Red Line (Cedar Avenue BRT)

[mattaudio]

Yes. The strategy is to keep uncomfortable transit riders short (people can stand, hold a grab bar, and be unproductive for 10-15 minutes) but longer transit riders >30 min should have seats and good ride quality. Of course this raises the prescient point that the types of investment necessary to have >30 min rides that are comfortable are not really encouraged by the suburban development pattern and the only reasonably valuable approach is to use express buses.

[David Greene]

On rail, or express service on coach buses, users are able to take advantage of their time on transit to conduct business, read, etc. This is much more difficult on our local bus routes where the motions are not smooth... lots of gas, brake, and swerving in and out of the traffic lane for stops.

<*shrug*> I do it all the time on the 53 and 21. I seem to have no problem using a laptop. The biggest issue is room for the screen to fully open. There are only a few seats that make that really comfortable.

But I can see how some people would find it difficult. Still, I find it hard to believe that *everyone* I hear from about "no bus, rail" is really thinking about activities during their commute.

[talindsay]

I use bus and rail both but have a strong preference for rail. Part of it is that you don't have to feel *committed* to ride a rail line - you glance at a map quickly to find your destination station, and you can shut off until you get there. You can stand - I much prefer standing because then I'm not committing and I don't feel like I'll have trouble getting off when I have to, even if it gets crowded, and I also don't have to interact with other people. Also, on rail you don't have to interact with the driver - you can just be anonymous. You can pay ahead of time, which means the potentially difficult task of figuring out how to buy a ticket and what kind you need can be done at your leisure, standing on a platform.

By contrast, on a bus you have to figure out how to identify your destination stop, and you have to signal to the bus driver ahead of time that you want to get off - this requires knowing the area or at least knowing how to identify street names, which means paying attention the whole time. You have to interact with the driver to pay your fare, which means figuring out in real time what's required to pay it. The expectation is that you need to sit down, which means sitting next to somebody. It also means you're trapped if the bus gets crowded, which means getting off the bus is further complicated by needing to get other people to move out of your way. And if you're stuck next to the wrong person, you're really stuck. If you have any kind of luggage, you're going to have to lug it up onto the bus and find a place to put it, which most likely means blocking other people's way. That's awkward and uncomfortable.

Riding a bus involves a lot of things that are difficult in unfamiliar areas, and it involves a lot of vulnerability. You can ride rail with very little knowledge of the area, no interaction with other people, and significantly less vulnerability.

[FISHMANPET]

I use bus and rail both but have a strong preference for rail. Part of it is that you don't have to feel *committed* to ride a rail line - you glance at a map quickly to find your destination station, and you can shut off until you get there. You can stand - I much prefer standing because then I'm not committing and I don't feel like I'll have trouble getting off when I have to, even if it gets crowded, and I also don't have to interact with other people. Also, on rail you don't have to interact with the driver - you can just be anonymous. You can pay ahead of time, which means the potentially difficult task of figuring out how to buy a ticket and what kind you need can be done at your leisure, standing on a platform.

By contrast, on a bus you have to figure out how to identify your destination stop, and you have to signal to the bus driver ahead of time that you want to get off - this requires knowing the area or at least knowing how to identify street names, which means paying attention the whole time. You have to interact with the driver to pay your fare, which means figuring out in real time what's required to pay it. The expectation is that you need to sit down, which means sitting next to somebody. It also means you're trapped if the bus gets crowded, which means getting off the bus is further complicated by needing to get other people to move out of your way. And if you're stuck next to the wrong person, you're really stuck. If you have any kind of luggage, you're going to have to lug it up onto the bus and find a place to put it, which most likely means blocking other people's way. That's awkward and uncomfortable.

Riding a bus involves a lot of things that are difficult in unfamiliar areas, and it involves a lot of vulnerability. You can ride rail with very little knowledge of the area, no interaction with other people, and significantly less vulnerability.

Most of that doesn't have anything to do with bus perse, but how it's implemented. I think every one of your complaints could be mitigated with a bus, and also on some systems you would have those same problems on rail. By this explanation, you'd have no problem riding the Red Line (provided you were at one of the terminus station with TVMs)?

[talindsay]

Most of that doesn't have anything to do with bus perse, but how it's implemented. I think every one of your complaints could be mitigated with a bus, and also on some systems you would have those same problems on rail. By this explanation, you'd have no problem riding the Red Line (provided you were at one of the terminus station with TVMs)?

