roughly the same speed as taking a car
Yeaaaaah no, not even remotely true. And i say that as a bus driver (king county metro so Seattle and surrounding areas.) Even on my express routes that shoot down main roads or highways with minimal stops, taking your car directly will get you from one end of the line to the other in less than half the time.
You literally just can’t make public transit the same speed, direct A >B with no stops will always be faster, especially when people REFUSE to be fucking ready to go when i pull up. Most people are but all it takes is ONE person who waits till after I’ve pulled up, they waited to step in, and ONLY THEN do they bring out their bag and start digging for their money/orca now making the whole route 3min behind. Before long the route is 10min+ behind
You are public transit relying on the same infrastructure and priority cars are. High speed rail, trams with dedicated right of ways and removing right of way from cars all can speed transit up and make it more competitive with cars. Buses are one of the lowest tiers and lowest quality of transit.
Hey maybe I’ve ridden on your bus before! Honestly, we need more protected bus only lanes, like not share with HOV at all. This would be a big boon especially on the 520 bridge. I think that + traffic light priority would be a big step forward. fuck cars
It would not solve much because it’s never going to be enforced by traffic police. There are several sections in Bellevue and in certain parts of Seattle where the lane is already dedicated 100% bus only but that doesn’t stop people from blocking the lane traveling in it and just otherwise making the lane worthless.
I think my absolute favorite is on Aurora where people will start accelerating to get up in front of me, only to cut me off so that they can pull into a parking lot. It’s not like they didn’t know that the bus was just traveling forward and wasn’t going to stop or turn into a parking lot, but they felt the need to accelerate and pass the bus so that they could get in front of it and then practically come to a stop to make a turn
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