Comment by laurencerowe
2 days ago
> A bus only lane is also a vehicle lane that is sitting empty a good part of the time.
While that bus lane may look empty most of the time it likely carries far more people per hour than the congested car lane next to it.
> While the Lincoln Tunnel’s car lane can only move 3,000 people per hour in each car lane, its bus lane moves 30,000 people per hour.
https://transalt.org/blog/bus-commutes-are-significantly-lon...
I think you've been lied to with that highly misleading statistic. The 3000 for cars is actual (though I'm skeptical of that now too), while the 30,000 for buses is theoretical. "While a typical traffic lane carries approximately 3,000 people in 2,000 cars each hour, the XBL lane can carry over 30,000 people in 700 buses during that same time period." http://fourthplan.org/action/highway-congestion
That doesn't seem unreasonable for the Lincoln tunnel. Rush hour buses are pretty full, 50 on each seems pretty reasonable - everyone got a seat!
> Now the XBL handles 1,850 buses that carry more than 70,000 passengers from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. each weekday, which comes to 600 buses an hour. The bus lane operates at its maximum capacity for 90 minutes of its four-hour operation.
https://www.govtech.com/transportation/fed-funds-study-of-ai...
Here in San Francisco along Mission St we have about 20 articulated buses an hour in each direction. These have a planning capacity of 94, 85% load standard 80, 125% crush capacity 119 according to https://www.reddit.com/r/AskSF/comments/445xdg/what_is_the_m....
While mostly a bus and taxi lane Mission St allows local traffic within each block so buses are still a minority of the vehicles in the lane.
Meanwhile the main 2 lanes in each direction street nearby has 1020 vehicles an hour in the peak direction. At 1.6 people per vehicle that's only about 830 people per lane at rush hour. So even at 'standard capacity' the buses in a regular city street not completely dedicated bus lane carry double the number of people. (From experience I suspect it is somewhat more than that.)
700 busses per hour is a BIT unreasonable.
That's a bus every 5.1 seconds. In a single lane. (and at 30mph it'll take 1.5 of that 5 seconds just for the bus itself to pass. That's very marginal braking distance).
Also, 1850 / 4 is 453, not 600.
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