CTA Tattler

So which routes should get the bus-only lanes? These are the routes with the highest riderships, based on average 2007 weekday boardings (both local and express):
79th (32,847)
Ashland (31,527)
Western (29,904)
Cottage Grove (23,851)
Madison (22,309)
King Dr (21,582)
Clark (21,199)
And the various LSD buses together beat them all.

Obviously there are other factors to be taken into account, like how easy it would be to take a lane of traffic and how bad the congestion is right now.

I'd like to see Western chosen, as a first step toward the long-term goal of a Western Ave subway. The South Side, deprived as it is of transit, should also get at least one.

Well, they don't need that green light technology - busses already just go on through the red, even if it means almost hitting pedestrians.

Not that I take buses that often, but I do find it maddening that they stop every other block (and at some times on the 22-Clark, every block).

As things currently stand, with every other block bus stopping, a person walking down a street will only be 1 block from a stop in either direction. Although this "express" bus congestion plan is a great step, it still wouldn't be too much to ask to reduce bus stops to every 3rd block (still only 1.5 blocks walk for a rider directly in between 2 stops).
Wouldn't this also make sense as a way to cut gas use since the buses could be more efficient and not stop and start as much?

The paying outside at the kiosk idea is great in theory, but I can still forsee the mass confusion that will occur in practice.

How would prepaying work? I like the idea, but I can't think of a good way to do it.

And why the secrecy from Huberman about what bus lines are being considered?

I didn't have a chance to finish the Trib's article on it on my way to work this morning, but they said LSD & possibly Ashland & Ogden, as well as a 4th, not named.
It's a pity that the streets that could use service like this, or even just a regular express (like the X80), are the ones too narrow to permit it. Like Clark or Lincoln.

I know Lipinski's been pushing the Ogden transitway idea forever, but it just doesn't make much sense to me. The area is already well-served by the Blue and Pink Lines, and the bus ridership on Ogden is tiny. This would be a huge waste of money that could go to much more heavily used routes.

The Streeterville part of the Carroll-Ogden transitway makes more sense, altho like the Circle Line it would once again mean devoting transit money to serving rich people who already have good access to transit.

Often, the factors that make a street not a good cadidate for creating exclusive bus lanes are also the same factors that create ridership demand for such an amenity.

Eliminating parking in a neighborhood commercial district to allow for an express bus to bypass traffic congestion may be nice for those people on the express bus who want to speed through the neighborhood without stopping, but it sacrafices the economic well being of the neighborhood. Do that, and it won't be too many years before those buses are speeding by a line of vacant shops, and abandoned buildings.

Find an area where there aren't neighborhood business that need the parking, and there's plenty of room to build an express bus lane that doesn't negatively impact the neighborhood, and you're more than likely also looking at someplace where traffic moves well enough that you don't need a bus lane.

There is a sweet-spot between those two extremes where you could make something work. But times change, and that perfect spot today may keep a neighborhood from reaching it's potential a decade from now, or it could be an unnecessary configuration a decade from now.

BRT works in places where population density is low because of plenty of lowly utilized land already off-street. For example, if a commercial district already has plenty of off-street parking lots. BRT also works well in cities with cultures where few people own cars, and population is so dense that any merchants can survive without a single parking space for outsiders. Unfortunately, while Chicago may have some short, isolated examples of both, there are no coridors that meet either of these conditions well enough for BRT to be anything more than an experiment that'll fail.

Perhaps the best shot for BRT would be to totally reconstruct LSD, and add a busway between the inner and outer drives. But the sacrafice there would be both traffic lanes AND parkland.

I think that by the time the planning is done, all we're going to see are a few more "X" routes that don't travel much faster than their local conterparts, and some sporatic bus lanes, bus stop bays, and super-nice bus stops. Perhaps all will be good ideas (given the constrictions), but nothing will be worth the hype, or come anywhere near the dream.

I also am very surprised that the money came if there weren't more specific ideas in the grant application. Either the media isn't doing a good job of reporting, or this is a political gift from the Feds with the knowledge that it'll never be used to it's full potential, but is neccessary because of how difficult it is to get any kind of funding out of Springfield.

So let's enjoy the money. Let's hope it's used as well as it can be. But I don't have a lot of believe in the pipe dreams that are being floated regarding the BRT concept.

Good analysis, Rusty.

So, basically the solution to traffic congestion is to create more congestion. The logic is astounding!

What is really needed is more "true" rapid transit (elevated and subway lines) and less pie-in-the-sky talk about BRT which will just exacerbate the problem at hand. The reason that people are in their cars is because the current transit options simply don't work for them (otherwise they would be using them).

Instead of chasing drivers away, try to find out why they drove instead of taking transit. The answers may be surprising. I suspect that they will be varied, but a common theme will probably be that transit simply wasn't available for that particular trip. If people can't get to where they want to go, they will just go somewhere else. The last thing Chicago needs is for that somewhere else to be Kenosha or Rockford.

Raising parking rates is a good idea. It will reduce the number of drivers circling the block looking for underpriced street parking in popular locations.

I hope BRT doesn't end up being yet another boondoggle that will fuel more cynicism about the CTA and public transit in general. It would be great to have new rail lines, but building new subway and elevated lines is prohibitively expensive in an established city. New York is finally building the 2nd Avenue Subway that was first proposed 50 years ago. The price tag is more than $2 billion and increasing daily as the price of construction materials and fuel continues to rise. BRT can be a more economical solution for moving large numbers of people where rail lines don't exist. Please CTA, don't screw this up!

Michigan Ave in and north of the Loop desperately needs a dedicated lane for buses. It takes forever for buses to move through that area at the moment. The "express" buses at all empty onto that street from LSD lose a lot of their allure when they suddenly take 10 minutes to get through a few blocks of traffic.

Some bus and bike only streets is something the city should consider, too. Much faster for the buses, and most of the time this would leave the street entirely available for bikes, making bicycle use much safer than at present.

