BRT Not A Stepping Stone To Light Rail — Plan For 100 Years Out, Not 5
The argument pops up now and again - folks who are supporting BRT not because they actually agree with it, but because they believe BRT is a ’stepping stone’ on the way to real transit - light rail. The latest example I found was on the GoGeary.org ‘Who Supports it?‘ page:
“Rescue Muni strongly supports Bus Rapid Transit on Geary as a first step towards an eventual upgrade to light rail. BRT on Geary will save riders valuable time and reduce delays as they ride to work and shopping, while dramatically improving Muni’s system efficiency. Pedestrians, Muni riders, and auto drivers will benefit from the reductions in traffic and congestion that this common-sense project will provide.
Transit riders deserve faster, more reliable service on this extremely busy line. We strongly urge San Francisco to adopt Geary BRT in a rail-ready design as soon as possible.”
- Dan Krause, Managing Director
Rescue Muni
I’m glad to know Rescue Muni exists (I’ve been complaining about the need for such an organization for a while, now), but I can’t say I’m happy about their support for BRT on Geary. Blah.
In a big ‘ol post from a couple of days ago, MetroJacksonville.com (who take a slightly less critical view of BRT than myself) points out that at least one study from Ottawa suggested that switching the horse mid-stream was not feasible:
Ottawa’s Transitway was originally billed as a BRT system that could be converted into light rail, at some distant point in the future. However a February 2003 Rapid Transit Expansion Study suggests this would be difficult because it would result in service disruption and an additional billion dollars in capital costs. Why repeat Ottawa’s mistake when we already know better?
Ottawa’s ‘Transitway’ would be the equivalent of one of our would-be BRT projects - say, Geary BRT, which is also supposed to be ‘rail ready’. I don’t think we actually needed a study to tell us that completely demolishing one of the most heavily used bus routes in America would in some way be, say, inconvenient to the people who actually ride that bus route, but here it is in case you needed some pencil-necked geeks to do your thinking for you:
Conversion of the Transitway to LRT
The transitway has been designed to be convertible to LRT.
The current Transitway incorporates exclusive right-of-way, a ‘rapid’ transit characteristic that allows faster travel than conventional bus transit. With the exception of the downtown, the Transitway has sufficient capacity for the next 20 years.
Conversion of the Transitway to LRT would be expensive:
1. There will be service disruption during conversion. Rapid transit service would, in essence, cease while rail construction takes place.
2. Value for money is not sufficient to justify conversion. Conversion of the Transitway from Orleans to Kanata would cost about $1 billion and provide unnecessary under-utilized capacity.
The study concludes that with limited financial resources, it is better to invest in new rapid transit corridors than to replace an existing one. It is not considered cost-effective to convert the Transitway to LRT at this time.
Let’s put that another way. What are the chances that you - Geary #38 bus rider, soon-to-be Geary BRT rider - will ever get to ride on that shiny, new light rail train that you and your friends and neighbors and pretty much everyone you ever met except the town planners wanted?
None.
It will never happen. You will die before you see Geary get light rail.
Transbay Blog seems to suggest that BRTs can be converted to LRTs:
Although one could argue quite reasonably that Van Ness deserves a higher capacity rail solution instead of just more buses, a robust, well-designed BRT design can provide many or most of the advantages of light rail but at a fraction of the cost, and constructed much more quickly. At the very least, BRT is an interim solution that would make Van Ness transit a more pleasant experience and increase ridership in this corridor.
The phrase ‘interim solution’ is a way to say, “Give us BRT, now, and we’ll take care of you later. What? Light rail? Yeah - we’ll do that. Trust us.”
And that leads us to the correlary of this post - we should be planning for further out - closer to 100 years, not the 5- or 25-year ‘long-term’ plans we occasionally read about.
Shoot - trying to get people to talk about planning even 5 years out seems impossible based on my reading thus far, so suggesting that we actually do real long-term planning that stretches across one or more generations might sound ridiculous to some, but short-term, reactionary “let’s-build-a-BRT-now-quick-hurry-up-or-else!”-type planning is how we got into this mess in the first place.
