Post by bennyp81 on Jun 21, 2005 7:36:33 GMT -8
Daniel Schwartz
User ID: 2198314 Jul 2nd 2:02 AM
Los Angeles Times, Sunday, July 1, 2001
Page M-6
From the Opinion Pages, Memos to Mayor Hahn:
______________
Barbara Lott-Holland, Bus Riders Union member
(actually she is the Co-Chair of BRU: see home.pacbell.net/krichrds/nodana.htm )
I would ask you to keep your campaign promise to support the consent decree with the MTA to improve the bus system, one element, of course, being the purchase of 350 new buses.
We have to put buses first, not rail. Not only will it reduce bus overcrowding but provide more jobs, because they will need more drivers to operate the new buses.
Right now the MTA is asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the consent decree; we'd urge you to ask the MTA to stop its appeals.
I would also like to see bus service expand. I work in Torrance and live near USC, and I must take three buses from three different municipalities to get from home to work.
I would like to see bus service extended so it doesn't take young people who live in Watts 2 1/2 hours to get to UCLA.
We need buses that have wheelchair lifts that work; we need more buses that run on compressed natural gas for less pollution.
We're also asking for the bus fare to be reduced to a $20 monthly pass and a 50-cent one-way fare.
Now it's $1.35, $42 for the monthly pass, and there are no family passes. The majority of people riding the bus are poor--day laborers and such who don't work a complete month.
If these families are making $1,000 a month, for a family of five to buy passes for everybody costs more than $200 out of the monthly income, and that's too much.
We also need a $10 student pass. You have 6-year-old kid who gets on the bus, she has to pay $1.35, and that's ridiculous."
_________________
This is the same woman who was profiled in the Work Place Section Sunday, June 17, 2001 in the article "Get Me to the Job on Time" by Dan Gordon. (see the thread on this.)
As she makes he claims of 1.5 hour bus rides from USC to Torrance, I do hope she is making use of the city's wonderful Harbor Transitway.
I'll have to take her word for her daily commute, but to say that it takes 2.5 hours to get from Watts to UCLA is a bit much in my book.
Much like the Steven Sample op-ed piece ("Don't Turn Exposition Park Into a Rail Yard", Los Angeles Times) on Thursday, June 28, 2001, I think this is just shock-value writing.
I immediately thought that the person who needs 2.5 hours to get from Watts to UCLA must be taking the cross-city 305 bus from Imperial/ Wilmington to UCLA Transit Center.
Surely they weren't taking the Blue line to 7th street, 720 to Westwood and whatever UCLA buses (or walking) from Westwood.
That would take just over an hour, plus getting to and from the start/end points.
Then, I checked the 305 schedule and was surprised to see that it only takes 1.5 hours to do this same route on one bus.
I know that buses breakdown and so forth, but 2.5 hours?...
I think to the day in June when we voted. I left my desk at USC at 5:45, took the 204 to Wilshire/Vermont, Red Line to NoHo, rode my bike to my polling place, rode home to change clothes, went back to the NoHo station, took the Red Line to Hollywood/Highland, walked to Sunset/Highland, rode the 3 to UCLA and was waiting in the box office line at 7:35 for will call tickets to an orchestra concert.
An hour and 40 minutes. In rush hour.
I just hope beofre people spout out shocking travel times, they are traveling SMART.
Over the long-haul (which as the employment section article accurately points out, is a necessity for many workers) buses and at-grade transit are very inefficient.
Who drives from Palos Verdes to Mid Wilshire solely on Crenshaw Boulevard? It would take forever! We take the grade-separated route, the freeway. It might not be as direct, but it gets us there a lot quicker.
Add in the fact that a local bus has stops every .2 miles (though it won't stop at every single one, usually one per mile) and this trip becomes even longer, of course.
More buses does not make this trip any shorter. Add to that, as Chris L. always does, that Rapid buses are merely 300-series lines painted red and, absent of proven signal priority, Rapid buses are not a magic bullet either.
I can understand family passes, but I think we are all fortunate to have fares as low as they are. $20 per month and $0.50 would put too much pressure on already minimal MTA farebox revenue.
