One Reason To Dislike BRTs - Buses
There are plenty of good reasons to dislike bus rapid transit systems (BRTs), but maybe especially so if you are a bicycle person. One simple, straightforward, easy-to-understand reason is that buses have an uncanny ability to trap and crush things under their rear wheels. This is the scene I caught while walking through SoMa today:
The driver, a woman, is still in the car at the time this picture was taken. She was in the driver’s seat, talking on the phone, and she looked to be in a state of shock.
I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be her, watching and feeling the bus slowly crumple her car, and her in her car. She didn’t look hurt - just shocked. The bus driver must’ve noticed something was wrong just in the nick of time. There have been cases where buses actually rolled right over the top of an entire automobile, crushing everything and everyone inside, and the bus driver never thinking anything more than that they’d simply run over another curb.
I was reminded of this photo I took today when I was perusing the web and read a story about the upcoming and always-awesome New York City Marathon:
Mr. Long, 42, a New York City firefighter and a former triathlete and competitive marathoner, once had a smooth, swift stride himself, but he was critically injured when he was hit by a chartered bus as he was biking to work during the transit workers’ strike in December 2005.
The bus pinned him and his bicycle to the pavement at a Midtown intersection. He underwent three days of emergency operations and received more than 60 pints of blood.
He was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where doctors spent several days just trying to keep him alive, then began to treat extensive damage to his right shoulder, pelvis, both legs and a foot, and repair severe injuries to his torso and gastrointestinal system. He needed skin grafts and muscle grafts, and parts of his body had to be rebuilt.
Unfortunately for many cyclists that get caught under bus real wheels like this VW car did, the cyclists tend to stay conscious for at least some of the time they’re still under the bus. I sprained my knee once and it was the worst pain I’d ever felt. I really can’t imagine what it’s like to be under a bus.
I’ve heard plenty of stories of pedestrians and cyclists getting ‘dragged under’ the rear wheels of a bus - I’m wondering if we could design something, like wheel well covers, that might help prevent this.
Buses are big, ugly, and dangerous. BRTs make big, ugly, and dangerous buses move faster. As a cyclist, that fact is not comforting. I might be more than a little bit interested in seeing what we can do to get rid of buses altogether. They’re part of the transportation mix right now, and we’ll probably have to live with them for at least a little while longer, but we should do everything we can to make them less dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists - whether they are part of a BRT system or not.
Leave comment (10)[p.s. The Forums are open for participation.]
October 25th, 2008 at 9:45 am
So it’s not just cars—aka “Death Machines,” as Steve Jones calls them—that cyclists want to eliminate from city streets. It’s buses, too? Which leaves us with—bikes!
October 27th, 2008 at 11:41 am
The bus driver was clearly apprehending her for violating state law by being on her cellphone while driving.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Dammit dude, you’re narrowing your vision WAY WAY WAY too much. BRT is a phenomenal thing that should be implemented with great speed, especially on Geary. I am a daily cyclist and I am very pro-BRT. You cannot get everyone on bikes and fixing muni is one of the most important things this city can do. Busses that go fast are good. Please dude, you only hurt cyclists by getting weirdo extreme like this.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
“There are plenty of good reasons to dislike bus rapid transit systems”
What are you talking about? Have you ever been to Curitiba or Bogota? Have you even seen the Orange Line in LA? Do you even know what BRT is?
It’s one of the best, fastest, cheapest ways to fix our transportation crisis in San Francsico and as someone who claims to care about better transportation, it’s very puzzling that you’d take a negative view. I suspect you’re not really sure what it is, please do some homework man.
October 28th, 2008 at 7:57 am
While I agree that improving cycling is the most efficient way to solve our transport woes, the City can’t function without quality transit, and BRT has to be part of that mix. The risk of getting trapped under the wheels of a bus while on a bike is greatly diminished if you HAVE ANY IDEA how to ride a bike - unfortunately many of the new folks getting on bikes in this City are clueless about how to safely navigate City streets.
October 28th, 2008 at 11:08 am
The EIR on the Geary BRT isn’t out yet. The idea of digging up Geary for months—perhaps years—and spending $200 million on this half-baked idea is just that. What BRT really is: a development scheme. What the Planning Dept. and developers want to do is line Geary with highrises as part of their false “transit corridors” theory. All you supposedly forward-looking progs and bike people are being hustled with this boondoggle.
