Technology may be salvation of mass transit

San Antonio Express-News ^ | 04/25/2004 | Patrick Driscoll

[Willie Green]

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

Mass transit in San Antonio and around the nation is on a downward spiral, but technology and good sense could increase ridership during the next decade, an expert says.

"I think it is possible," said Chris Bausher, who will be among about 2,000 government and private professionals attending the Intelligent Transportation Society of America's conference this week in San Antonio.

The recipe calls for predictability and comfort by making buses and trains faster, more reliable and attractive, said Bausher, an engineer in the Houston office of PBS&J, an engineering company.

Tools to improve mass transit include smart-card payment systems, which could also be used regionally or statewide; real-time travel advisories by phone, on the Web or at transit stations; and the ability to trigger traffic signals to help buses slice through crowded streets.

Even Internet access and watching television while riding transit are on the horizon, Bausher said.

VIA Metropolitan Transit has already added technology, including a bus location system and computer-aided dispatching to help keep drivers on time, but officials want to do much more.

Traffic signal controls on major routes, smart cards and arrival-time displays are some of the high-tech items in a 10-year vision VIA is crafting.

The plan, in draft form and awaiting input from VIA board members and the public, aims to increase boardings from 38 million to 50 million a year. It involves the latest technologies along with boosting frequencies of buses, expanding routes, and adding shelters and benches.

But there's a problem.

VIA has been losing money and riders for several years. The agency can't afford to maintain the system it has now, much less polish and expand it.

As a result, board members intend to ask voters to raise the agency's sales tax rate from half a cent per dollar to three-quarters of a cent.

Half of the estimated $34 million a year this would raise would be used for transit, and the rest would go toward local roads and highways.

In two months, the board is expected to schedule an election for November.

"It's going to be up to the voters to decide," VIA Chairman Shelton Padgett said. "What kind of mass transit system does this community want?"

What taxpayers likely won't get to decide in the election is whether any of the money should be used for light-rail transit, even though state law would allow it.

Four years ago, about 70 percent of the voters rejected a proposal to increase the sales tax by a quarter of a cent to build an extensive light-rail system, and many city leaders have maintained a safe distance from the issue since then.

"Everybody's so scared of that because we got beat so bad," said Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, who helped lead a push backed by most area chambers of commerce to sell the idea.

Padgett said he'll request a board resolution to ban light rail unless voters approve it in a later referendum.

"Twenty years from now this community might say they want light rail," Padgett said. "That's fine, but that's a decision that the voters will make."

Wolff said the 53-mile, $1.5 billion plan might have been too much to swallow at once. Perhaps starting with one segment, as Houston did with its recently opened 7.5-mile line, might be better because people could see how it works.

"I would only hope at some point that we'll be able to look at doing a demonstration project," he said. "But no one's really enthusiastic about doing that right now."

For now, VIA is hoping to do the job with buses and new technology.

The agency's most ambitious pitch is a pilot project for a rapid bus system, which uses treatments such as dedicated lanes, boarding stations, prepaid tickets, arrival-time displays and signal light priority to make buses look and feel more like light rail.

Rapid bus lines are much cheaper than light rail and have boomed in popularity since VIA's 2000 referendum, said Todd Hemingson, VIA's vice president of planning.

"It was a bleeding-edge technology at that time, and now it's cutting-edge," he said.

VIA is seeking a $24 million federal grant, to be matched by up to 50 percent in local money, to put rapid buses along the Fredericksburg Road corridor from downtown to the South Texas Medical Center — the city's busiest transit route and its two largest job centers.

If it works, rapid buses could spread to other major bus lines, VIA officials say.

But more than that, it could pin down the idea of providing separate facilities for mass transit vehicles, laying groundwork for planning that could lead to light rail, said Jay Moore, who leads the long-range planning committee for VIA's Citizens Advisory Council.

"This is the time for VIA to show what it's worth," Moore said. "If it is effective, it will show how light rail could be developed in San Antonio."

[reluctantwarrior]

Mass transit will be a loss leader for politicians campaigns forever. The majority of voters ride their own wheels to work, school, and play. This won't change until there are clusters of homes, work, school, and play within walking distance of each other. Go to Agritopia.com and see what I mean.