I would like to see aid those in need of it, as some sort of non-MTA subsidy for monthly passes.
At USC, I am the beneficiary of a subsidy for my MTA pass. I value it, but am sure that I need it a lot less than many out there.
Come to think of it, Eric Mann's salary could provide almost 10,000 $25 subsidies for monthly passes.
Maybe the BRU should shift some of its fundraising prowess out of its own pockets and into the pockets of its "members".......
Daniel Schwartz
User ID: 2198314 Jul 2nd 2:07 AM
Once again I proved that I did not major in the empirical sciences.......
Obviously Eric Mann could not subsidize 10,000 passes per month, but nevertheless could be on to something in the way of providing bus riders aid.
Scratch that. TRANSIT riders aid. I'm sure may of the BRU take the trains regularly, if they're going their way.
Dave K
User ID: 9544623 Jul 2nd 12:49 PM
Perhaps we could target some sort of free/ subsidized transit for day laborers when they show up and register at the centers (for those who use the centers).
I'm not sure what the procedure is there, but something could surely be worked out. This would help those who need it most.
Also, student passes sound like a good idea.
I'm also in favor of just negotiating a settlement to the consent decree. If its 350 more buses, then let's do that. On top of that, I would like to see the maintenance records.
Many MTA buses are apparently older than the FTA recommended lifespan, and it would be interesting to see if a disproportionate amount of maintenance is driven by this fact.
(Note: "On the bus front, the MTA announced that, under its accelerated bus purchasing program, the average age of MTA buses has dropped from nearly 15 years when the program began in 1998 to 6.1 years.")
Jason S.
User ID: 0777594 Jul 2nd 3:49 PM
With all the buses the MTA has acquired in the last couple of years I thought sure the requirements for the consent decree would have been met by now.
Does anybody care to outline some of the peculiars with the consent decree? How close has the MTA come to completing its requirments.
When does the appeal go to court?
Thanks for the knowledge.
Jason
Jeff Wilson
User ID: 0094674 Jul 2nd 3:51 PM
I saw that article and there were two things that struck me.
The first was that buses were better because it employs more drivers than rail. If that's the goal, then the MTA could just employ two drivers for every train even though they are not needed.
The second was her complaint that she has to take three buses to get from her home to her job.
I don't think that no matter how many buses are purchased that front door to business service can be guaranteed.
What would be possible, though is if she were willing to move near a train line that she would be able to get to a great many destinations within the city by taking the train, and even more with a single transfer to a bus.
Dave K
User ID: 9544623 Jul 2nd 5:10 PM
Jeff, Good points about the article. WRT door-to-door service, the consent decree is supposed to deal with overcrowding on existing lines, so more buses under the consent decree would likely do little to help this woman.
Similarly, for the ride taking 2.5 hours, one of three things must be happening if the schedule for that route should take 1.5 hours.
The first possibility is that the route gets stuck in traffic and takes longer than scheduled.
New buses will do nothing for this (a point that seems to be lost on the BRU).
Second, the route might run infrequently, so the 2.5 hours includes time wasted for the passenger since the bus schedule doesn't fit with their schedule.
While it might seem that more buses would help this problem, since it could run more frequently, they won't.
If a route is running that infrequently, it is because ridership is limited, so it wouldn't be a candidate to receive improved service under the consent decree (which is to relieve overcrowding, not run empty buses on low ridership runs).
Or finally, it could be that they have long wait times for connections. It is not obvious that more buses would solve this problem, in particular since buses are not so reliably on schedule as rail lines.
Of course, try telling that to brainwashed BRU members.
As for the consent decree, I'm not an expert on its provisions. However, I understand that part of the perception is that the MTA lets us know how many new buses it has purchased, but that the number includes buses to replace older models.
This would obviously give the impression that more buses have been added to the fleet than reality.
I think the bigger problem is that there is probably a latent demand for bus service, which results in increased ridership when service improves.
This is no different than we see on the freeways, where most of the new capacity of freeway improvements is taken up by induced trips, meaning that congestion continues.
