Smaller buses would be more efficient, and increased frequency would improve ridership and usefulness of the service. The impediments, as I am sure most readers of this list are aware, are that it costs more in fuel to increase frequency, and that the other major expense, drivers, doesn't scale down with the size of the bus. While personal rapid transit might make sense in the urban area, I don't see it as very practical for the outlying areas. If it is to be mass transport, there have to be masses to transport for the efficiency to be there.
Joel At 12:29 PM 10/21/08 -0400, you wrote: >I've been wondering about this for years. > >BTW, I know those giant buses cause traffic problems in town and are >mostly empty most of the time. Back when we were trying to restore >Cayuga and Aurora as 2 way streets (partial success there), we were >told the giant buses were the reason they had to stay one way. > >I was given some silly reason for buying the biggest buses possible >back when I first pushed for restoring the two-way patter. It was >something like "but the feds will pay most of the cost, so we may as >well get bigger buses." But maybe there was a better reason. Now that >operating costs are higher, maybe the cost-benefit equation will shift >towards smaller, more frequent buses. And watch what happens to >ridership when buses come every 30 or even 15-20 minutes; just think >how popular the 10 minute shuttles are. > >Thanks to Valorie for asking a key question (and for deleting the >previous content so her post doesn't have a "long tail"). > >Margaret _______________________________________________ For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ RSS, archives, subscription & listserv information for: [email protected] http://lists.mutualaid.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainabletompkins free hosting by http://www.mutualaid.org