Note by the way that I'm not the original poster and that I *do* use buses frequently; these are the reasons I prefer rail, and why, when traveling I stick almost entirely to rail in unfamiliar places.

With that out of the way, you're technically correct that all of them can be mitigated on bus; for that matter, some of them are actively being mitigated already. The new low-floor buses are certainly better than the old high-floor Gilligs on many of these questions, for instance. With that said, I don't think any bus line in practice is very good at addressing these issues, and I think in practice almost all rail systems are good at them. The lowest-amenity rail line I've been on is the Helsinki streetcar, which is still better on nearly every count than bus systems.

From this perspective the only bus line in the Twin Cities that approaches the characteristics that make rail superior is the University's Gopher Express buses - they have a small number of well-defined stations that every bus always stops at, there's ample space to stand, no reason to interact with the driver, room for bags, no need to figure out payment on board. Sadly, it's a unique true BRT case that is very unlikely to be replicated in the Twin Cities.

In terms of replicable bus examples, the Red Line certainly comes closest, but at least on my ride on Saturday it seemed to fall short in a few key ways: (1) with just one bus platform for both directions at Cedar Grove, it wasn't immediately obvious which way the bus was going, This is just stupid shortsightedness in design. (2) while the bus was designed to encourage standing, the space for standing is still small and is seriously encroached upon by anybody using the onboard bicycle racks (both of which were in use); and further, the ride was much too rough to actually sustain a standee's confidence. Finally, (3) the bus was still much too small to provide ample space for any luggage or other stuff a passenger might have.

[David Greene]

I use bus and rail both but have a strong preference for rail.

Thanks for that! This is really well stated. I agree that to use the bus requires one to know the area. Since I regularly ride the 6, 53 and 21 and always go to the same places, that problem kind of fades away. But when I want to go somewhere new I definitely have to pay close attention.

[FISHMANPET]

I'm just not very fond of the way the bus vs rail debate is usually framed, as it's usually done poorly. Usually it focuses on things not about the vehicle but about the way the vehicle is used.

Vehicle size is something where bus will never beat rail, as is ride quality. Most everything else comes down to system design. Jarret Walker (@humantransit) tweeted this today and I thought it was pretty applicable:

Demanding that transit be categorized by technology (bus/rail) is like demanding that literary works be categorized based on their font

[Tom H.]

I never rode a city bus until starting graduate school about 4 years ago. Fear of a complex and confusing system definitely played a large part of that. However, now that I have experience with my own city's system, I feel much more confident using a bus system in other cities as well. Speaking from experience as someone who would never have even considered riding a bus - sometimes you just need to try it. Transit grows on you!

[FISHMANPET]

Having tried to ride a city bus in Chicago I can say that it wasn't a very pleasant experience. First, I had no idea how much the fare was. Chicago has something confusing where bus fares are lower than subway fares but you have to pay to transfer and ??? I had a swipe card for the El but it only had $1.75 so I just dropped $3 into the machine and walked to the back of the bus with my friend because it was cold and I wanted to get back to my hotel.

Because of Google Maps I knew what cross street we needed to get off at, but I couldn't figure out what street we were on because it was a strange city and the automated announcements were too quiet (and both our phone batteries were dead).

It was also slower than molasses, because we were stuck in Chicago traffic.

I think a lot of people have an experience like that and shun buses all together. However I had a perfectly good experience in Vancouver riding the Skytrain and transferring to a bus, but that was because I'd done my research ahead of time and we had prepaid fare tickets. But discoverability/intelligibality is a big problem with a regular city bus, though smartphones are doing a lot to make that better. I have no problem jumping on any bus in this city with my smartphone and my Metropass.

[mattaudio]

UrbanMSPers are intelligent enough to figure out a bus system if we want/need to. But why should we have to? Don't make me think!
- Simplify the transit map... No branches. No super infrequent service like the countless lines that run 2-5x pdew.
- Use interlining to serve inner high ridership corridors and fan out to outer lower ridership corridors
- Don't get off the street like Uptown or Chi-Lake transit stations.... as was noted here it sucks to be on a new bus and think "is this the right bus?"
- Put cross-street signage at bus stop shelters etc so people riding the bus can see where they're at and wayfind
- etc.