In the case of an overcrowded bus line, when more capacity is added, it is likely that some new trips are generated from people who would not have ridden it before.
Other effects of adding new buses to busy lines - shorter headways (more convenient service), greater reliability (average age of buses is temporarily reduced as wave of new buses enters service - likely improving reliability), cleaner buses (since newer), possibly expanded service hours.
All of these would bring in many new riders, which is a positive thing (and helps take the bite out of the cost of running more service), but will hinder any actual progress on improving load factors.
I would make the same argument for bus service that I would for freeways - in some corridors there is not a reasonable amount of improvement that can be made which will relieve bus overcrowding (or freeway congestion).
For freeways, in some corridors we could double capacity and still be left with congestion in five years.
For buses, in some corridors you just cannot run them frequently enough to carry the passengers that would be attracted to that improved service.
The answer, of course, is the capacity of rail in those circumstances.
Mattmike
User ID: 2129174 Jul 2nd 6:02 PM
She actually brought up the dirty little secret of the bus riders union, that is they are a shill for THE BUS DRIVERS UNION.
Why do they want more buses? Because more buses need more drivers, more mechanics and more money in the union coffers.
It's got nothing to do with "racist policies", in fact I'm always reminded of the phrase
"patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel", I think it should be changes to "charging racism is the last refuge of a scoundrel"
Daniel Schwartz
User ID: 2198314 Jul 3rd 1:16 AM
Absent of breakdowns, I have found the MTA schedules for both bus and rail to be fairly accurate.
Of course, rail schedules are more precise while bus schedules tend to use the "5-15 minutes" crutch.
I doubt that the MTA would continue to print a schedule outlining a 1.5 hour trip when it actually takes 2.5 hours most days of the year.
The 1.5 hours quoted was during rush hour - the MTA lists 70 minutes during off-peak.
Regardless, grade-separated transit of any kind is preferable to at-grade. Seems simple to us, but I'm not sure why that does not seem to compute with the BRU.
When the Red Line extension to the Valley opened last year, I remember reading comments by people whose bus lines were being eliminated due to their duplication by the subway.
On occasion, I need to take the 156 from 7th/Spring (not too far from Pershing Square) to the NoHo station after midnight.
This leg of the trip takes over one hour. By contrast, the subway trip from Pershing Square to NoHo is exactly 25 minutes. Where is the problem here?
One may have to transfer, but only after reaching the transfer point 35 minutes earlier!
So do Busways count as grade-separated? In name, yes. But, so long as buses hold 40-70 people per vehicle compared to the 1000 I estimated on Friday's afternoon subway trip, they remain horribly inefficient.
As I waited on Vermont for the 204 this evening, I thought of how in order to be assured of a seat on a bus (which seems to be a rallying cry of the BRU), no more than 30 or 40 people have to be headed your way at the same time.
In a metropolis of 10M+, what are the chances of only 30-40 desiring a trip north on Vermont Ave at 7:30? The only time I'm assured of a seat anywhere is when I choose to drive my car.
My private transportation. All other times I'm more than happy to slide over, get up for someone else, or lean against a pole for the whole ride. If I didn't, I'd be in my car.
We could definately use some more buses and I'm sure that there are many buses that should be retired (as opposed to being relegated to Valley duty).
Portraying more buses as the panacea to transit woes in Los Angeles is so very wrong, though....
...I like the comment about the Bus Drivers Union. If all we need is more jobs, put a conductor/ticket checker on every rail car.
Chris Ledermuller
User ID: 1244314 Jul 3rd 5:01 AM
If the BRU wants more bus service to relieve overcrowding, they are looking at it through the leftist perspective that more buses are better because it is more labor intensive.
The rational explanation to overcrowding is a problem of capacity, not a problem of under-service. Look at all the overcrowded lines.
Are they underserved? Hell no. Most of them run every 10 minutes or more. The headways on these lines are better than the service offered by about 99% of the transit agencies across the country!
