What Makes a Good Transit System?

[DC Al Fine]

My city has been debating transit reform for the past couple years, so I thought I'd throw this out to the forum.

What do you think makes a good transit system?

I have a few thoughts. A good transit system:

1) Acknowledges that not everyone is a BoBo, and that people like cars for a reason
This is a primarily a criticism of the left on my city council. They come up with bold, ambitious transit plans, that ignore that cars our convenient and people have kids so not everyone can swing a 1bdrm in the city.

2) Realizes that more roads isn't always the answer

This is the right's problem in Halifax. Here's a map of my city.



The downtown and all the major employers are on the peninsula in the middle. There are five bottlenecked entry points to said peninsula and we keep building more and more low density housing. More roads just can't solve the problem. A good transit system must also acknowledge that the current system isn't sustainable and that building more roads can't always alleviate traffic woes.

3) The Public Transit has Middle Class Commuters in Mind

The public transit system in my city tries to serve two sets of customers; middle class commuters, and people who cannot use a car for whatever reason (income, age, disability etc.). The two sets of people have very different needs and rather than trying to separate them out, the transit authorities try to serve both groups together and provide mediocre service to both.

The commuter wants quick transit that make few stop. They drive to hub and get on a bus that takes them directly to work. The poor/elderly etc, want more frequent stops since its their primary mode of transport. The public transit system in my city serves the latter group mostly, which in turn means that commuters will opt for their cars.

Now I take the bus about half the time. When I take one of the few "Express Routes" run for commuters during a narrow rush hour, I prefer the bus. It only takes 5-10 minutes longer than driving and I don't have the stress of traffic. However, if I have to work early/late, or go to a client's during the day, I take my car. Why? Because taking the bus would add nearly 30 minutes each way as the bus stops at every little street corner. Now serving the people who want stops at every little corner is certainly fine, but people cannot expect commuters to take public transit if it takes significantly more time than a car.

Thoughts?

[Kushahontas]

service that doesn't end before 1 a.m. (and ideally is 24 hours or stops at like 2:30 at least)

cleanliness

[Hatman 🍁]

I remember when I was in Halifax for the NDP convention in 2008, I was disappointed with a lack of 24 hour (or at least late night) bus service. I wanted to be able to get to my uncle's house in Dartmouth (from Downtown) in the wee hours of the morning. Had to get a taxi. Not cool Halifax!

The main focus of any city should be to try and reduce as many cars on the road as possible. So if people like to drive for convenience, then make it less convenient for them to drive. I know some cities in the world make it illegal to drive into the downtown core. Not sure I'd go down that route, but something similar would help.  People with kids DO NOT NEED CARS. Take it from me, a car-less parent. It can be done, with ease. I think many working class families know what I'm talking about.

Cities also need to focus on urban intensification. If you want less people driving, than don't build suburbs. Few people actually want to live in suburbs, but have to due to affordability (or they have families, and buy into the myth that you need to live in the suburbs if you have kids). I don't know if I'd make it illegal to build suburbs (perhaps I would make it illegal to build on arable land), but suburbs could be discouraged by not building good transit systems to any would-be suburbs.

Of course it would be cool if more people biked for transportation. But I admit I'd be a fool to think more than 5% of the population would do this. I do enjoy saving $100-$200/month by not using public transit or owning a vehicle. But biking in -20 temperatures isn't for everybody

[traininthedistance]

1) Frequency, frequency, frequency.

2) A grid pattern, or as close to grid as practicable; and free transfers.  It's better to take two straight lines that come every fifteen minutes than to have one line that gets from A to B with lots of detours that comes once an hour.

3) Grade-separation is good.  Yes, this means that dedicated and seriously enforced bus lanes are better than gee-whiz streetcars running 5 MPH that mostly serve a decorative/economic development purpose.

4) Really, just read Jarrett Walker, he says 90% of everything worth saying, better than I ever could: http://www.humantransit.org

5) F*** cul-de-sacs.  Seriously f*** them right in their sac.  And density is nothing to be afraid of.

6) More roads is almost never the answer.  Induced demand, folks. 

7) There's a lot more that I could add, might later.

But, seriously, frequency.

[AggregateDemand]

Good public transit is set up like a garden city layout. Pockets of car-free areas with independently functioning public transit, connected by a light rail system. The areas where cars are allowed become even more car-centric to accommodate suburban commuters, non-retail corporate employers, and pass-through long-haul traffic. Separating car areas from public transit areas also helps keep public transit at ground-level, which drastically reduce cost.

If you want to get rid of grid lock, get rid of the inefficient road grid. In the car-free areas convert most of the roads to pedestrian and bike lanes. Use the remainder of roads for public transit buses, street cars, and service vehicles. Build-up the roads to keep traffic moving in areas where cars are allowed.

Once the layout is fixed, the minor details of frequency, cost, cleanliness, hours of operation and so forth can be hammered out.

[KCDem]

Everything said above plus get rid of the dirties and stinkies.

[TNF]

Affordability.

[King]

Not yielding to NIMBYs when planning infrastructure.

[muon2]

The problem is the existing density of potential transit users, since additional densification takes years if not decades to develop. Consider Des Moines, IA with a population of just over 200K in a metro of 600K. The city density is about 1000/sqkm. Compare that to Halifax with 300K in a metro of 400K and an urban density of about 1000/sqkm.

Des Moines has a bus-only transit system with a mix of fixed routes and on-demand routes that have about 2500 stops, which is comparable to the number of stops in Halifax's system. Halifax maintains more routes, in part because Des Moines has only kept fixed routes that tie to the downtown and capitol. This hub and spoke system in DM caters to the commuters since attempts to create fixed route service that are point-to-point outside the downtown lack the density to provide ridership to justify the service. Des Moines has looked at light rail, but has been unable to justify the cost.

In a city like Minneapolis (pop 400K, metro 3.8M) the city density is closer to 3000/sqkm and that makes a grid of city buses feasible, and provides a user population to support light rail into the downtown. However, there's no realistic planning path to take one from 1000/sqkm to 3000/sqkm over an area the size of Halifax or Des Moines.

[Del Tachi]

Affordability, availability and sustainability