[Tcmetro]

So I took the Red Line upon the opening on Saturday, and again during the PM peak hour today.

Some observations:
- A lot of riders on Saturday seemed to be one time riders riding for the novelty of it. It kinda felt like that today as well, but most of the buses had between 5 and 15 people on them.
- The level boarding system is pretty dumb to have on a bus system. The buses have to pull up to the stops really slowly, which is a huge waste of time.
- The buses were running pretty late today. They seemed to be 5-10 minutes down consistently. The schedules need to be adjusted and maybe a bus or two added to the line.
- The Transit Police were riding the line, despite the fact it was free, and even had a Transit police car following the bus!
- The transfer to the 440 line at 140th and 147th is completely unmarked, and there are no bus stop signs for the #440 bus.
- At Cedar Grove, the connecting buses had few riders. The 440 I rode from AV had a total of 4 riders, the 437 that pulled in was completely empty, the 440 SB from the VA had maybe 7 or 8 riders on it, the 444 that came through had about 15, the 445 left with only 4 riders, the 491 that came through had 7 with no one getting on or off.
- Its a shame they didn't open the line with stops at Diffley Rd (site of an Alternative HS), Cliff Rd (shopping district), Palomino Rd (low-income/high-density housing), or the extension to the shopping areas at 161st and 179th.

[David Greene]

- Simplify the transit map... No branches. No super infrequent service like the countless lines that run 2-5x pdew.
- Use interlining to serve inner high ridership corridors and fan out to outer lower ridership corridors
- Don't get off the street like Uptown or Chi-Lake transit stations.... as was noted here it sucks to be on a new bus and think "is this the right bus?"

Aren't the second two in contradiction to the first? Interlining *looks* like a line with a bunch of branches. I know the route numbers differ and that makes a difference, but I think people will still wonder, "Am I on the right bus?" while in the shared segments. I don't have a better proposal, just making an observation.

I totally agree with eliminating branches.

[Tcmetro]

Branches and short-turns have their uses. I favor simplification also, but let's not go wild with the system. Then you will have buses running frequently (and empty) in the suburban areas. Case in point, the #4 bus. It's quite logical for the 4 to have a Penn Av branch, and a Lyndale branch.

I'm not for interlining either. It's generally bad policy, because the lines become too long, and the reliability significantly decreases. Good policy is to keep run times under an hour. If you want to see poor reliability look at the lines that run through downtown. The 4, 5, 6, 11, 14, 17, and 22 probably have bad on-time performance during peak hours. The 7 and the 9 are a little better because they use more local streets, are shorter, and have fewer riders.

The infrequent lines have their purposes as well, they often provide coverage to areas where people would have a significant walk to a more frequent service. The peak hour lines bring in lots of people from the suburbs that would have little interest in taking a bus that is even 5 minutes slower.

[Mdcastle]

There's really three reasons I don't use buses.

First I think my attitude is partly "I have a car, why do I need a bus", the perception is that rail is for people that already have cars but make a choice to take transit. The old joke about a guy boarding a bus wearing a suit and someone whispering "DUI" to their seatmate isn't far from perception.

Second, my mother didn't drive when I was a kid in the mid 1980s. My school bus stop was 5 miles away, which meant I had to take the city bus when my father was out of town, my mom escorted us. It involved a quarter mile walk to Nicollet in all kinds of weather. (3/4 of a mile if she wanted to be cheap and avoid paying the extra fair, then waiting for the bus, transferring at 38th, which generally involved a wait of close to an hour in a sketchy (by suburban standards) area, then finally a mile walk to the school. The trip could easily top 2 hours with lots of time spent waiting in the elements, instead of about an hour on a school bus or a half hour if my dad drove me to school that day. The buses were slow and stinky, some lacked air conditioning or even padded seats, if it was hot the windows would be open sucking in everone's exhaust. And the people on board looked less than middle class form my perception.

Thirdly, I work at home so I have the luxury of avoiding peak hour commuting, but back when I worked in the office, the Blue Cross building, it didn't seem feasible to take the bus. It would involve taking the BE line to the Mall of America, than transferring to MVTA. Paying two fares would still probably be cheaper than using my SUV, but take a lot longer since I was reverse commuting and never had to fight traffic unless there was a snowstorm. I have no idea how to use and pay for ( I don't keep cash around and I presume they don't take credit cards) a bus, I never go downtown (last time was when our company made us for a meeting at the convention center a year ago April). I go to the Chain of Lakes, Hyland Park, Ax-Man in St. Paul a lot, but I don't have any idea how or if I could take a bus there. I shop at Walmart in Shakopee near my parent's house, I don't imagine I could take a bus to either place, at least not reasonably and what would I do with a weeks worth of groceries? Rail there's a map and vending machines so it's easy to figure out where it goes and buy a ticked.