Thought this column from Gapers Block might be of interest for those with inquiring minds, as it has a CTA tie-in.

Crocodile Tears from the Mayor of The City of Children

http://gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/crocodile_tears_from_the_mayor_of_the_city_of_children/

KevinB (typing during my lunch hour)

"The reason that people are in their cars is because the current transit options simply don't work for them (otherwise they would be using them)."

I have no problem with single-motorists' commutes on LSD doubling and HOV-2 / bus only lanes being built so that people who carpool and take the bus aren't delayed in gridlock caused by thousands of selfish single-motorist commuters who think it's their right to clog LSD out of convenience and laziness.

Hell, in DC, they made Rte. 66 inside the beltway HOV-2 only and, lo and behold, the world did not come to an end.
http://www.virginiadot.org/travel/hov-novasched.asp

If you accomodate single-motorist commuters, you'll just be enabling this belief that they can live wherever they want, work wherever they want, and use Edgewater streets as their personal freeway feeder ramps.

Martha,
$2 billion for the 2nd Ave. Subway is just for the first phase. The price for the full length subway all the way up and down Manhattan is about 4 times that.

This thread of comments shows why this just isn't going to work. Everyone has his or her own agenda about what will turn Chicago into the New Glorious Dawning Republic Of People-Moving. It'll be tied up in studies and debates and trial experiments and devolve into chaos.

The other reason is those studies and debates and trial experiments have to be done by someone, and Daley's pals will enjoy this windfall for a few years and, come 2013 or 2014, suggest taking the planters off the Lake Shore Drive median because, if the Drive isn't as pretty, no one will want to use it.

FWIW, today was one of the longest commutes I've ever spent on the Drive -- took us nearly an hour to get from Foster to Michigan -- and maybe there were a zillion buses behind us but there wasn't a single one anywhere in front of us. There are stretches where you can see a couple of miles ahead, and there were no buses. If traffic's at a standstill and there's only one bus in a two-mile stretch, it's damn near criminal to take that capacity away from cars when the goal should be to get those cars off the Drive as fast as possible. The claim that "if people are in their cars, it's because there's no public transit option available" is ludicrous, because public transit's available damn near every inch of the Drive.

Sorry to be the iconoclast, but -- while I don't think there's any good solution -- I think the best solution might just be what eBob seems to dread above, and that's to get employers the hell out of Chicago and make sure there are plenty of transportation options for those companies available to those who want 'em.

BRT works very well in Mexico City. I was just there. They seem delighted with it and they're pursuing rapid plans of expansion.

If I were a rude, vengeful person I would suggest to Bob S. that he just get off the bus and walk--problem solved!

Instead, I'll just (very sincerely) point out that if this morning's Lake Shore Drive pattern revealed a long interval when no buses had entered the traffic stream, that suggests to me that buses were not very "available" to people waiting at the stops for buses that did not show up. Plus there's the issue of catching eastbound buses from further inland over to catch the LSD expresses. Last time I had to take one of those regularly, the waiting times were outrageous! My point is, availability on paper should not be confused with what happens in reality. If you use draconian measures to force people out of their cars, but the public transit alternative is just too unreasonable to put up with, all you'll do is force them out of the city altogether (as both Bobs suggest).

I don't have a problem with congestion pricing in various forms--it merely puts the cost of resources on those who actually use them so these factors are reflected in truer proportion when people are making choices according to their own priorities. Road capacity can be legitimately regarded as a limited resource. Maybe I missed it, or has no one thought of charging tolls (via I-PASS) to drivers who use Edgewater and Lake Shore Drive? They're getting convenience and a nice view to boot; why should they not pay for it? Use the money to resurface LSD and Sheridan more often. Then, they can be the ones to decide if it's still worth it. And capacity will be freed up for the buses.

I have the distinct impression, well, feeling really, that no one in Chicago was prepared to get the money so there were/are no actual plans in place for it.

This is going to po people, but since we're on our agendas, I'd love for LSD to go to Evanston - AND be two lanes with parking and stop signs all the way. In other words, a park access road. Of course, subway improvments would go along with this.

I can't wait for Edgewater to hit gridlock when Mary Ann Smith allows off peak parking on Ridge. And the people screaming bloody murder will be those claiming it's an expressway for Skokie who live in the area.

"Plus there's the issue of catching eastbound buses from further inland over to catch the LSD expresses. Last time I had to take one of those regularly"

I do this every work day and very rarely have a problem with it.

I think it's very important to remember that when people travel trough a neighborhood without ever stopping, it does nothing for the good of that neighborhood.

Of course we need things like expressways with a mile between exits, rapid transit with a mile or more between stops, commuter rail with many miles between stops, and express buses that may go for a half-mile with no stops. And all those modes will have people who don't exit just because they can.

People NEED to travel significant distances, and they should be able to do so with some level of efficiency. But people also NEED to stop and live somewhere, too. We can't all live at destinations. Some of us have to live in the intermediate areas.

For a neighborhood to be healthy, there needs to be not just residential use. There needs to be commercial services that are available without the need for transportation choices that further erode the quality of life.

And, unfortunately, the economics of many small retailers require them to attract customers from further than walking distance. Or the goods they sell can't be easily carried. Thus most small retailers need parking.

If someone is so pro-mass-transit that they forget this, they will set-off a spiral of urban deteriorzation that will ultimately lead to population paterns that aren't easily served by mass-transit choices. And thus you end up with under-utilized express transit choices slicing through once healthy neighborhoods that have turned into ghetos. The policies of the '60s, '70s and '80s eventually created this in a much more obvouse fashion in many cities that were more reliant on buses or new rail lines than on rail rapid transit built decades earlier.

I'm a huge mass-transit advocate, but I cringe anytime that proposals come up that speed people through neighborhoods at the expense of the neighborhood being sped through. It's not that I'm a NIMBY. It's that I believe there has to be a balance between the needs of a neighborhood being sped by, and the people who want to speed by it.