[JSteff]

Why do they keep trying to make "mass transit" bigger than the market makes it? People are voting with their dollars and it is NOT going the way greenie, tree hugging, liberals want it to.

Mass transit has it's place in the bigger cities but almost no where else. If it was any good they wouldn't need to throw tax dollars at it. It is not self supporting because it is not practical or desirable for most people.

Let' just hope that the liberal greenies don't decide to that stage coaches and/or paddle wheel river boats are the way to go.

[Paleo Conservative]

I think the whole idea of busses with fixed routes is obsolete. Why not smaller vans that can pick people up on an ad hoc basis? You could request service from a PDA. The PDA could know your location from its built in GPS receiver. dispatching companies could find the nearest car going near your destination. They could also verify your ID and your credit worthiness to purchase the ride. You could also save money by sharing a ride with others. Unlike current services, there could be an opportunity for both the customer and driver to rate each other (just like Ebay). Drivers would have a better incentives to provide courteous service.

Of course such a system steps on the toes of taxi companies who price their ride for executive on expense accounts and public transportaion employees unions who don't like competition from the private sector. There would be tangible benefits to such a system. It would not be necessary to find and pay for a place to park. It would allow elderly people who should not be driving any longer a means to get around more safely than on busses. It would also save lots of time, because private vehicles could transport people directly to their destinations. It would reduce traffic by replacing single occupant cars with multiple occupant vehilcles. It would also increase employment of people with low skills but clean criminal records.

[Lokibob]

Last fall I did a survey of Salt Lake Citys mass transportation. I did it simply by riding it all over the city and into the country.

Caught the 7 am bus as far as you can get away form SLC and still have bus service. Rode the bus to town (it was crowded, people going to work). Transferred to light rail in downtown SLC, and rode it the 30 miles south. Caught a bus north, and another bus west back to my country home.

Report: Super experience. the drivers were helpful, friendly. The buses and the light rail were clean. I asked the bus driver once about light rail and he suggested that I catch a train, even stopping his bus between stops to let me off.

Technology: You can, on line, download the entire schedule or any portion of the schedule to your PDA. It lists stops, times, bus numbers and destinations.

Again, on line, you can input where you are, and where you want to go and when you want to be there, and their web site will come up with a schedule for you with bus numbers, times.

You can input the address of the place you are going, and it tells you how many feet from the bus stop is to the place of business.

I did't try it, but I understand that you can download the front page or an edited version of USATODAY to your PDA courtesy of UTA.

IMHO, UTA is doing it right. My first experience was a pleasant one, and I have done it probably 6 times since. I cant see driving into SLC with the $10-15 gas bill when It costs $3.00 for an all day pass on UTA.

[isthisnickcool]

"This is the time for VIA to show what it's worth," Moore said. "If it is effective, it will show how light rail could be developed in San Antonio."

Like it has been in Houston? They could add private cars with dancing girls from Ricks Cabaret in the Houston Metro Choo-Choo and they still would not get enough people to ride it to make any difference.

[chiller]

Agreed. Until private autos are financially impossible,(not likely) people will not surrender the few cherished, private moments they get during transit each day....maybe their only private moments.

[Wonder Warthog]

"I think the whole idea of busses with fixed routes is obsolete."

But compared to Willie's favorite ride (any form of "choo-choo train"), bus routes are NOT fixed.

RAIL routes ARE fixed--being literally "cast in stone".

[eno_]

Tools to improve mass transit include smart-card payment systems, which could also be used regionally or statewide; real-time travel advisories by phone, on the Web or at transit stations; and the ability to trigger traffic signals to help buses slice through crowded streets.

Even Internet access and watching television while riding transit are on the horizon, Bausher said.

That's it? Pathetic.

[JoeFromSidney]

Why not smaller vans that can pick people up on an ad hoc basis?

Cities used to have these. They were called "jitneys." Almost every city in the nation outlaws them, because they outcompete taxicabs and buses. I've lived in a city (Istanbul) where the jitney service was plentiful and inexpensive. So far as I know, they weren't subsidized. They literally raced each other to grab the next passenger. If you didn't sit down quickly after you got on you'd fall down as the jitney accelerated to get the next passenger, standing on the next corner, before another jitney got there. It happened to me only once. After that I learned to sit down quickly.

