Sound Transit and KCM Buses

This is an open thread.

89 Replies to “News Roundup: Faces of the Plaza”

  1. Just to try to see what was there before, I attempted to put 200 Occidental Ave S, Seattle, WA into Google maps. This doesn’t result in a location in Pioneer Square at all, as best as I can tell. Is the address featured in the Seattle Times article correct?

    1. The address is correct. Currently it’s a surface parking lot adjacent to Occidental Park.

      There were plans at one time to have the Waterfront Streetcar maintenance facility in it, but that plan was dropped.

      1. Thanks. For some reason 200 Occidental Ave S and 200 Occidental Ave South result in two very different places.

  2. Well, somebody tried to steal my bike off of the 522 yesterday at Lake City Way & 125th. Good thing I was sitting near the front and the bus wasn’t crush-loaded, or he might have gotten away with it (I noticed it before the driver did). First time in 7 years of taking my bike on the bus that that’s happened.

    I wonder how often bikes are stolen from the bus racks?

    2. When my husband commuted by bike, he’d attach the bike to the rack with a carabineer. You wouldn’t see it unless you were looking for it, but if a bad guy tried to take his bike off the rack wouldn’t be able to until he unhooked the carabineer.

      1. I would always sit as far as possible up front when taking my bike on the bus, to keep an eye on it, as well as a way to easier remember that I brought it, and to remind the driver when exiting that I would be removing the bike. I wonder if a mandatory registration program for bikes would reduce theft?

      2. I dunno, Chicago has a pretty big bike registration program and it doesn’t seem to have dented bike theft. I think registration is required, but there’s no enforcement on that.

  3. So Weyerhauser, a company that is as non-urban as they come, decides to move to a very urban location. This is just another example of why Sound Transit’s numbers for suburban and satellite city growth are just ridiculous. People and companies are moving back to the cities. You can see it with tech companies quite clearly. Microsoft is suburban, Amazon is not. I have no doubt that if Microsoft was starting right now, they would locate in a city. That is where a lot of the people want to be, and for those who don’t live there, they can get there easily.

    1. Also, 68 parking spots in the building, for 800 employees + first-floor retail. Not that there isn’t a ton of parking in the area, but it’s a pretty glaring contrast to what you would find in a suburban campus.

    2. Some years back Weyerhaeuser bought out Willamette Industries, which had always had its HQ in downtown Portland. They also have a pretty substantial presence in Longview, which while it isn’t a huge urban area is also a significant industrial and port city rather than a traditional bedroom and parking lot only suburb.

      So, it isn’t as if Weyerhauser and its relatives have always been oriented around suburban communities.

      1. They started in Tacoma, which is a city (and had a bigger population relative to the rest of the state at the time). I never said they were always oriented towards the suburbs, or even the rural areas. I’m just saying it is striking that a company that has been in the same location for years decides to move from the suburbs to the city. It is even more striking that the company that does that is not a high tech company, not a medical company, not an insurance or banking company, but a company that deals with trees and land. Lots and lots of land, most of which is a long way from the city. It is just one sign in an ongoing trend that Sound Transit seems oblivious to.

        Let me be more clear: The great suburban migration is over. It started when folks wanted the suburban lifestyle. It gained speed during the race riots of the 60s and early 70s. It really gained favor when companies decided to move to the suburbs. But this last step was too far. It was a mistake, and company after company realizes that now. It is extremely presumption to assume that people want to live in the suburbs (and even more presumptuous to assume that they want to live in that particular suburb and their spouse/significant other wants to as well). Meanwhile, it is extremely difficult to service from a transportation standpoint. It is one thing to try and get everyone from the suburbs to the city in the morning. It is much harder — no, damn near impossible — to try and get everyone from one suburb (or one part of the city) to every other suburb. So hard that a lot of people (myself included) have quit their job because of the commute. That just doesn’t happen if you work in downtown Seattle — you take a bus or the train.

        Just to be clear, we will certainly have suburbs in this country. We will have suburbs like most parts of the world have suburbs. They will be for people who can’t afford to live in the city. The good news for folks like John is that they will be really cheap.

    3. Plum Creek is already located in downtown Seattle. It’s not new or even strange to have timber companies headquartered in very urban settings.

      1. I never said it was. What is strange is that they are moving (it isn’t strange that a company like Boeing is located in Chicago — what is strange is that they moved their). We are talking about Weyerhaeuser. I know the history. I grew up here. I remember when they moved from Tacoma to Federal Way. Now, after more than forty years they are moving again — to the city! That is the news. That is why it was front page news throughout the region (Seattle, Tacoma, even Bellingham, where I was when I read it). If they moved to Kent, I guarantee you it wouldn’t have been front page news.

