Grieve-Smith on Transportation

Despite what some may think, there is a certain amount of prestige attached to riding a bus in New York City. I've made that observation in blog comments before, on Streetsblog and more recently on the Overhead Wire, but I think it deserves its own blog post.

Contrary to the way that Peter Smith presents it, I am not claiming that riding the bus here is always a prestigious activity. What I am saying, based on my own observation, is that there are plenty of middle-class and even upper-class New Yorkers who ride the bus. I'm referring here specifically to local public buses; express and long-distance buses have their own idiosyncrasies.

The Upper East Side of Manhattan is one of the most wealthy places in the world. If you ride one of the buses that go through it, you'll see lots of well-off, well-dressed people, including white people, older adults and women. Many people ride the bus who might be considered "elite": for example, I once ran into former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern (who has his own car and an illegally reserved parking spot in the middle of Central Park) on the M57.

A middle-aged Asian female friend who lives on the Upper East Side once told me that she avoids the subway; my understanding was that it was because in her mind she has an association between the subway and crime that goes back to the graffiti-covered trains of the 1970s. In any case, she took buses (or sometimes taxis) everywhere she went.

As you get further from the Upper East Side, the prestige of local buses diminishes, and in most of Brooklyn and Queens until in Hempstead or Mount Vernon or Paterson they're largely used by poor and working-class Black and Latino people - and college students. Further afield, in towns like Kingston and Hartford they're mostly seen as welfare transportation for the homeless and the mentally disabled.

Let me be clear here: I'm not saying that the bus-riding experience here is necessarily any better (objectively, in terms of speed or comfort) than that in Garden City, or in Syracuse or Denver. I'm saying that here, better-off people are willing to ride the bus; any prestige that attaches to the bus is through association with these relatively prestigious riders. It's not "bull shit," and I'm willing to defend the validity of my observation against all comers.

Regardless, why might it be that upper-middle-class people are willing to ride the bus in New York? I think it's all relative. In Manhattan bus service is pretty frequent, and owning and maintaining a car is an expensive and exhausting proposition. Why would they prefer it to the subway? Because of the daylight and the relatively low historical crime rate, but also because the subway doesn't really work for travel within the Upper East Side or from Upper East to Upper West. The Second Avenue Subway, when it finally gets built, may change some of that.

This fact has strong implications for bus design and planning. The main one is that convenience, safety and reliability are much more important in attracting riders than any branding strategy. The branding on NYC buses is lame and always has been; the buses have "gotten people out of their cars" (more accurately, prevented them from shifting to cars) simply by being more convenient than a car - and that's more due to the relative lack of car subsidies than anything the buses have done. Want successful buses? Tear down the bypasses and tear up the parking lots.

The other is that prestigious associations are the best marketing strategy, and we already have that in NYC. NYC Transit is wasting precious money and effort in branding its "Select Bus" routes. Forget the fancy paint job; people will ride the bus if it's more convenient. They know it's good enough for the rich folks on Madison Avenue, so why wouldn't it be good for them? More importantly, don't think you can skimp on real, honest improvements in convenience, safety and reliability and make up for it through branding. New Yorkers have seen it all.

I recently attended a neighborhood screening of A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions from Curitiba, Brazil, sponsored by the West Queens Greens. I've had some interest in Curitiba, particularly in their bus rapid transit system, so I wanted to find out more.

I'd already heard about the dedicated right of way and the prepayment system. One of the ideas that struck me most was this simple-sounding one: the buses are operated by ten separate companies, which are paid by the kilometer. After seeing the mess in Santo Domingo that is at least partially the result of transit systems that pays operators by the passenger, I was intrigued by a potential solution. A report from the Institute for Transportation Development Policy (PDF, Google Cache) explains why:

By paying bus operating companies by the kilometer and tightly regulating where the buses stop, the chaotic behavior at the curb lane is removed, freeing up road space for mixed traffic. Since some buses have platform level boarding doors (with no steps down), it is impossible to discharge or board passengers except at the station. Thus, this can help alleviate the problem of frequent and sudden stops that result in more congestion and potential accidents, as well as picking up and leaving passengers in unsafe areas (such as the middle of the street). Private bus operators are generally contracted to operate the system, and their profits are fairly secure because they are paid by the kilometer.

And there, in one swell foop, is a move that would tremendously improve the transit experience in Santo Domingo, Weehawken and many other places where the anxiety of private bus operators puts passengers at risk. A bit of thought indicates that it's easier said than done, however. A report from the WorldWatch Institute (PDF) gives one reason why (Box 4-2, page 80):

For more than two decades, BRT failed to thrive outside Curitiba. Brazilian cities such as São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Porto Alegre built bus lanes superficially resembling Curitiba’s but without the key elements: prepaid platform-level boarding stations, structured bus routes, and bus priority through the city center. When experts considered why no city could replicate Curitiba’s success, they noted that its Mayor, Jaime Lerner, had been appointed during a dictatorship and had military backing to force private bus companies to reform. The municipal transit agency collected fares and paid bus companies by the kilometer. Bus operators in other Latin American cities blocked such changes.

