1. Light rail vehicles are less expensive in the long run, with useful lives of 40 to 60 years. Reconditioned LRVs from the 1950s are still running in San Francisco and Philadelphia. Where do you see a 60 year old bus in regular service?

2. Light rail vehicles have better acceleration than buses do, and can run a route much faster than buses. This means that you need fewer LRVs and fewer drivers to cover the same route.

3. Light rail vehicles can run in much narrower lanes than buses can, so they take up less space. This is especially important in crowded urban areas.

4. Light rail vehicles only use energy when they are accelerating. When they decelerate, the momentum is turned back into electric energy. When they’re at rest, their motors use no energy at all. Most buses use energy continually, whether they are accelerating, decelerating, or standing still.

5. Light rail vehicles give a smoother, bump-free ride far superior to the bouncing around bus passengers are subject to.

6. Operating expenses for light rail vehicles are significantly less than for buses, according to the Federal Transit Administration’s 2001 National Transit Database. Boston’s light rail line had costs of $1.25 per trip vs. $2.04 for buses. If you want the figures expressed as costs per passenger mile, Boston spent $0.51 for LRVs and $0.71 for buses.

7. In city after city (St. Louis, Denver, Phoenix, Boston, Philadelphia, Charlotte, Salt Lake City, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas ……) people prefer light rail to buses. Ridership on the entire transit system increases when even a single light rail line is opened.

In Houston where I was carfree at school, there was a definite stigma attached to using the bus, and there was a big fight over light rail. I think that the reason they went with light rail instead of BRT was to try to escape the negative connotations of buses. Like Boston- most of the bus traffic in Houston is long distances on arterials- without the parking or congestion issues that would be addressed by dedicated lane BRTs.

Is this the case in NY, or is there a real class divide between buses and other forms of transit?

Good question. As I’ve pointed out before, in New York, buses actually have more prestige than the subway. I know many people – who tend to be older, whiter, wealthier and more female, but by no means exclusively – who avoid the subway because they think it’s dirty, dangerous or just plain below their standing.

In many parts of the US even the working poor drive, and the buses are almost exclusively used by the very poor and people whose disabilities – mental or physical – prevent them from driving. Cleveland seems to be more in the middle, but I think that in those places, a marketing strategy is appropriate component of “BRT.” Not in New York – or Chicago. In these cities, if you make the buses practical people will ride them, no marketing campaign necessary.

It’s very frustrating to see formulas from other cities applied unthinkingly. Paris has had very little in the way of branding for its BRT, and people ride it. Big cities just don’t have the same prejudices against buses as small American cities.

It seems that this negative perception of buses, especially in cities without the infrastructure for other types of transit is really a barrier to increased transit funding and usage.
I don’t know if Cleveland’s success is in changing that perception through PR, or a result of demographics of the service area. If it’s successful PR, we should all take a lesson from it, because increasing middle class ridership seems like the key to increasing transit support and funding.

The key difference from Cleveland, though, will be the CTA bus-only lanes will operate only during the rush hours—one lane inbound in the morning and one lane outbound in the evening on each of the four routes. Off-peak, the lanes will be open to all traffic.

On most of Cleveland’s Health Line corridor, one lane in each direction is dedicated to only buses 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

That makes more sense in Cleveland because its congestion isn’t as bad as in Chicago, which ranks No. 2 in the nation for traffic gridlock.

Ah yes, much more sense. Because in a more congested city, bus riders don’t get stuck in traffic outside of rush hours, while in a less congested city they do? Or is it that outside of rush hours, no one rides buses? At least, no one who matters to the Tribune editors.

The idea of rush-hour-only bus lanes is really, really boneheaded. Even more boneheaded than rush-hour-only train service, because if a bus lane is open to cars some of the time, drivers will try to use it all the time, and many will succeed.