And this short-term ROI thinking is especially prevalent in the BRT-instead-of-LRT debate because the BRT folks want to show that BRT is less expensive than LRT (light rail) - and, of course, this is only true if we look at the very short term of these systems, and only look at the transit system itself - in isolation - as if its larger role in the development process did not matter. Once we start taking the longer-term view, the ROI picture starts tilting towards LRT bigtime - capacity for growth, TOD inspiration, operating costs, you name it.
My gentle advice to those who came out in support of BRT on Geary or anywhere else in San Francisco? Come back home.
I can tell from your carefully-worded ‘endorsements’ that you were never really comfortable shilling for BRT, and really, who would be? You thought it would be a smart political compromise, but looking at the details, now - knowing how much pedestrians and bicyclists will suffer under BRT plans, directly and from stunted future growth of bike and walk transit mode shares due to the gifting of these boulevards to the buses - you’re having those second and third thoughts again. I say don’t fight it anymore. Some compromises are just not worth it. We can do better than BRT. San Francisco deserves better.
Leave comment (12)[p.s. The Forums are open for participation.]
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:11 am
Three things I’d really like to see your thoughts expanded on:
1) What makes ‘Light Rail’ more ‘real’ than Bus Rapid Transit (or buses in general for that matter)?
2) You talk about ‘Light Rail’ being a more forward-thinking mode and planning for the 100 years, rather than 5 or 10. What does this mean? Are you referring to Peak Oil/Diesel usage? Because, as I’m sure you know, most Muni buses, including the 38 are Trolley buses, using the same power source as what your proposed ‘Light Rail’ would. This isn’t ‘forward energy policy’– it’s just reduced tailpipe emissions that spew C02 and particulates in fenceline communities (like BVHP and Richmond) near power plants, rather than on SF’s streets. …maybe you are referring to something else…
3) Both BRT and LRT would create an exclusive lane in the middle– both would require light timings… You claim BRT is more detrimental to bike and ped modes- on what basis?
To be clear: I am speaking personally as a former transit advocate, not in any official capacity– and I don’t necessarily support the BRT Geary plan, but just think that between BRT and ‘Light Rail’– BRT is by far the better option. If we are to reduce car dependency, which I think is step one in creating better bike and ped access in the city, we have to think about agility of transportation systems (people move, people’s destinations change, mode popularity changes (i.e. more bikes = more bike lanes needed), etc.) and cost-effectiveness if we are to get buy-in from car dependent politicians, planning departments, and residents.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:10 pm
ACTUALLY,
when one looks at full life-cycle analysis, peak-period commute BRT is more energy-efficient than rail.
That is even the case when one gives rail the benefit is always leverages in these comparisons — externalizing all the costs such as trips by other modalities to and from stations, and the lousy land-use induced by rail, etc.
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
1) What makes ‘Light Rail’ more ‘real’ than Bus Rapid Transit (or buses in general for that matter)?
People generally prefer light rail to BRT. That’s the elephant in the room that planners absolutely refuse to address. But I plan to crush this one over the center field wall in an upcoming post, as it’s one of the most dastardly effects of BRT on the population.
Rail has permanence, which riders and developers like.
Greater capacity.
I’ll address more as we go.
2) You talk about ‘Light Rail’ being a more forward-thinking mode and planning for the 100 years, rather than 5 or 10. What does this mean?
Not quite. Light rail and buses/BRT both have their uses - maybe one is more ‘forward-thinking’ than the other - i haven’t given it much thought. What matters here, though, is making sure we don’t allow planners to artificially limit the terms of the debate to a very short ROI time frame. This should not be Wall Street Investment Bankers Gone Wild - we should treat transit investments more seriously by looking at the long-term consequences of what we do, and 5 or 10 or 25 years is thinking short-term - as if someone won’t still have to live here after we die. It’s a very dangerous way to go about planning, and as I mentioned, it’s how we got to this point in the first place.
3) Both BRT and LRT would create an exclusive lane in the middle– both would require light timings… You claim BRT is more detrimental to bike and ped modes- on what basis?
