Glad you leaned on the boarding procedure & bus layout. You're right, those are rarely unpacked by transit planners & advocates. A few years ago I was helping a company develop a mobility-as-a-service platform, and was stunned by the basic human factors that were slowing down the buses.
It seems like contraflow lanes are a very low hanging fruit in areas with one-way roads. But for the standard 5-lane bidirectional arterial, is there anything similar?
At least in Seattle, the solution is either cheap curbside bus lanes shared with turning traffic or a federally-funded and expensive 'BRT' project with center running lanes that takes forever.
Looking at the key street in the example (Andrea Costa) it looks like there's a westbound counterflow bus lane, but then heading eastbound, the bus route (14?) would be in the general purpose lane.
Is that a problem for reliability and bunching (eg everything goes fine westbound, but then 14 hits the turnaround at the west terminus and heads back east and gets stuck in traffic)?
Does the Andrea Costa/14 example mean that service is great (fast) in the PM peak (assuming that it's heading westbound out of the city centre and that's the predominant PM peak flow, perhaps that's not the case) but then service is lousy in the AM peak, when the eastbound bus is stuck in the general purpose lane?
Great piece; so many small things to improve and so much that can be done even with very small right-of-way. Another example of the potential benefits/flexibility of the one-way streets that north american urbanists hate on so much.
In Oakland, recently some bus stops on line 6 got bulb-outs, but they're not level-boarding because they're at sidewalk level (therefore shorter than the bus level).
I believe they didn't raise them to bus height because that would require a ramp for accessibility, which requires laying more concrete / taking away more parking space.
How are accessible level-boarding bulb-outs implemented in Bologna/Vienna/Zurich? Are sidewalks higher in those cities?
The quality of this post is nuts. Excellent stuff!
Truly an amazingly well written piece. Would be happy to support this financially to keep getting these awesome insights.
Glad you leaned on the boarding procedure & bus layout. You're right, those are rarely unpacked by transit planners & advocates. A few years ago I was helping a company develop a mobility-as-a-service platform, and was stunned by the basic human factors that were slowing down the buses.
It seems like contraflow lanes are a very low hanging fruit in areas with one-way roads. But for the standard 5-lane bidirectional arterial, is there anything similar?
At least in Seattle, the solution is either cheap curbside bus lanes shared with turning traffic or a federally-funded and expensive 'BRT' project with center running lanes that takes forever.
Hi Marco,
Looking at the key street in the example (Andrea Costa) it looks like there's a westbound counterflow bus lane, but then heading eastbound, the bus route (14?) would be in the general purpose lane.
Is that a problem for reliability and bunching (eg everything goes fine westbound, but then 14 hits the turnaround at the west terminus and heads back east and gets stuck in traffic)?
Does the Andrea Costa/14 example mean that service is great (fast) in the PM peak (assuming that it's heading westbound out of the city centre and that's the predominant PM peak flow, perhaps that's not the case) but then service is lousy in the AM peak, when the eastbound bus is stuck in the general purpose lane?
Great piece; so many small things to improve and so much that can be done even with very small right-of-way. Another example of the potential benefits/flexibility of the one-way streets that north american urbanists hate on so much.
In Oakland, recently some bus stops on line 6 got bulb-outs, but they're not level-boarding because they're at sidewalk level (therefore shorter than the bus level).
I believe they didn't raise them to bus height because that would require a ramp for accessibility, which requires laying more concrete / taking away more parking space.
How are accessible level-boarding bulb-outs implemented in Bologna/Vienna/Zurich? Are sidewalks higher in those cities?
(non-level-boarding bumpout: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8295195,-122.264407,3a,75y,312.39h,86.54t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1siCFYb5olskQE1u3cJi2JcQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!9m2!1b1!2i29
BRT accessible, level-boarding, Kassel kerb station: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8026975,-122.2714127,3a,75y,23.38h,94.03t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1sK4CGGTEXCrnINRyq3sqYJg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192!9m2!1b1!2i29)