Seeing Cars from Transit

 There's nothing quite like being on a train and looking out at the cars that you're passing. Conversely, there's little more annoying than looking out and noticing the cars are passing you. So here are some thoughts about that.

1. Hands-Free, Mind Free

One of my main thoughts in such a context is remembering that I'm privileged to be able to look at the cars as much as I want: after all, when I'm driving, I really shouldn't be looking at the train at all.

Who can tell if these cars are passing the Finch West LRT or not? What I can tell is that those drivers are having to pay attention to the road in the rain, and I'm not.

This streetcar may be stuck in traffic, but at least if I'm on it I'm not the one paying attention to that traffic and the red light.

There's a freedom to being on a train--or a bus!--that is distinct from the experience of driving, and it's one I remember every time I watch cars from transit.

2. Imagining Other Lives

Sometimes the cars you're seeing aren't competing with your transit, though: sometimes they're just an excuse to imagine how other people's lives are going while your mind wanders--or while your body is lifted hundreds of meters in the air.

Hello, motorists driving down the Thames! I wonder why you're there! It's probably not the same reason that I'm in the sad little cloud car. Unless you're new here and a car is just as unusual to you as a gondola!

I guess the above picture is of another bus, and not a car, but one of my favorite activities on the second story of a double decker is to look about at the other vehicles and consider why everyone else is here.

3. Not Needing Parking

Sometimes the cars you see from transit aren't even driving.

Apologies for the misty picture, but the windows on the Citibus weren't as clean as they could be. Still, you can see the parked cars, right? It's a nice reminder that I don't have to find my own parking on transit--though to be fair, parking in the QCA isn't the hardest thing to find.

And sometimes they just seem parked (sorry London)...but that's more like #1 and #2 above.

Overall, for me the chance to see cars from transit is just another form of transit tourism: it's a chance to think about others' lives and the choices we make--both individually and collectively. What does it say about our society that we have so many cars? What does it say about us individually each time we take those cars out on the roads? And what does it say about me that I'm sitting on the once-hourly bus instead of a car that would let me go where I wanted when I wanted?

Coaches and Buses

In the UK they don't call intercity buses buses, they call them coaches, which is a really useful term of distinction I'm going to adopt here. And in the US, coaches (most famously Greyhound) are still the main way to get from city to city without a car, because our train infrastructure has regressed to second childishness and mere oblivion.

Our intercity coaches aren't that great either, but they're a lot more extensive.

Now, I usually talk here about city-by-city issues, but I have had times in my life where coach service between cities was vital to my ability to move around, and I have some thoughts on what it means to have good coach service between two cities or in a region. 

1. More Than One Carrier or Option

I realize that many of the lines highlighted in the link above are state-sponsored routes that exist because the state pays or subsidizes a carrier to provide service. And that's a vital lifeline for many communities, don't get me wrong! But good service almost inherently has to come from some competition. I say this not necessarily in a capitalist way, but in the sense that if there is no pressure of competing schedules, prices, or amenities, in my experience service gets cut back to the absolute minimum for, well, capitalist reasons. Hence the need for state subsidy in so many cases.

This doesn't have to be super-robust: the picture above is from the bus depot where I caught a Burlington Trailways route, and Greyhound serves the same route, but they each sell tickets on the other's service. That means it's really more coopetition, where two services combine to make one effective service without either of them having to fully commit. But it still improves the service relative to a single carrier doing the least they can.

2. Variety in Times

Related to the above, a key element in a good coach service is that you need variety of times: if you have what is fundamentally a commuter service, or worse yet (but commonly) a morning-only or evening-only service, you don't have a real connection, because you don't have the flexibility to allow people to travel when they want.

On the other hand of course are those coach services that might as well be buses: some like the Chinatown buses between NYC and Boston are just high-frequency intercity routes, and others, like the below bus in Indiana, are kind of somewhere between bus and coach by connecting smaller cities that are close together (but still notably distinct) in a time-consuming but bus-frequency manner.

This guy is a technically connecting two cities! You might call him a bus because of his frequency and the shorter distance compared to say QC-Chicago, but he's still out there doing it! And an ideal coach service should be so frequent that you can assume it'll be available roughly when you want it.

