Traffic Congestion, Friend or Foe?
London is getting tough on traffic congestion, charging drivers extra to drive in certain parts of town (see wiki). New York is debating a similar measure in Manhattan. At last week’s Rail~Volution conference, many attendees concurred that addressing congestion was a top priority. After all, cars stuck in traffic are not productive — they are just stationary polluters at that point.
But not all are in agreement. In fact, the keynote speaker Doug Foy indicated that, “congestion is our friend.” How can having motorists stuck in traffic be good? What is the upshot? Transit, of course. Well, except buses and streetcars that operate in traffic with cars.
To get federal funds to offset the costs to install a transit system one main thing must be shown — a time savings. This is why streetcars are not generally funded — while they offer great localized transit they suck at getting the suburbanite back to the park-n-ride after work or a game. So planners and engineers, trying to meet federal funding guidelines, focus on making the systems as fast as possible. Fast enough, to show a savings in time over the same A to B trip done by car.
Transit systems can only go so fast so the longer the trip by car, the better the transit looks. This is true for both new riders and for funding approval.
Engineers currently in court over the new Shrewsbury line found ways to save overall trip time. For example, the Clayton station is in the middle of the roadway rather than off to one side and more connected to the city. So while the trip time is probably less each time a train passes through that station I think it also has less passengers due to the highly disconnected means in which to get to the platform. Is this time savings really a gain if the total number of users are reduced?
Some were critical for a transit line not being run down the center of I-64 (highway 40 to locals) but in terms of time savings it never would have been justifiable. Stops along the route to pick up riders would have consumed more time than any delays from say Chesterfield to downtown.
The recent North-South study for future transit in St. Louis was focused on time savings too — how quickly can we get to the edges of the city limits to pick up suburban riders? Oh sure, we’ll stop and get some city folks along the way as long as they don’t slow us down too much.
Travel times throughout the St. Louis region just are not that great. That is, getting from the Illinois to St. Charles, from Chesterfield to South County or pretty much anywhere just doesn’t take that much time by car. This assumes, of course, that you have a car. Some of our worst congestion is getting a half billion dollar fix via the new I64.
So do we want to increase congestion in the St. Louis area to make transit a more interesting option? Hardly. So is congestion a friend or foe in St. Louis? I’d say neither. Increased congestion will only result in more money being spent on road projects. Besides, we are such a large region that a line or two of rail transit may never even impact where the congestion may appear.
In NYC, transit is simply a factor of life — so many people use the subways — reducing traffic congestion isn’t going to suddenly wake up New Yorkers to the idea of transit. However, it will free up road space so that buses, taxis and other vehicles have some room to function. In London the studies show that while some people use transit as an alternative people have also begun carpooling or altering schedules to avoid central London. Auto use in the core of the city is down a dramatic 25%. Back here in St. Louis we’ve got more road width than we know what to do with. In the city our streets were widened decades ago for the day when we had over 800k residents and streetcars.
So while it is easy for someone to claim congestion is a friend or foe, I think it really must be taken into context. The foe for St. Louis transit advocates, in my view, is our sprawling nature and divided political context. If the St. Louis County voters are going to pay for much of the expansion, it should serve them. Hard to argue with that logic. Still, I think a city/inner ring suburb series of streetcars serving local riders is the way to go.
Congestion will never be an issue in St. Louis. Never. We are so spread out and our population is stagnant. No, we have no congestion worries to help us justify transit expenditures. Oil running around $100/barrel, however, is our new best friend. Once gas prices make their steady climb past $3/gallon, with no return to the lower territory, we’ll begin to see some minor rumblings although nothing major. Once it passes $4/gallon, people will be calling out for more transit options and then we can hopefully raise the Missouri gasoline tax to levels say equal to Illinois.