That's one difficulty. I've also not yet found out how the Curitiba bus agency managed to prevent the opposite problem: if bus companies are paid by the kilometer, what's to stop them from slamming the doors in customers' faces, or not even stopping to pick up passengers? What's to prevent them from running hundreds of empty buses in the middle of the night? How did they verify that the companies actually drove those kilometers in the first place, in the days before GPS? These are not insurmountable problems, but if they're not dealt with properly they can bring down the whole system.

When I travel, I often find the transit systems of other places interesting, but Santo Domingo's was really fascinating. Here's a fairly large (over two million people, the second largest in the Caribbean after Havana), fairly dense (23,000 per square mile) city with low private car ownership (the country as a whole had only 4.4% in 2004). But there are no dedicated lanes for buses, and until this past Monday there was no rail transit. How do they get around?

Hardcore transportation development experts may chuckle, because there are many cities in this situation around the world. I've been to both Ciudad Juárez and Bamako, which both have over a million people, more than 10,000 people per square mile and no rail or dedicated bus transit. I didn't have much opportunity to study the transit system in those cities, but I was in Santo Domingo for over two weeks. Here's what I saw:

There are essentially six tiers of transport in Santo Domingo: private cars, reserved taxis, full-size buses, carros publicos, guaguas, motoconchos and non-motorized private transport (bicycles and pedestrians). I've listed them in approximate order of prestige.

Private cars and reserved taxis work very much like in New York: you have a car, or you call a cab. Similarly with bicycles and pedestrians, although I've written about the pedestrian situation in previous posts. Before the subway was built, the transit system was composed of the remaining categories.

Full-size buses are the most similar to buses in the US or Europe. The main operator in our neighborhood was Caribe Tours; they had marked bus stops and only stopped at those. They usually had working air conditioning, but I only rode them once, because I almost always saw them full of people standing. Just inside the door was a turnstile operated by a cashier who could make change; my son was allowed to ride free, but I was asked to lift him over the turnstile. The inside of the bus was clean, relatively new, and well-maintained.

On our second day in Santo Domingo, we went with one of my wife's colleagues to see if we could ride the subway. My wife's colleague spoke better Spanish than any of us, so she asked the soldiers guarding the entrance if we could go in. They politely said it was off limits and wouldn't open until November, so she asked them how we could get to the park we wanted to visit. They explained how to use the guaguas and which route to take, which was a big help and got us off on a good start.

Guaguas are minibuses (sometimes minivans) that operate on fixed routes. The price in June was twenty pesos, about sixty cents US. I never saw one with air conditioning, and in fact the side doors were always open. In addition to the driver they have a cobrador, which literally means "fare collector," but they also act as conductors and touts. The routes are confusing, so at any bus stop the cobrador will call out the major destinations. People can bring luggage on the guaguas; one time my son and I boarded a bus and came face to face with a chicken sitting on a man's lap.

The guaguas are operated by independent contractors, and their profits are proportional to the number of fares they collect. Because of this, drivers and cobradores will try to pack as many people into the bus as they possibly can. If there are only a few passengers, the driver will go slow, and the cobrador will jump down at every stop and shout the destinations at everyone nearby. Sometimes they will stop in between official bus stops to try and convince people to ride.

The most common guagua has three or four rows of seats in the back, with two seats on the left and one on the right. When these are full, there are jump seats that fold down in the aisle. This would be crowded enough, but the cobradores insist on squeezing five people into those four seats, no matter how fat, so that they can announce to potential passengers that "hay asientos!" If a passenger in the back seat has to get out, everyone in the jump seats in front has to stand up and move out of the way. There are also various jump seats mounted on the engine well, and then room for standees; if there are too many standees, the cobrador will ride hanging out the side door. Small children are expected to sit on laps whenever seats are scarce.

Because the guaguas can go slow when they're not full, and spend a lot of time loading and unloading, many people opt for the carros publicos. These are taxis (usually small Japanese sedans) that run on fixed routes. They cost thirty pesos (about ninety cents US), and have no cobradores, but the drivers of these will also try to fit as many people in as possible, to the point of having four or five people across in the back seat and two in the front, sitting on laps whenever possible. The advantage is that they fill up quicker, so they tend to spend less time fishing for passengers, loading and unloading.

The motoconchos have a similar advantage to the carros publicos, with even less room. These are motorcycles (or maybe scooters) that take passengers on the back. I never felt comfortable trying them.

