Friday, June 24, 2011

What is the limit for buses on the Douglas Street corridor?

The LRT is being proposed in large part because there is a claim that buses could not handle the volume, but is that really the case?

We have a nearby example of a bus route that can handle more than 50,000 passenger trips in a day - the 99 B Line in Vancouver.   The bus runs along a route that is busier than any street or road in the CRD and manages to travel 13 km in 42 minutes in traffic and 30 minutes late at night when there is no traffic.

What we have is a clear example that buses can carry more than enough passengers and can do it reasonably quickly.  

The B Lines have managed to bring bus rapid transit to the lower mainland without needing to build a lot of transit only lanes and without having to spend a fortune of money.   The example would be easily replicated here in the CRD.

If our goal is to be able to move a significant number of people cheaply and efficiently via transit, creating our own B Line would be by far the best option.    If our goal is to make travelling in private cars harder and impose a larger tax burden on home owners, then the LRT is the best option.

I have yet to see any data from any source at any time that shows the LRT makes any sense for this region.   The report BC Transit released has assertions and errors in which mean no one could work from it to make a good decision.   BC Transit needs to show their work and explain how they came up with their numbers and the data supports.   I know they will not do this because the data does not exist.

If the report had worked from real data the only answer would have been to introduce B Line type buses in this region.

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