The trick then will be do we try to run transit lines out to the far reaches of the region or do we focus in the central section of the region? Do we skip transit lines and stick with less costly methods like BRT (Bus Rapid Transit)? Regular readers know my thoughts, streetcars are the best solution for localized transit service — they offer the convenience of a local bus route while having the permanence of a light rail line to assure developers the line is there to stay. To those outside of the I-270/I-255 loop — you are screwed.
Our whole 16-county MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area) could live well within a much tighter geography such as inside this highway loop. But market forces, combined with suburban zoning that mandated sprawl, has led us where we are today. Our homes and jobs are dispersed throughout the region to the point we have no congestion — just cars criss-crossing the region daily.
In our region congestion pricing is a mute point. Take care of the traffic signal timings and a few other things and we are good. In other cities, I think we need to work to reduce congestion through means such as congestion pricing. Letting congestion build for the sake of making transit look better is simply careless with resources and the planet.
I agree with most of your points. Congestion is no one’s “friend”. Time is money and we choose the alternative that yields the best outcome. Congestion IS a great motivator in forcing people to consider public transit as an alternative to the single-occupant vehicle.
What is left unanswered is the funding question, since most transit agencies rely on Federal funding for a big part of their capital construction programs. Do we limit expanding Metrolink to fund streetcars? Do we invest more in buses and less or none in rail – stretch our limited dollars further? Or, do we invest more in rail and less in buses, to attract people like my wife who “won’t” ride a bus?
The reality is that Metro relies on a fractured, politicized funding stream. We city dwellers simply can’t take the position that “To those outside of the I-270/I-255 loop — you are screwed.” Their simple response will be “Screw you, I’m not going to vote for more taxes to fund Metro.” We city dwellers may be “more enlightened”, but we need the suburbanites’ money. It’s not an us versus them problem, it’s the challenge of creating a comprehensive public transportation system that moves people. It’s not BRT versus light rail. It’s not streetcar versus bus. It’s not fixed route buses versus call-a-ride services for all, not just people with disabilities. It’s not expecting every suburban rider to wait at a bus stop – let them choose to drive to a park and ride lot where enough of them will create a critical mass to justify viable service levels – it’ll get them off the roads for 80-90% of their trip, and likely off city streets completely! While the “new and different” will attract new riders, providing frequent, relatively-seamless TRIPS (on whatever the best vehicle may be) will convert more people to transit AND convince them to help fund it.
One side point. I now work in Clayton, southwest of the Clayton Metrolink Station, within walking distance of the station. Apparently, during “value engineering”, a pedestrian connection (ramp and/or stairs, between the tracks ) was apparently eliminated between the west end of the platform and Brentwood Boulevard. Bottom line, it adds three blocks and five minutes each way to go up and over than it would taking the straight line path of least resistance. Just another case of either penny wise and pound foolish or balancing a very limited budget/doing things on the cheap . . .
StLers probably can’t even imagine what it’s like to step off the sidewalk and slither into gridlocked traffic, trying to avoid breathing tailpipe exhaust and hoping the gridlock lasts long enough to let you make it across the street without becoming a statistic on STREETSBLOG’s (streetsblog.org) “This Week’s Carnage” report.
Imagine: I just wrote, “hoping the gridlock lasts long enough . . . ” That’s how insane–and how life-threatening–simply crossing the street has become in certain parts of Manhattan at certain times.
That’s why a plan–Congestion Pricing–that in the past would have amounted to political suicide for any official who proposed it, has received such a surprising degree of support from New Yorkers.
That support is strongest among the Manhattan intelligentsia, as you’d expect; but the plan also appeals to a growing constituency (though not yet a majority) in the outer boroughs as well, who see it, if nothing else, as a way to trade political support for critically needed mass-transit capital projects and upgrades.
Less discussed is a benefit that’s more abstract: Getting drivers to realize that the right to occupy real estate in Manhattan, whether in an office or an apartment; on a roadway or in a parking space, isn’t guaranteed in the Constitution. If you want it, you’re going to have to pay, and pay a lot. So maybe it would make more sense to leave the car at home and take the bus, the train or the ferry instead.