[henderson field]

The two failures of mass transportation are: 1) the failure to make it user-friendly, e.g. having to wait too long for a bus and 2) the failure to market it - it is, after all, in competition with the private automobile. The people administering public transportation don't care about this as long as they are getting a pay check and a big pension.

[Action-America]

Even technology can't save Houston's Wham-Bam-Tram. It was built at the wrong level (at grade), through two areas of Houston that are a focal point for out-of-towners, who don't know where they are going (the Med Center and the Museum district). It is far too quiet. When I was a child, I had a train whistle that came with a Lionel train set, that was louder than the Wham-Bam-Tram's horn. It needs a set of air horns, like a locomotive. It's the wrong color. The silver color tends to blend in too closely with the color of the street. Action America has suggested a color scheme more fitting its threat to public safety.

The list goes on. Those are just a few of the most obvious flaws in the design of the Wham-Bam-Tram. Any one of those flaws would have been bad by itself. Together, they spell disaster.

The whiney liberals are intent on controlling the public and to do that, they have to make them dependent upon government, in as many ways as possible. Mass transit is a key to that control. People who don't have cars, tend to live in closer, where they can be more easily watched and controlled. But, the real reason is that by eliminating cars and getting people to live where they want them, the big money people can focus their investment efforts in a smaller geographic area.

The Houston downtown crowd is apoplectic that so many companies are moving their offices out to the Woodlands, near the airport, to Clear Lake and all along Highway 6 and the I-10 corridor. While outside-the-belt rental rates are climbing at a rate that easily outpaces inflation, downtown rates are rising, but barely enough to keep up with inflation. Several large companies have moved out of downtown in recent years and several others are rumored to be considering such a move. So, as is typical of liberals, they get the taxpayers to bail them out, by spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, on what are laughingly referred to as "improvements", to entice more people to their depressed area of town. Then, in a few years, when the newness wears off, they will again spend even more taxpayer dollars, in a desperate effort to artificially boost their, once again, declining property values and fight their loss of control over large portions of the public, who by that time, have begun looking for the better quality of life, that the suburbs offer.

Keep in mind that when large portions of the public depend upon public transportation, it's easy for those in power to limit who gets to the polls. They would not have to do a lot. Just by chance, on election day, there won't be enough bus or train service in areas of town that might threaten the status-quo, while those areas that can be depended upon to help maintain the status quo, will have plenty of mass transit service.

Those who depend on mass transit, in general, are just falling into the government control trap. With an average of two crashes a week, those who ride the Wham-Bam-Tram in Houston, are actually risking their lives. Just the other day, there were two passengers on the Wham-Bam-Tram, who were taken to the hospital, after one of its many crashes. Furthermore, all types of mass transit are now being targeted by terrorists. Technology will not fix that. At least for now, you are much safer in your own car.

Finally, if there were really a demand for light rail in Houston, the private sector would jump in, with both feet, to fill that demand. But, since the demand does not exist, the liberals in our city government have taken the socialist route. They get the taxpayers to build it, despite the lack of demand and then do everything that they can, to force people onto the thing. I've heard of that methodology before, somewhere ... Oh, yes! Now, I remember! Communist China.

 

[Doctor Stochastic]

The recipe calls for predictability and comfort by making buses and trains faster, more reliable and attractive,...

No mention of "where people want to go." This never seems to be taken into consideration.

[Willie Green]

No mention of "where people want to go." This never seems to be taken into consideration.

Doh!

That's why they call it MASS transit,
and operate along traffic corridors that are most heavily traveled.
If you want personalized, chauffeured limosine service, you're on your own, buster.

[Willie Green]

So if I understand you, Achtung-Amerika's opposition to mass-transit systems is based on some kind of convoluted urban/suburban polarization of soci-economic bigotry and unjustified fear of government control.

Man, I always knew you were a weird dude with your fraudulent tax-dodge hype, but this proves you're a butthead on other issues as well.