If you add buses on an already frequent line, you get very little added capacity. Ridership does not even out on high frequency lines because most people do not need to catch a particular bus on schedule, like they would have to with a bus that runs every 30 minutes or hourly. The boardings are too random to make a difference.
Second, high-frequency lines have poor on-time performance. This is because of congestion on local streets and also because drivers know they can leapfrog other buses without hurting the overall service level.
Example: while the schedule says a bus arrives at 8:15 a.m., and one arrives at that time, it doesn't mean that the 8:15 a.m. bus that arrived had to meet that stop at that time according to the paddle.
For all you know, the bus you got on was supposed to arrive at 8:20 a.m., but somehow made it ahead of the real 8:15 a.m. bus.
If service is simply added, then there might not be any visible results.
If the capacity of buses were added, that would make a noticeable improvement. If MTA ran artics, this would do far more than running more buses.
The buses have more seats and can handle more people. Most agencies try to keep costs in line by doing a 1:2, 2:3 or 3:4 substitution, but this is merely to evenly distribute service.
An even substitution results in higher costs because of the added space. MTA has lines where this would make sense, despite the added cost.
The BRU would never go for this because it hurts labor. An artic driver can carry a full bus of 125 people, while a 40' bus driver carries a maximum of 80 riders.
Numan Parada
User ID: 1327644 Jul 3rd 10:19 AM
Just a thought: The op-ed piece mentioned earlier in this topic talks about a 2-and-a-half hour ride from Watts to UCLA. Suppose Expo rail was already built.
Now, it takes about 20 to 25 minutes to make it from 103rd Street to either Grand or Pico, depending on where planners will diverge Expo.
Transfer there, and it would be some 30 minutes to Sepulveda or Westwood, where a 10-minute bus ride could take them the rest of the way. Total time: A little over an hour.
That's a large difference from that 2.5 hours she points out. On these grounds, it would be a far better idea to build light rail than add buses.
Unfortunately, for reasons stated in this topic, the BRU would never buy it. How are those poor folks clockwork-oranged into their antics?
Dave K
User ID: 9544623 Jul 3rd 12:38 PM
"The BRU would never go for this because it hurts labor. An artic driver can carry a full bus of 125 people, while a 40' bus driver carries a maximum of 80 riders."
Cut those numbers by about 30 percent to comply with the consent decree.
Numan Parada
User ID: 1327644 Jul 3rd 2:56 PM
Hm. Now that I think about it, it's a good thing most ordinary bus-riding folk are careful not to fall into this. And this whole Bus Riders Union thing would be excellent Kubrick fodder.
Darrell Clarke
User ID: 0930774 Jul 3rd 4:12 PM
Have any of you written letters to the editor at the L.A. Times making these comments about Barbara
Lott-Holland's "2-1/2 hour" trip?
Send to:
letters@latimes.com; also include your full name, mailing address, and phone number.
Chris Ledermuller
User ID: 1244314 Jul 4th 4:13 AM
Dave K wrote:
This would still favor artics. The BRU would oppose them still because they are labor-unfriendly.
Dave K
User ID: 9544623 Jul 4th 12:44 PM
Yeah, that was just my knee-jerk reaction to seeing numbers like that for bus loading.
I got used to spotting numbers like that in the Expo and Wilshire BRT proposals, arguing for the amazing capcity of BRT but requiring crush loads that:
a) exceed by 50% or more the loads permitted under the consent decree.
b) are inconsistent with the ridership estimates (new riders attracted to crush load service)
c) are inconsistent with the operating characteristics presented (i.e. unloading and loading a crush load bus very quickly to meet optimistic running time estimates).
Don't worry, we're on the same page here. Artics are a good idea for improving capacity on bus lines where we are already running short headways - Wilshire would be a good start.
I wouldn't be suprised to see some other Rapid Bus lines meeting this requirement once they are running as well.
All the more reason to phase in Rapid Bus a couple of lines at a time. After running with standard buses, we can see if artics are justified on a given route.
If they are not, keep that service and start the next line with new regular buses. If they are, then you buy new artics to use on that route, and redeploy the standard buses to start the next new line.