It's like the urban-rural issue. One can't exist without the other.

BRT doesn't sound right for the conditions in Chicago, but some of the elements used in BRT could help in some isolated, case-by-case locations that aren't necessarily part of some overall plan for a whole corridor. The money will definately help. I just hope that it can be used wisely, and not squandered away on pipe dreams that can never come true.

I may be missing something, but why in the world would I ever pre-pay at a kiosk on a corner before getting on a bus? Hell, half the time I'm not even relatively certain a bus is COMING; why would I pre-pay for something I wasn't sure I was going to use? Even if I were to wait until I saw the bus coming around the bend, I wouldn't be the only one lining up to pay, so the bus would either have to wait or maybe it'd just pull one of those #56 fake-outs (driver guns it by the stop, depiste passengers waiting). What happens when these kiosks malfunction?

That part of it is a bad idea at worst and really needs some serious troubleshooting at best.

in that case, erin, it would have to have a large time buffer (like the 2 hours to use a transfer) And hopefully, they think of that, too!
(mind you, I don't entirely understand why I would do this either.)

Is this why they've screwed up traffic patterns all over the city by moving bus stops across the intersections? Drives me nuts! I even had a bus driver tell me the drivers didn't always know if the stops have been moved--or where.
(please, I know they think they're helping traffic movement, but the evidence of my own eyes says otherwise)

Absolutely, Dee. There was very little coverage of the bus stop shuffle when it happened en masse a couple of years ago (I think there are still changes being made), and none at all that I can remember on the CTA's site; for that matter, I never saw any signs saying "Catch the bus on the southwest corner" or whatever. And what typically happens now is that the bus sits on the near side of the intersection, where the stop used to be, with the driver not letting out any passengers; then when the green light comes, the bus reaches the stop on the far side of the intersection and blocks traffic just as badly by preventing the cars that could be making a right turn (whether on red or, because the bus has to be there longer than one traffic cycle to unload and load, on green) from doing so. Most of the local buses I ride are on the 22 Clark, 36 Broadway, and 50 Damen routes, and that's a pretty typical scenario.

As an Edgewater resident, I don't get all the bitterness about how "these commuters are going through my neighborhood." Good grief, invent the hovercar if it bothers you that much. The only arteries on which people are "speeding" are designed for them to travel at that speed and, if there's an "expense" to the neighborhood, I'm missing it. They don't particularly *benefit* the neighborhood, but that makes them *neutral,* not an expense. Having them stop in the neighborhood would be an expense, as the folks in Wrigleyville might confirm.

I see that Daley & the Feds are using Los Angeles' one BRT line as a comparison.
That doesn't wash as that line, the Orange Line runs specially designed buses on a bus only transitway that used to be a railroad in the San Fernando Valley. In fact, it was supposed to be an extension of LA's rebuilt rapid transit system, but there wasn't enough money for that!
There have been numerous crashes at the grade crossings of the bus way with cars turning into the buses.

Where are the matching funds going to come from? Now would be a good time to push through a capital bill.

I am also an Edgewater resident and I am one of those that feels this area turns into a a series of feeder ramps for LSD during rush hours. I do not own a car, I bike and take CTA everywhere, maybe the occasional cab. Its IMPOSSIBLE to ride a bike with out a death wish on Hollywood, Ridge, Sheridan, part of Devon, and Broadway isn't even that great. I used to live in Lakeview and there were no streets clogged side to side with cars, with no street parking and completely non bike friendly like there is up here in Edgewater. The thundering traffic on Sheridan is one of the biggest reasons that sometimes I regret I ever moved up here. It is like living on a highway, not a city street. Its also no fun trying to be a pedestrian at Hollywood and Sheridan. The walk light takes forever, then you get it and if you cannot walk decent speed...good luck making it across before the light changes! Its all about the thousands of cars with ONE commuter, screw the pedestrians or bicyclists! I have been very clear to Alderman Smith that I am behind her 100% with returning street parking to Ridge and Sheridan. Its proven that street parking calms and slows traffic and reduction in capacity by 50% will not create 50% more traffic backup. Some people will find other routes, change times they drive and others will find Metra to be faster to downtown from the North Shore. Our area has to watch out for itself, nobody else will. Rogers Park or Evanston doesn't want Lake Shore extended at our expense, then fine, we can use the street parking big time and reclaim our streets.

I think Bryn Mawr entrance/exit should be made bus/carpool only at weekday rush hours. Make it a way to access the carpool/bus lane in the center. Nobody seems to realize that the Lake Shore bus routes carry more PEOPLE than all the single occupant cars!

A point of clarification on far-side bus stops:

At intersections where can reach the corner (and the stop!) on the first cycle of the light -- intersections without much traffic -- near side stops are often the best, because the bus can use the stopped time for loading and unloading, then pulling through the intersection.

There are many major intersections in the city where, for the time of day when buses are most used, and most behind schedule, they typically don't reach the corner while the light is red. Instead, they initially stop behind traffic at the light. When it changes, they move forward, coming to the stop 10-20 seconds into the cycle. If there are 3-5 passengers, the boarding time pushes the bus into another red light.

At intersections like these, far side stops should be faster.

I'm not saying CTA has made perfect choices about which stops should be near and far. Just trying to describe what goes into an analysis.

Ed - I feel the same trying to cross Hollywood and/or Sheridan. my favorite thing to do is stand at Winthrop/Hollywood and walk in front of all of the people in their cars stuck at the red light that's a block away when the little walking man tells me that I have the right of way. I just can't wait for that day when some idiot hits me with their car because they're stuck under the red light/they don't feel like seeing me. Sadly, i'm pretty sure it will happen, and I will be ready to call a lawyer ASAP, hahaha.

