how you never saw any buses here is perplexing, unless you never wandered beyond the altstadt.

http://www.kvb-koeln.de/german/fahrplan/linienplan.html

In New York City, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is considering steep fare increases and its deepest service cuts in years to help close a $1.2 billion deficit. In addition to considering a 23 percent increase in fares and tolls, the authority is weighing plans to eliminate more than two dozen city bus routes and two subway lines, reduce off-peak service and even close some subway stations at night.

Big systems in Boston, Atlanta and San Francisco, and smaller ones across the nation, find themselves weighing cuts or fare increases that they fear could erode the gains they have made in attracting new riders. Beverly A. Scott, general manger of Marta, the Atlanta system, said as the sales tax revenue continued to drop, she was weighing everything from fare increases to service cuts to even selling the naming rights to stations — but she still hopes for more state support.

WHERE ARE THE BUS DRIVERS GOING? Once people start to ride the light rail. More people will get on their cars and ride to work. That has happened in every city of the United States including New York city. It will mean less jobs for bus drivers.

Each year, the Texas Transportation Institute published congestion indexes for America’s major urbanized areas. Among the 12 cities that have built rail, the number of cars removed from the road in 11 of those cities would not change the TTI congestion index. Only in Washington, DC can an impact be discerned — from 1.44 to 1.43. Put another way, the traffic removed by rail systems in the US is so small that it can be measured in days of traffic growth avoided. The top score is again Washington, DC, where it is estimated that the $12 billion subway system has removed less that three months worth of traffic growth from roadways. In other words, in exchange for $12 billion in tax funding, traffic conditions in May 1998 are what they would have been in February 1998 without rail.

Rider Paradox: Surge in Mass, Drop in Transit
Dilip Vishwanat for The New York Times
St. Louis is girding itself for some of the most drastic service cuts in the country.

MICHAEL COOPER
Published: February 3, 2009
ST. LOUIS — Buses will no longer stop at some 2,300 stops in and around this city at the end of next month because, despite rising ridership, the struggling transit system plans to balance its books with layoffs and drastic service cuts.

http://www.mn-getonboard.org/plantrip.html

Another route that would have made sense is a ring line from Ballard to the U to Capitol Hill to downtown to Ballard. That would cover a lot of people and a lot of trips. But now it would overlap with Link on the downtown-to-UW portion. Still, you could make an L-shaped line from downtown to Ballard to the UW. But I’d be in a nursing home by the time it gets built.

http://www.hostropolis.com/april/mp3/StarSpangledBlogna.mp3

I’m hopeful that with Link to the airport, this city will suddenly step back and say “oh“. It’s going to be a hell of a lot easier to get more of this.