Buses are slower and have lower capacity than trains. However, because they can travel along existing roads, they're good for transitlet cities and for routes that aren't as popular. But if you're going to build BRT (which requires a larger investment in infrastructure), why not go all the way and build infrastructure for trains?
Trains are expensive and difficult. Buses, on the other hand, are like the car you probably drive, only bigger, so it's easier to understand how it works.
politically easier:1. pigs won't enforce actual bus lanes because "it will only be a minute" and "productive people are the ones driving personal automobiles not the scum on the bus", so just giving it a dedicated ROW instantly speeds it up exponentially2. the voting public sees it as just "streets but extra" so they won't flip their shit like they would with trains, which are seen as coming at the expense of cars
The only one I'm familiar with riding is Boston's silver line, and that barely qualifies. Three of the routes have their own tunnel system and right of way, could've been another trolley at the very least. I don't even think it's considered a BRT by technicality. I'm sure there's one in Europe or S. America that works well, but as far as I can see it's just a cop out for a real train
>>2009249They're 100% compatible with existing bus routes, so you can have dedicated bus ROWs without issues of other traffic around it. Dedicated bus lanes rarely work as well since they tend to be on the outside lanes where the slowest traffic is/turn lanes/property access.
>>2009249BRT is just poor man's light rail. It's cheaper and faster to set up but less efficient and expensive in the long run.
>>2009249You're not thinking like a bureaucrat.1. They're cheap to put in. You can use the buses you already have, though you might order a few new ones for promotional pictures/hype.2. No lenghty time disrupting traffic to lay down rails and catenary.3. It's achievable for our level of dysfunction4. You can make it ADA-compatible easier than trains. (ADA is the death of rapid transit and everything good in transit. Spoiled, high-standards. Can't just have a lean-to shelter and people step up into the train, now it needs a huge platform, elevators, and so on, blowing out costs.)5. You don't have to actually deliver anything. It can be literally just a normal bus line, under-invested, but you still get to call it "BRT," because there's no real standard for it like there is for High Speed Rail.>>2009288Good points.
>>2009369>No lenghty time disrupting traffic to lay down rails and catenary.Downtown Pittsburgh is fucked rn due to BRT construction. Impossible to know where any bus stops because they all changed their downtown routing, and it doesn't show on online or paper maps. And then they move stops again later in the day when evening construction starts up. Haven't tried driving down there but it's all a mess.
>>2009249It's cheap and works REALLY well if you implement right/go whole hog. Mexico city, for example, has an AMAZING BRT system.
>>2009547Your fault for living in such a gay/retarded city. Come to San Francisco - you get all the same delays and community opposition bullshit but it's permenenent because nothing gets fucking built.
I live in Madison WI and we are getting one. Should be completed by winter. I am trying to reserve judgment though already it seems like something only being done by YIMBY’s to troll car owners without really having the goal of being useful transit.
>>2009369>being accessible to old people and people in wheelchairs is badOh look it's the yimby eugenicist again
>>2009634Isn't it wild how they'll tell you that walkable cities and urban life is better for the elderly and disabled than suburbs, then turn around and complain that the ADA is the death of rapid transit
>>2009635Yeah they don't have any morals at all. The other thing they love to say is that living in suburbia is racist, and then they'll turn around and say that the thing that's really holding cities back is too many minorities
>>2009346CDMX has good BRT but I don't think it's ideal in North America when operator salaries make up such a large portion of transit costs.
>>2009249Laying catenary and tracks is expensive. Painting BUS ONLY every block for a mile or two is comparatively cheap. Cities which already have buses don't really have to add much, they don't have to invest in training operators in a new piece of equipment, and if the overall traffic impacts are a net negative, they're cheap to convert back into regular through-traffic lanes.All the above saves a lot of face from a high-risk investment like rail, tram, or monorail systems that would be extremely expensive, and may not be justified by ridership.
>>2009679BRT in Madison was pegged to cost $200m. I’m sure it’s gone over that and will continue to go over that before it’s completed.It feels like a bit of an excuse to spend the same money as rail would’ve cost (the ROW exists in abundant amounts) but do even less so the contractors could pocket even more money.
>>2009719That's a hell of a ticket price. I'm guessing it's mostly going towards purchase of rolling stock and station construction, however. Even with construction companies pocketing most the cost on a government contract, there's no way that redoing lanes costs that much. I used to get to Madison pretty frequently, but I don't remember seeing too many platforms being built (granted I wasn't really looking).
>>2009577saying one of the most successful north American brt projects on market street is nothing is brain dead.