Hello??? Big elephant in the room: did the RTA know about this? Did CMAP? Did IDOT? Hilk of the Trib made a big stink a month ago about CTA doing the Google-thing without the RTA, but he's silent about this? $150 million? Did you notice who was there at the signing? Good 'ole Honest Frank.

We can see how Daley kept it quiet, but what about US-DOT? Shows that Daley and Bush get along a lot better than some may realize. Think he'll get this super-star treatment from a Clinton or Obama Administration? Probably not.

Sarah? Back in the summer of '01 I was in a crosswalk with the little walking man, and a driver making a turn wasn't paying attention and hit me. He drove down the street with me on his hood looking at him through the windshield and screaming. You know what? You can wait. It actually wasn't any fun. And here in Illinois, it's a minor ticket (note that the truck driver who killed two people at the Chinatown/Cermak stop last week was ticketed and released). Also here in Illinois, if you take action in a civil process, much of the calculation of "damages" comes from your medical bills and how much work you missed (thus losing wages); if you're on salary, the latter isn't going to affect things much, and for the former, you can decide on your own how hurt you want to be to boost those medical bills way up, but pain is real and it's going to take a long time to collect. And before you see any of that money, your insurance company -- if you're lucky enough to be insured -- receives reimbursement for its expenses covering you; you and your lawyer split what's left. (I missed only a half-day of work and my only medical expense was my office visit copay; that's a best-case scenario, if I'm not being clear enough, and the lawyers I talked to wouldn't take the case after explaining all this to me. So you'll have to be pretty hurt to light up any lawyer's eyes.) If you're still fantasizing about being hit by a car, I don't know what more to say.

Jake, thanks for the explanation. For some reason, every bus driver I've ever asked has told me it's so the bus doesn't block cars trying to make right-on-red turns.

On the topic of bus stops before/after intersections: I've never understood how putting stops on the far side of intersections is supposed to speed anything up. Consider the two scenarios:

#1, near-side bus stop: the bus gets to the intersection and passengers exit & board, which takes some amount of time T. When the bus is ready to proceed, there's some probability P that the light will be red. And the average time left on the red light will be half the length of the red light, call that R/2. So the expected wait time will be P*R/2. Total time is T + P*R/2.

#2, far-side bus stop: the bus gets to the intersection. The probability that the light is red is still P, and the average time left on the red light is still R/2. So the expected wait time is P*R/2. When the light turns green, bus proceeds across intersection and stops, and passengers exit/enter, which takes time T. Total time is P*R/2 + T.

Now, what with addition being commutative, I'm pretty sure T + P*R/2 = P*R/2 + T.

Now I'm willing to believe that there's something else going on here, but what is it?

It's hard to see why the time needed for passengers to exit and board (T) would vary from one side of the intersection to the other.

The probability (P) of the light being red at the time that the bus is ready to proceed through the intersection is going to be constant - it's just the ratio of the duration of the red light to to the duration of the entire traffic signal cycle, which has nothing to do with where the bus is at any particular moment. Likewise with the average time spent waiting at the red light R/2.

(Re Jake's explanation, note that none of this depends on P being high or low. It's true regardless of whether the light is green most of the time or red most of the time.)

If anything, having the stop at the far side of the intersection just makes it more likely that the bus will have to stop and start twice rather than once, which would seem to take more time, since buses don't accelerate from 0 to 25 MPH instantaneously. (Thankfully!)

So what's the deal? Since one has to imagine that the CTA's transportation engineers didn't all fail basic probability, I assume that there's some reason for this far-side idea. But does anybody actually know what it is?

Bob S.

Please tell me when I'm supposed to cross Hollywood then.

Thanks.

The only arteries on which people are "speeding" are designed for them to travel at that speed and, if there's an "expense" to the neighborhood, I'm missing it. They don't particularly *benefit* the neighborhood, but that makes them *neutral,* not an expense. Having them stop in the neighborhood would be an expense, as the folks in Wrigleyville might confirm.

First of all, Ridge is not designed for people to drive 40 mph on, but that's what people do. Peterson, Ridge, Sheridan and Broadway are dangerous roads because they accomodate drivers who want to blast through the area as quickly as possible. If you build it they will come -- in droves. Ridge and Sheridan weren's always feeder ramps designed to carry thousands of self-absorbed lone-motorist commuters. They used to be streets you could park on, ride a bike on, and walk across without having to wait 3 minutes. I see no reason why Edgewater should accomodate lone motorist commuters. I also think we need to do away with right turn on red and install bumpouts at intersections to make that practice impossible. In Chicago, right on red means "don't stop, look to the left for oncoming traffic, and floor it regardless of pedestrians." Finally, the comparison to Wrigleyville, a destination neighborhood packed with nightlife and a baseball stadium that seats 40,000 people makes no sense.

Hell, I have neighbors near Thorndale and Glenwood who drive downtown to work by themselves simply because they can. Transit options need to be improved but I don't think we should have to wait on improving the quality of life in the neighborhood just to accomodate people who already have options and are too selfish and lazy to use them.

Any time you want, Sarah. I cross Hollywood at Ridge daily without a problem. And Hollywood and Winthrop on a daily basis seems a lot more pedestrian-friendly to me, especially with a cop stationed there every morning.

"I see no reason why Edgewater should accomodate lone motorist commuters."

What makes Edgewater so special, Mike? I see feeder ramps to the Drive every mile or less in Edgewater, Uptown, Buena Park, and on south.

As for the comparison to Wrigleyville, I think you missed the point, which was that Edgewater *isn't* Wrigleyville and, presumably, we don't want it to be. And while we don't have the stadium, one of the joys of Edgewater is the variety of nightlife options. To me, anyway.

Commuter traffic is definately a negative impact on any neighborhood.

Local business want -- no, correct that, they NEED to have people stop at their stores. It's nice to be seen as people drive by, but if the conditions don't encourage stopping, the amount of traffic becomes more of a liabiity than an asset.

