My complaint about transportation in my city...

[AliciaD496]

OK...so I was reading this article about how my old neighborhood is having one of it's main road repainted and two lanes removed in order to accommodate bicycle lanes and left-turn lane. They recently repainted the road near my new place in this way (but without the left-turn lane, thank you very little) and I have to say I haven't seen the bicycle lane get used much. Maybe people don't know about it yet or maybe it's just not a major route for cyclists but it seems kind of waste.

This whole idea of a 'road diet' and limiting the amount of cars on the road in favor of bicycles and buses just seems...odd to me. They're cutting off their noses in spite of their faces by making it more difficult for people to both move around in their own neighborhood and to go downtown to work and shop or eat out or what have you. They want people to use alternate transport to make into the city that's fine. Just make it viable. Don't keep cutting funds to the bus system if you want people to actually use it! That...and make it safe to walk to the bus stops. There's some routes around where I live where there's NO sidewalk leading up to the stop, it's just the pole marking where the stop is and those waiting have to just stand on the side of the road on someone's lawn.

Public transport in Seattle is a joke at this point. The buses are slow and just like cars subject to congestion that is created by limiting the number of lanes. The new light rail from the airport to downtown misses major stops (like Boeing and a major commercial center in Southcenter) that a few small adjustments would have allowed. They also didn't include park and rides that would make it easier for people to choose to ride the rail.

They're focusing on doing stupid things like painting bike lanes and studies about bike lanes rather than focusing on improving what infrastructure that is already in place. There's also talk of tolling the bridges across Lake Washington and they're trying to figure out how to deal with the whole viaduct situation on the water front both of which will create MORE traffic problems. It's too expensive to dig the tunnel they really want, but too expensive to fix the viaduct as it is as well.

Are other cities facing these transportation problems? Were the city planners of Seattle just stupid when they didn't realize the city would grow a lot bigger and didn't plan for the increased demand that a larger population would bring? Is our city council smart in it's idea of a 'road diet' or is it playing favoritism towards the Metro bus system (which cyclists would likely use to travel at least partway on long trips)?

Maybe Seattle's unique in this problem as well because even our neighbor to the south, Portland, has a viable light rail that actually takes people the places they NEED to go and a USEFUL bus system. I know when I lived in London I got along fine for 10 months using the buses and the underground. I think I only used a cab twice the whole time I was there and that was when I had heavy luggage. Seattle is growing compared to a lot of cities as well, I think, and hasn't been handling the population boom of the last 15 or so years very well. This whole ordeal is why I'd like to get out of Seattle sooner than later really. While I enjoy driving and the freedom that comes with a car, if I'm living in a city I don't want to feel like I have to use a car (plus there's the danger of accidents, vandalism, break-ins and theft just simply by having a car PARKED in this city). I'd rather live in a city that provides adequate options and allows me to go without a car or a city that at least isn't hostile towards drivers.

So...anyone else want to complain about their city's council or transportation problems?

 

[An Officer]

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em... get on your bike!

 

[Ghost07]

So...anyone else want to complain about their city's council or transportation problems?

Yeah, I will...in this whole county, there is NO provision for transportation for the disabled. I don't have a car, I have a wheelchair and there is no way for me to go to a grocery store even. In order to get to a doctor, I have to rely on a company over thirty miles away, and they will ONly transport to a doctor.

It's been years since I've been able to go to any store, let alone a decent grocery...sigh

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The new light rail from the airport to downtown misses major stops (like Boeing and a major commercial center in Southcenter) that a few small adjustments would have allowed. They also didn't include park and rides that would make it easier for people to choose to ride the rail.

Does it at least stop at Safeco Field?

 

[Kestra]

So...anyone else want to complain about their city's council or transportation problems?

Yeah, I will...in this whole county, there is NO provision for transportation for the disabled. I don't have a car, I have a wheelchair and there is no way for me to go to a grocery store even. In order to get to a doctor, I have to rely on a company over thirty miles away, and they will ONly transport to a doctor.

It's been years since I've been able to go to any store, let alone a decent grocery...sigh

Don't metropolitan areas have disabled access, at least? I do think public transportation outside of major cities is horrid, and by horrid, I mean non-existent.

 

[Miss Chicken]

These complaints show how lucky I am. I live in a city with a reasonably good transport system though some people complain about it especially about there not being buses between about Midnight and 6am.

My niece was complaining about how bad the bus service was to the township of Snug which is about 30km from Hobart. She said that many poor people have bought land at Snug because the land was cheap. I pointed out that one reason the land was cheap was because of the poor public transport. There are about 10 buses a day that go to Snug, the last leaves the city at 6.13pm. There are only 3 buses on a Saturday.