3. Integration

A good intercity coach route should integrate with more local transit on either side (which of course is where the above Indianian bus falls down because it is the only local transit). I used to take the coach between Oxford and London often, and while I didn't really take the bus after on the Oxford side because it was so walkable, in London we came into Victoria, a major rail and bus hub, so everything was easy to get to from there.

When intercity coaches come into the Milwaukee Intermodal Station, they get the local bus, the Amtrak station, and the streetcar all in one. That's good integration. The coaches in Davenport share the station with local buses. And then you have Chicago, where the Greyhound station sits in a terribly-integrated area of near-downtown, which you'd really have to work hard to make as close in with as bad transit connections as it has.

Oh well.

So yes, intercity coach routes matter a lot for a lot of people--and just like other transit, connecting them to other things, making them run frequently, and having multiple routes to get somewhere in a robust network make them better. It's almost like there are consistent principles for good transit, or something...

Better Buses

 Vancouver is improving their bus network. The key elements are these: more frequent services across more of the city, and particularly filling in the pattern so that there is frequent service pretty evenly spread out across major arteries all across the city (and indeed much of the Metro area). Not all of this (indeed, not even most of this) is Bus Rapid Transit, but it is bus frequent transit in a way that matters a lot to making a city's transit operate more effectively.

Acknowledging the value of this kind of work has actually been somewhat difficult for me, personally, in the past, because for me it has always formed a kind of assumed baseline in a major city's transit mix. I grew up in Seattle, visited Vancouver often, and have particularly distinct memories of visiting Toronto in the early 2000s and feeling like all these cities did this well: wherever you wanted to go in the city, you could take a fairly easy to figure out set of bus routes (or in Toronto's case, also trams in some areas) to use the general city grid to find your way around.

As the above link indicates, I wasn't actually right about that: Vancouver is only filling in that grid now, and Greater Toronto and Metro Seattle both have serious gaps in such systems as well. But it always seemed just like what a city does, to me--which has made it hard to acknowledge how important actually doing it well is.

So today I want to talk very briefly about why this is important, and what it brings to the table.

1. Clarity 

As I said above, I have distinct memories of visiting Toronto and noticing that my family could get around very effectively, even without knowing the city well, because of how clear it was to move from place to place. Yes, you could use the subway, and we did, but if the subway didn't go where you wanted or you didn't want to (or couldn't efficiently) get to it, you could just take a bus up and a bus over (or a bus over and a bus down, or whatever combination) to get where you wanted to be.

Or, as mentioned above, on some of those streets you could take streetcars/trams. I think that the trams are probably why it stuck in my mind so much more than Seattle, where I still had the same assumptions. This kind of system provides clarity for those who may not learn a system well or want to memorize or consult maps. If you know you just need to go up one street until you hit the right cross-street and then over that street to the place you want to be, your path is clear. It may not be optimal, but it doesn't have to be: it will get you there and it frees up mental space for considering other factors rather than trying to compute how to get from point to point.

2. Equity

When this system is extended as fully as Vancouver is doing it now, it also provides real improvements in equity. Yes, there are still areas where there is better or worse service: frequency matters, quality and age of vehicles matter, speed matters, the existence of other transit modes like rail matters. But when you have a baseline provision of quality, clearly intelligible transit options everywhere, it means that nowhere gets completely left behind. Yes, parts of Vancouver have SkyTrain. And it's awesome!

But buses feed SkyTrain stations, and even if SkyTrain doesn't come anywhere near you an effective bus system nevertheless means you still have mobility even if it's not identical.

I lived for a summer at the University of British Columbia, and it's not on SkyTrain but let me tell you that we still got out and around the city. And did I mention I wasn't even an adult yet? That's another key kind of equity that a good bus network provides: not only does it create equity between people who live in different areas, it provides equity between those who can drive and those who can't, whether the reason for that is age, cost, or something else.

3. Virtuous Cycles

You knew this was coming, right? I mentioned that buses feed trains. Good baseline bus systems across a whole city provide a matrix in which all kinds of good transit, density, and general urbanist outcomes can grow like crystals. 

I believe firmly that Seattle's Sound Transit Link light rail is only as effective as it is (especially since in a lot of places it really should be heavy rail) because it is embedded in a good bus system. Similarly, the TTC has gotten away with a relatively small metro in Toronto because of good bus coverage, though thank goodness they're expanding it finally.

