I-Like-To-Bike

Thanks for pointing out that in one city, many of the downtown office workers arrive by bus. Actually I am surprised that that so many arrive by auto. In most very large cities that I am familiar with, downtown parking is so difficult/expensive that cars are usually used to get to an outlying public transit terminal/train station for getting in/out of the downtown area. Seattle must have a relatively crappy rapid transit system. Is there any kind of useful commuter rail network or subway system?

cooker

I don’t know, I was staying on topic by discussing how "busophobia" seems to be a non-issue in at least that one setting.

Obviously, since most cities no longer have a dense network of trolley rails like you showed for 1944 Philadelphia, buses are the most appropriate "last mile" (or last 3 blocks) solution for urban public transportation. Surface rail, subways, or express bus routes are only going to be effective at carrying large volumes of people considerable distances if the stops are well spaced apart. Some suburban residents commuting into town may not mind walking a kilometer from the train station to the office every day, but if it's cold, or rainy, or they're hobbled by age or infirmity, and there's no underground mall connecting the station to their building, then they're going to hop on the bus for that last leg (actually, "the foot" might be a better term for the final segment of the trip!). And if they already live in the city, a bus might be all they need.

I-Like-To-Bike

Can you clarify how that survey of Seattle's downtown office workers' commuting mode categorized/described such multimode commuters? Didn't see any slice of the charts that would cover them.

cooker

Is this the death by a thousand cuts? The survey simply shows a lot of of people in Seattle take the bus. You said that doesn't happen. It's not complicated.

LesterOfPuppets

Yep, lotta Puget Sound peeps take public transportation. That's why there are nice Wifi buses down to Olympia and sweet commuter rail down to Tacoma, tons of buses all over town, some of which run on overhead electric (trolley buses), etc.

Looks like continued use of trolley buses is in peril, however.

I-Like-To-Bike

To be accurate, I wrote that "not in many (if any) places in the US [is it easy to sell taking the bus]" for reasons already pointed out by Machka and Steve D, which you apparently believe meant none, no way, no how. If you believe you proved me "wrong" by showing that there is indeed one place where a vague survey pointed out that many downtown office workers take a bus for at least a section of their commute, so be it.

cooker

Then I followed up with another link showing at least stable or more likely increasing bus use across multiple aggregate sites. https://www.apta.com/resources/statis...hipreport.aspx

pitbullfan

When i lived in Seattle (car-free for 3 years) I absolutely LOVED the bike racks on the front of the buses. As someone mentioned earlier they come in handy if you happen to run into mechanical issues. Or if you've simply explored too much of the city in one trip.

I think bikes and buses compliment one another very well, and can't imagine municipalities are spending money on new buses without fitting them with bike racks (seems a no brainer to me). Even worse I shudder to think some municipalities are taking the bike racks off.

Also, I lived in the southern part of town (Georgetown) and my lady and some other friends lived on the North end of town. Sometimes i would ride my bike one way and then take the bus back, using their bike racks on the front of the bus. Good times.

The city I live in now has like 2 buses for the whole damn city, and very few bike lanes. Though times are-a-changing here in the Raleigh NC area.

Dahon.Steve

Every mall that I know of has bus service. The malls themselves weren't built to serve transit consumers but the motorist. In fact, I've see a number of malls that don't want bus service because it brings in lower income shoppers.

cooker

I believe Machka was using the term "bus mall" to refer to a segment of street reserved for buses, sort of like a busway, or bus lanes.

Like the Adelaide Street Bus Mall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelaide_Street_bus_mall

Machka 

Yes, exactly. And we have one in Hobart too. The Hobart City Council just recently announced plans to upgrade, enhance, and renew the bus mall here. Hobart's bus mall is connected to a pedestrian mall ... an open air shopping area that used to be a road, but has been blocked to traffic.

(We use the word "mall" a little differently here than in North America)

tandempower

This is only during periods of economic recovery where enough shoppers are driving to the mall to fuel eliminationist sentiments toward 'lower income shoppers.' In periods of recession where the number of 'low income shoppers' increases, providing bus access makes it possible for those 'low income shoppers' to trade in their auto expenses for disposable income, which means more revenue for the mall.

What has happened, unfortunately, is an economic ideology has emerged that if the public spends more money on cars and auto expenses, that generates growth and jobs that provide people with more disposable income. That may be true in the short-term, but it is a recipe for boom-bust. I.e. you can stimulate the economy for a while by growing the automotive sectors (or any sectors for that matter), but once the sector-growth trend slows, it takes a while for people to shed the burden of automotive costs so that they can use the money as disposable income for shopping.