User ID: 2198314 Jul 2nd 2:02 AM
Los Angeles Times, Sunday, July 1, 2001
Page M-6
From the Opinion Pages, Memos to Mayor Hahn:
______________
Barbara Lott-Holland, Bus Riders Union member
(actually she is the Co-Chair of BRU: see home.pacbell.net/krichrds/nodana.htm )
I would ask you to keep your campaign promise to support the consent decree with the MTA to improve the bus system, one element, of course, being the purchase of 350 new buses.
We have to put buses first, not rail. Not only will it reduce bus overcrowding but provide more jobs, because they will need more drivers to operate the new buses.
Right now the MTA is asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse the consent decree; we'd urge you to ask the MTA to stop its appeals.
I would also like to see bus service expand. I work in Torrance and live near USC, and I must take three buses from three different municipalities to get from home to work.
I would like to see bus service extended so it doesn't take young people who live in Watts 2 1/2 hours to get to UCLA.
We need buses that have wheelchair lifts that work; we need more buses that run on compressed natural gas for less pollution.
We're also asking for the bus fare to be reduced to a $20 monthly pass and a 50-cent one-way fare.
Now it's $1.35, $42 for the monthly pass, and there are no family passes. The majority of people riding the bus are poor--day laborers and such who don't work a complete month.
If these families are making $1,000 a month, for a family of five to buy passes for everybody costs more than $200 out of the monthly income, and that's too much.
We also need a $10 student pass. You have 6-year-old kid who gets on the bus, she has to pay $1.35, and that's ridiculous."
_________________
This is the same woman who was profiled in the Work Place Section Sunday, June 17, 2001 in the article "Get Me to the Job on Time" by Dan Gordon. (see the thread on this.)
As she makes he claims of 1.5 hour bus rides from USC to Torrance, I do hope she is making use of the city's wonderful Harbor Transitway.
I'll have to take her word for her daily commute, but to say that it takes 2.5 hours to get from Watts to UCLA is a bit much in my book.
Much like the Steven Sample op-ed piece ("Don't Turn Exposition Park Into a Rail Yard", Los Angeles Times) on Thursday, June 28, 2001, I think this is just shock-value writing.
I immediately thought that the person who needs 2.5 hours to get from Watts to UCLA must be taking the cross-city 305 bus from Imperial/ Wilmington to UCLA Transit Center.
Surely they weren't taking the Blue line to 7th street, 720 to Westwood and whatever UCLA buses (or walking) from Westwood.
That would take just over an hour, plus getting to and from the start/end points.
Then, I checked the 305 schedule and was surprised to see that it only takes 1.5 hours to do this same route on one bus.
I know that buses breakdown and so forth, but 2.5 hours?...
I think to the day in June when we voted. I left my desk at USC at 5:45, took the 204 to Wilshire/Vermont, Red Line to NoHo, rode my bike to my polling place, rode home to change clothes, went back to the NoHo station, took the Red Line to Hollywood/Highland, walked to Sunset/Highland, rode the 3 to UCLA and was waiting in the box office line at 7:35 for will call tickets to an orchestra concert.
An hour and 40 minutes. In rush hour.
I just hope beofre people spout out shocking travel times, they are traveling SMART.
Over the long-haul (which as the employment section article accurately points out, is a necessity for many workers) buses and at-grade transit are very inefficient.
Who drives from Palos Verdes to Mid Wilshire solely on Crenshaw Boulevard? It would take forever! We take the grade-separated route, the freeway. It might not be as direct, but it gets us there a lot quicker.
Add in the fact that a local bus has stops every .2 miles (though it won't stop at every single one, usually one per mile) and this trip becomes even longer, of course.
More buses does not make this trip any shorter. Add to that, as Chris L. always does, that Rapid buses are merely 300-series lines painted red and, absent of proven signal priority, Rapid buses are not a magic bullet either.
I can understand family passes, but I think we are all fortunate to have fares as low as they are. $20 per month and $0.50 would put too much pressure on already minimal MTA farebox revenue.
