Do we need to focus more on suburban bus services? #Urbanism #UrbanPlanning #Transit
Do we need to focus more on suburban bus services? #Urbanism #UrbanPlanning #Transit
Yes, in an ideal world, we would all live in walkable cities with great cycling and public transport.
But, particularly in North America, Australia, and New Zealand, we have been left with around 60 year's worth of car dependent suburban sprawl.
In quite a few metro areas, the inner city has a great public transport network. Yet once you get out to the suburbs, you're lucky to see a bus every half hour. Services often also start late and end early.
As a starting point, should there be more emphasis placed on upgrading suburban bus networks to a 10-minute frequency or better?
Better bus networks are less expensive upfront than large extensions to metro and heavy rail systems. And they can prove that demand exists, when it becomes available.
What are your thoughts?
These ideas tend to not work out that well, as the main cost-factor is often the bus-driver and increasing the frequency means hiring more drivers. I also think bus driving isn't exactly an enjoyable job as it can be quite monotonous, so increasing the number of such jobs is probably not such a great idea.
What might work to some extend is some sort of shared but on demand mini-bus taxi service, and of course potentially self-driving mini-buses, but really ultimately there is little one can do to solve the fundamental transport issue of low density housing in such suburbs.
@poVoq @ajsadauskas the solution to low density suburbs is to have less low density suburbs.
Here's an example of the type of situation I'm thinking about.
The 806 bus is the main public transport options for a number of suburbs in outer Western Sydney
The problem is the timetable is infrequent. If you miss a bus, you're potentially waiting half an hour for the next one.
The bus is already there. It already runs. Just it's incredibly infrequent.
Improving the timetable so it runs every 10 minutes would be enough to encourage more people to use public transport, rather than driving.
And it can be accomplished at a fraction of the cost of a new underground metro or light rail.
A mini-bus taxi service won't do the trick. It's less than what's there already.
And we're not talking bus rapid transit here. Just a regular, reliable bus service with a decent frequency.
Yes, in an ideal world, suburbs such as the ones the 806 shouldn't exist. The fact they were built is a planning mistake.
Now that they do exist, is there a case that at least getting decent bus and cycling infrastructure should be more of a focus than it is in urbanist circles.
Sure, but typically such lines operate at a loss already. Making them more frequent would make the service significantly more costly.
So either the inhabitants of the suburb will have to pay expensive bus tickets, which they will likely not do as most of them have a car already, or other, likely poorer, city inhabitants have to subsedize this bus service in this suburb even further than they already do.
@ajsadauskas @poVoq
Busses can be useful and they can provide top-notch public transportation. To be effective and on time, they need designated lanes or streets that don't allow privately owned cars. May as well put streetcars in. They are quieter and cleaner.Ppl who pay $5M for a house or apartment do hardly use public transport at all. The reason public transport in the center is better than in the suburbs is that everything meets in the center. Business, tourists, doctors, entertainment etc. So it effects everyone who is using public transport. But the suburbs only effect those living in that suburb. It has nothing to do with rich ppl living in the center. |1
I guess one of the main problems is that in some cases suburbia doesn't have the population density for bus services to be cost affective (buses should be subsidised but cost is still a factor). Even if everyone in suburbia stopped driving this would still be a problem.
One solution is to have some sort of local transport hub where there are more frequent bus services as well as facilities to store bikes/scooters. This would probably only work well if you have cycle path infrastructure linking suburbia to these transport hubs. There will probably still need to be buses going to suburbia for people who can't bike/scooter to the transport hubs.
Population density isn't the only variable that determines the number of passengers. The other two critical variables are service levels (the quality of public transport services and how frequently they run), and modal share (the percentage of trips taken by public transport.
High population density doesn't automatically guarantee either good service levels, or high ridership (although it can help with both of those things).
There are high-density cities with low ridership and low modal shares, and very low density villages (think Switzerland) that have high public transport modal shares and relatively high levels of public transport ridership.
There are real world examples where increasing service frequency leads to a huge growth in public transport use. It's the same area, with the same population density, upgrading to higher service frequencies has led to higher public transport modal share, and higher ridership. Here's an example: https://www.busnews.com.au/industry-news/0907/patronage-on-new-smartbus-route-highest-on-record
In many suburbs, the modal share for cars is well over 90% because there's no viable alternative.
If the public transport option is one or two buses every hour, then of course it's not going to be a viable option for many people.
Increase the frequency to one bus every 10 minutes, and it becomes a more viable option for more people, and suddenly it becomes a much better option for more people. This leads to a higher percentage of trips being made by public transport.
These are good points. In general I think it is good to increase bus frequency everywhere.
However I do still think that we should prioritise adding bus services to try and maximize usage (and stop as many car journeys as possible). Population density is definitely a factor here but (as you pointed out) so are other things like car usage in the area.
@ajsadauskas It's always cheaper to work on with what you have and improve upon it, rather than getting everything from 0. If you have some unused rails though, it's better for you to use these instead, or in conjunction with the bus network (i.e. making the bus network serving areas where the line is not going).
My city has an extensive tram network and quite a lot of train lines serving former factories, now abandoned. The current mayor has plans for revitalizing these, electrifying them, and starting a metropolitan train service on it (sort of a RER or S-Bahn-like service), yet things are moving way too slow, and I'm afraid he'll not finish the whole project until the next elections.
