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Is It Worth It IV: Reader Response

A bus-riding commenter suggests that if existing bus service provides for all your needs, you won't get anything out of voting for Prop 1. I ceratinly fall into that category. Let me give my own story.

I live somewhere in the Madison Park/Madison Valley neighborhood. The 11 bus takes me to the downtown bus tunnel, which takes me 1 block from where I work (a couple of morning buses give me a one-bus trip, but we'll set that aside). It's a 35 minute trip---slower than a car, but fast enough that I'm willing to do it, especially since I get to read during my commute and don't have to pay for parking. This is all find and dandy.

At peak hours (and sometimes off-peak hours too!), though, the trip is much less fun. Buses both into and out of downtown during rush hour are standing room only. When the buses get too full, this starts to slow down trips, as passengers take a longer time getting on or off the bus. If the city could up its rush hour bus service from one bus per 15 minutes to one every 10 (and it's off-peak service from once every 30 minutes to once every 20 minutes -- I'm on the 9:30 bus into town and it's SRO before we get to Broadway!), that would both speed up my trips and improve my quality-of-commute (letting me sit and blog rather than stand and read) enough that I'd be willing to pay for it.

There are two ways we can get there: we can buy more buses; or we can build a mass transit system that does some of the work that buses are doing today, then use the buses that currently go downtown to beef up other lines of service. I'm definitely hoping that Prop 1 helps me out in that regard.

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Last updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 11:00 29 October 2007