighted politics of most public transit, the stops stay, and keeping one rider happy discourages a dozen potential new ones.
Bottom line, transit needs to look forward, not back. The vehicle is not the “problem” or the reason people choose not to ride. Provide better alternatives, including adequate, secure, inviting parking at most Metrolink stations, and you’ll get a lot more people out of their cars for at least part of their trips. Provide increased special service for special events like Rams games and the Taste of Clayton and you’ll give suburbanites a reason to support increased funding for public transit (even if they only use it a few times a year). Sure, there will always remain a core group of committed transit riders and commuters who will choose to make the compromises and sacrifices needed to save money, reduce congestion and help the environment. But it’s still all about me, and given enough obstacles, real or perceived, and I’ll find a reason not to use transit . . .
General Motors Streetcar Conspiracy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Did selling more cars reduce bus ridership or did selling more buses to tramway and trolley companies kill the streetcar? Yes, GM’s in the business to sell rubber-tired vehicles (and railroad locomotives). We live in a free-market economy where the company offering the better product and the better price almost always gets the consumer’s business. People vote with their feet and their wallets. If streetcars were/are equal to (or better) in value than transit buses, we’d still see streetcars.
The reality remains that any transit system must make tradeoffs to move as many riders as possible for the least cost per rider. The capital costs of any rail system are significantly higher than the cost of running a bus on the same or a parallel street. Rail only starts to make financial sense when there is a large number of riders that are willing to (or can be forced to) use a specific route. That’s why you see Metrolink working and why you don’t see any steetcars. Even if the lines had been preserved 50 years ago, their higher ongoing maintenance and vehicle replacement costs, coupled with falling ridership, would have dictated their replacement with buses at some point (with or without a GM conspiracy).
Face it, people today are both spoiled and lazy. We like our air-conditioned cars that go from our driveways to our free parking spots whenever we decide we want to go. Taking transit many times means getting hot, cold and/or wet, taking 2-3 times longer to get from point A to point B, and if we’re shopping, having to schlep whatever we buy back on our laps! Until you change any part of that equation (primarily the time and/or money part), what’s the incentive of a) voting to increase taxes to fund public transit, and b) to actually use it?!
Jim has hit on the essential point of why those who do not have to take public transit don’t. A story was relayed to me not long ago by someone who rode the bus to work. It would take her 45 minutes to get to work, which was no more than a 5-10 minute car trip. It was actually faster for her to walk the miles to work than to ride public transit. The problem with our transit system is availability. Now, if we had an underground, with trains arriving and departing every few minutes, the story would be different.
Steve, there may be a correlation between the end of the streetcar system and the loss of population in the City, but that is not cause-&-effect. I agree with Jim and Rob – people are spoiled and lazy: if they have the financial means to support an automobile they’ll use it, cars being part of the whole consumerist shift to the suburbs after WWII.
Can anyone tell me when St Louis transit lines were racially integrated? I’m wondering if the nostalgia for streetcars has anything to do with a wish for pre-Black Power civic life…? A virtual Apartheide has characterized the usage of our transit system, especially on the bus lines – although due to better planning by Metro and the rising cost of gas, the system is becoming more “diverse” (i.e. more White people are joining me on the buses). The MetroLink provides as close to a “melting pot” experience as we St Louisans have right now.
I’m not against streetcars – I love them in Toronto, where they’re a busy component of a multi-modal syatem. But here, if Joe Edwards and Vince Schoemehl have their way, streetcars will belong to tourists, plus those hip & affluent occasional users who don’t want to mingle with working-class folk the majority of whom are Black.
Travis, as of Aug. 28, thousands of us near the Metro (near enough by a walk or 10-minute-or-less bus ride) will have access to trains every 5 – 10 minutes. Join us and be part of the solution, not part of the problem, so we can expand Metro again- maybe by adding real streetcars next time.
[REPLY True, nobody likely said, “Well, since the streetcar is gone I’m moving.” However, I don’t know that you can definitively say it is not a cause-effect. Why? Simple, it is the cities that retained rail service that are the most urban and dense today. Coincidence?
Bus service has a stigma, no doubt about it. You take a mostly black bus route and put a new modern streetcar on the same line and you will see ridership increase from all races. Upper and middle class blacks don’t want to ride the bus anymore than whites. Bus=lower class in many minds. Rail transit= quiet, efficient, green, smart, etc…
I think bus service has a sort of glass ceiling in St. Louis. That said, JZ is often correct in that simply offering more frequent service will turn people into transit riders. Take a bus route with 30 minute headways and change those to 10 minute intervals and see what happens. Which would promote the most ridership and the most TOD investment — a 30 minute bus interval reduced to only 10 minute headways or a modern streetcar system on 15-20 minute headways? I’d place my money on the streetcar. – SLP]
“The cities that retained rail service that are the most urban and dense today. Coincidence?”
