Mass Transit or Mass Travesty?

Great Debates
1

Our local government has recently distributed a mail-in questionaire about the quality of the local mass transit (bus) system.

This irritated me. I’ve never been a fan of the local bus system. Oh, for what it is it’s reasonably efficient and safe. Though it boths me that the central bus station is named for a sitting city commissioner.

What irritates me the most is that the damned thing exists in the first place. The bus system is clearly intended as an assistantship to the less fortunate. It makes it reasonbly convenient for those without “personal transportation” to get from point A to point B.

But it serves no other purpose. The downsides include:

[ul]
[li]The bus system is costly. The cost to the rider is approximately 20% of the cost of operation. The rest is borne by the taxpayer.[/li][li]The bus system conjests traffic. Busses tend to operate on two lane streets where there are limited passing opportunities. Busses tend to stop frequently.[/li][li]Busses are polluting! Studies show that on a per passenger mile basis, busses actually pollute as much or more than passenger cars. These studies typically do not include the secondary pollution and costs borne by traffic affected by the bus routes.[/li][/ul]

I want to dismantle the local bus system. How do I convice the city commission and their empire-building ways that the bus system is one of the worst possible solutions?

2

Well, you are certainly entitled to your opinion. I’m guessing that handy thing you got in the mail might be used for such a thing? Right…

Sure, assuming what you said about the bus system makes it sound horrible mostly, but I think that people who can’t afford to have a car (is this somehow punishable by death now?) should have a way to get around, their taxes are paying for the buses as surely as yours are (I suppose that they aren’t using the busses to go to jobs and stuff?) and that is not even taking into account that I have no idea of your characterizations of your cities bus line (what city?) are accurate at all or just the clouded biased “facts” from someone whose been cut off a few times by the unwieldly vehicles.

Also, speaking as someone form new York City - where public transportation makes the roads LESS congested and makes LESS polution and has a GREAT need amongst its populace - the “problems” you complain about might not even BE problems…

Yer pal,
Satan

[sub]I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
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3

Seeing as I am one of those “less fortunate,” I feel the need to respond to this. I am going to be as civil as possible, even though SouthernStyle’s suggestions, if implemented in my city, would cost me a job I love and make me dependent upon friends for such necessities as getting groceries.

So let me address these points.

And what would you suggest the “less fortunate” who need “assistance” do in its place? Remember, your suggestion has to help the same amount of people and be less costly to implement, run, and ride. Light rail? Subway? Do you know how much those things cost to start up? If the rest of the taxpayers are like you, and don’t want to subsidize the bus system, what makes you think they’re going to subsidize anything else, especially something that requires mass changes in infrastructure? Or do you suggest that those of us without “personal transportation” take expensive taxis wherever we go? I, for one, could afford that just as much as I could afford to get a car, which is to say not at all.

Well, I don’t know about where you live, but where I live, the buses are allowed their own lanes during peak hours, and traffic seems to go along just fine in the other lanes. That way, nobody’s stuck behind one of those stopping buses. During the other times, the buses don’t run more than every 15 minutes or so, so it’s really not that much of an issue. Plus, I’m not sure how much of an impact would be had on traffic by the 40-50 extra cars for each bus that is retired, but I’m sure it would be just as much.

I did a quick search for the studies you are mentioning here, but couldn’t find one. Mind providing a cite?

First, you’d have to come up with a better one. Good luck.

4

  1. Right – you have no idea. No argument here.

  2. I’m not in NYC and wasn’t speaking its demographics. This is a modest southern city of < 200,000.

5

SouthernStyle:

Nice debating technique. I properly give you the benefit of the doubt while making a few devil’s advocate arguments about how I would need more information to give a clear opinion and instead of getting this information, I get a ccondescending, smart-ass reply about how I don’t know.

Nice way to have a debate here, keeping the details to yourself. Fuck, man! I still don’t even know the city you are in!

So according to you, I can come in here, shout some “facts,” and if someone asks for more information, I can just tell them, “well you don’t know anything, you admitted it yourself.” Fucking brilliant, dude.

Oh, and I stand by what I said. Even in a smaller city than New York (I used that as an example because unlike you, I provided a point of reference), the things you complain about might very well be benefits.