A lively street is the lifeblood of a neighborhood. Businesses and services can pop-up on both sides of the street, and serve people who live on both sides of the street. When you put too much traffic on a street -- especially traffic consisting of people who's goal is to get through the area as quickly as possible -- you split the neighborhood in two. Pedestrians don't want to cross the street. School children have to be given rides to get safely to school. All kinds of changes happen that split the neighborhood.

Look at the south side where the 24 runs on either side of the Ryan, and one can only cross where bridges exist. How many people from the neighborhoods on either side of the Ryan ride the 24 both ways? Did bi-secting the neighborhood help it? Was it neutral? Of course not. Splitting the neighborhood had a huge negative effect.

Not a good comparison? Well, maybe not. After all it is easier to cross the Ryan than some streets in Edgewater.

Now the Ryan needed to be built. And there are as many bridges as there are because of a slight nod to trying to attempt to mittigate it's negative effect. But the bottom line is that there was a very obvious negative effect, and the bridges barely made a difference.

There's a huge difference between living in an area that's congested because of local activity, and a neighborhood that's congested because of comuters who see the neighborhood as an obstruction rather than a destination.

And the bottom line is that it doesn't so much matter whether you're cutting a one-block wide trench for an expressway, putting up a berm or a viaduct for a rail line, creating a through-route for SOV's, or cutting a bus lane along the curb. Any one of those things can become a huge barrier in a neighborhood, ultimately splitting it from one cohiesive community, into two disconnected areas.

When a street becomes too busy for retail, when people become afraid to cross the street, when the two sides of the streets start to feel like different neighborhoods, the traffic on the street becomes a problem.

We may not be in a position to fix the existing problems like this that already exist. And we may find it necessary to create more of these problems -- perhaps even in the name of solving other problems. What we can't do is ignore the problems that catering to comuters causes to a neighborhood.

And in the context of this thread, that means we can't just eliminate parking in commercial districts in order to shove BRT down the throat of a neighborhood. A bus full of people driving past a neighborhood without stopping is no better for the well being of the neighborhood than a bunch of SOV's driving through without stopping.

Mass transit is important. It should be very high on the list of urban priorities. But being high on the list doesn't mean that everything else -- or even anything else -- on the list can be ignored. BRT may solve problems, but in solving those problems, it WILL create more problems. That must be addressed and reconciled in any planning and implimentation.

But it is my opinion that the problems that BRT will cause in Chicago cannot be mitigated sufficiently to justify any significant implimentation of a complete BRT system. At best, issolated segments may be pieced together here and there. But there aren't any corridors where BRT can be fully implimented without irreperably harming some neighborhoods along the way.

Montrose is not a feeder ramp. Foster is not a feeder ramp. Irving is not a feeder ramp. Those streets get gridlocked but they were not turned into feeder ramps by eliminating all parking as has been done on Sheridan, Hollywood, Peterson and Ridge. The difference is that LSD terminates into a neighborhood. On these roads, there's little or no buffer between the sidewalk and the road -- cars fly down these streets when they can. Broadway-crossing intersections south of Bryn Mawr have much shorter waiting times for pedestrians and E/W traffic. If you can't see what accomodating cars has done to Edgewater's arterial streets, and how it's a self-fulfilling cycle, fine. Enjoy.

Bob S. Think that Wrigleyville-Edgewater comparison will become more apt in upcoming years with all of the construction and new building going on? The huge Lego-block looking condo, the Blue Water (or whatever it's called) about two blocks south of Bryn Mawr on Sheridan and the proposed condo in the parking lot next to the Greek Orthodox church. After all of that is said and done, our nice little Edgewater with be a honking-horn filled mess. if it isn't already.

In all this discussion of BRT, everyone is overlooking the CTA's serious underinvestment in flying cars.

stillwaiting,

Here's the part of your analysis that I think isn't right:

>#2, far-side bus stop: the bus gets to the intersection. The probability that the light is red is still P,

If the intersection is routinely more or less clear, or if there is a fairly long parking/bus stop lane for the bus to pull into, then you're absolutely correct.

However, at backed up intersections, the probability changes. Instead, it's likely that a bus arrives at the choke point some distance from the light. Then, when the light changes, the bus moves forward and into the bus stop, almost always opening the doors at some point during the green part of the cycle, and in fact. And the distribution isn't even randem within the green cycle -- rarely would it pull to a stop in the first eight seconds. Instead, it would reach the intersection at a random distribution of points between G9 and G28, where G = the green portion of the cycle, and the integer is the number of seconds already elapsed in a 30 second cycle that includes 2 seconds of yellow.

Thus, if there are enough passengers to take 22 seconds of time boarding, the bus will ALWAYS wait another cycle before advancing. If there are enough passengers to take 11 seconds boarding, the bus will wait an additional cycle half the time. Whereas, with far-side stops, the bus will not wait the additional cycle. It will only wait the amount of time needed to board.

That's my analysis anyway.

Of course, you could also affect this equation by creating longer bus-stop lead-ins, which would tend to make your original P correct, since it would be more likely that a bus could pull around the back-up at a red light and arrive at some point during the red cycle, availing itself of the downtime for boarding.

The far-side/near-side issue has been studied and quantified ad infinum for at least the last 60 years. There's no shortage of data available, so all these assumptions based on the (very) limited observational skills of any one person don't need to be made.

One issue not being considered here is pulling back into traffic. This is almost universally quicker from a far side stop, and is far more safe.

The whole process could be sped-up in another way, too: Loading peninsulas. Instead of the bus pulling out of traffic, and needing to pull back in to traffic, the bus never leaves the traffic lane.

Sound nuts? It actually works to speed bus traffic. Motorists hate it because they can't get around the bus. When used on a street where passing isn't available, it also creates gaps for pedestrians to cross the street. It's a highly effective way to keep mass transit moving, while allowing a neighborhood to flurish.

