>Most new Light Rail lines are being built between the suburbs and city
center >to get commuters out of their cars and off the freeway. (e.g. San
Jose, >Sacramento, Portland, etc.). There is now a growing sentiment that
building >Bus-Only lanes on freeways and running a fleet of buses is much
more flexible >and less expensive.
There is a problem in the discussion of the pros and cons of light rail
in that it is too easy to lump all cases together. Max is not necessarily
doing that here, but I've run into this amongst some critics. As I mentioned
before, light rail has an economic advantage over dedicated busways if and only
if the following two conditions are met:
1) the capital costs are not allowed to balloon out of control
2) the ridership is high enough to merit multi-car train operation.
If these two conditions are met, the operating economies of train
operation can offset the higher capital costs of rail.
For example, the reason that the operating cost per passenger mile
for the Third St. line for LRVs is the same as for buses is because
most of it will use single-car J units. Single LRVs have no
economic advantage over buses.
Many of the light rail lines that have been built...or are being built
...around the country do not have a high enough ridership to justify the
capital expenditure on purely transit grounds. Things like
community pride, encouraging transit-oriented development, etc.
provide much of the rationale (e.g. in Sacramento).
A problem with freeway express buses as a solution is that most
concentrated areas of urban use are not within walking distance
of freeways. When freeways are built, the highway departments
try to use the least expensive land route through a community to
keep capital costs down. This is why a multi-stop type of service
cannot be offered along a freeway effectively. Freeway express
bus services tend to be even more downtown-centric than rail lines.
This is because the best case for express bus service is where the
bus can operate on local surface streets as a "collector" in some
outlying area and then use the dedicated lanes of a freeway HOV
or bus lane for a fast nonstop ride to some major center, usually a
central business district.
But as urban areas in the U.S. over the last half century have
become increasingly multi-centric, commuting to a single CBD tends
to be a declining pattern.
A light rail line is especially well suited to providing a limited-
stop service on a high-volume multi-centric corridor. This is why
I think light rail is particularly well-suited to L.A., for example,
because it has become so dense over the last quarter century that
it has quite a few multi-centric corridors that could easily
attract 50,000 or more boardings a day on a light rail line. This
is why the Blue Line between L.A. and Long Beach is the most
successful light rail line in the U.S.
>I think Light Rail is popular because it is high tech. Buses have an image
>problem; they are old-fashioned and only poor people ride them. It is a
lot >easier to convince a driver to take light rail, even if the bus is
cheaper, >faster and more convenient. It's also easier to get voters to
approve a tax >to fund light rail, than for bus lanes.
I don't think their popularity is because of an image of being "high
tech." They're just trolley cars, after all. I think there is a perception
of a higher quality of service...less jarring than a bus, faster
if it has a reserved right of way. Buses definitely have an image
problem. As a friend of mine remarked to me recently, "There is
nothing less sexy than a bus."
You can begin to equal some of the advantages of light rail with buses
through measures like a dedicated busway, well-lighted stations
with user amenities, bus-floor-height boarding (experimental systems
have been developed), signal pre-emption, even bus subways, etc.
But all of these things
increase the capital cost of the bus line. But the whole economic
advantage of bus over rail is its lower capital cost. And if you have
a corridor that can use 3-car trains of LRVs, the numbers of drivers
for equivalent buses will increase the operating costs for bus.
>For me, Light Rail only makes sense if it improves service compared to a bus.
I agree.
>By the way, Boston is building a 1 mile long tunnel to be used exclusively
by >electric trolley buses.
Seattle already has a 1-mile bus tunnel for trolley buses. Maximum speed:
30 MPH. They built it with tracks in the pavement and I think they're
now thinking of converting it to light rail, or streetcars.
Tom Wetzel
+===============================================+
! Tom Wetzel !
! Senior Technical Writer !
! BEA Systems, Inc. !
! Sunnyvale, CA !
+===============================================+