I would like to see aid those in need of it, as some sort of non-MTA subsidy for monthly passes.
At USC, I am the beneficiary of a subsidy for my MTA pass. I value it, but am sure that I need it a lot less than many out there.
Come to think of it, Eric Mann's salary could provide almost 10,000 $25 subsidies for monthly passes.
Maybe the BRU should shift some of its fundraising prowess out of its own pockets and into the pockets of its "members".......
Daniel Schwartz
User ID: 2198314 Jul 2nd 2:07 AM
Once again I proved that I did not major in the empirical sciences.......
Obviously Eric Mann could not subsidize 10,000 passes per month, but nevertheless could be on to something in the way of providing bus riders aid.
Scratch that. TRANSIT riders aid. I'm sure may of the BRU take the trains regularly, if they're going their way.
Dave K
User ID: 9544623 Jul 2nd 12:49 PM
Perhaps we could target some sort of free/ subsidized transit for day laborers when they show up and register at the centers (for those who use the centers).
I'm not sure what the procedure is there, but something could surely be worked out. This would help those who need it most.
Also, student passes sound like a good idea.
I'm also in favor of just negotiating a settlement to the consent decree. If its 350 more buses, then let's do that. On top of that, I would like to see the maintenance records.
Many MTA buses are apparently older than the FTA recommended lifespan, and it would be interesting to see if a disproportionate amount of maintenance is driven by this fact.
(Note: "On the bus front, the MTA announced that, under its accelerated bus purchasing program, the average age of MTA buses has dropped from nearly 15 years when the program began in 1998 to 6.1 years.")
Jason S.
User ID: 0777594 Jul 2nd 3:49 PM
With all the buses the MTA has acquired in the last couple of years I thought sure the requirements for the consent decree would have been met by now.
Does anybody care to outline some of the peculiars with the consent decree? How close has the MTA come to completing its requirments.
When does the appeal go to court?
Thanks for the knowledge.
Jason
Jeff Wilson
User ID: 0094674 Jul 2nd 3:51 PM
I saw that article and there were two things that struck me.
The first was that buses were better because it employs more drivers than rail. If that's the goal, then the MTA could just employ two drivers for every train even though they are not needed.
The second was her complaint that she has to take three buses to get from her home to her job.
I don't think that no matter how many buses are purchased that front door to business service can be guaranteed.
What would be possible, though is if she were willing to move near a train line that she would be able to get to a great many destinations within the city by taking the train, and even more with a single transfer to a bus.
Dave K
User ID: 9544623 Jul 2nd 5:10 PM
Jeff, Good points about the article. WRT door-to-door service, the consent decree is supposed to deal with overcrowding on existing lines, so more buses under the consent decree would likely do little to help this woman.
Similarly, for the ride taking 2.5 hours, one of three things must be happening if the schedule for that route should take 1.5 hours.
The first possibility is that the route gets stuck in traffic and takes longer than scheduled.
New buses will do nothing for this (a point that seems to be lost on the BRU).
Second, the route might run infrequently, so the 2.5 hours includes time wasted for the passenger since the bus schedule doesn't fit with their schedule.
While it might seem that more buses would help this problem, since it could run more frequently, they won't.
If a route is running that infrequently, it is because ridership is limited, so it wouldn't be a candidate to receive improved service under the consent decree (which is to relieve overcrowding, not run empty buses on low ridership runs).
Or finally, it could be that they have long wait times for connections. It is not obvious that more buses would solve this problem, in particular since buses are not so reliably on schedule as rail lines.
Of course, try telling that to brainwashed BRU members.
As for the consent decree, I'm not an expert on its provisions. However, I understand that part of the perception is that the MTA lets us know how many new buses it has purchased, but that the number includes buses to replace older models.
This would obviously give the impression that more buses have been added to the fleet than reality.
I think the bigger problem is that there is probably a latent demand for bus service, which results in increased ridership when service improves.
This is no different than we see on the freeways, where most of the new capacity of freeway improvements is taken up by induced trips, meaning that congestion continues.