Ultimately, of course, mass transit should be paid for through taxes, not through the anachronism of the farebox, even if it be digitized. “Free” mass transit (which is not free at all, of course, but which is paid for as a shared health-maintenance and transportation expense through taxes) would be the most compelling incentive for mass transit use.
One hears so-called free mass transit discussed more and more openly in alternative transportation circles, which is where the political momentum for such a policy would likely originate. I hope transit paid through taxes will soon become one of a group of feasible next steps in the larger progressive transportation agenda, which is to reclaim streets as places for people, as generators of community rather than as roadways for cars, with narrow concrete ribbons on each side for those pesky pedestrians who can’t afford to or haven’t yet learned to drive a car.
A comprehensive public transportation system is one that serves all users, whether it’s a car, bus, truck, pedestrian, train, cyclists, pedestrian, etc. Trouble here is that anyone who doesn’t use a car is treated as a second class citizen and infrastructure projects are underfunded and poorly designed.
For example, the MetroLink Ext was designed to cater to alternatives but, as built, fails miserably in meeting this simple goal. Circulated plans called for an adjoining bike path linking Shaw Park with the paths in Shrewsbury. This path was integral in the Great River Greenway goals to create a critically needed north-south route. It was never built.
Botton line?: People were able to cycle or walk from Hanley Rd in Maplewood to Shaw Park without ever crossing a street or stopping at a red light, but no more. Given this large public expenditure, people have to walk-ride on dangerous streets such as Hanley Rd., Eager, and Brentwood, and negotiate 18 stop lights instead of walk-riding without accident worries or dodging cars. This is not progress but rather lunacy.
The result: public officials are increasing the widths of Hanley, Brentwood and Eager. The County’s stated reason for rejecting alternate design proposal was that it would encourage pedestrians and bicyclists along this stretch of Hanley Road and open the County up to potential lawsuits from injured (or worse) pedestrians and bicyclists.
The Metro light rail also changed bus routes making connections and transfers more difficult and time expensive. In effect, we have designed a system that creates more “congestion type delays” without the socio-econmic benefits typically associated with congestion.
If Metro leaders wanted to save traveling time, stations would have been built further apart and positioned in easily accessible positions. No Steve, many of these designs have added to congestion but without the benefits. The traffic in these areas along highway 40 have been created by the three-fold increase in the volume of retail establishments. This is part and parcel of the divided communities syndrome. Solving the associted problems has more to do with parking lot management and creating mass transit with value and useability. Metro has done the opposite.
Metro leadership has proven that they think the city-region is full of clowns. Even the prez has statedt: “The only people I really care about that have any input with me are my 10 commissioners that hired me, and I care what Wall Street thinks about me, and I care what my headhunters care about in the case I have to go someplace else. And other than that, I just don’t care.”
Wake up clowns before every major public asset is turned into time wasting resources without the associated benefits. High costs/poor designs will lead to civil disagreements and further funding problems.
Another huge factor is the difference in costs associated with transit vs. driving. As long as parking in our downtown is cheap and plentiful, the rational choice for commuters will be to drive. Metro areas with good commuter rail systems, like Chicago and almost all of the Northeast, have downtowns and commercial districts with prohibitively expensive parking and toll highways connecting them to the bedroom communities.
What makes you think that we’ll be able to increase the gasoline tax AFTER a gallon hits $4? Who’s going to accept $4.25 by choice?
While I agree that running rail transit to nebulous places like St. Peters, Ballwin, and even Festus makes no sense, I don’t think throwing out rail transit to all areas outside of the 270-255 ring makes sense. Linking together traditional centers such as the City of St. Charles with St. Louis City makes sense from both a transportation and land use policy perspective.
In response to John’s post the design of the cross county MetroLink extension, it was done by the guys getting sued when different people were in charge of Metro. Some of the design was done by orders of then County Executive Westfall. I think it is important to remember these facts when criticizing the shortcomings of Salci. I do not defend Salci’s recent statement, however, he has done a remarkable job of getting the buses to run on time and to build ridership of the system. Political cronies have been weeded out of the workforce and the overall productivity of the agency is vastly improved as measured by a variety of factors such as cost per rider, workers comp claims, on time performance, ridership, etc.
