Physical Infrastructure Is Good

This post is perhaps a bit obvious, but it speaks to one of the tensions I sometimes see between different waves of transit advocacy and different priorities placed on how transit dollars are spent. The key concept here is in the title: physical infrastructure is good. Flexibility is also valuable, but in seeking flexibility, transit cannot afford to forego the presence and visibility of physical infrastructure on the street. And this has implications for how cities and regions should invest in transit.

This is often phrased in terms of trains vs buses: trains (including here pretty much all variants thereof, from heavy rail or metro on the one hand to trams and light rail on the other) require a lot of visible physical infrastructure on the ground, from tracks to stations, while buses do not. A bus can run on any street. A bus can stop anywhere that there's safe space on that street for someone to board or alight. A bus, therefore, can run without physical infrastructure of any kind except the bus itself.

Except, my friends...except...

1. Where does it go from here?

Physical infrastructure gives key information about where the transit goes. The most obvious example is a train track:

It goes thataway.

Tunnels are even more obvious, as they constrain where the tracks could go in the future. And if the Cloud Car has (only) one advantage, it's that it's the most visible of all. 

This can be done with a good bus stop too, of course: there can be timetables, route maps, area maps, etc. But what it requires is somewhere to look and see where the bus goes, or the train goes, or something, without having to use an app or a website, because if you can't see it from just showing up, you only get people who were planning to take transit, and not people for whom it might be convenient but didn't plan ahead like the transit junkies (like me) do. Speaking of which...

2. How do you even know there's a bus?

Here is a bus approaching a stop in Davenport. 

I know a bus is going to stop here because...there is a bus stopping here. And because I trust my maps (and my reading of them, and where I am, and that the bus is not on diversion). And because I've actually taken this bus several times before.

But if I'm in the city for the first time, or taking the bus for the first time, or the bus doesn't happen to be there right now (and it runs once an hour, so that's more likely than not), I'm not going to know that. It's just a stretch of street. And this is true in most of Davenport. Actually, this particular stop is more marked than most: the other side of the street has a shelter, for the other direction of service, and this side has a small "no parking, bus only," sign, though it doesn't actually say it's a bus stop or what lines run there. 

So in most of Davenport (and the Iowa Quad Cities in general; the Illinois side is a bit better but still highly imperfect outside of downtowns), I will have no idea where the bus goes or stops except if I take active steps to look it up. And assume that it isn't in a diversion. Speaking of which...

3. How do I know if something is running off-route or off-schedule?

Where I grew up, in Seattle, there are a lot of bus stops marked just by a single pole or sign--but that physical infrastructure is where crucial information is posted about detours, delays, and diversions.

When there is not even that physical infrastructure, how do you communicate that? One way is via app or website--but then again, only those already actively seeking transit will find and use it. Another is this:

This is better than nothing, I guess. But it's also...not great. There is one small, text-filled sign at one intersection covering a multi-block area and a major diversion for several weeks, with no timing indicated. It's not at a stop, because there are no signed stops, so a rider would have to be here (and not, say, a block away) and looking at a generic Public Works sign (not anything inherently related to Citibus) to see it.

If there isn't predictable, visible physical infrastructure, you don't have a clear way to tell potential passengers about things like this. 

Now, none of these fundamentally say you need something other than a bus. A bus line with clear stops and signage can do this. A bus rapid transit line with stations, dedicated lanes (or even a busway!), and clearly visible presence on the street does basically all of this! Trains do it too, of course.

But what does not do it is the Davenport Citibus, or any similar service that relies on the "show up and hope it's a bus stop" model.

Physical Infrastructure Is Good, because it lets people use transit without being transit junkies. And much as I enjoy being one of those, I prefer a system where other people use it too.