LogFAQs > #972708317

adjl posted...

Road infrastructure is unfathomably expensive, and far and away the least cost-efficient way to move people around cities (putting aside obvious silly alternatives like personal, tax-funded helicopters). Low-density housing, industrial parks, and other car-centric designs need way more road infrastructure (and also power, sewer, water, phone, internet, and other forms of infrastructure that every one of those spaced-out buildings needs) to connect them to the rest of the grid, so not only do those parcels of land generate less tax revenue per unit of area, they cost more tax dollars to service. People routinely balk at the idea of spending half a million to install a few protected bike lanes (which improve traffic flow by getting more people out of cars), but happily swallow spending a hundred times that just fixing the potholes that showed up over the winter (which is the bare minimum needed to keep roads usable and does nothing to improve traffic flow).

Would there be a front-end cost? Sure. Is that front-end cost going to be very quickly mitigated by fares, increased property and sales tax revenue, and reduced road maintenance requirements? Absolutely. Cities routinely invest more in road "improvements" than it would take to pivot to a less car-centric model, and those improvements don't actually help anything in the long run.

They dont really fix the roads here, anyway So, reduced roads maintenance wont get us much Plus, theyll still need to fix the roads. The public transport will still use them, plus most people would still tend to drive cars Fares also wont get us much. The fares they currently get is not even enough to run the bus station. Its currently needs the city to keep paying it constantly They dont actually seem to make a profit Like at all And lots of people can get reduced bud fare in most cases. Like children, the elderly, and college students. They also might have a military thing, as well And most people who ride the buses everyday get the month pass thing. You pay a pretty cheap price and get a month pass that you can use for like 31 days or something. Its to help out, and its probably the only things this city does right. But that also means that fares, which are already low, would probably stay low, and not offset any cost And the front-end cost would end up being a ton to change a whole city around to be public transport friendly And thats not even getting in the amount of money the bus station would need for more buses, fuel, and literally everything else they need. And more space for everything

adjl posted...

Buses tend to follow the same major arterial roads that you'd take in a car anyway, or at least something closely parallel to it. Personally, I don't walk/bike to work on the same road that my bus to work would take, but it's only 1-2 blocks over for most of the trip, and that's the same distance I'd have to walk to get to the stop in the first place. On the rare occasion that I drive, I'll take either of those two roads and see similar results either way. Now, that bus comes once every 20 minutes at best, is routinely very late, sometimes doesn't show up at all, and I'm still leery of public transit amid the pandemic, but I would at least say that the route is well-designed and improving it to be properly usable is going to be a matter of improving the frequency and reliability.

If transit is well-designed, you won't be meandering aimlessly around on a bus before getting to where you're going. It might not be quite as direct a route as you would drive, but it should be comparable, especially with provisions like bus lanes and advance signals to help it avoid getting stuck in traffic (which is a major part of making it faster than driving).

It really depends on the transit in that city. For my current city, we have 8 1-hour routes. So, if you miss the bus, you have about an hour to wait. While that can be better with more buses (which would cost an insane amount for our station), it cant fix the next problem (on its
own, at least). Like if you are going from point A to point B in a similar scenario: Point A is 15 minutes into a 1-hour route on Bus One, and Point B is 30 minutes into a 1-hour route on Bus Seven. That means it will take 1 hour and 15 minutes for a drive that would take 15-20 minutes on its own And more buses on its own doesnt fix that since the hour routes are fixed that way They would need to change the routes. But I dont see them changing them any time soon as they found whats seems to be the perfect routes. They would need more routes to fix it Which would also call for more buses But even then, it could still take some random amount of time thats still more than driving And honestly, Im not even sure how much shorter most of the routes could be, tbh

Also, the buses lanes and advance signals wont help much. The buses actually dont have much trouble reaching their stops on time. They get to stops pretty early. But are suppose to wait until that time before leaving. For example, if a bus is suppose to get to a stop at 10:31, and they get there at 10:27, they still have to wait until like 10:31 or 10:32 before they can leave So, the route takes the same amount of time either way The issue is the route length itself So, in the end, its still ends up being at least a little slower And much slower in probably the average case

My hometown is better, but not much. I think they have more buses come around. So, shorter waits. But I believe the routes are about the same length. Like being hour long routes. But Id have to check to make sure