Comparing St. Louis congestion to NY or London congestion is a stretch. St. Louis will always remain a broken disconnected community so long as public education funding is tied to property tax dollars. As long as St. Louis is disconnected we’ll never have a good rail transit system which trying to retrofit into an already built city is next to impossible. For you street car proponents, have you seen this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV2rdGX4JYc
Houston’s Light Rails Greatest hits.
While, conceptually, making public transit “free” is an interesting idea to increase ridership (the incremental cost is not that high), you need to be prepared to deal with the unintended consequences. Much like certain public parks, libraries and malls (also “free” to all comers), free public transit equals free shelter for some in the homeless community or a place to hang out for bored teens. We have a hard enough time convincing people with other alternatives to consider riding the bus now. Ratcheting up the likelihood that you’ll be smelling one or more fellow passengers from several rows away or being hit up for spare change or hassled and/or intimidated by a group of rowdy teens while riding won’t help the overall effort. Better to lower fares significantly (to $0.50 – $1.00, from the $1.75 – $2.25 we pay now) and to offer free transfers so that transferring become a smaller hurdle and the system becomes viewed as a comprehensive solution, not a series of discrete, not-interconnected routes. The reality, for most riders, is not the cost of admission, it’s the much-longer time it takes to make the trip.
I have to agree with Jim on the connection fare elimination idea. Although I also must disagree that charging somehow eliminates beggers and homeless people. Here in Miami, we have our fare share of people sleeping and begging on the trains and busses, and it certainly isn’t “free” to get on for a ride. A simple no-loitering/no begging policy would seem to fix the problem. Public transit is for doing just that, transiting. If someone gets on board for another purpose, removing them shouldn’t be that difficult.
* Tom Shrout – I DO defend Salci’s recent comment. His goal is to prudently manage a transit system with limited resources. While the nominal purpose of “You Paid For It” is exposing government waste, the REAL purpose is to draw viewers. In this case, Salci was right and Elliot Davis was wrong. But Davis’s segment presents an edited version of an encounter that always makes the other guy look bad.
* Thor R. – There isn’t enough traffic between downtown St. Charles and points along Metro to warrant a very costly extension of the light rail line. In another life, I rode the express bus from St. Charles to North Hanley Station, and there was rarely more than ten people on it. And this was before 370, and the Page Extension.
* dude – You are right on when you say that retrofitting light rail into an existing city is next to impossible. We will spend billions of dollars, and provide little more than a subsidized way for people to avoid paying for parking at baseball games. For businesses in west county that need cheap labor from the city, they could provide (that is, pay for) a shuttle from North Hanley, or from the 40/Ballas transit center, to businesses requiring employees.
The reality in St. Louis is that people live and work everywhere. We already subsidize low density development with huge highway expenditures. That should stop. But we won’t make matters better with a hopeless and costly attempt to get people to drive from their home on 3 acres on Wildhorse Creek Road, to a transit center at Clarkson & 40.
Unintended *consequences*?!! Public goods are goods which are non-rival and non-excludable, meaning everyone benefits and this includes people that smell or are of lower socioeconomic means. Jim, not all of society is well groomed and working at Wachovia. I take Metrolink every day and recently have been taking the bus for *all* of my trips. The biggest issue with our transit system is its frequency. Assuming that was fixed by an increase in the gasoline tax, and that is a big assumption, then transit in the City would be wonderful. If people are offended by the lowly plebs then perhaps they should take their elitist ass somewhere else!