For the first week I saw several minibuses passing by our hotel with doors closed and air conditioning on; they looked so comfortable compared to the guaguas we rode! They occasionally let passengers off at our stop, but never let anyone on. I asked around, but no one could tell me where to get them. Finally I went to the major bus transfer point on the Avenida Duarte, and found the answer. They were medium-distance buses going to and from towns an hour or two away. That's why they got the air conditioning, and that's why they couldn't pick up passengers within the city limits.

In another post, I'll explain why I think the case of Santo Domingo is relevant for us here in the US.

Being a transit geek and spending an inordinate amount of time reading Streetsblog, I'm well aware of the city of Curitiba, Brazil, famed as a pioneer of Bus Rapid Transit. I've even translated an article about Curitiba's plans to build an elevated metro instead of expanding their BRT system.

I was kind of amused, therefore, to hear the name of the city shouted out as I was boarding a crowded #7 train on Tuesday morning. A man boarding behind me shouted, "Eh Curitiba!" and a woman at another door responded "Saudades do brasil!"

It turned out that they knew each other, and were clearly tourists, losing their balance on the subway and taking pictures of each other, but I noticed another couple chuckling and exchanging glances. A few minutes later I heard that couple quietly talking to each other in Portuguese: they too were Brazilian, but didn't know the others.

I was curious: why had the man shouted out the name of a Brazilian city? What did he think of Curitiba's BRT, and of the 7 train? I didn't work up the courage to ask, and in fact I must confess I eavesdropped, although often it's not hard to eavesdrop on Brazilians. In fact, the larger group heard the couple speaking Portuguese and started up a conversation as the train headed into the tunnel at Hunterspoint Avenue. Here's what I was able to pick up:

The couple was from Rio de Janeiro and had been living in New York for five years. The other group was from the state of Paraná (of which Curitiba is the capital), but not from Curitiba itself. They were clearly tourists, but based on the code-switching of a boy in the group ("Olha o bridge, pai!") had probably been living somewhere in the US for a couple of years.

Based on this, my guess is that the man's invocation of Curitiba was a reference to the "ultra-crush capacities" often mentioned when people question the applicability of the Curitiba model to North American cities. Being from the countryside of Paraná, when he and his friends squeezed their way onto the #7 train the first thing they thought of was being packed on a bus in Curitiba. If the Flushing Line at rush hour is like Curitiba now, and people want to build more BRT, it doesn't exactly make me hopeful for the future of transit in New York City.

(Photo from The Oxford and Chilterns Bus Page.)

I'm writing this from a bus. Nothing particularly special about bringing a laptop on a bus, but in this case my laptop has full AC power from an outlet under the window seat. I was hoping to be able to post it via on-bus broadband wifi, but that doesn't seem to be working. I have been able to pick up wifi signals from nearby buses, however. The bus is new, comfortable and spacious - particularly spacious because I'm sitting near the wheelchair spot.

You may have heard of the Bolt Buses; this is not one of those, but one of its inspirations. I'm in Barton, Oxfordshire, on the Airline bus from Oxford to Heathrow. On the way here I took the train, but I figured I'd try the bus on the way back. The trip takes almost the same amount of time - an hour and a half - but is cheaper: eighteen pounds, or about thirty-six dollars, versus twenty-two pounds and change for the train. The bus is direct; for the train you have to go into London and take another train back out to Heathrow. After the central bus station there were three stops leading out to a park-and-ride on the outskirts of town.

I actually missed the 10AM bus, but I'm not worried about missing my flight; I just took the 10:20. The frequency of the buses is about the same as the trains: every twenty minutes in the mornings and evenings, every two hours from 10PM to 4AM, and every half hour in between. That's seven days a week - but on weekends the morning service starts at 6AM instead of 5AM. There are also buses to Gatwick Airport, and express buses direct to London every 5-10 minutes - the latter operated by two competing companies. This bus is about three-quarters full.

While in Oxford I stayed in a room above High Street, one of the main streets in town. Unlike a similar room in the US, there were no honking cars under my window because that part of High Street is restricted to buses and bicycles, and there was a steady stream of them until late in the night. The buses were mostly hybrid, so I didn't experience the noise and pollution that I used to associate with buses. There were the airport buses, express buses, long-distance buses and local buses. Now, here on the M40 highway, there are numerous buses traveling in both directions. As far as I could tell, they were all privately operated by for-profit companies.

I had come here expecting a fairly limited transportation system, based in part on Kingdom by the Sea, Paul Theroux's Thatcher-era exploration of the United Kingdom by train, bus, foot and ferry. Judging by what I've seen this week, England seems to be recovering from some of that. It obviously has a long way to go - only a few of the eliminated train lines have been reactivated - but public transit in Oxford looks very healthy indeed.