The solution is not to build elevated platforms for your special low-floor buses — it it to RUN MORE BUSES. The bunching problem is alleviated by having routes that aren’t 100 miles long. It is totally not complicated, because it is how buses work in every city in which they actually work.

I grew up riding the bus every day, in Boston and New York. I lived here for almost a decade without a car — without a license! — I really wanted to make it work. But it is just impossible.

BRT might improve things. But it is a complicated and expensive answer to an easy question. AC Transit needs to spend less money on trips to Belgium, “transit rodeos”, and elaborate schemes to destroy every major street in the east bay, and just run more buses. Also, a remedial route design class or two.

The stations are from the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, Build Alternative 1. See the map on page 2-13. Note that, as I mentioned in my analysis, I am discussing the section from Berkeley to downtown Oakland. Yes, the route is slightly more divergent in East Oakland. I stand by my original 0.8 mile claim under its stated constraints.

Remember that the BRT system is an “express” arrangement, and that you’ll have to walk from the station to your destination, just like BART. Consider the Children’s Hospital example. From Macarthur BART to the front door, it’s 0.6 miles. From 49th and Telegraph, which appears to be approximately the location of the proposed BRT stop, 0.4 miles. Ooops, it’s an 0.2 mile net increase, I was off by a tenth of a mile. Apologies.

As for the other examples you mentioned, you can cherry pick exact locations to support either side of the argument. For example, eating at Don Tomas versus Koryo in Temescal. Just remember, you’ll have to walk from BRT too.

As for your “9 buses instead of 1″ argument, do you honestly believe that there will be only one bus operating along the entire BRT route at any given time? Please, detail, with some estimates, why the “little express loops” solution would be so much less cost effective than the BRT solution.

There are obvious advantages to any solution that doesn’t require new infrastructure. First, you eliminate the disruption from construction and modification of existing traffic flow. Second, you can spend all that money on something else.

I don’t disagree that the BRT would be a improvement for some amount of people that frequent the Telegraph corridor. I’m just not sure that it’s a wise expenditure of all that money, given the overall benefit received, especially when framed by the potential traffic/parking disruptions.

First of all, people don’t travel as the crow flies. They travel on roads.

I can’t figure out where you’re coming up with those distance numbers. How did you decide where the stations are? AC Transit hasn’t even selected an alignment alternative, let alone placed stations. And it’s fairly obvious just looking at the corridor (PDF!) that your 0.8 mile claim simply isn’t true. 98th and International, for example, on the proposed BRT route, is over a mile and a half from any BART station.

Traveling along actual streets, Children’s Hospital is .71 miles from MacArthur BART and 1.04 miles from Ashby BART. Dona Tomas is .6 miles from MacArthur BART. Amoeba Records is .98 miles from Berkeley BART. Koreana Plaza is .43 miles from 19th St. BART.

In any case, only someone who doesn’t use transit would think it’s reasonable to expect people to walk a mile or more to get to a station, then walk another mile to get to one’s destination, then repeat the same thing for the return trip. The 1 line is not redundant with BART in any meaningful sense. If riders thought that it was, it wouldn’t be one of the most popular bus routes in the entire Bay Area.

As for the idea of using “little express loops” from BART stations, such a system would hardly be more cost effective. I shudder to think about the operating cost of running shuttles (to where, exactly?) every 5 minutes from every single BART station along the line – yikes! How does it make sense to pay for 9 buses instead of 1? Additionally, I’m at a complete loss as to what the benefits of this sort of system would be.

Ergo, BART gets you pretty close to each of the destinations that you enumerated that it “isn’t going to help you”, incurring the following additional travel over the BRT solution:

Children’s Hospital – 0.1 miles
Dinner in Temescal – 0.4 miles
Koreatown – Art Murmur – 0.3 miles
Telegraph @ Channing – 0.7 miles

I’m all for helping people walk slightly less, but considering the similarity to the BART route, BRT might not be the most efficient utilization of our TaxMegaBuxxx. Maybe little express loops from each BART station to the local destinations, on the existing infrastructure, would be more cost effective, as well as less disruptive to traffic flow and parking?

Just went back and looked at your comments – I see we hit many of the same notes. In fact, it was partly your very matter of fact, reasoned responses to their shrieking that inspired me to write this post. I applaud your efforts to try to reason with these people, or at least make them somewhat informed. I was simply an observer, not a participant, in the debate. I never comment on the Chronicle – I don’t feel like creating an account and there’s always so many comments I feel like mine would just get lost.

Since you seem to be more in tune with Bay Area transit issues in general than me, I’m interested to know if you have an opinion about what’s going to happen with East Bay BRT. I’m very worried that Berkeley or San Leandro will kill it. And I also worry about Oakland – there has not been loud opposition here so far, but the project also seems to be getting no support from any Councilmembers or our Mayor. Where is the commitment to sustainability they showed when they formed the Oil Independence Task Force? Or banned styrofoam? And plastic bags? Does their concern for the environment not extend to addressing the single most important choice people can make – getting out of their cars? to Is AC Transit just doing a poor job educating people about this?

If you ran into me there, I was commenter “ecsf” on that article, but I felt like I was running into a brick wall, and gave up after awhile.