Bus service is only part of transit plan

3/29/07

As a transit alternative, buses have great promise and even greater limitations. A statewide push to draw more funding for better service, more express routes and increased reliability makes sense, but supporters need to show they can make the bus an acceptable choice for more people.
A study put before the state Legislature by a coalition of transit authorities, business representatives and employment interest groups would put tens of millions of dollars into bringing new and better bus service to Connecticut. Reliable, widespread bus availability would, so the plan goes, get cars off the road, help low-income workers expand their job-search areas and allow seniors more mobility.
But to vast swaths of the population, buses just aren’t something they’ll be riding. Trains are one thing — a Metro-North ride to New York is a somewhat representative sampling of the local population. But buses, outside of New York itself and other large cities, just don’t have the cachet that rail service offers. Does the bus-backing coalition have a solution? Will millions of dollars be spent to serve a narrow slice of the populace — so narrow that there will be no wider effect on regional transportation?
That’s what’s important — the big picture. If more buses aren’t going to help clear the roads a bit, there’s not much point; an express bus, after all, can only go as fast as the traffic it sits in. And our sprawled development makes any new bus map by definition exclusionary. You can’t reasonably send a bus everywhere.
So what this amounts to is a step. Among the more promising ideas is putting money into bus routes based around train stations. A dependable bus service stopping regularly at suburban Metro-North stations, with plenty of publicity and visibility, could lure some otherwise bus-phobic people to give it a try. But it would take a serious cash commitment, and some of that money would have to go toward getting people to change their attitudes.
So this proposal could have real benefits. But to make the most of any new subsidies, transit companies should be asked to rethink operating procedures, reaching out to all different income levels and age groups. Combined with improved train service and better road design, along with a real commitment to density promotion in future development, a better regional bus operation could help all of us get around easier.