Again, chicken or egg, and unproveable. The more urban and dense a city is, the easier it is to justify frequent public transit of all kinds. Did St. Louis’ loss of population and density kill transit, or did the switch from rails to rubber drive people away? Or did the massive flight of both businesses and residents from the city to St. Louis County (and points beyond), for whatever reason, take away both the population density and the employment density that makes transit successful?
Transit is but one part of the equation. Toronto, Chicago and New York shifted from manufacturing to ntional and international information-based economies. St. Louis city saw a lot of its industry leave, with little to replace it. Every city has its local entertainment, medical, educational, government and legal sectors. St. Louis has A-B, AG Edwards and Ralston-Purina as major employment anchors (with only R-P truly downtown). GM moved to Wentzville, Ford moved to Hazelwood, Chrysler built in Fenton – how many of their workers take the bus? Less than 1%?
Add in the poltical demarcations that limit a regional solution (no Metro taxes from, or service to, St. Charles and Jefferson Counties) and you perpetuate a system that’s viewed as one more focused on the transit-dependent “inner-city” rider, and one that’s “not for me, the affluent suburban rider”. Successful systems in New York, Chicago, Toronto, Denver and Portland transcend these perceptions, by both living in areas where congestion and parking prices make transit more attractive from a time and money perspective and by being able to provide express services that appeal to the suburban commuter. If you live in Elmhurst, IL., Centennial, CO. or Islip, NY, you have viable transit options for commuting into downtown. If you live in Fenton, MO., St. Peters, MO. or Alton, IL., your best and only real commuting option remains the interstate highway.
And, unfortunately, this remains the big local transit challenge. Without more suburban tax revenues coming in to support and expand the system, the system will remain one that’s more likely to be viewed as primarily serving the transit dependent. And without more suburban service to place like Chesterfield and O’Fallon (MO or IL), there’s less reason to support transit taxes and it’s harder for the transit-dependent to access these areas for employment or to shop.
Our biggest immediate opportunity is encouraging smart, appropriate transit-oriented development around our Metrolink stations. The land is there, it’s inside Metro’s current boundaries and it’s obviously well-served by transit. Done right, it will encourage more people to live and work near, and likely use more frequently, transit. More use / demand will drive more service and higher frequency which will atract more riders and encourage more dense development. Again, it’s truly a chicken or egg solution. Transit is a tool, it’s not the solution. And lamentin what we’ve “lost” isn’t the answer, either. We need to focus on building on what we have now . . .
[REPLY Equally unprovable is that our switch from streetcars to bus service 40-60 years ago didn’t contribute to our population loss during the same period. My point was that regions that retained rail service during the same period saw loss in population but not to the extent we did. They have also seen population increases.
You are correct that examining past decisions and the results from those decades really doesn’t help us today. However, we must have a full understanding of past decisions and what they meant to make educated decisions moving forward. Understanding the transit/population relationship is critical to new decisions.
Going forward we must also look at a city like Toronto different than say Portland. Toronto kept its streetcar system and added subway in the 1950s while Portland, like St. Louis, switched to bus only service and later added rail service.
From an intellectual (aka grad school) perspective I am curious to examine transit and population trends. I cannot prove true nor can you prove false that had St. Louis retained a number of streetcar lines and eventually, as Toronoto did, update the cars that our population would be higher than it is today. This has the makings of a great research project. – SLP]
“A story was relayed to me not long ago by someone who rode the bus to work. It would take her 45 minutes to get to work, which was no more than a 5-10 minute car trip. It was actually faster for her to walk the miles to work than to ride public transit. ”
When I worked downtown I lived 4 houses away from a Grand bus stop, and the MetroStink stop was directly in front of my building.
At that time, the round-trip cost $2.20, but it took me almost 45 minutes in the morning, and anywhere from 1 hr to 1.5hrs in the evening was typical.
It was a 10-15 minute drive OTOH, and cost $2 to park, or $0 to park if I rode my scooter.
Guess which option I took?
Today working in the Yuppie Purgatory of Westport, it would take over 2 hours EACH WAY if I rode Metro.
The drive takes 25 minutes most days…
“It was actually faster for her to walk the miles to work than to ride public transit.”
Especially with reverse commutes, I don’t doubt this in certain cases. But I also hear many drivers underestimate the time they spend behind the wheel. Many use the mile-per-minute rule of thumb if they take the highway but don’t take into account:
-getting to the highway
-the highway being slower than average
-exiting the highway
-driving the streets to get to the garage
-parking
-extra walking, if applicable
So if a standard commuter says how short his/her daily trip is and give a range such as ‘5-10 minutes’, I double the high number and consider that the actual commute time 🙂
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