I don’t know if Jim was being elitist, so much as trying to get across the plain truth that most suburban commuters won’t get out of their cars if they are going to be hassled by homeless beggers. While it may come across as calous or cold, it is just a fact of life. When I try to convince my co-workers to use public transit, this is by far the biggest reason I get for why they won’t. Just this last thursday I had a discussion with my boss about how to avoid sitting in traffic. I told him to use the metro, and I got his response in the prose of two stories. He told me he tried the metromover twice with his family, and won’t use miami tranist again. Once, he was hassled for money, and the other time their was a young male harrasing an old lady and making his daughter feel uncomfortable. I ride the train and take the bus. I feel perfectly comfortable. Some peoploe don’t. Calling them elitists doesn’t help. Getting beggers and rude youth off our public transit line will.
There is nothing in my comments that suggested Salci was 100% responsible for all these problems. He’s not and that is obvious…to sugest otherwise is a waste of space. Personally I’m a big fan of mass transit as I used it daily for over 25 years.
Sure Slalci has financial responsibilities for spending wisely but the quote was not about wheelchairs but the whole system. Frugality can be easily used to rationalize all sorts of excuses. However, many of these short term non-expenditures will inevitably cause much higher expenses for years to come and lowers the quality of Metro services.
I’ll stick with the same example to incorporate bike-pedestrian pathways along the Extension: Most of the needed funds could have been provided by others such as Great Rivers Greenway and thus only costing Metro meeting time. This superior low cost option was destroyed by the way tracks were placed and permitted Metro to ignore alternative plans, which wouild have served a wider audience.
The consequence is that more will have to drive cars instead of walking or cycling. The result will be more traffic, more accidents, higher insurance rates, more damages, more police calls, more EMS service, …you get the picture.
The Metro system here is quite deficient by design and ongoing management.
The leadership, Metro, and local advocates have failed in creating a system that works but have succeeded in turning numerous potential want-to-be users into non-supporters.
Failing to spend public funds to serve a wider constituency provides insight on how local leadership and agencies create problems by pretending to listen. Yes the region is divided, not only by political boundaries, but by solutions as well. These facts are very inconvenient as they reduce the number of viable ooptions.
Mr. Kruse, “Getting beggers and rude youth off our public transit line will.” It is thus no longer a public good or public transit. Public means everyone is allowed and in the case of Metro the only requirement is payment of the user fee. In the time that I have been here, there has only been a single instance where I have been hassled in a way which was aggressive. Aggressive in that I was called a “racist cracker” by a woman on the Gateway Mall for not paying her bus fare. Never did this occur on Metrobus or Metrolink. And it has not occurred any other time I have been on the Mall. This is not to say it doesn’t happen for others, however I am inclined to disagree that simply being asked for money, or seeing a person who isn’t of the same socioeconomic status, is an issue. Diversity presupposes interaction with unlike individuals while cities, at their best, are extremely diverse.
When that rude exchanged transpired, I didn’t suddenly decide that the City is dangerous. I figured hey that woman has some problems, but not this institution. Moreover, people who use Metro often will notice that the trains and platforms are accompanied by security personnel and cameras. In case they may not have known, being in a public setting is also security. When people are around, individuals are less inclined to take criminal action as there are eyes watching. Most criminals don’t wish to be caught or have witnesses.
If we are talking about some irrational nut who doesn’t care, well that could happen at anytime anywhere even if you are in your car at an intersection in West County. Being a member of society there is always a possibility that some irrational actor could do something. Yet, being on transit the rider is most certainly safe, regardless of what certain irrational and stereotypical perceptions indicate. When people say lets ban the youth, the smelly vagrant, or the beggar, that is what the statement reflects. Such provincial conclusions should not enter public policy.
Frankly those statements should be kept in St. Charles where they seem to belong. Meanwhile my television is most certainly in tact, while my apartment is approximately 30 seconds from a bus line. I have saved a lot of money not driving and I think I lost a little weight.
