I voted against the bad BRT
In order to please the reactionary
NIMBYs. I want to be their choice,
Though I call myself a “progressive voice.”

BRT was like playing with fire.
It could have given an issue to Beier!!
I protected myself, when things could have got messy,
By telling the NIMBYs to telephone Jesse.

No need for me to have the courage
To protect the earth from damage.
I’ll get endorsed anyway, since I have thrown
The Sierra Club an occasional bone.

Protecting the earth demands courage and class.
I always prefer to protect my own —.

(not the politics – the poetry).

tizzielish: who have you in mind (as the alternative)?

Here’s a neat one. Numbers here are for AC Transit’s fiscal year 2007/2008.

AC Transit used many kinds of fuel but their main fuel for the fleet was diesel. Let’s ignore all the others for a moment. AC Transit used about 6.69 million gallons of diesel that year.

So, let’s talk “passenger miles”. What’s that? Suppose you and I get on a bus together. We ride for one mile. We both leave the bus: that’s 2 passenger miles.

In that same year, AC Transit provided about 198 million passenger miles of actual transportation. Not all of those miles were running on diesel but we’re ignoring the fuel they used over and above diesel.

196,000,000 passenger miles / 6,690,000 gallons

is approximately 30 miles per gallon per passenger.

The first observation is that person driving a modern hybrid around town — just one person in the car — is probably more fuel efficient than AC Transit.

Another observation is that if you put *two* people in just about any car you see on the street: they are probably more fuel efficient than AC transit.

Now, to be sure: if you load up a bus with people and drive them 10 miles — the fuel efficiency you get will be outstandingly good. You’ll have trouble beating it with a car, for sure.

The problem is that, that same year: ever mile an AC transit bus traveled, it carried and average of about 7.5 passengers. That sparsity of passengers is the price that’s paid to have anything close to regular, day-long routes and established stops.

In contrast, in the calculations above (e.g., that a hybrid car is better) I’ve assumed that the car is *not* driving around a fixed route without passengers. That assumption is reasonable. That’s how smaller vehicles work – they are “on demand”.

The cars, of course, have other advantages. For example, they are better at handling cargo. For many car users, that means (for example) fewer trips to the grocery store (and lower food bills).

Of course it cuts both ways. Perhaps a car can easily be more fuel efficient per passenger mile than AC Transit – but perhaps owning or having access to a car leads to traveling many more passenger miles!

Who knows!? I don’t. And neither do you who express such bitterness over BRT’s defeat. What we do know, though, is that the environmental case for the more bombastic versions of BRT was very, very weak.

Charles,

That sounds partially but not entirely plausible to me. It sounds like you might know of better data than I’ve found so far so I’d like to pose some questions to you and make some observations.

First, let’s talk about this “averaging in lifeline service with high volume service” and how that might be skewing my fuel efficiency numbers. Two points and related questions:

1) I’m skeptical that the lifeline stuff skews the results all that much. I’ve experienced and observed quite a large number of near empty buses on high volumn routes. And the lifeline routes get a lot less service. So the question is: where do we get those numbers for AC Transit? How can we reasonably quantify the efficiency of high volume routes from the public data?

2) In some areas (some cities in Ohio come to mind) — lifeline routes were successfully replaced with on-demand / smaller vehicle service. Even if we suppose AC Transits efficiency is low only because of those lifeline routes, wouldn’t it be a higher priority to try out something like on-demand / smaller vehicle for those routes?

Next thing, you write:

“In addition, there is general consensus among environmentalist that we need to build new transit infrastructure AND transit-oriented development around the stops. As a general rule of thumb, the amount of energy saved by the transit-oriented development is about three times as great as the amount of energy saved directly by people shifting from cars to transit.”

Could I get some cites for that please, because (for speculative reasons I’ll spare you for now) I don’t buy it. I know a lot of people argue for that development pattern. I’ve heard lots of people refer to that “general consensus”. Based on belief and observation I don’t buy it — can you give some substantial cites to back up the claims there?

It is not surprising that Berkeley environmentalists who focus on transportation and land use were disappointed that Berkeley belied its progressive reputation by taking such a conservative stand on this issue.

However it happened, I’m still thinking Berkeley dodged a bullet there (and helped the whole county dodge the same bullet). Gimme better data that says otherwise. From my perspective the BRT thing never passed the common sense sniff test and never met a burden of proof to overcome that — ’twas all handwaving in the face of fairly substantive and more immediate objections. But, prove me wrong — what’d I miss? Cites?

On your follow up point about a nicer resulting city, Charles: my suggestion is that we can achieve that aim (and probably better green-ness, too) faster, cheaper, and better and in no small part by being less reliant on AC transit and finding some creative, lighter weight, mostly intra-city public transit solutions.

(What would worry me about BRT as the “nicer city” solution is that it would fail miserably, devastate micro-economies, and create a kind of failed-communist-central-planning parody of a public transit system.)

Thomas: Intracity solutions don’t work for most trips. Those high-volume routes that provide environmental benefits are intercity.

Smaller buses are not economically viable, because they require more drivers and labor is by far the greatest cost of running a bus system. As far as I know, there are no light-weight buses that carry enough passengers to make them economically viable, except in special situations where they are very subsidized (as in Emeryville, which has sales-tax money to burn).

Ok, I’ll drop for now questions about AC Transit efficiency because, yeah, it seems like you don’t actually have the kind of harder data I was fishing for. I’m not saying you’re wrong or that I’m certainly right — I’m just saying that’s one area where we get stuck for now in the debate / analysis. (And thanks for your analytic help.)