Wanna try again, SouthernStyle?

Yer pal,
Satan

[sub]I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Four months, six days, 18 hours, 52 minutes and 14 seconds.
5151 cigarettes not smoked, saving $643.93.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 3 days, 21 hours, 15 minutes.[/sub]

"Satan is not an unattractive person."-Drain Bead
[sub]Thanks for the ringing endorsement, honey![/sub]

6

What would happen to your city’s economy if everyone was paid enough to buy a car and could commute to work on their own? Never mind the congeston and pollution: according to the OP this would actually be reduced. So what if the taxpayers pay to subsidise a bus system - how does that compare with what they’d have to pay extra, all across the board, so every single working person could drive him or herself to work. In this service-economy that would be as unrealistic, even in a city of 200,000, as demanding that all aparment buildings be raised and only free-standing 3-bedrooom houses allowed.

7

That is, if his profile can be trusted. I trust it. Damn shame that a state capitol’s city streets are two-lane roads. Ah, well, not much tourism there, AFAIK.

Yes, Southern Style, I, along with Drain, would be interested in seeing a cite as to those studies. In addition, let’s return to:

The wording of that strikes me as qualifying it as anecdotal, so asking for a cite may be inappropriate, but its content also strikes me as overly simplistic. Is this intended to be a debate on the question of whether public transportation systems should exist?

I might contribute by pointing out that the prices at your local grocer are, at least in part, reflective of the operating costs of your grocer. If the workers are to get to work on their own nickel, they will require more nickels in their pay envelopes, an operating cost that will be passed on to you, the customer, in the form of higher food prices.

Extrapolate the above observation to restaurants, malls, and any other place where you might be likely to spend money on a regular basis, and you might be able to calculate that a public transportation system benefits you personally more than it costs you.

By the way, it will do you no good to say that the working poor can get jobs in places that they are able to reach without public transportation. Joe’s Market will fill its staffing needs, and if the local kids won’t do it at the wages that bus riders settle for, those wages are going to have to rise (and the customer will pay for it). Otherwise, Joe’s Market will not exist for long.

8

God forbid if SF got rid of public transport. About 700,000 people ride Muni every day. This in a city of 800,000. That doesn’t even include BART. It already takes two hours to get into the city from the suburbs. During the bart strike that time doubled. You can’t find a parking space to save your life. If we got rid of public transport it would be impossible. Studies have shown that MUNI is much less polluting that cars (you don’t want to give cites, I won’t either).

Also all of your arguments can be made against SUV’s. They put more wear and tear on roads, they cost other people more money(more demand for gas means higher prices), they congest traffic (you must give SUV’s more room than cars, plus they take longer to accelerate), and they pollute much more than normal cars. Should we ban SUV’s too?

9

  1. How costly is the bus system? Rather than what percent is borne by the taxpayer (how is that relevant to the assertion?) tell us HOW MUCH IN DOLLARS it costs you to support the bus system in a year. Then consider how much it would cost the city to expand the streets, roadways, and parking to handle the increase in traffic that would result from eliminating mass transit.

  2. Buses, like all forms of mass transit, relieve congestion. Imagine if every one of those people riding those buses had to have their own private car on the street in front of you (or do you think they would just disappear along with the buses?). The inconvenience from the stops a bus makes are very minor in comparison.

  3. Buses are very polluting, and should be required to meet the same emissions tests as cars, as should ALL government vehicles. I agree with you 100% on this one. They should also meet noise standards - those damn squealing brakes that every fucking municipal bus has do NOT sound like machinery that is working properly, and they make everyone’s skin crawl.

If you really want to change the system, try the following ideas:

  1. Smaller buses, more in number. That way, more buses could be sent out during the high-traffic times of day to carry commuters; the huge behemoths designed for peak carrying capacity would not have to be out on the streets at 2PM or later in the evenings when they are carrying only three passengers.
  2. Put the damn trolley cars back. GM went around buying up the nation’s trolley car companies and shutting them down to usher in buses as the principal form of municipal transportation in the U.S. I am under the impression that trolleys are MUCH superior, on a variety of fronts, including both cost and pollution.
10

Actually, check out our own Uncle Cecil’s column, Did General Motors destroy the LA mass transit system? for The Straight Dope® on this. Nutshell conclusion according to Cecil: “blaming GM is like blaming the inventor of gunpowder for war.”

