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Outside Boston, Silver Line hailed as mass-transit success
By adamg on Fri, 12/26/2008 - 8:07pm
The Kane County Chronicle reports the suburban-Chicago county is looking at the Silver Line as a way to improve bus service along a crowded corridor. Officials there are looking forward to dedicated bus lanes and manipulating traffic signals to speed buses.
Wait, what did you say?
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Comments
Transit managers obviously don't use transit
BRT has become such a buzzword in the past few years because the FTA has favored it over LRT, and the standards for what constitutes BRT are vague at best. You can pretty much apply the label to any transit project you want. From dedicated busway with elaborate stations, to a shiny bus driving through mixed traffic, stopping at simple metal poles marked "Bus Stop".
Transit planners love this because they can create a "transit line" that is portrayed as being equal to that of light or heavy rail with minimal initial investment (it usually costs more to run a bus route than a light rail line). Minimal investment bringing minimal results. Replace a 40’ bus with a repainted 40’ or 60’ bus (depending on the whims of the MBTA that day), paint “Bus Lane” on a few hundred feet of street and you’ve got Silver Line Phase I. Compared to light rail it costs more to operate, holds fewer passengers, requires more frequent vehicle replacement and generally offers lower ride quality.
Though I guess if you are going to replicate failure, at least replicate the least spectacular failure of the bunch. The Silver Bus Line on Washington doesn't really qualify as "rapid transit" by any stretch of the imagination, and the T doesn't even guarantee riders a full-sized bus, but it avoids some of the pitfalls of the shinier Waterfront line, and the subsidy is only $0.48 a rider, as opposed to $9.16 on Phase II. The top speed is higher too, with the Waterfront branch hitting an average of only 12 MPH in the $618 million dollar busway.
Sadly the service quality ratings for Phase I are dropping. (page 36)
I think ...
I think you can still make the case that a bus line similar to the Silver Bus Line (thank you) can still work.
The trouble with the Silver Bus Line is not in concept but execution. It does not have a dedicated lane, for one thing. From Dudley Square, it must dodge cars, sit at lights, etc.
Phase II is even worse. It starts off dedicated, but then goes above ground, goes through (at least) two traffic lights, then, unbelievably, joins regular traffic through the Ted Williams Tunnel to the airport.
If it had its own lane the entire way, it could work. Common sense, apparently, was not given any attention.
The Silver Line is a success within Boston also
The Silver Line on Washington Street replaced Bus Route 49. The ridership doubled within a few months of the startup of the Silver Line. The cost was relatively low and it helped to spur development from Dudley to Downtown Crossing after a long period of decline.
While ridership certainly would've been higher with light rail, Bus Rapid Transit was all the state could afford and the Feds wouldn't fund rail in this corridor because they had just paid to move rail from this area to the Southwest Corridor.
As for the Waterfront portion of the Silver Line, my sense is that the theory was good, but they designed and built it in a way that doesn't allow for high speed and the route to Logan is too indirect. It's more than adequate, however for the relatively low level of development that has occurred in the waterfront area so far.
dedicated lane is a good idea
Washington Street is the only sensible street in the city from 5-6:30. Buses in this city are a major cause of traffic congestion. But a bigger improvement is all the space for the usual deliveries, double-parkers and left turn workarounds we have to live with here. I can't help thinking that the silver-line hate is light-rail fanaticism. Isn't it obvious why the 66 for instance is such a terrible route, because it has to go down South Huntington with the deranged above-ground E Line?
The E-train only goes 2
The E-train only goes 2 blocks above ground on South Huntington.
The dedicated lane on Washington Street is a joke. cars double park on there with abandon, and nobody tickets. The silverline was supposed to also provide GPS notifications of how much of a wait there is until the next bus, AND it was supposed to automatically change traffic lights when the bus arrived. That never happened.
The Silverline is just a bus. Two busses actually. And to link the busses, they want to rip up Downtown, Chinatown, the Common, and they want to do this with tens of millions of dollars to build an outdated system.
Dedicated lanes
Dedicated lanes as in separated right-of-way, like Beacon St and Comm Ave but with, umm, bus rapid transit vehicles. Add stoplight priority, and it should work just fine. Could have happened when the Silver Line was designed, not gonna happen now.
If its any consolation
The urban ring project has committed to not building any of its bus rights of way along the side walk, based on the problems encountered in the Silver Line operation.