tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post1076814821722449094..comments2024-03-18T16:22:10.302-04:00Comments on Urban kchoze: BRT and LRT: the transit warsimval84http://www.blogger.com/profile/10615053214354191224noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-23571879912916165912017-01-30T13:08:13.006-05:002017-01-30T13:08:13.006-05:00I am an independent transit/transportation plannin...I am an independent transit/transportation planning consultant who has lived and worked in Ottawa for 24 years. One of the issues the Transitway (the marketing name for our BRT busway) has never been able to shake as the amount passenger traffic increased, the labor costs to O.C. Transpo (the transit operator in Ottawa) greatly increased. Yes our Central Transitway has a peak hour passenger level of 10700 passengers/hour/direction (p/h/d) however, it takes 185-200 buses/hour/direction to do this. Could they improve the efficiency of the BRT operation mode and reduce the number of buses per hour without losing passenger capacity? In short yes but it would only delay the inevitable rise in bus numbers and would force massive wholesale changes to the entire bus network and how it operates. The main issue became the cost of operating that many buses and the effect on bus availability for the network outside of the Transitway. The ever increasing numbers of buses, bus drivers and especially bus mechanics (whom are worth and cost their weight in gold to have) made Ottawa a city of 925,000 and area population of just 1.2 million (if you include both sides of the Ottawa River), need one of the largest bus fleets in North America. The city could no longer afford the current fleet size, let alone the planned future number of buses needed. Thus, the switch to LRT began, made easier because the Transitway was designed to rail not road standards, easing conversion to rail. The change has been expensive and painful but appears to be on track for Stage 1 to open in September 2018 and Stage 2 somewhere around 2023-24.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12485279802084389870noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-32976239888120132442015-01-05T17:43:08.611-05:002015-01-05T17:43:08.611-05:00"But the experience isn't really all that..."But the experience isn't really all that much better than a good BRT running over reinforced concrete"<br /><br />That depends on people, I think. I have yet to experience a motion sickness, but a large chunk of my acquaintance can get carsick or bus-sick, especially if they read (which takes out the "work during transit" advantage) or aren't facing forward. Trains don't wiggle and seem notably more comfortable for such people. For me the comfort advantage of a mass transit train is modest, but for others, big.Damien Sullivanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13321329197063620556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-9735704300741268792014-07-17T15:57:08.963-04:002014-07-17T15:57:08.963-04:00My light rail transit experience is mostly from De...My light rail transit experience is mostly from Denver, Salt Lake City, and Mexico City. <br /><br />Light rail gets enormously more investment in rights of way improvement, exclusive routes, straightening, and quality vehicles. But the experience isn't really all that much better than a good BRT running over reinforced concrete. The worst thing about busses is jerking out of traffic and descending to the curve while you wait for people to creak on and off the stairs and pay and then stopping every block and twisting around a maze of slow corners. BRT already eliminates most of that with pre pay and level boarding. The advantage of LRT is mostly straighter rights of way, but BRT could have that, too.<br /><br />The LRT systems in Denver, Salt Lake, and Mexico City all run mostly on old railroad and utility rights of way or dedicated corridors built for LRT. BRT is stuck with existing roads.<br /><br />Mexico City's BRT stops every 400m. That's far, far too close spacing. Just going to 800m would really improve service and make infrastructure cheaper. I've seen ordinary city busses really improve by refusing to stop on even numbered street corners, too. Transit planners always put in a lot more stops than is optimal for riders, as if density of stops could substitute for quality of service. LRT and heavy rail suffer much less from the extra stops impulse from planners.<br /><br />So I think BRT, LRT, and subway each have their place. I enjoy riding LRT the most but the BRT experience could often be drastically improved by spending heavily in a few focused spots to open bottlenecks with direct, exclusive BRT cut through lanes just like you would do with rail. Everyone is building too many stations on BRT lines.<br /><br />I'm fascinated by that Bogotá map and I want to ride that system just to see how it works. Less than 5% of Mexico City's streets are even 20m building to building, though, much less with sidewalks. All the Mexico City BRT lines run through narrower streets than that except the One line. El Gringohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04445984552616680278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4153985804832811048.post-1197139808712638212014-07-17T15:56:36.360-04:002014-07-17T15:56:36.360-04:00My BRT experience is mostly in Mexico City with a ...My BRT experience is mostly in Mexico City with a little more in Boston. <br /><br />The One line on Insurgentes runs articulated busses with capacity of 100-200 riders running about 75 busses per hour at peak, making a capacity of 15,000. The busses are crowded and often people on the platform wait for two or three busses to stand on one that isn't already full; there's little chance of getting a seat. In 2008 and 2009 I watched this line upgraded block by block overnight from warped and beaten asphalt to deeply entrenched reinforced concrete. The city wasn't confident enough to build proper concrete lanes originally but needed them badly very soon. Lucky for Mexico City, efficient overnight concrete work is a local specialty.<br /><br />The One line probably can't be upgraded to light rail because train control systems won't support the consistent lead times necessary to beat the busses' capacity. Busses, of course, don't have train control systems and drivers are happy making 48 second lead times that engineers and their insurance companies would never approve.<br /><br />But the One line has enough ridership and unmet demand to justify conversion to full underground subway service at least from Doctor Gálvez to Indios Verdes, most of its length. In fact, that upgrade is badly needed. The extension to the south climbs up several grades over 5% south of Perisur so I don't know what kind of system would work there and integrate with any kind of rail.<br /><br />In 2009, the Two line running E-W was added and isn't as crowded. Then in 2011 the Three line that mostly parallels the Green subway line was added. The Green line is the busiest of the Mexico City subway, so the extra capacity is useful and the northern end of the BRT line turns off and runs on the alternate route the Green subway might have taken if it had been planned differently in the 1960s, so that provides mass transit out on a different spur. <br /><br />In 2012 the Four line extended to the airport. On the Three and Four lines I see an essential point. A few buildings moved, a new overpass, and a dedicated shunt through the airport (already legal for some service vehicles) would make an enormous difference in trip length on those lines. They would eliminate waiting at three or four busy intersections or cut three sharp turns out of the routes. But BRT is sold as cheap because all that has to be done is building stations and marking exclusive lanes, so that doesn't get done the way it would for rail.<br /><br />For instance, the airport route has to pass two terminals, so it needs to leave one and get onto a road through a twisty onramp or left turns and then get through traffic into the other. Regardless of your terminal, you must run through this gamut twice on a round trip. It makes the airport route uncompetitive when compared to the speed of taxis or walking to the metro station. A simple infrastructure improvement with 200m of dedicated roadway would allow an exclusive cutoff to avoid the wait and make the BRT very fast, but the investment was promised to be small.<br /><br />Now Mexico City has among the cheapest taxis and lowest transit wages of any first world city which creates funny incentives, but that probably won't last forever. And there already is a light rail system running, but it's very limited and not exciting.<br /><br />El Gringohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04445984552616680278noreply@blogger.com