And this is bus coverage which of course usually interacts with the subway.

A solid bus system is unexciting in the way that pasta is unexciting. We talk about sauces a lot more than noodles because the same noodles can work with a lot of sauces--but you don't want to be eating straight alfredo sauce no matter how much you like fettucine alfredo.

I love a subway but it needs to be part of a whole system--and a better bus network like Vancouver is putting in is perhaps the key element in that.

EVs and Ebikes in Winter

 This article on electric buses in Wisconsin reminded me of the greatest flaw of electric battery-driven vehicles of all sorts: the changeability of battery power. 

Now, that article is about how the buses in Wisconsin are doing well despite this limitation, and I don't want to undersell that. It's good news! It's great news! We should be happy about it!

But I also want to speak to my own experience with how to best use these kinds of vehicles in winter, especially if you don't have public funding to improve your experience.

1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

My first piece of advice is basically the same as it would be for any kind of trip in winter, up to and including walking--or a gas-powered car: the fewer trips, the better. The more you can double-up on a trip to include multiple purposes or destinations, the better. The less you have to leave the house in the bitter cold or heavy snow, the better.

This guy is gas-powered, all-wheel drive, and can get through anything. That doesn't mean I want to drive in those conditions!

Waiting for a train isn't always the worst in the snow, but it's still not the best.

EVs and ebikes might intensify this advice, with reduced ranges, but they don't originate it. 

2. Pick Your Spots

As I write this, we're supposed to get a hard to predict but noticeable amount of snow in the QCA this weekend along with a big drop in temperature. I would prefer not to drive or bike my electric vehicles, or charge them, in these conditions and those temperatures.

But guess what? I can drive and charge them now (I am charging them now) and they'll be fine! 

This picture was only a few days after the one of the Jeep above; note that the snow is entirely absent. 

There are always times and days you can pack your bigger trips and longer ones into, and times and days you want to stay at home. Having an EV might mean being more strategic about those, but it's important to note that you can still get everything done if you want to and you think about it.

3. Remember the Benefits

I never have to get out and pump gas in the cold or snow in my EV. I get places faster on an ebike than an unassisted bike. Both of those are benefits during the bad times in the winter, even if a gas tank or an acoustic bike might be more invariant relative to temperature.  

I didn't park this guy in the garage this time, but when I do, he can charge and stay both warm and dry, while making sure I don't have to fill up outside...literally ever.

This guy can live in the garage even with a car next to him, and the battery can unclip and come inside, and again--less need for me to be out in the cold.

These two both fit inside my back room, or my office, and so again--less walking outside to a car in the cold or snow, and they get me to my destination faster than a regular bike would.

Are there tradeoffs or even downsides to an EV in the winter? Certainly. But they aren't hard to work around, and there are benefits too. As Wisconsin has found, EVs aren't impossible in the winter for buses--or for the rest of us, if we take some care in the execution.

Bare Ruin'd Choirs (or Missing the Trolleybus)

 This article about Seattle's trolleybuses made me feel some feelings, since I grew up in Seattle taking trolleybuses fairly frequently.

Ah, to sit upon the throne of the seat in the middle of a Seattle articulated trolleybus. 

There were, as the article mentions, some severe political headwinds against these buses in the earlier part of this century, which led to the issue obliquely referenced by this title: that the trolleybus is seen as a declining technology when it ought to be in its prime.

Why? Because the trolleybus is, in my humble opinion, the best option available for a city that wants to improve its transit outcomes on the cheap, without investing in full-scale rail. That's because trolleybuses provide three things I think of as ideal in transit, all without requiring nearly as much investment in either infrastructure or vehicle costs as trains: visible infrastructure, high volume (or the potential for it), and pleasurable trips (or the potential for them as well).

1. Visible Infrastructure

I love trains because you can see where they're going and know that you're on a transit corridor without having to actually see the bus. It creates an awareness that there is service, and an expectation that you can use the service, which I think is a critical element often missed by bus-only service.

But with a trolleybus you can do that without paying train prices. Yes, you need to install the overhead lines for the electric system, but that's a lot less expensive and disruptive than train tracks, an elevated rail corridor, or god forbid tunneling or cut-and-cover. 

And yet the lines above still show the transit exists, and guide you to knowing that you're in a transit corridor.

