Comment by esikich
20 hours ago
That's cool, but suburban US cities don't have a city center. It's a sprawl of strip malls. There's no route that can solve this problem. Cities would need to be redesigned from the ground up.
20 hours ago
That's cool, but suburban US cities don't have a city center. It's a sprawl of strip malls. There's no route that can solve this problem. Cities would need to be redesigned from the ground up.
"Suburban cities" is a very funny concept to me. Typically the suburbs are not a part of the city.
"Transplant this pattern onto a suburb and it breaks." Well, we're talking about the city, aren't we?
Let's pick a city, I'll let you choose, and tell me which suburb within that city is a classic example of the pattern you feel is commonplace. Then we can discuss a concrete plan.
> "Suburban cities" is a very funny concept to me.
An example near and dear to me is Portland. Although there is an urban core, so some people would claim it is not in fact a suburban city, the footprint of the city is dominated by single family homes. And generally not the endless modern tract variety, either.
Most of the area of London is family homes. It is surrounded by commuter towns too.
The difference might be that the suburbs and commuter towns have local centres.
People still use cars, but they use them less and for shorter journeys.
Appleton, WI.
You've got:
Grand Chute, Kimberly, Little Chute, Combined Locks, Harrison, Fox Crossing, Greenville, etc.
Show me where you think the main hub of this area is that many people all want to go to that a train or more unused city buses will solve.
Appleton has 75,000 people. I guess under some definitions that's a city.
I'd focus on the college corridor. (Airport, Fox River Mall), Appleton Transit Center, Downtown Appleton, Lawrence university, maybe a little east. Theres some decent anchors along that line, but it might make sense to deviate from college ave to hit them.
Because this is a small town, this route is small. Probably need only 4-5 buses in active revenue service to achieve those 15 minute time tables.
Then I'd probably prioritize an intersecting route from Richmond, Oneida, and Memorial.
Both would need light and right of way changes to prioritize bus traffic.
Route 15, which strongly parallels my suggested route, Carries 15% of the whole transit network's total load and is considered a high revenue route despite only hourly service. This route heavily serves workers and students.
The route was decreased in frequency not due to flagging demand, but because they could not sufficiently staff the route. Their general manager is quoted as saying, "we are having trouble finding enough drivers to drive the buses". They lost like a third of their drivers over the past five years.
If the route was staffed and had priority right of way, making it a key means to get across town, you'd definitely see riders come back.