12-08-2020, 01:09 AM
(This post was last modified: 12-08-2020, 01:11 AM by danbrotherston.)
(12-07-2020, 11:48 PM)tomh009 Wrote:(12-07-2020, 05:29 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: I am sure they are doing a cost analysis, but I'm saying the improvement is probably not much, if fuel economy is 20% better, and the buses were half as much, it's still possible we're saying less than 10% of the cost of those routes.
I often hear of smaller buses (sometimes even vans or cars) being a magic bullet for better transit, and in general, I don't think that's the case. Frequency is absolutely important, but I suspect most routes which are seeing smaller buses are not seeing a high frequency...transit agencies like ours are barely willing to prioritize frequency over cost on heavily used routes.
Certainly not a magic bullet, but if you save $50K+ per bus on acquisition costs, and 10%+ on operation costs, why wouldn't you use it for routes that never go above 20 pax? I really don't see the downside.
Again, operational costs....and if your goal is to grow your system, then you hope never to have routes that don't go above 20 passengers.
Ultimately, I'm not opposed to the idea. I just don't think think it achieves much. I don't see that it can make a meaningful improvement in our transit...to me it's nothing more than a minor (and somewhat brittle) cost optimization.
And honestly, this isn't the first time I've heard excitement around the idea...the microtransit/smaller vehicle theme comes up pretty often.
I'm more interested in systems which are focused on maximizing frequency at high density nodes, while minimizing overhead. I remember being super annoyed there was no ramp here.
I timed it once, and figured that a GRT bus could save 30 seconds - 1 minute per trip with such a ramp, and one to the north would also achieve the same efficiencies. A dozen buses an hour made this trip.
I've not done the math, but I'd bet that this type of enhancement would have a bigger impact than shorter vehicles on the transit experience.
We see the same thing with poorly designed transit depots where buses must spend forever meandering into a bus terminal, Greyhound is notorious for this, GO Transit is only slightly less terrible.