Hey guys, my point was free (charge no fares) transit versus not – it has nothing to do with elitism. If the bus is free and it’s hot or cold, why not ride around aimlessly? It beats sitting under a tree or on a sidewalk and suffering. Unfortunately, that’s not the role transit should serve. I don’t expect every rider to be a charm school graduate, but I do expect a certain level of decorum and respect for other passengers. Charging to ride creates a small hurdle – the smaller the charge, the smaller the hurdle. But just as you’ll likey never attract very many CEO’s, you shouldn’t attract the smelly and the scary, either. The one thing our personal autos offer us is control over our travel environment. If you can’t do that with public transit, you can’t change people’s mindsets, especially around here!
Douglas Duckworth – Great job smearing St. Charles county. Hope that made you feel good. But it puts you in the same category as you’re putting them. Yes, there are some racist “urbanphobes” in St. Charles county, just like there are plenty of young black criminals in the city. We don’t judge the people of either place by the worst attributes of the worst people – right?
Regarding being hassled while using transit … well, it depends upon one’s definition of being hassled. I’ve engaged in many a conversation while riding a bus, mostly with people who didn’t look like they worked at Edward Jones. I was cool with that. I was even cool with the guy who walked up to me, asked me if I listened to rap, and proceeded to pop his headphones on my head so that I could listen to his rap band. They were probably a little greasy, but hey, it’s culture. I wasn’t so cool with the group of young black men who approached me after boarding at Delmar Station, demanding to “use” my cell phone. When I refused, one of them said he had a gun. When I responded, “No problem, bring it on,” they departed for greener pastures. And I continued to use transit.
Jim Zavist – You are right, the purpose of transit is to provide transportation, not a nice air conditioned environment for people who would otherwise be spending the day in Lucas Park.
Overall … y’all are missing the point. People aren’t choosing cars over Metro because the fare is too high, or because gas is too cheap, or even, for the most part, because they are afraid of hobos or young black males. A few months ago, with much effort, I talked my wife into riding Metro to work, since her office is near highway 40. Her first day, the nearest park and ride lot was full. So she had to redirect to a different one. She rode from North Hanley into the CWE, transferred to the Shrewsbury line, dropped the baby at daycare, walked to work. A trip that takes about 1/2 hour in the car took an hour and a half. That was her first and last commute on Metro.
PS to moderator – How the heck do you get blank lines between your paragraphs?
Nick, Thanks. I will continue to smear New Florissant whenever the opportunity arises. There weren’t exit polls when St. Charles voted down Metro, however one cannot discount the racist hysteria over the expansion. It most definately was a significant factor. The same rhetoric was espoused when Metro access was provided to the Galleria, however people seem to have forgotten the bus lines which serve the Mall.
Nick, I agree. The reality, for most riders, is not the cost of admission, it’s the much-longer time it takes to make the trip that makes it hard to embrace public transportation, especially around here.
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Transit 102 – There are three basic groups who use public transit, the transit dependent, daily commuters and people going to special events. The transit dependent include the poor who have no other options, people like Doug who have made a personal choice and the young, old and disabled who can’t, for whatever reason, legally drive themselves. This group will put up with infrequent schedules, poor transfers, “interesting” fellow passengers and operational snafus simply because they have no other choice, other than walking or rolling.
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Daily commuters are people who ride public transit every day to work or to school. They ride out of some choice, either because they “receive” a “free” pass from their school or employer or because it’s cheaper and less of a hassle than driving to and paying for parking downtown or at a hospital or a university. It’s an economic decision and time-value decision. They expect a direct trip, clean equipment and, for the most part, to either be left alone for the duration of the trip or to socialize with the same small group every day. Increase the time or increase the hassle and you’ll drive ’em back to their cars – that’s why they like Metrolink a whole lot more than Metrobus, and why promising more rail out in the county will be critical to approving any tax increase request. They’re also the group, who through their use of transit, have the greatest impact on rush-hour highway congestion. (The reality is that we don’t have a congestion “problem” 20+ hours a day, just for a couple of hours in the morning and for a couple of hours in the evening.)