But it is at the expense of motorists who only want to get through a neighborhood as quickly as they can. It doesn't work well on primary arteries where there is heavy non-local truck traffic, either.

This is the kind of option you'd want to use on an over-burdened collector street that's seeing too many problems due to through traffic from a nearby major artery. Along with landscaping, bike lanes, marked pedestrian crossing, and other ammenities aimed at the local neighborhood, you can create a really nice urban community -- assuming you also provide positive incentives on a close-by major artery, and give-up on fostering a neighborhood there. The SOV's and trucks need somewhere specific to go, or they'll just try to go everywhere.

(BTW, BRT isn't compatible with peninsula stops, either.)

Rusty,

Something tells me that if near-side far-side has been studied for 60 years then

a) it's a chancier calculation than you imply, or they'd have stopped studying it 50 years ago after conclusively proving the point; and

b) something in the calculation has changed in the last 10 years, and that's why CTA, which almost universally went with near-side for it's first half century, has moved to a fair number of far side stops.

My understanding is that what has changed is increased congestion. That coincides with my description of the math problem -- congestion reduces the likelihood that a bus will arrive at a time in the cycle when it can take advantage of being stopped anyway.

A few responses:
- Within my neighborhood, over 75% of bus riders board at the half-mile intersections. I wouldn't worry about the impacts to neighborhood businesses.
- This proposal was the "city" part of an earlier CMAP proposal to USDOT that also included a suburban component of variable ISTHA tolls. For once, Chicago gets money and the suburbs don't.
- I don't know why drivers drive, but CTA's surveys already show that "expensive downtown parking" is the #1 reason why CTA riders choose transit. What better way to encourage ridership than to raise parking prices?
- The comparison to LA is to the 30+ "rapid bus" routes, not the Orange Line. I have taken the original Rapid down Wilshire many times; Wilshire has high densities, choking traffic, on-street parking, and the works, but the Rapid still moves pretty reliably. It's so popular that there's now a Rapid Rapid (stopping every mile) to relieve the Rapid (which stops every half mile). The two true BRT systems in North America, in Pittsburgh and Ottawa, also don't fit Rusty's demographic profiles.

So Edgewater residents who don't like the traffic you have a tough choice; a Lake Shore Drive extension to pull traffic out of the area. Do you want the cost and loss of private beaches?

I think a lot of you are forgetting that a huge number of the high rise residents along Sheridan already drive everywhere, even within the neighborhood, I think even more so that the west of Broadway population. There are people who will even drive from Sheridan and Thorndale to the Dominicks at Broadway and Glenlake. These people are going to violently oppose any changes to traffic patterns...

"There are people who will even drive from Sheridan and Thorndale to the Dominicks at Broadway and Glenlake."

nd, any serious grocery run usually involves more than a person can carry on foot or on the bus without a huge hassle. Are you offering to deliver the groceries for them? Oh, and don't characterize reasonable objections as "violent" unless you're being so unreasonable about it that someone might end up wanting to punch you.

It's strange...somehow I've been grocery shopping without the aid of a car for the past 6 months.

Actually, plenty of people in cities, including Chicago, walk to their local grocery store. I go after work every other day to pick up whatever will fit in my bag.

This is far healthier for you and environmentally friendly - since it doesn't require driving or consuming 10,000 paper/plastic bags.

It is true, if you adopt a more suburban model of stocking up for 32 weeks at a time, then of course you could justify driving a hummer six blocks to the supermarket. But is that really what we ought to encourage?

I've been in the city for well over a decade and don't use a car for groceries. For the big trips, I use what is sometimes called a granny cart that I tow along the 2 blocks to the store. Handy when I do a laundry run, too.
My grandmother (who has lived here over 60 years and is 4 blocks from the store) has almost always done the same thing; no car.

And I recycle my bags, too!

Yeah, I've never owned a car, so I've never used one for grocery shopping. I'll sometimes bring a backpack if I think I'm going to buy some heavy items. With two Domenicks and the Jewel in a one-mile stretch between Foster and Thorndale, there's really no excuse for using a car. (And I'm overweight and out of shape, so I'll be pretty cynical about objections.)

exactly my case, too, Bob!

Shopping on foot has an added benefit of saving money. I always have to factor in whether I really want to carry something home and that leads me to consider whether or not I really need it. Gone are the days of driving to Target to buy paper goods or cleaing supplies because they're supposed to be cheaper and then leaving with $50 of extraneous crap.

I should say, that was one one of my qualifications when I was looking for an apartment. I had to be within 4 city blocks (or 4 hundreds) of a large grocery store--Jewel, Dominick's, Butera for example--so I could walk.
(I also wanted to be close to a church, library, and at least one decent bus line that ran past 9pm and on weekends)

If you all prefer to do your shopping that way, knock yourself out. It's very easy to say what others should do, but be careful about assuming the collective right to dictate to them, when you don't really know their circumstances or priorities. Just remember, it was your choice based on factors that are important to you. Nobody made you do it. Do not seek to take away from others the same rights you expect for yourself, or one day you will wake up to find that the collective is now telling you how to live.

Well, part of the choice is made when you choose where to live. If you choose to live in Hoffman Estates, it doesn't matter if you like to walk to the grocery store every couple of days. It's probably not very practical. If you choose to live in the city, four blocks from a grocery store, but your nearest parking space is two blocks away, it's just plain silly to choose to shop the same way as you would if you lived in the suburbs.

But if the nearest grocery store is on the other side of a street so filled with commuters that they've trimmed the walk signal so only sprinters can get across the street, you've got a problem.

Combining the pedestrian unfriendly road conditions with the density of an urban neighborhood leads to trouble for the neighborhood. People who can afford to move will either move somewhere they can park their car more conviniently, and take-up the suburban lifestyle, or they'll move to a neighborhood where streets are vibrant parts of the community rather than barriers.