Sort of like the top of this tram picture, without the bottom part. They both trace the route, but only one of them alters the street--and it's much cheaper not to alter the street.

2. High Volume Potential

There's a reason I referenced the articulated trolleybus above: artics (or double-artics!) are big. They're higher-capacity (generally) than even the doubledeckers that London is known for. 

Sorry buddy, you know I love you, but you're no artic.

They're not as high-capacity as a tram, but a lot of that is that places that run trolleybuses tend to just not run them as high-frequency as a tram would, and trams are often made up of more vehicles linked together (as in that Paris tram above, with its six sections). An articulated trolleybus is roughly two-thirds higher capacity than a regular bus, and there's no reason they can't be run highly frequently (especially if run as bus lanes or fully separated BRT) even if Seattle historically didn't really do that. 

So while the volume is nowhere near a metro, these aren't really competing with a metro or even true light rail. They're competing with low-volume tramways or regular buses, and they're cheaper than the former and higher-volume than the latter.

Don't worry, Link Light Rail, this isn't coming for you. Rather, the trolleybus is ideal for a high-volume route that isn't ready for (or doesn't have the political will for or the money for) a tram, light rail, metro, etc. It's a great way to boost capacity without costing an arm and a leg.

3. Pleasurable Trips

By this I mean a callback to my first thought about trolleybuses: I like riding a trolleybus. The artics can be distinctive, attractive, and comfortable to ride on.

Basically like the HOP in Milwaukee, except much easier to expand.

The regular bus is a workhorse that we should not disrespect. 

Pictured: a bus that calls itself a trolley bus but isn't.

But it also has a justified reputation as kinda basic, not particularly comfortable, and, well, generic: most US cities run pretty similar buses.

And even buses like the above Chicago artic that isn't a trolleybus don't have some of the trolleybus's advantages: like a consistent route with relatively little variation that means that you can actually make the ride smoother and easier. 

Trolleybuses have the potential to be well-branded, well-organized, and consistent in a way that can make them a distinctive service with a service and a reputation that both go beyond the traditional bus.

I like riding them; you might too. And that makes them a real potential tool for cities looking to expand their portfolio of transit beyond the bus/rail duality in so many US cities.

I wish Seattle had expanded them, rather than cutting them back, and I'm glad they seem to have turned back towards them in recent planning.

What do you think? Does your city have trolleybuses? Do you wish it did?

Coolness

Today I want to talk about something that I often see raised as a reason that people want to drive cars instead of taking transit: the cool factor.

And look, I'm not going to pretend that I'm an expert on cool. I am, perhaps, the opposite. But at the same time, let me at least try to explain why I don't think that cars are actually that cool compared to actual, exciting transit options.

1. What Are We Contrasting?

Let me start with this: in the Quad Cities context, and honestly in a lot of American contexts, I'd say that the conventional wisdom of which is cooler is correct.

This Mustang is cooler than this bus:

Bussy here is a good, solid vehicle and I would trust it in a crash much more than the Mustang, but it is boxy and basic. Of course, this car (which I love driving, but that's a different point) is less cool:

Classic bug-eyed Nissan Leaf: not cool.

This Jeep: cooler.

This bus: less cool.

Even in the same snow!

So, yes, what we're comparing matters a lot. This is why I'm saying that modern, up to date transit vehicles can be a lot cooler.

2. Keep Your Stuff Updated

Those buses were never cool, at least not in living memory. But also, transit tech that was cool can stop being cool (though retro is also a thing).

The El, I would argue, is retro.

El trains, however, are not.

The main distinction so far is not necessarily boxy vs sleek (the Jeep is pretty boxy but, I think, also considered fairly cool). It's up to date vs dated.

So this tram, which is sleek and up to date, is something else:

Look at those rounded edges and that smooth motion (I realize this is a still photo; I still think you can picture it from the picture).

The Croydon tram is not as cool, but could be if they updated the trainset:

And even this I like, personally: the green is a real touch of difference from the surroundings that makes it pop.

It's certainly less dated than the buses.

3. Speed Kills

One of the ways that I think the cars get the reputation for coolness is also the speed at which they travel. Trams, buses, metros, trains in the US: we think of these as pokey vehicles where you feel like you're trapped aboard, which massively limits cool factor.

