To Save Money on Marketing Buses, Try Running Enough Buses

I like bus improvements. I hate Governor Cuomo's terrible proposal to run an elevated "AirTrain" from Willets Point to LaGuardia Airport. So you'd expect that I would like Josh Barro's post last week arguing that we should improve the buses to LaGuardia instead of building the AirTrain. He writes, "Transit agencies are spending millions of dollars on new rail infrastructure that is no faster than existing bus service, simply because riders perceive a train as better than a bus." And then he goes on to make a nice argument that we should tell these poor deluded people that the train is actually not better.

This is wrong nationwide, but it's wrong on even more levels in the case of transit to LaGuardia. This is because people are already riding the bus to LaGuardia. On the first weekend of the M60 Select Bus Service I rode the bus, and it was packed. Since then I've ridden it twice more, and both times it was crush-loaded. The Q70, Q72 and Q48 aren't quite as heavily packed, but they have very healthy ridership. The Q70 probably gets even higher ridership than I give below, because it had only been in service for three months by the end of 2013.

Route	M60	Q48	Q72	Q70
2013 average weekday ridership	17,013	2790	5764	3716 (August 2014)*
2015 weekday buses	139	62	71	96
Average riders per bus	122	45	81	39
Loading capacity	112	70	70	70
Seated capacity	62	40	40	40

The M60 is packed, and the other buses are pretty full. If I were wealthy, or if my employer were paying, I would take taxis over the M60 almost all the time. I would probably take taxis over the Q72 or the Q48 as well; the Q70 experience is the only one that has been close to comfortable for me.

Why does the MTA not run enough M60 buses to bring the loads down to reasonably comfortable levels? I have no idea. but imagine that someone did what Barro suggests and spent a ton of money on "marketing" these buses. Imagine if that marketing succeeded in attracting the 70-90% of people who currently arrive by taxi or private car (PDF). The MTA would not be able to serve the people that they attract. They would have a horrible time and take a taxi from then on out.

Barro frames this with a quote from the National Bus Rapid Transit Institute, "Bus-based public transit in the United States suffers from an image problem." Yes, the BRT people keep repeating that buses are just as good as trains, and everyone just needs to be shown the light, but notice two things. First, the actual report (PDF) that Barro drew the quote from gives a much more nuanced picture and hardly makes a strong case that marketing is all you need. Second, this report and Barro's post, and this lame entry from EMBARQ a couple weeks ago, are just three more in a long line of bus scoldings where someone patronizingly tells you to love your bus without showing any interest in taking the bus themselves.

When Barro first tweeted the link to his post, I responded by telling him that the M60 is frequently packed. His response to me was simply, "even more reason not to spend $1 billion on a train." Well, I don't know about a billion dollars, but as Stephen Smith frequently reminds us, high bus ridership is actually one indicator that a potential train line is worth spending money on.

What bothers me most about Barro's piece is how since he posted it on February 10, several people have uncritically cited it as either an argument for more bus marketing, or an argument against subway expansion. It is neither, because it is based on inaccurate information. I hope that Barro will post something correcting those mistaken impressions as soon as he can.

* Thanks to @AHInQueens for the Q70 ridership figure.

Transit setback roundup: I can't even

These past few weeks have been discouraging for me as a transit advocate. From almost every^* level of government I've heard elected (and appointed) officials promoting "roads and bridges," or crappy, uninspiring, unproductive transit, or opposing reasonable transit improvements.

• President Obama going on and on about "roads and bridges," and "infrastructure," and "choice."
• Senators Schumer and Blumenthal bloviating about the safety of Metro-North, without mentioning the safety of driving.
• NEW! Representative Maloney also ignoring the possibility of holding drivers accountable, exploits the tragedy to push $100 million for Positive Train Control upgrades … reallocated from where, exactly?
• Governor Cuomo proposing a budget full of transit raids, park-and-rides, and a mostly useless AirTrain from Willets Point to La Guardia. Oh, and taking $1.3 billion in mortgage fraud settlements for the Tappan Zee Bridge.
• State Senator Gianaris bashing plans to increase subway service to his district based on decades-old conversations.
• Assemblymember Simanowitz and Councilemember Lancman coming out swinging against Main Street Select Bus plan.
• Mayor de Blasio with a transportation plan based on ferries without feeder buses.
• Members of Manhattan Community Board 8 opposing bus bulbs.

* I say almost because I haven't heard anything stupid from a local congressional representative recently. Added: I just heard from Maloney! To the contrary, Jerry Nadler's efforts to promote the Cross-Harbor Rail Freight Tunnel project seem to be making progress.

So much crap, so much of it things that transit advocates have discussed for so long, I feel exhausted thinking about writing more than a sentence about each one. Thanks to Streetsblog for going into the details in many of these so that I don't have to; you can donate here. Also thanks to Ben Kabak, Yonah Freemark and Alon Levy for taking the time to call bullshit on Cuomo's AirTrain proposal, and Ben again for calling bullshit on de Blasio's ferry proposal.