There are many reasons for this, but one of the worst is the ‘highway within a highway’ effect of buses/BRT. Since their capacity is so much lower than that of light rail, more buses are required - running at ever-lower/smaller/decreasing headways (the amt of time between when people-killers, buses, roll through). Some BRT systems consider headways of *less than one minute* - and there are those who suggest that BRT will make pedestrians *safer*. I’ll be honest - I don’t think these people have considered what they’re about to buy. I really don’t.
November 3rd, 2008 at 3:10 am
I don’t want to respond at too much of a length since I’ve been campaigning for 16 straight hours today and you’ve posted at least 2 new posts since this, but your third point is completely invalid in discussion with SF. This IS an SF blog (and supposed to be about bikes…)– but the comments of your third response have no bearing on Geary or anything in SF– this isn’t Bogota and no is planning replacing Caltrain with a peninsula-long BRT…
Point one… fine– market it it better. Build a quality bus system that people like– instead of spending twice to 10 times as much to cater to people’s classist snootiness.
Point Two: You didn’t respond to my question– How and why is ‘Light Rail’ a better investment (as you claim in your response) and a further-ahead plan than BRT? There are plenty of mostly-paved over tracks all over SF. The Key system throughout the East Bay is long gone, we have lost train service over the Bay Bridge… there are plenty of examples of lost rail systems- they aren’t any more ‘permanent’ than the will of people, just more expensive to build and remove, when needed. How is BRT 5, 10, 25 years thought while ‘Light Rail’ is umm.. 25, 50, or 100?
November 3rd, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Point Two: You didn’t respond to my question– How and why is ‘Light Rail’ a better investment (as you claim in your response) and a further-ahead plan than BRT?
LRT is a better investment than BRT on at least Geary - for a number of reasons - the first and primary reason that it can actually do the job. That is, it has the capacity to move the tens of thousands of daily passengers on that corridor. Buses simply don’t have the capacity. Why would we invest in a system that won’t do the job? It doesn’t make any sense.
High-capacity transit should be served by LRT, because it is more cost effective.
A quick note - it’s difficult to make a direct LRT vs. BRT comparison because there are no working BRTs in America. Some will talk about the failed Orange line or some other failed scrap of BRT - like the Boston Silver Line, but I want to compare a real system that costed real money to create - Cleveland’s Euclid Corridor should work nicely. We’ll see some initial investment and then it will stagnate or fall off a cliff.
To be spending all this money and create all this hardship, all for a marginally quicker ride for some bus riders seems to be a tragic waste of resources. As I’ve pointed out in a later post, there’s a better use for that money.
The TOD benefits of rail over BRT are not generally disputed, but we can dig into the numbers. It will be interesting to see how much non-government development dollars and density the ‘rail-like’ Euclid Corridor project can pull in. I’m going to bet, ‘not much.’ Contrast that with light rail systems the world over - including the ‘disastrous’ T-Third rail line right here in SF - which is actually ‘momentous’ - unlike the haters, I know how it’s affected development along Third because I’ve ridden it - it’s phenomenal - it gets ridden more every day - there are new restaurants and cafes and housing popping up all over the place. That’s just first-person observation - I’m sure the official numbers will back that observation up.
There is plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest LRTs are better investments than BRTs - as I mentioned, the direct comparison is almost impossible. Streetsblog pointed us to the money train in Denver. The most vibrant and livable cities in America and the world have LRTs, not BRTs, running into and through their downtown/core areas - Portland, Melbourne, Copenhagen, etc.
Operating costs for bus systems are much higher than rail because bus capacities are lower - thus more buses, and drivers - are required to run these systems. This is part of why political conservatives tend to ‘cross the aisle’ and vote for light rail - even though they generally despise public transit and big capital outlays (or so they claim). Light rail attracts more riders.
Houston, the 4th largest city in the u.s., was temporarily swayed to the BRT game, but they came to their senses and decided to invest for the long term. But don’t take my word for it - just look up the reasons why Houston switched back to LRT - despite it’s much bigger up-front costs. It’s almost as if Houston wants to go from being America’s Armpit to America’s Angel.
People like rail for a bunch of reasons - as this article points out, it’s a psychological thing as well. We don’t need to talk to Harvard’s Happiness Professor to know that people don’t like unpredictability - we’ll adapt, but we hate buses - GM knew that back in the day, which is why they colluded to rid us of light rail.
