Comment by xp84
15 hours ago
Having lived in SF I've seen many cycles where the SFMTA says "We'd like to make (insert any changes)..." and the 'advocates' immediately come out of the woodwork to make the argument you're making, about how walking another block or two is impossible for some constituents.
Fundamentally as another commenter here said, a bus "can't wear two hats." In most large US cities, the bus, and sometimes the subway (if one exists), is mostly a welfare program, and its target demographic is the elderly, the poor, and the homeless. Two of those groups are rarely in any hurry.
The fact that urban professionals also rely on transit to actually get to work is not very much considered in the decisions ultimately made. This is why any changes to it are so fraught.
To actually serve both populations, you'd need to have two independent systems, but that would represent a tremendous amount of incremental cost. That's why they used to have (do they still? I'd guess not, post-pandemic) buses paid for by Apple, Google, Facebook etc. to shuttle people to work -- it's something the city government could never accomplish because the choices that make transit useful to those with jobs make it problematic for the other group.
The US already has a completely separate model where we send yellow busses to pick up and drop off school kids which involve buses going to a large fraction of US homes 4 times a day 180 days a year for minimal expenses that’s free at the point of use.
Nothing stops you have adding express bus routes, thus allowing busses to work for yet another population. Further, bus networks are inherently cheap as long as they see reasonable ridership numbers it’s more economically efficient than cars.
Unfortunately DC found out something does stop you from doing that, namely activists who flood your public meeting and say that a new bus line designed to meet the needs of young urban professionals is a gentrification accelerant and must be prevented.
In Seattle large employers still run their own private busses. This has been going on since long before the pandemic. These busses often tie in to existing transit options. They take you from the office to a neighborhood transit hub.