In the case of an overcrowded bus line, when more capacity is added, it is likely that some new trips are generated from people who would not have ridden it before.
Other effects of adding new buses to busy lines - shorter headways (more convenient service), greater reliability (average age of buses is temporarily reduced as wave of new buses enters service - likely improving reliability), cleaner buses (since newer), possibly expanded service hours.
All of these would bring in many new riders, which is a positive thing (and helps take the bite out of the cost of running more service), but will hinder any actual progress on improving load factors.
I would make the same argument for bus service that I would for freeways - in some corridors there is not a reasonable amount of improvement that can be made which will relieve bus overcrowding (or freeway congestion).
For freeways, in some corridors we could double capacity and still be left with congestion in five years.
For buses, in some corridors you just cannot run them frequently enough to carry the passengers that would be attracted to that improved service.
The answer, of course, is the capacity of rail in those circumstances.
Mattmike
User ID: 2129174 Jul 2nd 6:02 PM
She actually brought up the dirty little secret of the bus riders union, that is they are a shill for THE BUS DRIVERS UNION.
Why do they want more buses? Because more buses need more drivers, more mechanics and more money in the union coffers.
It's got nothing to do with "racist policies", in fact I'm always reminded of the phrase
"patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel", I think it should be changes to "charging racism is the last refuge of a scoundrel"
Daniel Schwartz
User ID: 2198314 Jul 3rd 1:16 AM
Absent of breakdowns, I have found the MTA schedules for both bus and rail to be fairly accurate.
Of course, rail schedules are more precise while bus schedules tend to use the "5-15 minutes" crutch.
I doubt that the MTA would continue to print a schedule outlining a 1.5 hour trip when it actually takes 2.5 hours most days of the year.
The 1.5 hours quoted was during rush hour - the MTA lists 70 minutes during off-peak.
Regardless, grade-separated transit of any kind is preferable to at-grade. Seems simple to us, but I'm not sure why that does not seem to compute with the BRU.
When the Red Line extension to the Valley opened last year, I remember reading comments by people whose bus lines were being eliminated due to their duplication by the subway.
On occasion, I need to take the 156 from 7th/Spring (not too far from Pershing Square) to the NoHo station after midnight.
This leg of the trip takes over one hour. By contrast, the subway trip from Pershing Square to NoHo is exactly 25 minutes. Where is the problem here?
One may have to transfer, but only after reaching the transfer point 35 minutes earlier!
So do Busways count as grade-separated? In name, yes. But, so long as buses hold 40-70 people per vehicle compared to the 1000 I estimated on Friday's afternoon subway trip, they remain horribly inefficient.
As I waited on Vermont for the 204 this evening, I thought of how in order to be assured of a seat on a bus (which seems to be a rallying cry of the BRU), no more than 30 or 40 people have to be headed your way at the same time.
In a metropolis of 10M+, what are the chances of only 30-40 desiring a trip north on Vermont Ave at 7:30? The only time I'm assured of a seat anywhere is when I choose to drive my car.
My private transportation. All other times I'm more than happy to slide over, get up for someone else, or lean against a pole for the whole ride. If I didn't, I'd be in my car.
We could definately use some more buses and I'm sure that there are many buses that should be retired (as opposed to being relegated to Valley duty).
Portraying more buses as the panacea to transit woes in Los Angeles is so very wrong, though....
...I like the comment about the Bus Drivers Union. If all we need is more jobs, put a conductor/ticket checker on every rail car.
Chris Ledermuller
User ID: 1244314 Jul 3rd 5:01 AM
If the BRU wants more bus service to relieve overcrowding, they are looking at it through the leftist perspective that more buses are better because it is more labor intensive.
The rational explanation to overcrowding is a problem of capacity, not a problem of under-service. Look at all the overcrowded lines.
Are they underserved? Hell no. Most of them run every 10 minutes or more. The headways on these lines are better than the service offered by about 99% of the transit agencies across the country!
If you add buses on an already frequent line, you get very little added capacity. Ridership does not even out on high frequency lines because most people do not need to catch a particular bus on schedule, like they would have to with a bus that runs every 30 minutes or hourly. The boardings are too random to make a difference.