Yer pal,
Satan

[sub]I HAVE BEEN SMOKE-FREE FOR:
Four months, six days, 20 hours, 0 minutes and 56 seconds.
5153 cigarettes not smoked, saving $644.17.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 3 days, 21 hours, 25 minutes.[/sub]

"Satan is not an unattractive person."-Drain Bead
[sub]Thanks for the ringing endorsement, honey![/sub]

11

SouthernStyle said: *[The local bus system] makes it reasonbly convenient for those without “personal transportation” to get from point A to point B. But it serves no other purpose. *

Uh, what other purpose is a bus system supposed to serve, besides letting those without “personal transportation” get from point A to point B? If you mean that your system’s ridership is exclusively non-car-owners, that is, that nobody with a car ever uses the bus for commuting or any other transportation, then it’s the car owners who are ignoring a potentially useful and economical transportation alternative. Presumably the bus system could “serve a purpose” for them if they wanted it to.

*The downsides include: The bus system is costly. The cost to the rider is approximately 20% of the cost of operation. The rest is borne by the taxpayer. *

True, but automobile transit is costly too; private cars are the cause of most of the expenditures required for road maintenance, parking, traffic control, and so forth, and those costs are borne by the taxpayer. And as Slithy Tove pointed out, if you’re going to subsidize any kind of transportation for those who can’t afford their own cars, it’s a lot easier to set up public transit than to give people cars.

*The bus system conjests traffic. Busses tend to operate on two lane streets where there are limited passing opportunities. Busses tend to stop frequently. *

Again, would your city’s traffic be less congested if all those bus riders were instead driving separate cars? In your city of 200,000, do you really have so much traffic congestion that this is a serious transportation problem? Do you have so many buses that they make congestion significantly worse? What percentage of your intracity car trips would you estimate are seriously delayed by buses, and by how much do they delay you? What levels of delay on your car trips would you be willing to accept for the sake of serving the transportation needs of the bus riders? Do you have suggestions for more efficient bus routing that would free up more of the single-lane roads for car traffic? If so, you should communicate them to your local transit authority, either via the questionnaire you received or in some other forum.

*Busses are polluting! Studies show that on a per passenger mile basis, busses actually pollute as much or more than passenger cars. *

Cite? Dirty diesel buses are certainly a problem, but you’ll be pleased to hear that the EPA is tightening standards for bus and truck emissions. Natural-gas-fueled vehicles such as the new bus and trackless-trolley fleets in many cities, on the other hand, are much cleaner than cars. And of course, whenever emissions standards are approximately equal, the mass-transit vehicle is going to be far less polluting than the multiple private vehicles. It sounds as though what your city may need is cleaner buses, instead of fewer or no buses.

12

What Drain Bead said.

I’d have to wonder about that statistic too. Surely 40 average cars with one passenger each pollute more than one bus with 40 passengers? if not, then that must be a pretty old, crappy bus.

ABP9999, I like the idea of the smaller more frequent buses. Many of the buses here in Chapel Hill stop running around 6:30 at night [which reminds me, damn I’m gonna hafta walk home from work now. Dang SDMB!]. Which probably makes economic sense for them, since there aren’t even that many passengers on the buses that do run late. But if I want to hang out late in downtown, I have nothing to do but take the 40-minute walk home. In the dark. Through all the scary places. Even less frequent, small buses (hell, vans for that matter) at night would be a godsend.

BTW, I don’t know if I’d call myself “less fortunate,” but rather “prefers to spend my money on someting other than car payments, insurance, gas, and maintenance when I don’t need to.” That’s only one of the reasons I don’t have a car.

13

Do you think that all the streets in your city and county are built and maintained out of gasoline tax revenues? Will you then campaign to have the street system abandoned?