The move to BRT in San Francisco and the Bay Area, if it happens, will be the single worst thing to happen to San Francisco this century (if we’re still around).
Unfortunately, that is not
understatementoverstatement.November 3rd, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Peter: Thanks for that last comment– that could in itself be a full post…
I agree on the Bus vs. Rail unpredictability- I know if foreign countries, I’ve faced that, for sure. Of course, this is resolved through clear signage– and Geary is a simple route that could allay these fears.
As for capacity and finances, there seem to be some contradiction between who studies them– as most transportation finance studies go.
The part about no BRTs in the US– you keep saying that, but that’s not the case… are you defining BRT in a way that excludes all of those 50 systems?
…also, generally– what’s with the recent spike in all-BRT-all-the-time Blogging?
November 3rd, 2008 at 5:32 pm
The part about no BRTs in the US– you keep saying that, but that’s not the case… are you defining BRT in a way that excludes all of those 50 systems?
Some of those systems don’t exist yet, some BRTs went away, some are only in partial operation and not fully implemented yet, etc.
What’s important is that for the purposes of the BRT vs. LRT discussion, most people on both sides of the issue want to address only true BRT systems - and as far as I can tell, folks on both sides are willing to agree to talk about the Orange Line in LA, the Silver Line in Boston, and now the new Healthline in Cleveland. The definition of BRT is a bit fuzzy, but key is that it must have significant marketing hype surrounding it - real marketing, real identification as BRT from the get-go, etc. Most of the systems on that wiki page do not have this. This ‘importance of marketing’ of BRT comes directly from BRT proponents - not me.
The distinction between ‘real’ BRT systems and simple ‘express’ bus services is important because people like me are contending that BRT is simply a ‘poison pill’ that prevents the creation of LRTs where they are needed (e.g. Geary). BRT proponents don’t like the ‘poison pill’ description, of course, but they’re gladly taking on the BRT vs. LRT fight. They, too, want to compare apples to apples.
BRT proponents don’t like to call NYC’s ‘Select Bus Service’ a BRT (see Streetsblog) - that is one of the listed ‘BRTs’ on that wiki page. BRT proponents don’t like to talk about Oakland’s ‘BRT’ - also listed on that wiki page. I agree with them - they’re not BRT in any meaningful way.
So, based on my reading, it seems that discussing the LA Orange Line BRT and Boston’s Silver Line BRT wrt LRT has only marginal benefits when we’re trying to do a BRT vs. LRT cost/benefit analysis - I don’t know the exact reasoning, but it seems folks just don’t see them as apples to apples comparisons. But folks are holding out hope for Cleveland’s Healthline. As I will point out in a future post - its creators have pulled out all the stops to make the Healthline as ‘rail-like’ as possible - with good reason. Now all we need is some time and data.
…also, generally– what’s with the recent spike in all-BRT-all-the-time Blogging?
As I mentioned, “The move to BRT in San Francisco and the Bay Area, if it happens, will be the single worst thing to happen to San Francisco this century (if we’re still around).”
There are numerous reasons for this - the most important of which is that we are going to disallow Geary from carrying bicycle traffic, and we’re going to do it with the full endorsement of the SFBC. I think this is a tragic strategic mistake that we’ll regret for the rest of our lives, really. We’ll start to approach 11 or 12% bicycle mode share and then we’ll wonder, “How come it won’t go any higher?” I’ll tell you why right now - we don’t need to wait until 2015 for that answer - it’s because we’re keeping bicycles off the main thoroughfares in the city. Simple.
Other reasons I’ve already alluded to are that people don’t like buses. People who drive cars won’t ride the bus. They will, however, ride the rails. BRTs will keep people in their cars. If we manage to push a few cars out of the city by making it that much more difficult to drive - just for the sake of doing it - we will be falling into the trap that Jane Jacobs warned us about - removing stuff just for the sake of removing it, and what will people/citizens/voters/businesspeople get in return for losing something? Nothing. And that, Jane Jacobs said, is a strategy that is doomed to failure - and rightly so, as she observed. I agree with her.
