Bad Weather, Driving, and Public Transit

The last couple weeks we had some bad weather here in the Quad Cities, a real mix: some freezing temps, some slight snow, some rain, some fog. Not ridiculous amounts of any of them, but along the way it got me thinking that all too often we treat bad weather as a problem for public transit, but ignore it being a problem for private cars. Let me explain:

1. Driving in precipitation sucks

Yes, we all know that waiting for the bus/train/tram in bad weather is unpleasant. 

But once you get on the vehicle, it's so, so much better.

OK, there are exceptions, but usually it's better.

When you're driving, you're responsible for navigating, for managing the vehicle in the wet and the slick, for paying close attention the whole time to everyone else who is doing the same.

When you're on public transit, someone else does all that. And if the public transit runs in its own right-of-way, the difficulty of managing all the other vehicles on the road goes way down--to the point where some vehicles don't have to have anyone driving them at all.

It's a lot easier to move around if you don't have to actually drive yourself in those conditions.

2. Frequency matters, of course

One advantage of driving yourself in bad weather, of course, is that you can go when you want. If you have public transit like we do in the QC (hourly, heavily dependent on connections rather than direct service), that's not the case.

But if you have fast, frequent service (turn up and go service, as they call it), your wait is less; your flexibility is higher; and you can take advantage of not having to drive yourself (see #1) without a huge disadvantage in terms of wait time, especially out in the bad weather.

3. Stations and shelters matter

Of course, the transit system can work with you to make it easier (or against you to make it harder) to use transit in bad weather. As I noted about Milwaukee, heaters in the cold help a lot. More basically, shelters against wind and precipitation matter a lot.

Even more, a subway can automatically help by putting stations entirely out of the weather.

Both stations visible here protect the riders, though one does it by building up and one by digging down.

The trip to a station is of course unprotected, but a good system can help that too: with frequent service across the whole city, especially feeder buses to stations, and more expansive systems that capture more of the city themselves.

All of this is not to say that it can't ever be unpleasant to take public transit in bad weather. I lived in Chicago for years; I know what standing on an elevated platform in freezing winds is like!

But the contrast can be to transit's advantage if we frame it right--and if we plan our transit appropriately to make that contrast beneficial, rather than detrimental.