>>2009755Is market considered BRT? Most of those lines branch off. Better example would be the replacement for the L taraval
It's much cheaper than rail and has a larger capacity than regular buses.And in low congestion areas BRT buses can use existing infrastructure. Bus drivers are easier to train and have lower wages than train conductors as well. Which is why BRT is used in poorer countries, like Brazil, Indonesia and the United States
>>2010881just to clarify my postAmerica isn't a poor country but America has an allergy to public investment, and american towns are generally underfunded America has a lot of bus drivers, train conductors are highly unionized and very expensive and America has a lot of existing road infrastructure than can be used in lower congestion areasKinda making brt a much easier sell, both to local governments and to nimbys allergic to development
>>2009249>>2009719>>2009731If your project is BRT then the feds will pay for 80% of the buses when normally they pay for 0%, plus up until fairly recently the ridership formulas for BRT were fucked where it assumed almost zero difference in riders between bus lane BRT and a metro so the programs would get funding every time because of how cost-effective they looked, hence all the meme BRTs from the past decade, because if you wanted to get your fleet replaced or expand your fleet you could do so for basically free as long as it was "BRT".
>>2010888>but America has an allergy to public investmentI see this said on /n/ all the timeain we spend too much on roads and freeways. We pump a shitload of money into public works, but few people oppose modernizing freeway interchanges from 60s designs, whereas an entire community may be mostly opposed to having a new transit system come to them. It's a no-brainer why more money goes to roads than rail and transit.>and american towns are generally underfundedSome are but most are fine.
>>2009249>What exactly is the point of BRT?One of the legitimate "pros" for BRT is that the routes can mix BRT and regular streets.With a train, you'd have to transfer to the feeder bus routes for movement away from the backbone line. But with BRT, your feeder bus routes can just get onto the BRT and run directly to a hub station (presumably at a desirable final destination for many trips), eliminating a transfer.It's very comfy when you can just sit on the same vehicle for your entire trip. And while street buses are kinda bumpy and uncomfortable, the BRT portion of the trip is about the same quality of ride as train.
>>2009249You can get BRT up and running in less than two years if your City is not comprised of retards; doing the same for light rail takes ten to twenty years comparatively. If you want to make a meaningful improvement in someone's quality of life, do the thing that would help them now, not twenty years from now.
>>2011955>local brt is more than 2 years behind schedule fml
Time and cost. I think the key to making your city pedestrian and transit-friendly is about incremental improvements anyway.
>>2009755They didn't really build anything new for that though, they just banned cars from Market St (which was effectively the case anyway)
>>2011946>urbanists talk about how many road deaths there are as a flex against privately owned vehicles>a disproportionate number of road deaths occur in rural areas>improvements are made to address deaths in these rural areas like cable barriers>urbanists see this as a waste of time and money anyway
>>2014378>a disproportionate number of road deaths occur in rural areasthat's quite the load-bearing assumption that you presented as fact, emily
>>2014380>assumptionA government paper on the issue:https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813488.pdf
>>2014387i see. well, emily, let's take the very first bullet point from the very first page of the pdf you linked and failed to cite yourself. would you maintain that these figures are disproportionate, and if so, why?
>>2014389>well emilyWho?>would you maintain that these figures are disproportionate, and if so, whyThird paragraph. I'll also the throw the fourth one in for vehicle miles traveled.
>>2014391thank you emily. the third and fourth paragraphs that you mention refer to two separate statistics: the percentage of all traffic fatalities in 2021, and the fatailty rate per 100 million VMT in 2021, respectively. could you please explain which of these figures you feel is disproportionate, and why you feel they are disproportionate?
BRT has always been a scam and always will be. It's a bus pretending to be a train, which is far more stupid than streetcars (which are stupid in themselves) which are trains being driven like buses on normal roadsWhen the government is involved, stupidity knows no bounds
Up until not too long ago I was thought the same thing, that BRT was just a bus service that might as well be a train, of course there are many reasons a city might want a BRT.1. Money- BRT is very cheap, all you need is to build some medians, paint a bus lane, maybe install overhead wires, and then build bus stops, with off bus ticketing if you want to get fancy, building a track may not be that much more expensive, but in something as underfunded as transit it counts.2 the existing infrastructure needed for brt (in North America) is already everywhere, wide roads and retarded turning lanes are prime for adding bus lanes3 finally, probably the biggest advantage of BRT networks are flexibility, for a cities that don’t have rail infrastructure or already have buses they already have the drivers depots and maintenance facilities for buses meaning they won’t have to construct new ones for rail.For somewhere like New York or DC where there are large developed transit networks and (relatively) steady funding they can handle large rail expansions but for smaller cities with way smaller budgets brt is really a great way to start a mass transit network, without having to build new tracks and depots, securing right of way and going through the headache of bureaucracy.