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The final group are typically people who occasionally use Metrolink (and who may have used the old Rams express bus service) to go see baseball, football, hockey, a show at the convention center or an event on the riverfront. The cost of the trip is secondary. Avoiding the traffic hassles and the “special event” parking costs are the big attractions. Plus it’s less illegal/stupid to drink and ride than it is to drink and drive. The biggest challenge Metro has serving these folks is getting thousands of folks out of downtown quickly. So why should we care if these folks are happy? Because they’re the swing vote when it comes to getting a tax increase passed. As Nick points out, there are many suburbanites who see no value in and no need for public transit of any sort, and won’t be supporting any sort of tax increase to fund it.
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Congestion is a regional problem, not a local one. It crosses city boundaries. Yes, we are a sprawling metropolis, and it’s going to be hard to fix. But just because it’s hard and requires regional cooperation is no reason not to try (and do). And the answer will not be a single answer, it will take a whole range of appropriate solutions. It’s also going to take money. We need to craft a comprehensive plan to address, as well as we can, everyone’s concerns, be they bike trails, improved signals, more traffic lanes and additional rail transit. Being elitist and saying that “my” solution is the only good one and that “yours” makes no sense gets us nowhere – we’ll continue to just get more of the same, and we know how well that’s working . . .
The main transit users in StL are the ones the system/track layout/station locations were designed for, particularly the Extension. WashU/BJC employees and students ride free and are served by five major stations (BJC, 2 at WashU main, WashU west, WashU south). Yes WasU is moving its IT department to Hanley/Eager and also likes to brag that its students can easily get to the Galleria (that makes six stops in total).
Besides the other free riders, the vast majority of residents cannnot use this public asset on a daily basis. It’s slow, inefficient, and built with an extremely expensive price tag. As explained, it also failed to incorporate cycling and walking paths alongside in order to serve a wider audience.
The most congested traffic areas are perfect examples of where the Metro system is poorly design and does not serve as a viable alternative.
I can easily get to places faster on my bike than Metro. It is also healthier and less expensive than Metro. Thanks to leadership-advocates, Metro is designed to fail and to be a financial albatross on the region. Shameful…
To say there’s no traffic congestion in St. Louis is to never have driven on Interstate 270 at Manchester/Dougherty Ferry during commute times, or on Memorial Drive at around 5:15 PM trying to access the Poplar Street Bridge or southbound Hwy 55 during a Cardinal pregame. To say that STL has any serious traffic congestion is to never have lived in places like New Jersey, LA, or California.
Jim,
Presumably if more money is available through tax increases (no, not those), then perhaps buses would arrive with greater frequency. At least with me what I dislike the most is having to wait 20, 30, or even 60 minutes for a bus. Also, a covered bench would be nice on those cold and wet days. For example, the Hampton 90 comes by at 7:10 and 7:40 then 8:10 and 8:40. If the frequency was every 10 minutes, wouldn’t people use it more, especially with ever rising gas prices? With greater frequency transit would be more of a supplement to driving, not an inferior good. But greater frequency again would have a higher cost. Thus how does one sell this to the public, especially if the public is ignorant of how well transit works in other countries. If they can’t see or relate to what we could do, then why would they pay?
One observation, as both a relative newbie and an outsider, is the perception among locals that the bus system and the light rail system in St. Louis are two different and distinct animals. Metro should be, and is, an integrated public transit system. Just because Metrolink doesn’t go where you want to go doesn’t mean that public transit is not an option. The bus is not just for the poor / “those†people. The buses Metro runs are clean and, from what I can tell, usually running on schedule. Try one – you might be pleasantly surprised! You might even see people “just like you†on the bus. Do you have to figure out one or more routes and schedules? Yes, but as they say, it ain’t rocket science.
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In other parts of the country, express bus service, demand-responsive services and bus rapid transit have evolved as a viable commuting options for many workers. For whatever, and likely many, reason(s), Metrobus seems more focused on running traditional, fixed, slow, local bus routes. I’m guessing that the main reason is an extremely limited budget forcing the Metro board to allocate more resources than they’d like to keeping buses running in transit-dependent communities and neighborhoods. I’m guessing that parking downtown is relatively affordable (and I know parking in most suburban employment centers is “freeâ€). And, unfortunately, I’m also guessing that like many things in St. Louis, there’s a racial component that keeps too many potential riders off the bus.
