When one of the most heavily traveled bus routes in Boston is nicknamed “the snail,” the city has a problem. The 28 bus, which plods between Mattapan and Roxbury along Blue Hill Avenue, is scheduled to take 38 minutes during rush hour. That’s an average speed of about 7 miles per hour. And the reality is often much worse — not just for riders, but for employers in a region that depends economically on public transit.
Governor Patrick’s push for a tax hike for transportation and education, along with recent weather-related breakdowns on the MBTA’s key rail lines, has reignited the debate over whether and how to get more money into the region’s cash-strapped transit system. Yet some problems along the T’s bus lines result not from money problems but from a failure of cooperation between the T and its host communities.
Comments
this is an idea worth looking at provided that the tradeoff is made clear to the local residents. Having cars idle for longer will produce more pollution than having a bus idle for the same amount of time assuming the number of cars is equivalent to the number of passengers on the bus. I'm willing to sit for a couple of extra minutes at the light provided that six months later there isn't another editorial screaming that pollution in urban communities is increasing because of longer car idling times and that cars must be required to be turned off at the red light. As long as this change is made with everyone understanding the tradeoff, I have no problem with it.
This is a rotten idea. Since I'm never over that way I don't particularly care but it's still a terrible idea. BTW, you can buy a the light tripping device at any police supply store, a guy did that and installed it on his pickup truck a few years ago and when the guys watching the traffic surveillance cams noticed the same vehicle disrupting traffic as it cruised through the intersection day after day the cops pulled him over to have a little chat. I don't know if he did jail time but the fine was pretty big as I recall.
Although it needs a lot of improvement, the MBTA is one of the finest transportation networks in the country. The idea that vehicular traffic can ever be made efficient, never mind environmentally healthy, is an idea that has failed in every major metropolitan area. The more roads they build, the more congested traffic becomes.
The future is in public transportation that is clean, efficient and safe. The future is not in one person in one car driving around doing an errand here and an errand there.
I'm just trying to wrap my head around the idea of an MBTA bus actually stopping at a red light.
"A Northeastern study found that giving buses priority at intersections around Ruggles Station, for instance, would cut more than a minute off average round-trip travel times. "..A MINUTE? For a round trip? How many total minutes is a Round Trip? What's this going to save in PERCENTAGE of trip time? Perhaps the MBTA could reduce the bus fare by 1% to compensate riders.