The houses in my suburb cost far more than Snug but we have an excellent bus service (about 70 buses a day). The first thing I looked at when I knew I was moving was the bus timetables/routes of different suburbs. Maybe I could afford to buy a house at Snug, but I would prefer to live near a good bus service even though that means renting.

Edit to add - We have many wheelchair buses and the times they run are clearly marked on the timetables. Though the wheelchair spots are more often used by prams I have seen people in wheelchairs on the buses on quite a few occasions.

 

[Timby]

So...anyone else want to complain about their city's council or transportation problems?

Yeah, I will...in this whole county, there is NO provision for transportation for the disabled. I don't have a car, I have a wheelchair and there is no way for me to go to a grocery store even. In order to get to a doctor, I have to rely on a company over thirty miles away, and they will ONly transport to a doctor.

It's been years since I've been able to go to any store, let alone a decent grocery...sigh

Don't metropolitan areas have disabled access, at least? I do think public transportation outside of major cities is horrid, and by horrid, I mean non-existent.

It's really a chicken-and-the-egg problem when it comes to public transportation / mass transit in areas that aren't huge metropolises like Chicago, New York City, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. For example: Dubuque, Iowa. It's a city of about 56,000 people, and there is a city-owned bus system, known as Keyline. However, Keyline has very time-consuming, convoluted routes (particularly for a city in which a car can get from end-to-end in no more than fifteen minutes, twenty during rush hour), and ridership is rather low. At my old house in Dubuque, I could have driven from my house to the Kennedy Mall / John F. Kennedy Road commercial area in about six minutes. It would have taken me 30 minutes or more to travel that distance by bus. It'd be great if the city government could increase Keyline's budget, add more vehicles, make the routes more sensible, etc., but the ridership isn't there to justify the increased subsidy for an operation that already loses a significant amount of money. Conversely, ridership won't increase until the bus line is better operated.

That's the case in a lot of areas -- you can't get the ridership until the system is better-operated, but you can't justify the increased expenditure on a money-losing system (which most public transit is; in the very most ideal situations, it's a break-even proposition at best) without more riders to defray the costs.

One nice program that popped up in Dubuque is called DuRide, a non-profit volunteer service through which seniors who are either disabled, cannot drive or don't want to drive can, by paying $40 a year and a small per-ride fee (I think it's $4) call a hotline at anytime and get a ride anywhere in the 28-square-mile city limits. Hopefully that kind of program gets traction elsewhere.

 

[PlixTixiplik]

I'm not sure what the problem is in the article. With daily vehicle travel of only 16,000 vehicles per day the road is too wide at 4 lanes. Road diets, reducing 4-lane streets to 3 lanes (with a center left turn lane), actually improve traffic flow and safety. The road looks like the only available bike route through the area because many of the smaller roads don't cross the creek, so I'm not sure why bicyclists should have to take a half-mile detour just so drivers can speed. And the business owner is full of crap about any city "catering to bicyclists" considering how much bicyclists subsidize the cost of driving a car. Maybe he also thinks the city shouldn't "cater" to pedestrians by trying to prevent them from being injured or killed by speeding drivers.

Also, congestion isn't caused by a lack of travel lanes (and it's a common misconception that you can relieve congestion by adding more lanes). Congestion is caused by the fact that the roads are priced inappropriately.

 

[Canadave]

We have the opposite problem in Ottawa... our city council basically refuses to consider the idea of a road diet. And even though we have a relatively large number of cyclists, we really suck at infrastructure. Outside an impressive network of recreational trails (which are nice, but meandering and often result in a long or roundabout route), we have very little in the way of well-developed infrastructure. Bike lanes are always non-segregated, often disappear at critical points, and occasionally seem ever worse than streets with no lanes.

That said, public transit here is generally good, outside of rush hour. We have one of the world's largest bus rapid transit systems, which is generally efficient, but gets really backed up through downtown at rush hour. We do have a plan on the books to build light rail in a tunnel underneath downtown, though.

EDIT: Also, I feel I should add that a good case for road diets is the fact that when road capacity is reduced, congestion is also often reduced. This isn't an iron law, but because it usually forces people to adopt other means of transport, or to take more disparate alternative routes, traffic becomes thinned, and the overall capacity of the surrounding road network tends to go up.