Second, high-frequency lines have poor on-time performance. This is because of congestion on local streets and also because drivers know they can leapfrog other buses without hurting the overall service level.
Example: while the schedule says a bus arrives at 8:15 a.m., and one arrives at that time, it doesn't mean that the 8:15 a.m. bus that arrived had to meet that stop at that time according to the paddle.
For all you know, the bus you got on was supposed to arrive at 8:20 a.m., but somehow made it ahead of the real 8:15 a.m. bus.
If service is simply added, then there might not be any visible results.
If the capacity of buses were added, that would make a noticeable improvement. If MTA ran artics, this would do far more than running more buses.
The buses have more seats and can handle more people. Most agencies try to keep costs in line by doing a 1:2, 2:3 or 3:4 substitution, but this is merely to evenly distribute service.
An even substitution results in higher costs because of the added space. MTA has lines where this would make sense, despite the added cost.
The BRU would never go for this because it hurts labor. An artic driver can carry a full bus of 125 people, while a 40' bus driver carries a maximum of 80 riders.
Numan Parada
User ID: 1327644 Jul 3rd 10:19 AM
Just a thought: The op-ed piece mentioned earlier in this topic talks about a 2-and-a-half hour ride from Watts to UCLA. Suppose Expo rail was already built.
Now, it takes about 20 to 25 minutes to make it from 103rd Street to either Grand or Pico, depending on where planners will diverge Expo.
Transfer there, and it would be some 30 minutes to Sepulveda or Westwood, where a 10-minute bus ride could take them the rest of the way. Total time: A little over an hour.
That's a large difference from that 2.5 hours she points out. On these grounds, it would be a far better idea to build light rail than add buses.
Unfortunately, for reasons stated in this topic, the BRU would never buy it. How are those poor folks clockwork-oranged into their antics?
Dave K
User ID: 9544623 Jul 3rd 12:38 PM
"The BRU would never go for this because it hurts labor. An artic driver can carry a full bus of 125 people, while a 40' bus driver carries a maximum of 80 riders."
Cut those numbers by about 30 percent to comply with the consent decree.
Numan Parada
User ID: 1327644 Jul 3rd 2:56 PM
Hm. Now that I think about it, it's a good thing most ordinary bus-riding folk are careful not to fall into this. And this whole Bus Riders Union thing would be excellent Kubrick fodder.
Darrell Clarke
User ID: 0930774 Jul 3rd 4:12 PM
Have any of you written letters to the editor at the L.A. Times making these comments about Barbara
Lott-Holland's "2-1/2 hour" trip?
Send to:
letters@latimes.com; also include your full name, mailing address, and phone number.
Chris Ledermuller
User ID: 1244314 Jul 4th 4:13 AM
Dave K wrote:
Cut those numbers by about 30 percent to comply with the consent decree.
This would still favor artics. The BRU would oppose them still because they are labor-unfriendly.
Dave K
User ID: 9544623 Jul 4th 12:44 PM
Yeah, that was just my knee-jerk reaction to seeing numbers like that for bus loading.
I got used to spotting numbers like that in the Expo and Wilshire BRT proposals, arguing for the amazing capcity of BRT but requiring crush loads that:
a) exceed by 50% or more the loads permitted under the consent decree.
b) are inconsistent with the ridership estimates (new riders attracted to crush load service)
c) are inconsistent with the operating characteristics presented (i.e. unloading and loading a crush load bus very quickly to meet optimistic running time estimates).
Don't worry, we're on the same page here. Artics are a good idea for improving capacity on bus lines where we are already running short headways - Wilshire would be a good start.
I wouldn't be suprised to see some other Rapid Bus lines meeting this requirement once they are running as well.
All the more reason to phase in Rapid Bus a couple of lines at a time. After running with standard buses, we can see if artics are justified on a given route.
If they are not, keep that service and start the next line with new regular buses. If they are, then you buy new artics to use on that route, and redeploy the standard buses to start the next new line.