Fresh Start
Banned
I'm sorry but I must refute several of the claims being made in this post.
No, you do not move on to LRT if regular bus headways narrow. You implement BRT in a dedicated ROW with articulated buses commanding the fleet. I know many here have come to believe that riding aboard a cram-packed vehicle is a norm but it should not be so. By awaiting every 5 minutes for a LRT tram we're being habituated to accept that reality and not strive for better. If any of you use GO buses, you'd know that that's the standard for BRT local operators should aim for. Big spacious seating areas, limited stops, dedicated ROW (in GO's case HOV lanes). Finch is a great case example for where BRT is suficient and LRT would fail. 77 second headways during rush hour means you put the buses in a right, place compartmentalized vehicles down the route which automatically nixes a third of buses on the roads, buses that have a carrying capacity able to match that of 2-car LRVs. You put in all-door boarding, you give it queue jumps and priority at intersections. Everything we've been duped into thinking cannot be achieved with regular "old smoggy" buses... CAN!
The Orion VII buses cost around $488,000 apiece. A standard diesel bus might cost $250,000 to $280,000. Where are you getting these million-dollar bus figures from? It is no lie though that the new low-floorTransit City LRT trams will cost a cool $5 million a piece, now today. That's 10x the difference. Also life expectancy of hybrid as a standard is 20 years but we've still got buses manufactured in the 1970s running along our streets so so much for discrediting bus transit in that regard. And since cities are always proactively buying buses, the upcoming costs won't be as high as you're predicting. You do neglect however that LRT currently costs 80%-90% more than buses so in the future that gap will widen out even further to about $10 million/LRV vs. $1.5 million/bus. That's why so many cities turn to BRT, not just because they have a lower intial cost but because the operation and maintenance cost of LRT is so much higher than BRT that its impossible for the transit operator to ever see a return on investment. Curitiba, Brisbane and Bogota are making a profit and the surpluses are going towards other public works projects such as the creation of crosstown bike lanes in those cities. TransMilenio has proved that BRT can carry up to 45,000 passengers PER HOUR in each direction (not per day) - comfortably and efficiently, and at a fraction of the cost of LRT (4 to 20 times less). SOURCE: http://www.itdp.org/index.php/microsite/brt_planning_guide/
The price of fuel always fluccuates, it's been so since the 1950s. Right now the cost of oil in Toronto is a mere 98.7 cents per litre. We're not to use that as a negative against bus transit which last I checked comprises 100% of Mississauaga Transit's fleet and operations as well 87% of the TTC's. Buses are perpetually the unsung heroes of mass transit despite not being prone to random blackouts and line closures like some other modes. If we invest in ways to make their viable more palatable to the masses, the masses will come in droves to ride aboard them.
Furthermore, why do you assume that steps aren't proactively being made to outpace our dependency on diesel to fuel buses?
British Columbia right now is developing a hydrogen bus fleet that will be even more energy efficient with an even longer shelf-life than hybrid electric. Why can't Toronto be innovative in this regard as well? Now that the newness of CNG technology was worn off prices for these vehicles are nearing parity with hybrid electric so it'd be very affordable for Toronto and environs to consider it, surely ahead of trams it cannot afford, delaying delivery times to start serving the transit using public.
Studies show that composite average costs per mile to operate a standard bus actually goes down over time with miles per year estimates of 10,000 = 62.0 cents; 15,000 = 52.2 cents; 20,000 = 47.7 cents. So by the 20,000 mileage mark buses can average costs per day x 365 days of $4,303 - $6,763. To use American statistics, Energy Information Administration on June 26, 2009, stated that the amount of fuel comsumed annually by public transit buses is peanuts compared to amount of fuel its usage has saved. The diesel chugged by 480,000 school buses that each carry an average of 54 students per bus produced a total annual car fuel COST savings by students riding school buses of $8,243,039,841 and a total U. S. savings in fuel cost per year of $6,097,028,413. Now you might say that such results could be duplicated by mass rail transit. However rail transit is very expensive to implement, operate and modernize as the system starts to age.
Which leads finally to this point that everyone I've debated with thus far can't seem to grasp. Evidence suggests that BRT can offer overall cost savings, despite its higher operating costs over all but the lowest range of capacity. Given that LRV incurs higher energy cost since it is larger and is more prone to failure, even when the driver's salary is about same the evidence demonstrates that BRT can cost as low as $90 versus $250 for LRT in daily O & M costs. And BRT can cover 10 times the surface area, meaning more people become dependent on the service over LRT which is limited to a set number of kilometre down select corridors that people from afar must transfer onto. Just thought I'd give some balance to the egregiously lop-sided LRT v. BRT debate.
