Forum Overview :: Tansin A. Darcos's Alter Ego :: Public transit, Europe vs. North America

[quote name="Commander Tansin A. Darcos"]In Europe, public transit - buses, ltrolleys (what we call "light rail" in the US), and heavy rail (subways) - are considered to be an important link in the entire transportation system of a community or country. Public transit is clean, efficient and service is very frequent. Now, in the United States, public transit is seen as the "bastard stepchild" of transportation solutions. Often underfunded or considered merely something for poor people to use, it is often badly maintained, filty, and either very infrequent service or inadequate service. But recommend expanding roads for more cars is almost always met with approval (until some jurisdictions discover the high cost of automobile-centric traffic, and sometimes realize they can't afford to do road widening.) Now, in some (rare) places, where there is a lot of commuter traffic, there will be good transit options. In Los Angeles, the Wilshire corridor is one such place. Wilshire Blvd., which runs from Downtown Los Angeles all the way acros town and into Santa Monica, is one of, if not the, busiest transit corridors in California. When I lived there in the 1970s and 1980s, the local bus operator, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California_Rapid_Transit_District">Southern California Rapid Transit District</a>, usually referred to as RTD, operated three bus routes along Wilshire Blvd, the 20, 21, and 22. All of them ran up Wilshire as far as Century City (the part of LA where the "Nakatomi Building" was located in the movie <i>Die Hard</i>.) At this point is where the three routes diverge: one turns off to go to Century City, the other route turns the other way and goes to the campu of UCLA. The third continues all the way to Santa Monica. Now, if you needed to catch one of these buses, you needed to be at the stop, because the bus <u>will not</u> stop for stragglers. It can't; it would block the next bus. The 20, 21, and 22 ran <i>six minute service</i> from downtown to the divergent pointm weekdays. So, you're thinking that there's a bus every six minutes, that's pretty good. That's not correct. Each route runs six minute service, staggered at 2 minute intervals. That's righ, for the major part of the route, the bus ran <i>every two minutes</i> from 6am to 6pm on weekdays. From 6PM to midnigh, they ran every 30 minutes (which means a 10 minute wait), and from midnight to 6am and on weekends, they ran once an hour (20 minute service). These three lines carried enough passengers to support 30 other routes. Sometimes transit service is good, but here in the US, good public transit is rare.[/quote]