Bonjour, je suis le TGV: le train à grande vitesse, aka the high-speed train.

This RER train is not a high-speed train, but look at that friendly front design--and it does go much faster than an American is probably used to their trains going.

This burst shot might give a sense of that.

Compare the Metra: blocky, slower, not as cool.

Basically, my takeaway here is that trains can be cool, but in the US they usually aren't. It's just not a thing we prioritize. Take the T in Boston:

I love the T but that train looks like it comes from the 1970s, and not necessarily in a cool way.

Contrast with the Mustang or Jeep above and you can see the cool difference.

But also contrast with a more up to date, cleaner, faster metro:

The newer SkyTrain sets in Vancouver are a lot cooler.

Which brings me to my conclusion: when people say cars are cooler, they're thinking about two categories of car, the awesome vintage car and the sweet new ride. But most cars on the road aren't either of those. And so when we contrast to most transit in the US, like Mr. Boxy Bus here, the comparison is weighted against the transit.

But when we consider the best of what transit can look like, it gets pretty cool too.

And you can add in some additional cool in terms of cooling the planet, since they're massively more efficient in fuel use.

Traffic and Its Avoidance

Traffic is by all accounts the biggest problem for urban mobility. Even Elon Musk famously agrees even though he hasn't acted on that in any useful way. Cars create traffic, traffic slows cars, slow cars make everyone annoyed and everything worse.

So the logical thing to do is to try to shift people out of cars for trips. 

Why focus on reducing cars instead of reducing, say, trips? Multiple reasons, but in short: cars take more space per person than other modes and cars produce longer trips than most modes; thus the same number of the same purpose of trips can be undertaken with much less traffic if you get people out of cars.

Well, if you do it right.

1. Transit Needs Out of Traffic

Just providing something other than a car doesn't do it alone, because if the other option is less pleasant, less useful, and/or markedly slower than the car option, even in bad traffic, people will still use cars.

And many transit options are all those things. Transit inherently has to deal with not being under the control of the individual: I don't get door-to-door trains, so it's marginally to very less convenient depending on parking, distance to train station, etc. And I don't control the timing either, but high frequency can mitigate that. What's worst, in my opinion, is when transit is still slower, or at least as slow, once you get on it.

Like this:

Can you see the buses? Can you see how they are stuck in the same traffic as all the cars?

Well, consider that they also stop more often (to let people on and off) and they become slower than the traffic, which is already very slow.

This means people are disincentivized from using it, because it's both slow and less convenient.

2. There Are Multiple Options to Avoid This

The good news is, you don't have to go all the way to a metro system to get ahead of traffic.

Now obviously grade-separated rail is good for this, since it literally doesn't intersect with car traffic, like this subway line in Toronto.

Nary a car in sight.

But you can also grade-separate light rail:

Or, naturally, real heavy rail:

And even a bus:

Well, in theory a bus: even though Connect is a BRT it's not actually grade-separated. But you get the idea.

You can also use signal priority to make sure transit (like these trams) moves before other traffic even at grade, thus reducing the traffic penalty on the tram or bus (metro/heavy rail are almost never subject to this):

The tram is at-grade with traffic but not actually in mixed traffic (itself an improvement) and signal priority lets it move as it goes rather than waiting.

It's rare in the US for, as far as I can tell, no good reason.

3. Adequate Replacements and Substitutes

One big issue in my recent trip to Toronto was that not only was the streetcar out for maintenance but its replacement buses ran in mixed traffic (see the first pic in this blog, which includes 2 of them). So even though the streetcar itself isn't optimal, since it runs slowly at grade, the substitute was even worse since it was repeatedly stuck in traffic.

Now, if that's occasional it's not the end of the world. But if the system isn't reliable and you end up with inadequate replacements/substitutes often, then even good transit on its original terms can end up repeling its audience back to cars and reinforcing the traffic vicious cycle. 

A city like Amsterdam (where buses can run on tram lines and there are multiple routes on transit from point to point) or London (where there are multiple modes from place to place) is much more resilient than a Toronto or worse a Quad Cities. And that ends up increasing traffic anytime something goes wrong--and it's a ratchet, only decreasing demand.

Traffic can be defeated by a robust, resilient, grade-separated or signal-prioritized transit system. Or by bikes, but that's a different article.