Local news - Arlington introduces BRT system

If you have even wondered why public transport is so bad in your city, you may want to read this:

I have touched this topic here before. Basically, Americans worked very hard to destroy pretty decent public transport system (streetcars) they already had at the beginning of XX century, in order to replace them with highways and cars. That might have worked very early on, when few people owned cars, but after WWII, when everyone wanted a dream suburban house with a garage, everyone started to drive into the city - and this was the beginning of the end.

It's really quite simple. Cities are not made out of rubber and you can't stretch valuable real estate forever to make space for more and more cars. Turning vast surfaces in downtown into parking lots is clearly a very bad investment for the city (free parking lots don't pay city taxes), which took us way too long to understand (and some of us still don't get it).

But there is hope. More and more city governors and planners notice that situation is not improving, despite opening new roads, bridges, parking garages, etc. They finally started turning their focus to what they destroyed 80 years ago - public transport.

One good example how a city can quickly improve the situation without spending massive amounts of money (Because let's be clear - building a new streetcar line from scratch wouldn't be exactly inexpensive.) is BRT - bus rapid transport. In short, it's about giving buses dedicated lanes whenever possible, adjusting signals to prioritize buses over the rest of traffic and moving bus stops to avoid buses leaving and merging with the flow of traffic.

My town of Arlington played with this idea for a while and this October we will see the introduction of a pilot BRT program on our main street - Massachusetts Avenue. I'm really happy such initiatives turn into solutions - hopefully permanent, but there are a few bugs in this early design that I'd like to point out.

First of all, this BRT program has a very limited range, running only between Lake St and Alewife Brook Parkway - that's only 10 blocks/intersections, but since it's just a pilot, I can live with that.

Then, there are some major issues in the design of BRT bus route and I seriously hope that this is only temporary and should Arlington decide to keep the BRT forever (and they should!), these bugs will get fixed before we make anything permanent.

Just take a look at this route design near Henderson St. The third, bus-only lane is placed where some parking spots used to be. Unfortunately, the city decided to place bike lane on the wrong side of these parking spots and now, since BRT lane replaces those spots, cyclists will get squeezed between moving buses to the right and speeding cars to the left. Honestly, who would want to ride a bike in a lane like this? Obviously the right way to handle this is to move the bike lane all the way to the right - next to the curb, and place buses next to car traffic.

This is what we have - with bike lanes painted on the wrong side of parking lanes.

 This is what are getting for now - bicyclists will be squeezed into a space between buses and cars.

And that's what we should have - move bike lane behind bus stops. No need to for buses to move into/out of their BRT lane and safer for cyclists.

Similar problem is shown in the second picture from city's presentation. It looks like buses will have to cross the bike lane in order to reach bus stops, then cross it again to merge with the BRT lane. Again, this makes no sense. The correct way is to swap bike lane and BRT lane, placing bike lane closer to the sidewalk, ideally running it behind the bus stops. That makes it easier for everyone - car drivers don't need to worry about buses and bikes, bus drivers stay in their BRT lane all the time and cyclists are physically separated from all heavy car/bus traffic.

Let's wait until October to see BRT in action and then hopefully we will have a chance to address these problems and make it right before anything becomes permanent. For now, I'm being optimistic.