November 6th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Those dudes says “The risk of getting trapped under the wheels of a bus while on a bike is greatly diminished if you HAVE ANY IDEA how to ride a bike”
Or if you realize that BRT is completely separated from other traffic. You would not be riding your bike in a BRT lane. Seriously do you guys like having your heads up your asses? Have you ever been somewhere that BRT was implemented? Did you see cars sharing the area with the buses? Bikes? Get out of your little bubble sometime and think!
I ride a bike everyday and i would love to see some real transit created in this city, like BRT. Invest now or you will pay for it later.
November 6th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
Ron - some people in town are arguing to allow bikes to share BRT lanes - in fact, I think some people actually expect that to happen. The Paris BRT system has some bikers brave enough to use the BRT lanes.
As for America, there are only three real-ish BRT systems in existence - LA, Boston, Cleveland. I don’t know the bike policies of those.
Nor do I know if they ban local bus service.
And you do realize that one of the major draws of BRTs is that they are flexible? Because buses are flexible - they can go anywhere, run over anything. It’s a big part of why I dislike buses, and BRT.
November 9th, 2008 at 12:32 am
This argument rings as silly as saying that “trains kill people, so let’s ban trains.” or that “planes crash, so let’s ban planes”. Before long bikes will be banned too because bicyclists are certainly involved in their fair share of collisions, too. And even pedestrians occasionally bump into each other, so I guess nobody can walk anywhere anymore. Before long we can kill off the human race and restore the earth to the wild animals.
Yes, the bus driver obviously did something wrong - but that does not make all buses bad. Do you want to ban all rail-based transit because they obstruct the free and clear passage by pedestrians, and in Seattle there was a problem with bicyclists riding into the flange way of the Seattle Streetcar line (more popularly known as the SLUT.) Would you rather those bus or Streetcar passengers each be driving their own car? Presumably many transit passengers aren’t going to be able to afford a Toyota Prius they’ll likely be driving an older, less fuel efficient, less clean vehicle. I’d rather have good transit.
As for “BRT”, I can tell you simply by looking at the rear of the bus that that was not a BRT system. That’s a MCI D4500 series bus - it’s similar to the kind of bus that Greyhound uses or a charter bus outfit, or a transit agency on an intercity commuter route - and not one you would find on a BRT system or a local bus route - it’s like saying that all cars are bad and showing a picture of a crash during a NASCAR race. On my bicycle, I tend to follow the maritime rule of “smaller vessels yield to larger vessels”. Yes, sometimes I might have the legal right-of-way, but I’d rather lose ten seconds of my time rather than end up in a hospital having emergency surgery and fighting for my life.
November 9th, 2008 at 11:50 am
This argument rings as silly as saying that “trains kill people, so let’s ban trains.â€
You may not like the fact that I call cars and buses and even trains ‘people killers’ or ‘death monsters,’ but that’s how I feel about them, and it’s true even if it’s not a fair and full accounting and description of these forms of motorized transport. Even when they don’t kill us directly, they kill us indirectly, and that goes for all motorized transport - including buses and trains. They all contribute massively to pollution, and therefore should be used as little as possible.
Buses and trains cause less pollution per passenger mile and kill fewer of us directly and indirectly than does the private automobile fleet, but is that really an apples to apples comparison? No. There are only a few buses and trains compared to private automobiles. The rate that motorized vehicles kill - be they trains, buses, cars, planes, etc. - far exceed the kill rate of pedestrians and cyclists.
And this says nothing about the incredible ability of buses to scare cyclists off the road - further adding to their indirect negative externalities they inflict against society. Are buses slightly less terrible than cars? Possibly. Slightly less terrible than trains? Possibly. But what is clear is that we need to reduce their usage as much as possible - only encouraging their use if they can manage to reduce, on the whole, the total detriment to society they bring - for instance, substantially reducing the number of cars on the road. All motorized transport need to be controlled better. Pedestrians and cyclists should be given free reign of the streets. Motorized transport should be allowed to proceed if and when pedestrians and cyclists decide to allow them to do so.