It is during that crunch period where consumer budgets get squeezed by having to keep up car payments, insurance payments, maintenance expenses, fuel costs, etc. What's more, if the entire economy is more or less addicted to driving, all the other costs in the economy are predicated on continuing to fund everyone's driving.

So the more people do to hinder 'low income shoppers,' the worse they suffer when recession hits, and it always hits sooner or later. The US is currently preparing to shift to a rising-interest rate economy, while the EU takes up the slack by taking over quantitative easing to provide stimulus for the global economy. This means all the US people and businesses in debt will face higher interest payments and, thus, recession will ensue. At that point, the recession won't hit as hard if there are buses and bike lanes for 'low income shoppers' to use. If there aren't, people will just sit home waiting for more money.

Pobble.808

There is one such bus mall (to borrow Machka's term) in downtown Honolulu. Actually it's not a segment or a lane, it's the whole street. It has a nice feature: bike riders are allowed to use it too. I wonder how common this is in other cities.

It also intersects with the city's only permanent pedestrian mall.

Machka 

Yes ... here in Hobart it is a whole street too.

There are three blocks of it ... one has a bus lane on either side where buses stop, two traffic lanes, and a central lane where motorcycles park. One is all buses (and emergency vehicles if necessary). And the third one up is all pedestrians.

Surrounding these three blocks are a park, large post office, and a multitude of other shops.

It's located right in the middle of the city.

Dahon.Steve

I understand now.

I've seen a couple of these bus malls and they are not bad. I'm all for closing streets allowing only buses and emergency vehicles to enter the "mall" of stores. However, trying to get the local business community to close off streets and parking will be a fight within itself. Also, It only works if the city did not cut it's transit funds to the bone like Detroit. The bus malls that I've seen were already vibrant shopping centers so it made sense to block off the street.

Here's the question. Can you take several streets of crumbling buildings and make a bus mall? I've never seen that done. I have see it done with rail.

cooker

A lot of European towns have vehicle-free pedestrian sections- usually in the historic downtown with narrow streets and a public square. However, I think a bus mall would more likely be a corridor to get people in and out of a dense area, rather than a destination in and of itself.

enigmaT120

There is one, a CARTS bus. It's route 10 or 20 on this web site, but the CARTS bus routes aren't shown on the map.

Bus Routes and Stops for Cherriots and CARTS

cooker

What is it's purpose? Is there street shopping all along it, or is it just to keep people moving to some destination at the end of it?

LesterOfPuppets

There's a big transit mall in Portland. It's just a couple miles of solid bus, light rail and streetcar stops. There is some shopping along the route but that wasn't part of the design.

Dahon.Steve

I wonder if lightrail wasn't the catalyst for the bus mall. In other words, it wasn't the buses that created the successful shopping center but the city redirected service to that area only served by lightrail once the district took off with new shops.

This turned out to be a good thread. I would like live next to that bus mall in Portland. Plenty of opportunity and jobs.

I suspect the OP wasn't thinking of bus malls as an alternative to heavy or light rail. He simply made a point that cities are spending incredible sums of money on rail while sacrificing bus transit. Maybe more cities should focus on building bus malls instead of simply providing service for the sake of moving people.

LesterOfPuppets

It didn't go down like that. There's been plenty of shopping in the area since the mid-late 1800s.

OG trolleys came and went.

Bus mall was setup in the late 70s, I think. Here it is in 1982. I guess It's possible they put in the bus mall in an attempt to promote downtown shopping to some extent but I doubt the bus mall and shopping are very closely tied. Each of these shelters had payphones and TV screens that showed bus arrivals.



They didn't have light rail and streetcar running down the bus mall 'til just a few years ago. Light rail runs down most of the transit mall, while streetcar runs through just a couple of blocks.

Ahhh, looks like 1978 for the bus mall. 2006-2009 saw the construction of the new transit mall.

TriMet: History of the Portland Mall

LesterOfPuppets

Vancouver, USA got rid of its bus mall a couple of years ago. That was confusing at first but I guess it works OK now. Must suck for out of towners. "Oh, you wanna go back to Salmon Creek? No the stop for the return bus isn't just across the platform anymore, You have to walk 3 blocks over that way ->

Machka 

I'm not quite sure what you mean.

The bus mall is a destination ... it's the middle of town. It's where you want to go if you're going shopping, going to work, visiting the historical areas, going on touristy adventures, meeting friends at cafes or restaurants, etc. etc., etc.

There are shops, banks, cafes, and other businesses along both sides of most of it, except for one area which is a park. There are also shops and cafes and businesses of all sorts on the side streets as well.

Every weekday morning, I (and a bus full of other office workers and students) take a bus from an outlying suburb, to the bus mall because I work in a building just off to one side of it. At lunch, I often walk through the bus mall to various shops. And that's where I go to catch a bus to the university once or twice a week.