 

[T'Girl]

Yeah, I will...in this whole county, there is NO provision for transportation for the disabled.

that's one of the pluses of seattle metro, most of the buses have lifts, I see them used all the times, not just for wheelchair, the drivers will used them for people with walkers too, which I think is nice.

and a major commercial center in Southcenter

the way I remember the story the light rail was going to southcenter (2 stops) then up the hill to the airportand when the seattle downtown merchant heard about it they went screaming to greg nichels and he had the routes re-drawn.

they didn't want their customers easily going to southcenter

 

[Miss Chicken]

Our buses for the disabled don't need lifts. We use these sort of buses -

The bus can be lowered to be nearer to the curb. Then either the driver or a passenger folds out the metal ramp.

 

[Canadave]

^ Yeah, something like 90-95% of our bus fleet is now low floor, too. We should be at 100% low floor within the next few years, I believe.

 

[Holdfast]

So...anyone else want to complain about their city's council or transportation problems?

Eh, it's swings and roundabouts here.

On one hand, I'm delighted that all our speed cameras have been turned off across the county, because of lack of money. Also, some much needed bottleneck-relieving roadworks are now taking place at some key junctions.

On the other hand, those roadworks are causing major congestion in themselves, and are due to last another 4-5 months. And our roads look like patchwork quilts because of all the cheaply-patched potholes from last winter, rather than proper resurfacing.

Oh well. Overall, things are moving in the right direction.

 

[Captain_Nick]

Transport in the city of Melbourne (Australia) is a joke.

 

[scotpens]

Our buses for the disabled don't need lifts. We use these sort of buses -

The bus can be lowered to be nearer to the curb. Then either the driver or a passenger folds out the metal ramp.

^ Yeah, something like 90-95% of our bus fleet is now low floor, too. We should be at 100% low floor within the next few years, I believe.

Many of the municipal bus systems in SoCal have those too. We call them “kneeling” buses.

And most of our transit buses now run on clean-burning compressed or liquefied natural gas, so you don't get the stench of diesel fumes when you're stuck behind one.

But it can take a long, LONG time to get anywhere by bus here, when you're talking about a metropolitan area that's spread out over hundreds of square miles.

 

[eastman23]

So...anyone else want to complain about their city's council or transportation problems?

Oh, you'll regret asking that.

Where to start...?

• This is an actual intersection (appropriately named, Confusion Corner).
• Take a look at this. You'll notice that you have to take an off-ramp and go through a set of lights to continue going east on the Perimeter Highway.
• Speaking of the Perimeter Highway, there are at least three other light-controlled intersections. On the one highway in or around the city that shouldn't have any stoplights.
• There are at least 6 intersections in the city that should be grade-separated interchanges.
• After years of plans and cancellations, city council finally starts actually working on a bus "rapid transit" solution (Phase 1). Only to decide to flip back (yes, that's right, back) to a light rail rapid transit solution for Phase 2. Without having any plans to convert the Phase 1 segment to rail. So in order to go from downtown to the University of Manitoba, you take a BRT system to the halfway point, get off, wait for the LRT and get on that. And that's all assuming that they actually get any money to build Phase 2.

For the most part, Winnipeg Transit (bus-only transit system at the money) is decent enough. Though service between different areas of the city without going downtown is spotty at best on evenings and weekends. It seems as though the whole purpose of Winnipeg Transit is to get people downtown... at a time when nothing is open there.

 

[FordSVT]

^ Yeah, something like 90-95% of our bus fleet is now low floor, too. We should be at 100% low floor within the next few years, I believe.

Yup, same with all of the new buses here.

http://saintjohntransit.com/index.cfm?event=page.view&filename=accessibility-low-entry.cfm

Simms Corner.

http://wikimapia.org/1698209/Simms-Corner

This doesn't look like much but it's one of the most highly trafficked intersections in the city and there are no stop lights. No, it's not a roundabout or a four way stop either, the right of way is very confusing unless you live here. They're planning on reconstructing this intersection in the next two years, but people have been complaining about it for literally decades.

 

[drychlick]

what get me mad is all day bus fares went from $3.25 to $5.50! what a rip off!

 

[Roger Wilco]

Something car drivers should keep in mind when they are annoyed by bicycles: Every bike on the street is one less car standing in front of you at the red light and one more free parking space for you.

 

[bluedana]

Boston's transportation system (the T) is actually quite good, for all we complain about it. It's very old, and that causes delays and discomfort (the oldest station, Park Street, is usually around 500 degrees F on a summer day. It has fans.), but since Boston is a "walkable city," you can get just about anywhere by public transportation.

Except, for some reason, the hospitals. There's a concentration of really great hospitals (Dana Farber, Brigham & Women's, Beth Israel Deaconness, Children's) and you'd think they'd be accessible by train. They're not, really. I find that incomprehensible. With all the car traffic and gridlock in that area, it's astounding that ambulances can ever get where they're going.

We have more bicycle lanes now, but they're ignored by cyclists and drivers alike.