14

By the way, SouthernStyle, according to your local public transit info site, your bus system “operates 31 city routes, campus shuttles at [two large local universities], the Old Town Trolley (a downtown shuttle), a DIAL-A-RIDE service for seniors/disabled citizens, and a variety of seasonal transit programs.” That sounds to me like quite a comprehensive transit agenda (serving a large number of local students, too), and hardly a mere (mere?)“assistantship to the less fortunate.” However, if you wish to convey your distaste for the whole enterprise to those in charge of it, it appears that the email address of the person to contact is given here.

If you want, I would be happy to write a letter to this contact on your behalf, drawing the administrators’ attention to the URL of this thread and asking them to note your opinion, as one of their constituents, that their system should be dismantled. I rather think, though, that your suggestion might lose some force in view of all the responses disagreeing with you. :wink:

15

Satan, I bow to the master. Although most of that article seemed more a comparison of the trolley lines to private automobiles, not to buses, nevertheless Cece obviously looked at more real info than I have. So GM’s off the hook.

Here’s another idea: elevated bike paths. If they can do it for trains, it should be simple for the much less structurally demanding bicycle. The only difference would be on and off ramps as opposed to stairs, and of course it would have to be paid for and maintained by the city. But it would make bike traffic easier and safer.

16

But the one post he made in response above was such a succinct rebuttal of all of the other opinions, I don’t see how anyone couldn’t have changed their minds!

WOO HOO! Damn, I almost said that without laughing!

SouthernStyle: I see you have not responded to what anyone here has asked from you. No further evidence, no elaboration on your displeasure, hell you wouldn’t even name the friggin’ city that you are so perterbed with!

Here’s some advice. There is a forum here called The Pit. It is where you go if you want to complain about something and not necessarily have to back it up with some rational thought and reasonable discourse. It seems like this thread should have been posted there.

Not that this would have made you right, of course. It’s just that had you properly posted there, insteasd of trying to reason with you, people would have been able to tell you exactly what they feel about being called “less fortunate” because they happen to use public transportation.

Capici?

Yer pal,
Satan

[sub]TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Four months, one week, 45 minutes and 33 seconds.
5161 cigarettes not smoked, saving $645.16.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 3 days, 22 hours, 5 minutes.[/sub]

"Satan is not an unattractive person."-Drain Bead
[sub]Thanks for the ringing endorsement, honey!*[/sub]

17

As one who relies on the bus to get everywhere, I would like to say that my transportation needs are rather important. If I can’t get to work, to the grocery store and to school I am rather screwed in my prospects for life. I think we can all agree that getting people to work is a worthy cause. That aside, I’d like to point out the other good purposes that buses serve.

They allow Seniors, young people and disablesd people who are unable to drive to get around. Not everyone physically (or legally) can drive.

 They alleiviate parking. Thousands of people flock to the same places downtown each day. If they all drove there simply wouldn't be anywhere for them to park.

 They allow tourist to get around. If it wern't for public transportation, tourists would be stuck with going where they could walk to from their hotels or paying outrageous cab fees.

 Finally, and most importantly, I have to admit that I love the bus. Admittedly this is kind of obscure, and I don't expect anyone to understand. I love the humanity of the bus. I love the people, the movenment, the marriage of machines and human. People spend so much of their lives going from their air-conditioned home to their air conditioned car to their air conditioned work and back. They never have to experience anyhting that is "real". The bus keeps me grounded. It is beautiful how people interact and how thir lives collide, briefly and beautifully, on the bus. I think it is important to fight the isolation of cars. Do you ever think when you are stopped at a light that you really are not that far from the other people in other cars also stopped there? But you will never communicate (except for the occasional upraised middle finger) you will never reach any understanding of them, because cars are so self-contained, so alone and so isolateing. I love the bus. It is beautiful. If anyone is intersted I could even post some of my bus poetry!

Ok, maybe not…

18

This past summer I took classes at my local college. Without the bus it would have either taken a 10-hour walk or pissing my father off to an extent that he’d arrange for me to sleep at college.

SouthernStyle, there are many, many programs funded by taxpayers’ money. They don’t all benefit you personally in a way you see every day. That doesn’t mean they’re not serving a valid purpose. If you’ve such a problem with the bus costing you money, why don’t you go out and get some other form of transportation for those who use the bus?