Then there are the myriad other factors that I believe make BRTs disastrous for city vitality/livability/sustainability/etc. - all things I care about. Bicycles can help us get to these beneficent ends goals - BRTs, as being planned, are the perfect way to destroy San Francisco. I really believe this. I think if one cares about bicycling and the future of our city, one should pay attention to BRT and take a stand regarding its future, and be active in guiding it - even if that means preventing it from seeing the light of day.
The BRT plans for Geary and Van Ness are absolutely disastrous for biking in San Francisco, and I don’t feel the public has any clue what it is all about. They’re likely to think what I did before I knew anything about it - just a couple of short weeks ago - ’sounds like a pretty good idea.’ Now I know better.
Ask a biker in town what they think of BRT and you’re likely to get a blank look. Explain to them that it means ‘bus rapid transit’ and ask them if they like it, and they’ll say, ‘Yeah - sounds good. What is it, exactly?’ Then you’ll give them the short answer and they’ll say, ‘Yeah - I guess. It’s probably a good idea. More transit is good, in general, I think, for bikers, because it’ll get people out of their cars, right?’ And then you’ll have the chance to do some edumacation. Tell them that John Pucher says if we ever want to achieve real bicycle mode share, then we need real separated bike paths on all major corridors, and then tell them that the remake of Geary and Van Ness will _not_ allow bikes to run on them in safety. Most bikers are not aware of Pucher’s research yet, but they’ll not like the idea of keeping bikes off of Geary and Van Ness, or forcing us bikers to continue to battle for road space - to be chased around like cockroaches by motorized traffic.
It’s up to us bike advocates to say, “Wait. Hold on. Motorized traffic does _not_ have any more right to these streets than we do. In fact, if we look at things objectively, there is only one mode of transport that deserves _more_ road space than we bikers do - walkers. After the walkers, it is _bikers_ that deserve the most amount of space on the roads.” We have to provide the education - to bikers, to walkers, to citizens, to politicians, to planners, etc. If we don’t advocate for bikes on Geary and Van Ness, nobody will.
For bikers and walkers and livable city advocates, BRT is the most important issue of the next 100 years in San Francisco (and probably around the US and the world). And that makes the next 2-10 years the most important years of our advocate lives. We have to get the word out quickly before more cities make the mistake of taking some free money from the Federales - it’s poison money, and will only wreck us.
Bush pulled another fast one and changed the rules to promote cars-through-BRT, and enough people weren’t watching, but there are already signs of a backlash. Houston went back to LRT. Austin went LRT. Denver went LRT. The people of Somerville/Boston are fighting over who gets to bring the rail stations into their neighborhoods. I predict Honolulu - the #25 most livable city in the world - will go light rail in a big way tomorrow - they know BRT destroys cities. In short, if one cares about city livability, one needs to know about BRT, and needs to know it now. Measure KK goes to the voters of Berkeley tomorrow. Most self-described planners and advocates are opposed to it - they’re for BRT. The measure probably won’t pass - which means BRT will run down Telegraph (but, importantly, with bike lanes), but getting the ballot put forward was an important first step in the battle for our cities and towns.
It might all sound a bit self-important and melodramatic, but I feel fighting BRT aggressively is central to our bicycle advocacy efforts. If we give away Geary and Van Ness, we’ve lost the city. The rest is table scraps.
That’s the short answer.
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:00 pm
The transitway in Ottawa was built on former railway right of way.
The other problem with Ottawa was that in 1966 the federal government removed all the rail lines to the heart of the city.
I call the city Autowa and it is an urban planning distaster!
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Hey there, I’m a bike nut and a transit nut. I’ve never really viewed buses as that much different than LRT from an urban cyclists perspective. But you seem to be pretty passionate about BRT being much, much worse than LRT, and you seems to have a good long-term vision for transportation in SF & the bay & have thought about this a bunch. But I’m not convinced. Could you please explain further what one of the above comments asked…
3) Both BRT and LRT would create an exclusive lane in the middle– both would require light timings… You claim BRT is more detrimental to bike and ped modes- on what basis?