When the appeal of a neighborhood is only that it's a shorter drive downtown that neighborhood is on it's way to becoming a slum -- which, of course, leads to more vacant lots that can be converted to parking lots. But eventually, if there isn't something more to a neighborhood, people who can afford to leave will leave.

City streets need to be more than just a quick route through places to get out of the city. It doesn't matter if it's SOV's or BRT, if most of the traffic is going "through" instead of "to", it's bad for the neighborhood.

Heh. Coming from the woman who told me if I didn't like my bus being stuck in traffic on Lake Shore Drive, I could "get off the bus and walk." Let's watch your credibility plummet past zero, C C.

(And everyone who's discussed congestion pricing in this thread, especially all the NIMBYs in Edgewater, are doing nothing more or less than trying to tell others how to live.)

No, Bob S, I said I *could* give you a pat "solution" to your problem, but wasn't going to, because that's not my way. In other words, I recognize that the problem is real, and I agree the CTA should be expected to hold up their end of the bargain, rather than telling you to compensate in order to let them off the hook.

I think there's a big difference between expressing the opinion that people who drive when they could walk are "silly" (perhaps they are, many seem to think so) and trying to outlaw cars. I also think there's a big difference between trying to outlaw cars and congestion pricing for road use and parking, which, as I think I have already stated, is part of getting the prices people pay back to where they more or less reflect supply and demand. Then the market, operating through people's individual choices, will correct overuse, and you may find that many things you view as "silly" or "unnecessary" will in fact decrease because the rest of us are not made to subsidize them--either through taxes or by bearing undue disruption and danger in our neighborhoods. Yet the people who feel they really need them on occasion, can do so, if they're willing to pay their way.

CC:

It's not a matter of "dictating" to people that they can't drive their cars four blocks to the supermarket. The question is whether to build roads and parking systems that promote healthy, walkable neighborhoods or whether to build ones that promote driving everywhere, to the detriment of neighborhoods and the environment.

The rights talk is just out of place; there's no "right" to have any particular configuration of roads connecting your house to the supermarket. Roads have always been designed with some notion of the public good in mind. It's one thing to say that the public good is better served by having big roads and lots of cars in otherwise compact neighborhoods (an idea many on here would apparently disagree with), but the idea that someone's *rights* are violated by the absence of big roads or cheap parking or whatever is weird.

And on the collective "dictating" front, let's be real for a minute. The roads aren't part of some kind of free market; they're a taxpayer-financed public utility. Also, um... we're talking about traffic. The "collective" "dictates" all kinds of things to drivers -- speed limits, which side of the road you can drive on, when you can and can't proceed through an intersection, and whether and where you can park (and for how much). These things have never been decided by the "market" and it's fair to say it would be chaos if they were.

Beans, I'm actually *not* arguing for more and more roads. I agree, nobody has a "right" to free parking or a road all to themselves, at everyone else's expense.

The reason routes like Lake Shore Drive are clogged at rush hour is because they're available "free" to users who will disproportionately benefit from them, while those of us who choose not to hog the road must pay to repair their wear and tear and by having our bus commute slowed to a crawl. Naturally they get overused (like too many sheep overgrazing the public green) to the point where they do nobody any good. In other words, there's a scarcity of a resource here and it has to be allocated in such a way that it's not ruined and yet is available to anyone.

Pricing does this in the marketplace, just as high gas prices make everyone think twice about whether they want to take the trip, and so conserve fuel. Yes, the public road system has to be somewhat of an exception to the competitive/free marketplace--and I say "somewhat" because while we can't have completely duplicative road systems, there's still usually more than one way to get from here to there, so people do have a choice.

What I'm arguing is that congestion pricing would utilize a market mechanism to accomplish fair allocation of resources in a way that leaves everyone a choice. Setting things up so that more costs are borne by those who receive the benefit of traveling highly valued, overused travel routes in a single-occupant vehicle would do this. A modest toll charge would cause people to consider whether they really need to drive LSD, which means that for some percentage of people--not everyone, but enough--that weekly cost will be the tipping point prompting them to pick another route or take public transportation to save money. Thus, traffic will be less clogged--yet the route will be available (for a price) to anyone who wants to use it that badly. Less chaos, more freedom!

Here's the rub:

>that weekly cost will be the tipping point prompting them to **pick another route** or take public transportation.

The problem is that it's difficult to price JUST ONE of the routes at a supposed market rate, while leaving the others alone, without promoting even worse distortions. Put a toll on LSD, and while you'll see fewer drivers and faster buses on the drive, you'll also see Clark St. and Halsted become war zones.

I'm not opposed to the idea entirely, but there is a devil you're not acknowleding. When the overwhelming destination is downtown, a parking tax downtown is probably a less distorting device to put the burden of cost on those who benefit.

". A modest toll charge would cause people to consider whether they really need to drive LSD, which means that for some percentage of people--not everyone, but enough--that weekly cost will be the tipping point prompting them to pick another route or take public transportation to save money."