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The reality remains that rail, while attractive, it is expensive to build. Most St. Louis (metro) residents are not going to live near a Metrolink line or station in their lifetimes. This may not be “fair†and it may be a disincentive, but it is reality. Many more of us, however, live near one or more bus routes, and even suburbanites have a variety of park-and-ride facilities available. We’re already funding a bus system along with a rail system. If more of us would get past our pre- and misconceptions, more of us could benefit from a resource that “worksâ€, to a certain degree, already. To assume that it won’t, just guarantees more of the same. (Unfortunately, public transit is very much a chicken-or-egg deal – you need riders to justify service and you need viable service to convince people to ride.)
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And to answer your questions Doug, it’s partly what I just said and partly convincing Metro to take a risk, incease service and see what happens. Frequency, and more specifically, the lack of frequency, is a HUGE disincentive for most riders. Seeing taillights and knowing it means waiting a half hour or more for the next bus really sucks, and if you have a car available, it looks pretty attractive in comparison. Bus routes are set up to serve as many riders as possible using limited resources (buses, fuel and operators) driven by a finite budget and politics. In areas like St. Louis with established routes and transit-dependent riders, it’s easier to cut back on frequency than it is to shorten the total hours run (AM to PM) or to eliminate a route (or a portion) completely. The downside is a slow death by a thousand cuts. Most riders don’t mind waiting (or would really enjoy only waiting) 10 mintues for the next bus (or train). 15 minutes is usually doable. 20 minutes gets to be troublesome, 30 minutes is marginal, and 45 minutes or an hour is a true burden. The brutal reality is that there ARE only so many dollars to go around, diesel keeps rising in cost, so it boils down to a Hobson’s choice between poor(er) service and no service.
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To serve more potential riders better, it may mean telling (more than) a select few they don’t get the service they’ve been used to (my Route 93, for example). Devise a grid route structure to replace the current radial one. Take the same number of buses and run them more frequently on fewer separate routes. Get rid of every other existing bus stop (to speed things up). It may mean walking 4-6 blocks to a bus stop instead of 1 or 2, but knowing the next bus will be every 10-15 minutes, instead of 30-60, would make it more attractive for many people. Bottom line, accept that following the old trolley lines likely no longer works in today’s evolving world.
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As for bus shelters, it’s all about dollars. If an advertiser can put one up, it stays maintained. If Metro could (and I doubt it can financially), it usually devolves into a maintenance headache. Vandalism is a fact of life, as is the expectation, by both riders and nearby property owners, that shelters need to be maintained. The short answer, for Metro, is limited resources makes putting service on the street a much bigger priority than providing amenities to waiting riders – do you eliminate one route to fund the installation and maintenance of 50 new shelters? The “answer” all depends on how it impacts you personally . . .
Before a native responds with the typical response about how the bus system is worthless, I want to say you are for the most part correct, Jim, about the bus system. I ride the bus system every day and have for years. It is almost always on time and gets me pretty much anywhere I need to go. There are incidents on occasion, such as a night where a bus was involved in an accident and caused a fairly lengthy delay, but an incident once in a while such as this will not and should not turn me off to the system. I have very little that is negative to say about the bus system and overall have no plans at all to return to driving. It isn’t worth it to me.
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal sends his thanks to all those clowns in StL who are helping to pay for his new flying palace. The Airbus A380 is estimated to cost between $400 and $500 million when retrofitted and require a crew of 15. The plane is as tall as a seven-story building and is financed by our increasing appetite for oil.
Too bad Metro wouldn’t provide any walking-cycling paths to reduce our addiction.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/11/16/Hillsborough/For_light_rail_plan__.shtml#