Saumik Narayanan•3 years ago The biggest problem with our current transit system is the lack of bus frequency. Most of our routes are stuck at 30 or 60-minute headways, which is unacceptable. It's claimed that the reason for this is the operator shortage.However, by working to improve our existing bus infrastructure to improve bus speeds, we can massively improve the usefulness of our transit system, even considering the labor shortage. Consider that if we were able to improve bus speeds by 30%, we can correspondingly increase frequencies by 30%, leading to a 69% (i.e. 130%*130%) improvement in our system, without having to hire a single extra operator!We should focus on building bus infrastructure like transit signal priority, bus queue jumps, off-board fare collection (or free fares), and stop consolidation along our highest ridership corridors. These measures alone will get us most of the way to a 30% increase in bus speeds and 30% increase in frequency, as shown in other cities. These four initiatives are very cheap to build and will lead to very little backlash politically.Dedicated bus lanes are even more useful, but require more political care. Ideally, these should be implemented using tactical trial periods, rather than drawn-out expensive studies. Because our road system was designed for a city with twice our current population, we have a lot of excess road capacity which can be used for bus lanes.We should implement these kinds of bus infrastructure on our highest ridership transit corridors, e.g. Grand, Kingshighway, Hampton, Goodfellow, Gravois, Broadway, Chippewa, Lindell, MLK, Natural Bridge, and Florissant. We've already decided to dedicate lanes along Jefforson to transit, and we should continue along this path.By focusing on building a network of efficient and useful bus routes which cover the city, we will massively improve the throughput of our roads, reduce carbon emissions, improve safety, and help our citizens who cannot afford to drive.
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