The "incidents" on buses in the news have also come to my notice.

I'd consider using commuter coaches if I were forced to work downtown and they left from the 98th street park and ride (which I could walk to in nice weather). I'd consider a regular express bus, but it would take more convincing given my past experiences. There's a psychological break that commuter coaches don't count as Hoi Polloi buses, again that they're people that choose to use transit.

[Nick]

Before everyone gets incensed about the above post, please keep in mind that it's definitely an opinion shared by a majority of Americans, so try to respond to it sensibly.

[talindsay]

Before everyone gets incensed about the above post, please keep in mind that it's definitely an opinion shared by a majority of Americans, so try to respond to it sensibly.

Haha, in a sense it takes a lot of courage to post, in no uncertain terms, the reason that suburbanites don't usually ride buses on a forum like this.

With that said, I think the reality is that the creation of the suburbs is pretty much antithetical to efficient one-seat transit, and people who choose to live in the suburbs have explicitly chosen to cut themselves off from easy mass transit - every trip, even when transit *is* involved, starts with a car ride. Suburbs were designed around cars. Time is the big issue - how much sense does it make to spend two hours riding a bus around suburbs when you can get in your car and be done in thirty minutes?

For that reason I think we should focus on improving transit for people who've chosen to live in transit-friendly ways, rather than trying to convince suburbanites that they should take the bus. Northstar and Red Line are both money that could have built light rail in the city and made a much more effective return.

Of course, this region *really* wants to build ridership with suburbanites, and I think Hiawatha is a better approach to that - it's cheap and easy to drive to the edge of the city and then take a train in the last ten miles. It's hard to see the value in driving to a bus stop out where the traffic isn't that bad, then jumping on a bus that will take you to the same train, which is surrounded by free parking. Seriously, why *not* drive to the Mall and park if you already have to drive somewhere to get on the Red Line?

[mulad]

For the southern suburbs, I think the biggest reason to invest in transit is the Minnesota River. Bridges are natural choke points, funneling traffic from broad swaths on either side, so you want to catch northbound commuters before they hit the bridges rather than after. Still, the suburbs would often benefit more from improved bicycle infrastructure more than they would with more transit service.

[QuietBlue]

With that said, I think the reality is that the creation of the suburbs is pretty much antithetical to efficient one-seat transit, and people who choose to live in the suburbs have explicitly chosen to cut themselves off from easy mass transit - every trip, even when transit *is* involved, starts with a car ride. Suburbs were designed around cars. Time is the big issue - how much sense does it make to spend two hours riding a bus around suburbs when you can get in your car and be done in thirty minutes?

For that reason I think we should focus on improving transit for people who've chosen to live in transit-friendly ways, rather than trying to convince suburbanites that they should take the bus. Northstar and Red Line are both money that could have built light rail in the city and made a much more effective return.

You don't necessarily have to have a car to use transit in the suburbs -- I live in a suburb and I have frequent service within a five-minute walk from my home, both local routes and express. It's doable, though admittedly it's not the norm.

I agree that the Red Line was a bad idea and I can certainly see the argument that investing more in transit within areas where it can be more easily and effectively used would provide a better ROI. However, like it or not, there is the political/diplomatic angle to consider as well. If suburbanites don't feel they have a stake in transit, why would they support spending money on it? Plus, it helps build a long-term base of support for spending money on transit improvements.

[TWA]

there is the political/diplomatic angle to consider as well. If suburbanites don't feel they have a stake in transit, why would they support spending money on it?

Really well said. Everyone wants to be in on the party. Issue is that there are so many commercial nodes around town it makes it difficult to get a slam-dunk line built. It's building a network of "meh" lines- but everyone wants one of them.

Wow that sounded pessimistic.

[mattaudio]

Pretty sure any transit line that starts and ends within the beltway and avoids undeveloped creek valleys would be a slam dunk, as easy as throwing a dart blindfolded.