Oh no. First the congestion pricing, now this. They said that Giuliani turned NYC into a theme park back in the day. This nonsense is doing that for real now.
I’ll bite: can you elaborate in a constructive and detailed manner to explain why it’s not an excellent thing for the city in general and for mass transit users in particular?
In a city where streets are not able to be widened, taking two lanes away to dedicate them to buses forces the car traffic from those lanes to the remaining lanes. Those lanes become horribly congested, and it doesn’t encourage enough people to use buses to offset it.
I’m not a total downer like them, I see some upsides, but this is incredibly costly for the small number of people it serves and huge number of people it aggregates. NY already has subways, the best kind of public transportation, spend your money improving that.
Bus and train always work hand in hand, train for mass transit from one place to another, and bus helps with the last mile and those outside of the train coverage. You cannot solely rely on train, because expanding it cost a fuck tons, especially underground in a city as pack as NYC.
The solution is not a dedicated bus lane in an already heavily congested road… Just because buses are good doesn’t mean any solution involving buses is good. Roads are very expensive to build and maintain, and maintaining a dedicated a rarely used road alongside a heavily congested road you just made more congested isn’t as simple as “bus go fast = good”.
And this is a challenge wherever dedicated bus lanes have been implemented: the buses cannot travel exclusively on the bus lanes, by increasing congestion on the regular lanes, you congest all the feeder lanes. Buses get stuck in nightmare traffic trying to get into and out of the bus lane.
Improving the subway network actually reduces car traffic, fewer people will use taxis and ubers, which directly leads to fewer cars on the road, and that allows buses to operate more smoothly on shared lanes.
Have you been to Amman Jordan, Bogotá Colombia, Minneapolis or Washington, D.C. USA, Thessaloniki Greece, Manila Philippines, Jakarta Indonesia?
All face increased congestion for regular traffic which directly leads to feeder lane issues and regular unauthorized traffic when people who can’t use bus routes end up driving on the bus lanes so they don’t lose thei jobs and end up homeless. But hey, the state collects fines from them, fuck them for existing in a society where owning a car is a life necessity, all that matters is buses are up to 30% faster, right?
High speed trains can make travel practical for way more people, and should be prioritized, with ground public transport to augment last mile. Buses shouldn’t replace trains as the primary method of public transport, and building them dedicated roads when the metro isn’t sufficient is resource wasting.
. . . it doesn’t encourage enough people to use buses to offset it.
This is the assumption that’s wrong, and it turns the whole thing around. Induced demand for public transportation does work. When people see buses going by while they’re stuck in traffic, they tend to make a different choice.
This doesn’t necessarily increase traffic on the remaining lanes actually. With traffic there’s something called induced demand: The more lanes you add, the more people will drive just because driving seems like a better option than the alternatives. This in turn means that adding more lanes can increase traffic jams!
Decrease the amount of lanes and people will be more inclined to take the subway or the bus. Or bus to subway station and then bus from the other subway station to destination, because you can’t have as many subway stations as you can bus stations.
Oh no. First the congestion pricing, now this. They said that Giuliani turned NYC into a theme park back in the day. This nonsense is doing that for real now.
Are … are you against this? Or is this sarcasm?
I’m very much against this. And I want you to to understand - I can’t drive. I rely on mass transit, especially the MTA, NJTransit, and SEPTA.
This is going to ruin NYC.
I’ll bite: can you elaborate in a constructive and detailed manner to explain why it’s not an excellent thing for the city in general and for mass transit users in particular?
In a city where streets are not able to be widened, taking two lanes away to dedicate them to buses forces the car traffic from those lanes to the remaining lanes. Those lanes become horribly congested, and it doesn’t encourage enough people to use buses to offset it.
I’m not a total downer like them, I see some upsides, but this is incredibly costly for the small number of people it serves and huge number of people it aggregates. NY already has subways, the best kind of public transportation, spend your money improving that.
If adding more lanes doesn’t fix traffic, removing lanes shouldn’t break traffic either.
Bus and train always work hand in hand, train for mass transit from one place to another, and bus helps with the last mile and those outside of the train coverage. You cannot solely rely on train, because expanding it cost a fuck tons, especially underground in a city as pack as NYC.
The solution is not a dedicated bus lane in an already heavily congested road… Just because buses are good doesn’t mean any solution involving buses is good. Roads are very expensive to build and maintain, and maintaining a dedicated a rarely used road alongside a heavily congested road you just made more congested isn’t as simple as “bus go fast = good”.
And this is a challenge wherever dedicated bus lanes have been implemented: the buses cannot travel exclusively on the bus lanes, by increasing congestion on the regular lanes, you congest all the feeder lanes. Buses get stuck in nightmare traffic trying to get into and out of the bus lane.
Improving the subway network actually reduces car traffic, fewer people will use taxis and ubers, which directly leads to fewer cars on the road, and that allows buses to operate more smoothly on shared lanes.
Rarely used? You can move like a hundred times more people on a dedicated bus lanes than a mixed road.
Have you been to seoul? Nearly everywhere buses go, they get a dedicated lane. Even better BRT systems even give buses priority at lights.
Have you been to Amman Jordan, Bogotá Colombia, Minneapolis or Washington, D.C. USA, Thessaloniki Greece, Manila Philippines, Jakarta Indonesia?
All face increased congestion for regular traffic which directly leads to feeder lane issues and regular unauthorized traffic when people who can’t use bus routes end up driving on the bus lanes so they don’t lose thei jobs and end up homeless. But hey, the state collects fines from them, fuck them for existing in a society where owning a car is a life necessity, all that matters is buses are up to 30% faster, right?
High speed trains can make travel practical for way more people, and should be prioritized, with ground public transport to augment last mile. Buses shouldn’t replace trains as the primary method of public transport, and building them dedicated roads when the metro isn’t sufficient is resource wasting.
anyone who drives in NYC deserves to be inconvenienced
This is the assumption that’s wrong, and it turns the whole thing around. Induced demand for public transportation does work. When people see buses going by while they’re stuck in traffic, they tend to make a different choice.
This doesn’t necessarily increase traffic on the remaining lanes actually. With traffic there’s something called induced demand: The more lanes you add, the more people will drive just because driving seems like a better option than the alternatives. This in turn means that adding more lanes can increase traffic jams!
Decrease the amount of lanes and people will be more inclined to take the subway or the bus. Or bus to subway station and then bus from the other subway station to destination, because you can’t have as many subway stations as you can bus stations.
“Small number of people it serves?” You’re just out here trolling because you think being frustrating is funny, aren’t you?
Thank you for putting it better than I was capable of at the time.
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Lol, ok NIMBY.
Not in anyone’s back yard.
People like you vote and that makes me sad.
Do you live in the Philly/Newark/Paterson/NYC metro?
Because I assure you, I plan to vote in what I see as my own best interest.