> A single bus creates as much congestion as around 15 cars. It's a fairly well-known result in urban planning.
I've never heard anything of the sort and I don't believe it at face value - that's roughly the length of a football field. Perhaps this is true in a specific area with terrible bus infrastructure but where I live, and the majority of places where I've been, bus stops are off the main road so they never block traffic.
> I've seen buses blocking multiple cars for a traffic light cycle because buses take so much space.
As I said, a consequence of bad infrastructure, not an inherent flaw of this mode of transportation. And even if some cars get held up that doesn't necessarily mean that the throughput has been affected - in heavy traffic this gap will be filled by other cars.
This table lists "Coach (bus)" at 27g CO2e/passenger-km. I don't know why buses are listed three times and they don't clarify, but it sure seems like the figure for passenger EVs represents the average for all types of trips whilst bus service is broken down into long-distance (coach) and local city service, making direct comparison impossible.
Additionally, carbon footprint is one small part of pollution and arguably it's not even the most important one. Ultrafine particles, PM2.5, and noise pollution matter just as much to the local population.
> I've never heard anything of the sort and I don't believe it at face value
Perhaps you should stop listening to propaganda from the ubranists and start digging past the images of happy smiling cyclists riding the bike lanes in perfect weather with the sun shining on them?
> that's roughly the length of a football field.
Yep. That's how bad buses are. Want another fun fact? One bus does the same amount of road damage as 1000-5000 cars. If you have a bus lane, look at it and you'll see that it is much more damaged compared to the nearby lanes, even though it carries far fewer vehicles.
> As I said, a consequence of bad infrastructure, not an inherent flaw of this mode of transportation.
Yes. A well-designed city like Houston will have enough road space so that buses are do not affect the traffic disproportionately. But then it means that such a city does not _need_ buses.
> This table lists "Coach (bus)" at 27g CO2e/passenger-km
It's a UK term for long-distance buses. Yes, they are indeed more efficient than cars. If you can get a bus to drive at freeway speeds without frequent stops, then it becomes extremely efficient.
> Additionally, carbon footprint is one small part of pollution and arguably it's not even the most important one. Ultrafine particles, PM2.5, and noise pollution matter just as much to the local population.
Ok. Let's talk about PM25. If we're talking about the _brake_ _dust_ then buses are absolutely the worst. They emit way more dust per passenger. But I don't believe that this is a problem long-term, EVs barely use frictional brakes and future EV buses should also be able to mitigate the brake wear.
For _tire_ wear, it's more complex. There are no good studies of tire wear that control for the average speed. In most studies, tire wear is simply calculated by weighing the tires and dividing the lost mass by the number of miles traveled. A few studies that tried to measure the direct particulate emissions near highway exits produced results with error bars that make them useless.
Noise pollution is a solved problem, btw. EVs are now required to make _artificial_ noise because they are so quiet. Ditto for brake dust, regenerative braking takes care of that.
> Perhaps you should stop listening to propaganda from the ubranists
I know this site is US-centric but excuse me if I don't take anti-public-transport propaganda at face value. I've lived in Europe all of my life and I've been to major US cities on the west coast so I've seen great public transport as well as the car-centric culture with my own eyes.
> Yep. That's how bad buses are.
No, that claim is ridiculous and obviously incorrect - It's laughable, really. Care to [try to] substantiate it?
> One bus does the same amount of road damage as 1000-5000 cars.
Sure, buses do cause more road damage than personal vehicles, but that's hardly a significant factor. Care to list all of the externalities for personal cars? Does parking build and maintain itself? How about all of the opportunity cost for space occupied by parked cars? Injuries caused by impaired drivers?
> A well-designed city like Houston will have enough road space so that buses are do not affect the traffic disproportionately. But then it means that such a city does not _need_ buses.
I have no idea what you meant by this. That doesn't logically follow.
> I've lived in Europe all of my life and I've been to major US cities on the west coast so I've seen great public transport as well as the car-centric culture with my own eyes.
So you're telling me that you've never seen a well-run people-oriented city like Houston?
And I grew up in Europe. I got my driving license around the age of 25, and my first car at 29.
> No, that claim is ridiculous and obviously incorrect - It's laughable, really. Care to [try to] substantiate it?
See?
> Care to list all of the externalities for personal cars? Does parking build and maintain itself? How about all of the opportunity cost for space occupied by parked cars? Injuries caused by impaired drivers?
Care to list all the externalities of buses? Do bus drivers spring out of sea foam and dissolve after the shift? How about all of the opportunity cost for people who can't make commutes that are forbidden by the bus network? The entire human lifetimes wasted every day while waiting for buses?
> Injuries caused by impaired drivers?
Self-driving solved it?
> I have no idea what you meant by this. That doesn't logically follow.
If buses don't affect your traffic flow, then you have enough road space so that residents can just use cars.
I've never heard anything of the sort and I don't believe it at face value - that's roughly the length of a football field. Perhaps this is true in a specific area with terrible bus infrastructure but where I live, and the majority of places where I've been, bus stops are off the main road so they never block traffic.
> I've seen buses blocking multiple cars for a traffic light cycle because buses take so much space.
As I said, a consequence of bad infrastructure, not an inherent flaw of this mode of transportation. And even if some cars get held up that doesn't necessarily mean that the throughput has been affected - in heavy traffic this gap will be filled by other cars.
> For example: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint
This table lists "Coach (bus)" at 27g CO2e/passenger-km. I don't know why buses are listed three times and they don't clarify, but it sure seems like the figure for passenger EVs represents the average for all types of trips whilst bus service is broken down into long-distance (coach) and local city service, making direct comparison impossible.
Additionally, carbon footprint is one small part of pollution and arguably it's not even the most important one. Ultrafine particles, PM2.5, and noise pollution matter just as much to the local population.