On intra-city vs. inter-city solutions: Just as a design idea – not something I can prove is actually better – but to call in to question your assertion that “intra-city solutions don’t work for most trips”. Please give some thought to (and respond to, flame if you like) this notion that I can’t shake myself of:

Intra-city is actually really important and should heavily involve the private sector. The inter-city focus of BART and to a lesser extent AC Transit has made them useless for a heck of a lot of intra-city commuting. Meanwhile, inter-city trips could be nicely handled with a single transfer: major inter-city routes and modalities converging on transportation hubs at the periphery of the city, tying in to intra-city transport. E.g.: you arrive at South Berkeley BART or you drive in down near where Ashby meets the highway and, there, you cross over to intra-city transport. Intra-city, focusing on competition, smaller vehicles, and demand-responsive supply can be extremely efficient and afford interesting uses (like larger cargos such as for groceries).

This bit is really interesting, I think:

Smaller buses are not economically viable, because they require more drivers and labor is by far the greatest cost of running a bus system. As far as I know, there are no light-weight buses that carry enough passengers to make them economically viable, except in special situations where they are very subsidized (as in Emeryville, which has sales-tax money to burn).

A slightly flippant response is to observe that smaller buses are quite economically viable in some other countries — but, being flippant aside, we like to pay our workers better, have better safety standards, etc. So.. you make a serious point. Except….

You want the AC model which — considering just the busy sections of town, not lifelines to the hills — means jam packed buses for intra-city trips during a few peak hours each day, and then mostly empty buses wandering around the rest of the time. Driver plus other operating expenses really prbly costs just a bit more than what AC is getting in revenue but, in any event, we ideally want average of maybe 100 passengers ($2 a pop) per day per driver assuming shallow managerial overhead and a pretty decent driver salary. It seems to me that you want the net effect of a mixed fleet — big buses and fixed routes for peek, tinier solutions and more demand-driven supply for off-peak — and enough flexibility so that the labor budget doesn’t get wasted hauling around big, mostly empty buses to pointless routes. Yes, there are new inefficiencies there but not a multiplication of labor costs — a multiplication of capital equipment costs. Offsetting those inefficiencies are decreases in fuel costs and (if you can technologically make the on-demand parts a better product) increased ridership.

This doesn’t look all that much, other than superficially, like the Emery-go-round shuttle. And there are real challenges there in designing who owns what and who employs whom and how it all gets regulated and how the system gets technologically tied together into a consumer friendly product… but… I think the best thing is over in that direction.

Oh, Charles. Um… Ok, you say such things as:

By contrast, most neighborhood activists working against BRT had little experience with the issue – and they know little and care less about improving public transit and creating more walkable neighborhoods. [....]
surely you can understand why we were disappointed to see the city council side with the city’s anti-environmentalists, rather than with those of us who have been working for environmentally sound transportation and land-use for decades.

About the only thing there I can agree with is that y’all were disappointed. The rest is noisy spin. You’ve been working on it for decades? You ought to be able to present a stronger case than you have!

Sorry, that’s just how I see it.

It is particularly disappointing, because the Obama administration is moving to support this sort of project across the entire nation, and Berkeley decided to be more backward and conservative on this issue than the nation as a whole.

What you describe as motivation there is, absent a stronger case for BRT on merits, indistinguishable from decadence and corruption (ala an Alaskan “bridge to nowhere”).

Anyway, back to where we might find agreement… I think the economy and the state of things generally is much worse than generally acknowledged and that this isn’t cyclical, it’s structural and here we are. The progressive agenda, these days, has to (in my opinion) flat out abandon these big plays like BRT (big for the region, at least) and concentrate on “faster, cheaper, better.”

Those who understand transit issues and who followed this issue closely know that we presented a very strong case.

Thomas Lord’s argument finally came down to “I have a vague idea about more efficient service, which has been described by me in a comment to a blog post and which has never been studied anywhere. I think my idea would work better than BRT. Therefore, BRT should not be built.”

TN is talking about service reductions because of lack of operating funds. Capital funds are separate from operating funds. This project actually would have cut operating costs. AC is planning to go ahead and try to find capital funding to build this BRT project in Oakland and San Leandro.

Charles, c’mon.. You are better than that.

Yes, I have a vague idea (drawing on stuff I know about queuing theory, graph theory, basic MBA stuff, etc.). You’re right and I don’t deny that my counter-proposals are vague and unproved.

Few if any of the details are without precedent and many have worked in various jurisdictions. Meanwhile, brute force imposition of the gospel according to bus rapid transit disciples and such have worked in some places and failed miserably in others. There’s an interesting discussion and analysis to be had here and it is well worth getting out of entrenched positions and potential grant moneys and such forth and returning to an innocent evaluation of what makes or does not make plausible sense.

I understand what TN is saying or at least what facts are driving him to speak so. I am doubting whether you understand just how badly the financial markets are messed up and what that implies. Left and right, these days, municipalities are approving projects that ain’t never gonna happen cause the money ain’t there….

Drunk Engineer:

Accusing me as you have there is idiotic. I’ve said no such thing. You call yourself drunk engineer? Indeed. You’ve reached your limit. Go sleep it off. Also, drop the “engineer” part of your name or else, um, show some evidence in that area. Off the mark name calling is not engineering, buddy.