You mentioned smaller carrying capacity per vehicle, thus more frequent vehicles… any other thoughts?
Thanks!
November 4th, 2008 at 12:56 am
that’s a good question, mike - i might need to really put it together a bit more so it sounds a bit more cohesive, but in short:
1) buses can go ‘off the track’ - we had one smash into a pole and some mailboxes, here, the other day. the other day, another bus came close to running over a VW - it was very similar to the typical ‘biker gets sucked under the back wheels of a massive bus’-type accident. i posted a picture on this blog. in short - buses are huge, and dangerous to pedestrians and bikers - they are not completely predictable, like light rail cars (which has some of their own serious safety concerns). buses regularly run over pedestrians here in SF. we can fix the ‘buses going off the track’ problem to a certain extent by building massive barriers that might keep them from running ‘off the rails’ and into walkers and bikers. that’s what they tell us. presumably another dividing/barrier/wall/median could keep passing BRT buses from slamming into each other. i would say that walkers and bikers generally have a strong preference for dealing with rail vehicles instead of buses. i could be wrong about that, but that’s what i’ve heard/read. some folks who have taken a spill on railroad tracks come to hate rail solutions more than buses, and i understand that - rails can be very scary - but i think most of us dislike buses more.
2) just last night i was able to zoom near and around a light rail vehicle (LRV) here in SF because i knew exactly where he was going - there was pretty much no way he could kill me, even if he was trying. that made me feel very safe. we know that many people don’t ride because they don’t _feel_ safe. that’s very different than actually _being_ safe. the reason we have bike lanes, for instance, is not because we know they make us safer, but we know they make us _feel_ safer, which then allows more people to ride in them, which then - through the ‘greater safety in numbers’ principle - might actually make us safer. so, light rail instead of buses is important, i believe, if we want to continue to allow people to get on their bikes - we need to allow people to feel safe. the more bikers that are out on the road, the safer we’ll all be. buses are just scary as heck. long-time riders might get used to them, but no normal human will.
3. the sheer size of buses makes them scary, and to me, anti-human. rail vehicles, in my experience, seem smaller, even if they’re longer. i don’t have the science to back it up yet, but i feel like buses have a significant deterrent effect on bicycling due to their ginormous size. i don’t like them, and i suspect other bikers don’t either - in particular new or would-be bikers. i have a feeling that Nikos Salingaros may have written something about this - and/or possibly other architects - but i haven’t found a reference yet. i know he’s addressed ‘city scale’-type issues, but don’t know if he’s addressed buses in particular.
The ‘frequency of bus vehicles’ with BRT is a definite concern. More vehicles means less time for pedestrians to cross, less chance for error when they do decide to make an attempt to cross.
November 4th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
Great Blog. You quoted from my article in Metro Jacksonville http://www.metrojacksonville.com/content/section/11/116/
Titled “How to Love BRT”. It was a rewrite of a post found in The Seattle Transit Blog - which we hacked into a Jacksonville piece with quite a bit of original material slipped inbetween the lines.
Our purpose at Light Rail Jacksonville was to run the piece (it’s original longer rewrite) in the Jacksonville Transit Blog http://jacksonvilletransit.blogspot.com/search/label/Bus Rapid Transit
We have been blasting away at BRT now for 3 years. The error of Jacksonville is that they plan to build a trunk line transit system with BRT, then tell us they are planning commuter rail. Interesting - because 3 of 4 BRT routes are directly over or on our rail rights-of-way.
It’s a dog and pony show, we respond by saying, “Don’t pee on our leg and tell us it[’s raining”. If you look in Jacksonville Transit there is a key word search on the left hand side about 3/4 of the way down. You’ll get plenty of ammo from that, MJ or Light Rail Jacksonville.
“FIRE FOR EFFECT…”
Bob Mann
AKA: “Ocklawaha”
May 15th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Yes. I’m from Ottawa currently, but I’m originally from Newfoundland and Labrador. The idea that BRT will “temporarily” suffice as a substitute for LRT or even a subway on Geary is not what I’d like. I’m shocked that our Transitway was done by paving over a former rail line. Not what I’d recommend. I don’t usually support BRT, either.