Why I have trouble with busses as a means of public transportation

This is probably going to be such a bold claim on my part, but I do not care, I want my opinion out in the world.

And, yes, the title is a bit misleading. What I mean by me not viewing busses as public transportation is not exactly what I am saying. I mean busses, in my view, are the lowest of the low in terms of public transit.

I am new to the world of public transportation. I would give myself maybe a week's worth of experience, legitimate experience, and what I have learned from years of transporting myself across cities and from reading up on different forms of transit is that busses are a poor excuse for a real public transportation system. Now, I am not saying that busses are not extremely useful and any transit system is golden without busses, no, they are indeed a necessary part of any decently-planned city, they just represent something bigger and worse than themselves.

Busses drive on roads, right? Well, roads lay the foundation for the personal vehicle, something that I am not too keen about. Yes, I love my Betty White (my car that is an old person's car that drives like a stallion), but cars are one of the deep-seated reasons for my dislike of North America. One of the best examples I can give is this: Los Angeles, at one time, had the foundation for a nearly flawless transit system based on rail, but it was scrapped when cars began to become popular in the States. Instead of a decent rail-based system over the roads, Los Angeles chose to pursue a bus-based transport system and a system of not rail but roads, roads that would shortly lead to the ridiculous congestion of personal vehicles we see daily all over Southern California. Busses are a transport system that promotes that very idea of exhaust fumes and relatively few people per vehicle by just running along roads.

Now, I got into a pretty good discussion about the benefits and detriments of Vancouver today. I, personally, am no fan of Vancouver. I find the urban sprawl gross and an emphasis on the car that leads me to make connections to Los Angeles (though a "true" Vancouverite would apparently tell me that the cities surrounding Vancouver are not, in fact, Vancouver, which I disagree. That is like saying that West Hollywood and Santa Monica are not a part of Los Angeles, which, in the grand scheme of things, they are). Also, I commented on the poor urban transport, to which I found no end of rebuttals: "Look at the bus system!", "We have a decent, regular skytrain.", etc. Well, ok, so there is a grand system of busses that dissects Vancouver and a skytrain that runs along three to four corridors throughout a pretty large city (wait, I meant cluster of cities), but, honestly, that is not the best. An emphasis on busses means an emphasis on roads, which leads to the personal vehicle. And while, yes, the city of Vancouver has relatively few cars, there are still a huge number of cars on the road. For such a green city, it really took me aback. On top of it all, one of the busiest routes in the city, and one of the most logical to tackle almost immediately, is the last of a skytrain connection between UBC and the rest of the system/city. I know that there are over four bus lines that all connect to the Canada Line, but, honestly, taking an over-flowing bus, like the 99, does not really suit me. Taking a slower-than-the-rest-of-traffic bus along a road to finally real some rail is not my idea of a really great public transit system. Once you get the airport-downtown covered, the university (of about 50.000 students) should be a priority.

I know many people disagree with me. Most people I run into absolutely adore Vancouver, and I am not saying that they are wrong, I am just showing people why I am not a fan of busses and why Vancouver's public transit system, while extensive, is not terribly efficient* or the best.

*Efficiency is marked by the movement of people at increasingly high speeds to their destination. Busses, while bringing people to their destinations, are bogged down by surrounding traffic and generally run slower than the cars that surround them. Rail, be it an over-ground or underground, moves markedly faster than any road-sharing vehicle (even the streetcars that I am designing for Palm Springs**)

**The reasons behind that are that streetcars are fun to ride, do offer another option beside buses, and, because of their enjoyment to ride, offer an insight to various other, mostly rail-based, public transportation systems. As Jarrett points out, "[s]treetcars that replace bus lines are not a mobility improvement," they are, though, more fun to ride, attract more ridership, offer a better (and cleaner) quality of ride, among other notes.

http://www.humantransit.org/2009/07/streetcars-an-inconvenient-truth.html

Photos courtesy of Google Images.