From: jeremy@classic.asd.sgi.com (Jeremy Higdon)
Newsgroups: ba.transportation
Subject: Re: BART and other Bay Area transit agencies... (was Re: BART "State of the System" handout)
Date: 19 Nov 92 04:36:42 GMT
Distribution: ba
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.  Mountain View, CA

In article <1992Nov18.232343.23068@s1.gov>, lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
> In article <1992Nov18.175327.23026@netcom.com> kudzu@netcom.com (Michael Sierchio) writes:
> 
> >And people carp about BART, but it does what no other Rapid Transit in
> >the world does, and does it well -- the biggest failures of BART are
> >AC Transit, MUNI, and all the other connecting transit agencies.
> 
> 	I can certainly agree that BART is a very efficient system,
> but can you please explain your assessment of AC Transit, Muni, and so
> forth in more detail?
> 
> 	I once rode an AC Transit bus from Hayward to Oakland out of
> curiosity to see what a BART-less East Bay might be like. The bus took
> over twice as long and was _very_ unpleasant. Too many buses have a
> _very_ unpleasant ride, or is that more a question of road quality? If
> it _is_ road quality, then that would explain the superior comfort of
> most passenger railcars; most well-kept rails are very smooth. I think
> that this is a serious failure of bus designers, not to pay attention
> to such thing. I think that designers of any kind of vehicles should
> be made to ride in them for awhile, to see if they would be willing to
> endure their brainchildren.

Mostly it is road quality, though bus suspension design hasn't really
gone anywhere in the last 30 years.  Buses on smooth roads are comfortable.
On pothole-filled roads, they can be unpleasant.  Much the same with
rail.  The worst I've been on is San Diego LRT and Caltrain.  Railfans
may like the lateral jarring.  I don't.  BART doesn't seem to have
these problems.

You're right about the bus industry, though.  It really shows the
results of two decades of being driven by government regulation and
low bid.  The modern bus is 30% heavier and carries 15% fewer
passengers than those of 20 years ago.  Part of the problem comes
from having to meet disability regulations (two to four seats per
bus are lost making room for wheelchairs).  The only real progress
is that A/C systems work better than they used to, though they are a
lot louder in many models.

I notice that LRV's also seem to have gained a lot of weight from
the PCC cars.

It's funny.  Los Angeles wants to start a consortium where the aerospace
companies would design new lightweight transit vehicles made from exotic
components.  Well, they could start by dusting off old blueprints!


> 	Also, on the only times I've crossed the Bay Bridge by bus
> (late weekends), there would usually be a traffic jam approaching San
> Francisco. What a bummer.
> 
> 	I read somewhere that AC Transit has not made any big changes
> to its south-of-Oakland lines since the late 1950's (!); it might be
> time to reconfigure all of AC Transit into a local and BART-feeder
> system. That will probably mean that most of the Bay-crossing routes
> will have to go. Those that I had ridden were nearly empty; BART had a
> _lot_ more passengers. The one exception would be a bus serving
> Treasure Island, since there is no BART station there.

Where have you been.  This is essentially what has already happened.
Part of the problem with completing this is that BART doesn't want
to share its fares with AC Transit.  One of the things that makes
it look good is the fact that it doesn't have to pay the full cost
of a feeder service.

> 	In a railfan magazine, I found one interesting curiosity:
> comparison of efficiencies of various North American transit systems.
> Comparing rail system with equivalent bus costs per passenger-mile,
> BART came out at a ratio of 2.16. Of those listed, the champion was
> Calgary's light-rail system at 3.03. San Diego's light-rail system
> came out at 2.61, while Sacramento's came out at 1.27. The worst one
> listed was Baltimore's Metro at 0.76, making it more expensive than a
> bus.

This was a really ridiculous chart.  Comparing efficiencies in this
way is really meaningless.  There was no attempt to qualify by
service type or anything of the sort.  The same thing happens right
here at home, where there is one number for SCCTD light rail farebox
recovery and one for bus farebox recovery, never mind that many
bus routes are an inherently more expensive type of service where
productivity is low, and almost all bus routes have to compete
with automobiles.  Since rail is generally built in high traffic
areas, it has an advantage there, also.  At a minimum, they ought
to break out recovery by route type.  For example, passengers per
revenue hour on the 22 route is far above other bus routes.  Its
farebox recovery is probably on the order of 25% to 30%, compared
to the 12% bus system average, or the 13% number for light rail.

jeremy