{"id":84,"date":"2009-04-06T00:56:27","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T05:53:53","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-04-06T00:56:27","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T05:56:27","slug":"better-buses-signal-priority","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/ftn\/2009\/04\/better-buses-signal-priority\/","title":{"rendered":"Better Buses: Signal Priority"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rapid <\/a><\/div>\n

I recently got back from a trip to Albuquerque, and had a chance to ride the Rapid Ride<\/a> buses which have been speeding bus passengers along the Central Avenue route since 2004. They use 60-foot articulated buses like here in New York, but theirs are low-floor and have three sets of doors instead of two. Getting off at the Frontier restaurant (announced by name, presumably sponsored, awesome green chile cheeseburgers), a woman tried to exit the front door to retrieve her bike, but the driver told her she had to exit through the middle doors. That would definitely speed boarding, as I discussed<\/a> the other day.<\/p>\n

Another feature that can speed the buses is signal priority: traffic lights will stay yellow a little longer for the bus, or change to green a bit sooner. I’d heard about it but never seen it in action. However, I had sure spent my share of time waiting at stoplights during my two years in Albuquerque! This week, I noticed several points when the buses went through lights that seemed to stay yellow for an awfully long time. I remember hardly any red lights, but those few seemed to be over pretty quick. Mainly, I just had the impression that the bus got from downtown to campus or Old Town a lot quicker than I remembered from 1999.<\/p>\n

The third feature is that the Rapid Ride routes are limited-stop, like our limited routes in New York. Both of the current routes have corresponding local routes for people who want the intermediate stops.<\/p>\n

Building on the success of the Central Avenue “Red Line,” in 2007 the city inaugurated the “Blue Line” along Coors, I-40 and Lomas. I had dinner with a friend who lives in the West Mesa sprawl and was the last person I would have expected to see on the bus. But she told me that she now takes the Blue Line to campus and has been saving lots of money.<\/p>\n

I’d love to see signal priority implemented here in New York. PlaNYC recommended it for the Q18 bus to Astoria, which is a good pilot route. All I know is that I’d get around town a lot faster if buses didn’t spend so much time at red lights.<\/p>\n

Again, this is a feature that is often touted as “BRT,” but it doesn’t have to be implemented as part of a BRT package. Rapid Ride has several of the fingerprints of BRT consultants (name, logo, limited stops, low-floor articulated buses) but not exclusive right-of-way or prepayment.<\/p>\n

I honestly think my friend would have taken it even without the name or logo. The speed was obviously a big factor, but convenience was too: when I lived there, getting to the West Mesa from campus involved taking two local buses and transferring; the express buses ran only a few times a day. Now the Rapid Ride Blue runs every 15-20 minutes until 6PM, and every half hour after that until 9PM. She also mentioned that the free bus passes<\/a> for UNM faculty, staff and students were a big factor in getting her to try the service. I honestly don’t know why more colleges don’t offer free bus passes; it’s cheaper than building parking lots!<\/p>\n

Photo: wastemanagementdude \/ Flickr<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently got back from a trip to Albuquerque, and had a chance to ride the Rapid Ride buses which have been speeding bus passengers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/ftn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/ftn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/ftn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/ftn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/ftn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/ftn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/ftn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/ftn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grieve-smith.com\/ftn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}