Here’s what I’m thinking here: I didn’t go to public grade or high school. None of my siblings go to public school. Quite frankly, I’m annoyed by the busses full of children who annoy me when I’m driving home or walking to the metro or whatever. My point is, I don’t personally benefit from lower education public schools. I find some of the things they teach to be either untrue or only partial truths. Part of the money I pay in my taxes goes toward paying for public education. It serves me no purpose in terms of giving me a good back in exchange for the money I give it. Should it be abolished because of that? No. Granted there are obvious holes in this comparison, but for what you’re saying (you’re giving it money, it’s giving you nothing, so far as you can see) it serves as a valid counterpoint, I think.

In addition, the busses I rode to get to and from school had special lanes for their stops. It’s not like they stop in the middle of an intersection to let someone with a wheelchair off. The typical stop also doesn’t usually lost much longer than five seconds, metro notwithstanding.

I hasten to add that cutting down busses would take jobs away from people, making more unemployment. You possibly counter with “they can all drive cabs.” Yeah . . . that adds to congestion and who says those who ride the bus can afford a cab? They might take one if they could afford it.

Also, a good number of low-wage workers and students take the public bus. Taking away the bus system creates problems so obvious here I’m not even going to mention them.

By the way, I’m damn interested in seeing this evidence of busses making more pollution than the requisite number of cars. Here I was thinking one vehicle makes less pollution than five others combined.

Couple more questions: “These studies typically do not include the secondary pollution and costs borne by traffic affected by the bus routes.” Care to put this in stupidtalk for me? I don’t know what exactly you’re talking about. Do you mean the strain it puts on the road? Do you mean gas fumes from when it stops? Do you mean something put out by the brakes? Fumes from the air conditioning?

Also: “The cost to the rider is approximately 20% of the cost of operation. The rest is borne by the taxpayer.” What does this mean to you, in terms of dollars per year? Or perhaps a better way to phrase this is: what percent of the money you put forth in taxes now is for the bus? I don’t know if you can itemize that or get ahold of the tax percentage breakdown for your city, so perhaps that’s not a fair question to ask. But how do you arrive at the “20 percent of the cost of operation” figure? Is this somthing provided on your questionnaire?

And lastly: what services is a form of mass transit supposed to provide other than mass transit? Was something else promised but not delivered?

19

I recently had to spend a couple of weeks doing jury duty in downtown Los Angeles. I drove there the first day, and it was a nightmare! Traffic congestion and costly and inconveniant parking. The second day I took the train downtown, which the state paid for. Once at the station, I took the DASH bus to the courthouse.

DASH buses vary slightly from regular buses. They only have 6 roundtrip routes through various sections of L.A. proper. The cost to ride is a quarter. And one comes by every five to ten minutes during business hours.

What a difference! I saved time, money, and my sanity. And I noticed that the majority of the bus riders were not the less fortunate, but professional people and state employees.
The trains were the same way. I couldn’t imagine what traffic, parking, and pollution would be like if all these people, who could more than likely own cars (and probably do) used them to commute downtown.

If it were up to me, there would be 3 times as many buses in Los Angeles ( a city of 3 million+).

20

For the sake of argument, let me join with those here who champion the funding of personal transportation for the poor by means of taxing those who aren’t poor. (And we’ll just leave “poor” comfortably undefined.)

What about the rural poor? Shouldn’t they also have publicly funded transportation so they can have the jobs they want? If Drain Bead, who happens to live in the city, is entitled to have a way to work, then why isn’t Hassey-Mae Hatfield, who happens to live twelve miles up a winding one-lane dirt road in Appalachia, entitled to the same thing?

Would it not greatly improve her lot in life? Or is it a matter of utility in some way? Is Hassey-Mae not useful enough to society (conveniently forget, for the moment, that she is a part of society)? Is the cost too high? If so, couldn’t we take, like, say, a couple billion dollars from Bill Gates to finance public transportation for the rural poor? I have a bunch more questions along these lines (like whether those who represent the rural poor in Congress have sufficient political clout to do anything for them), but let’s start with these.