Or, more likely, they'll decide that they'll just go somewhere else other than where they were going, which means that the area's economy will be put into a tailspin. You know, not everyone who takes Lake Shore Drive is going to and from someplace that is efficiant by public transportation. In fact, I think if you observe the drive you will see that the majority of people pass through the downtown area. They often go from point to point that is not easy to do via public transportation, such as between Lincoln Park and Hyde Park. In fact, that is the major thing that is wrong with this entire congestion relief thing. It seems to be based on the assumption that the people who don't use public transportation are not doing so because of issues of speed and cost. When this is applied to downtown Chicago (especially during peak hours which is what they seem to be focusing on) it is not only a flawed assumption, but really a silly one. The last I checked, the overwhelming majority of people who commute downtown during peak hours do not drive. It already is much more expensive to do so and usually takes longer. There are some exceptions. Some people commute from suburbs where public transportation is not at all convenient. Other people absolutely need their car at work for any number of reasons. They may need to use it for a business or other trip from their office or they may need to bring something that is too heavy to bring on public transportation. I think the overwhelming majority of people who commute by car downtown during peak hours fall withing these catagories. So a bus rapid transit system that focuses on downtown workers is not going to attract anybody who would have driven otherwise. It will only attract people from other busses or from trains (and maybe very occasionally from cabs, although this would be a very small number). Maybe it would work if they had so called rapid transit busses that went through congested outying areas that do not currently have good public transportation. But the press coverage of this seems to imply that they are targetting downtown (not that I trust the press, in fact their coverage of this has been as shallow as anything I've seen). And these kiosks being discussed just seem bizarre to me. I cannot for the life of me imagine how that is feasible. Are they going to lock you out of the kiosk until you pay and then once you do you will then be locked inside of it? Then when the bus comes the driver would know that everyone has paid. Or are they going to have a staff member making sure everyone has paid at every kiosk? That would seem like a waste of money to me (but heck, it's federal money so people don't care about that). It seems to me that the people with the kiosk idea came up with it in some ivory tower and do not observe how things work. With the Chicago Card, people can already board at pretty much the same speed as they would if they are not paying. If they are really serious about speed, they could require everyone to only use a Chicago Card and they could put a reader or two in the back (and more than one in the front). That would have exactly the same effect ast the kiosk. But the whole thing seems like it was thought up by some researchers who have no common sense or knowledge about why people choose to drive vs. take public transportation. It was a bizarre idea for New York (where it was originally intended) and it is not much better here. I think it is disgusting that money is being wasted on this when there are many very worthwhile public transportation projects that it could be used for instead.

Come to think of it I do have an idea where a bus rapid transit system may work in the city. They could have a route that serves downtown and then Old Town, west Lakeview, and Ravenswood. After all, the brown line is at capacity so it might be a good idea to provide a good alternative mass transit option. In fact, that would be much cheaper than what the CTA might otherwise need to do, which would be to expand every brown line platform to accomadate longer trains and rebuild every station. Oh wait, the CTA just spent millions of federal dollers to do that. Never mind.

As expensive as the Brown Line upgrade is, I don't think that BRT would have been a better alternative.

The rehab work would still have needed to be done, so the cost of expansion is only the cost above that rehab work.

Compare that to clearing a second coridor for BRT. Whether you use eminent domain to build an off-street busway, or take-over existing parking or traffic lanes, you're cutting a new path through a number of neighborhoods. You're also creating a new trunk route with new connection points that would need a redundant set of feeder routes.

The (lack of) efficiency of having that second rapid transit route to the same neighborhoods is an ongoing cost.

I'll point to the building of rapid transit in the middle of the Ryan (now the Red Line), and what it did to the South Side Rapid Transit line (now the Green Line). In that case the new line has more capacity than the old line did. Building the Ryan killed the neighborhoods it bisected regardless of what transportation modes they stuck in that trench. But by putting a rail line in there, they caused even more changes to the dynamic of the south side neighborhoods.

The original rapid transit line was a barrier that over the years, and many cultural changes, the neighborhoods adapted to. The stations provided anchors for development. (The areas between the stations did, however, take a hit when it was originally built.) But when the new rapid transit line opened, bus service shifted, and comuter paterns shifted, and the areas around the old line's stations became less viable as neighborhood centers.

While a BRT paralleling the Brown Line wouldn't be able to top the attraction of the Brown Line, and it's right-of-way wouldn't be as devistating to the parallel corridor than the Ryan was, you would still see a number of inefficiencies, and it would have effects on the neighborhoods being bisected.

All in all, capacity expansion at the same time as a necessary rehab was a VERY cost effective and efficient way to address the situation. BRT parallel to the Brown Line would NOT have been a good economic move by any measure.

MK,

I think you should give the city a chance to elaborate the kiosk idea.

Your post makes it sound impossible. Given that the payment machine/boarding area style of BRT works in other cities (Mexico City is the one I'm familiar with), you're the one that is an ivory tower theorist, and they're the ones who at least seem to understand how transit works.

On the other hand, it's certainly possible that the city's plan will be different, and fail in some way. We need a lot more info on this.

How do you know it works in Mexico City? Have you been there to see it? If so, how does it work? Do they actually staff each kiosk? Are the kiosks used for just one bus route or several? Are they at rail stations where the equipment and any staff can serve multiple purposes? No, my opinion that a kiosk system would not be desirable in Chicago is not an "ivory tower theory". It simply comes from my observarions of the city's current transit system and my common sense thoughts of how fare kiosks would effect it. I just cannot imagine how this would make sense. It may make sense in other cities. But I just don't see how it does here.

Kevin will probably have this up soon anyway, but the new BRT routes have been announced.

Chicago Ave. from Fairbanks to California;
Halsted from Lake St. to North Ave.;
Jeffrey from 67th to 87th;
79th from Ashland to the Dan Ryan.

It'll be much easier to have an informed discussion now that we know where they're talking about.

One thing I'm curious about:

That's a long stretch of Chicago Ave. -- about 4 miles. The route only goes another 4 miles from California to Austin, unlike on Halsted, where they've included about 1.75 miles of a 10-mile-plus route, and similarly on the other routes chosen.

The 4 miles of Chicago they've included must take in more than two thirds of the trips on the route.

So my question -- will they be turning buses at California to take advantage of the greater density, greater demand for buses, and the bus lane itself? Or will they be sending every bus west?

Actually, I could see demand growing out there if the service was made more reliable by the signal preemption, and speedier by the whole BRT concept.

Will Oak Parkers be enticed to take the bus to stop on the Mag Mile? My cousin once took the Chicago bus from our house in O.P. while spending a 6-week shift working in the Northwestern Medical Center, and while it was quicker than going to the Lake St. el (it wasn't yet Green line), and then transferring downtown, it was not quick by any means. But a 4-mile bus lane should speed this route up immensely!