        In this case, it is huge,and just another example of how the suburban office experiment has run its course. New companies are not only locating in the city, but old companies are moving after spending decades in suburban locations. Companies that started in the city, then moved to the suburbs. They move because it makes sense to move. This is why Sound Transit, with their predictions that the suburbs (and Tacoma) will grow faster than Seattle are ridiculous. If companies can’t even stay in the suburbs, why do they expect new ones to move there? Office space in the suburbs, like suburban land, will be cheap, but it won’t be in high demand. As a result, there simply won’t be the growth in the suburbs that we saw forty years ago. That era is ending. Sound Transit should think again before sending out fliers that suggest otherwise.

      2. When did ST say the suburbs and Tacoma will grow faster than Seattle? I think ST is expecting it all too grow. “Completing the spine” and “a Lynnwood downtown” don’t mean the suburbs will grow and Seattle won’t. They just mean a million more people are coming to the region, and the ST board is mostly suburbanites.

      3. Am I the only one who got Sound Transit’s insane cardstock flier in the mail?

        “Tacoma +60%!” “Everett +74%!!”

        Conveniently, that idiotic fictiongraphic seems not to be available online.

      4. Those numbers come directly from PSRC in Vision 2040. They’re planning goals, not predictions. They allocate a larger absolute population growth to Seattle+Bellevue, but Everett and Tacoma start from a smaller base, so they have a larger percentage growth.

      5. Well, with existing core urban areas like Ballard already at 300% of their growth targets, while Everett languishes at 3% and Federal Way has a new center-city Taco Time as its great expansionist achievement, maybe we should consider calling out the PSRC predictions as the ignoramus nonsense that they are, rather than regurgitating their wishful thinking in mass mailers and planning 75-mile transit spines around them.

      6. According to my numbers, Everett acheived 13% of its growth target between 2000 and 2010. I haven’t checked more recent ACS numbers.

        One of these days, I’d like to see a citation for this local folklore that Ballard has reached 300% of its growth target. If so, what parts of Seattle are the slackers?

      7. Now 340% of this city’s prescribed 2024 target:
        http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/cs/groups/pan/@pan/documents/web_informational/dpdd017580.pdf

        Not sure how Seattle’s 2024 targets relate to the PSRC’s 2040 predictions, but suffice to say we’re a wee bit ahead.

        The PRSC’s “spread ’em around, even where they have no interest in going, even where they would require zillion-mile commutes, to distant dead satellites and to fictional Chia hubs” strategy is an untenable violation of sound growth planning, and needs to be called out perpetually as such.

    4. Microsoft has been renting some of the newer buildings in downtown bellevue, they’re slowly changing to be more urban themselves, but they will never abandon their suburban campus I imagine.

      1. Having just read about China’s plans to create its own OS and keep everyone else out, I wonder if they’ll have to do what Weyerhauser is doing in Federal Way — emptying the campus and turning it into residential housing!

    5. A lot of those 5-6 story apartment bread loaves popping up all over the city are made with wood too.

    6. I’m glad Weyerhouser is moving downtown, and to a neighborhood that has tried to revitalize itself and keeps failing; maybe the clump of Weyerhouser workers will make a difference.

      But Federal Way is not going away. ST ridership patterns will change little because there was little reverse-commuting to Weyerhouser in the first place — unlike to Microsoft or downtown Bellevue whose reverse buses are full. Some Weyerhouser employees will remain in Federal Way. And somebody will buy the building and do something with it, maybe. I hope it gets replaced with something walkable, but I’m not exactly sure where it is or how far out-of-the-way it is or how far from the transit center, so I’m not sure if that’s feasable. Maybe Weyerhouser can just bulldoze it if nobody wants it, and Federal Way can focus on development in the Commons area. Like an office building for the next Weyerhouser, within a couple blocks of the transit center and the mall. That’s really Federal Way’s only hope, besides Pacific Highway TOD.

      Also, if Weyerhouser is just the beginning of an increase in urban headquarters, pretty soon downtown will fill up and they’ll have to go elsewhere. That’s where Federal Way and Lynnwood and and Burien and Tukwila and Tacoma and Renton will have to be ready — to incorporate it into a walkable neighborhood near a transit center, and not an isolated office park a la Eastgate or outer Bothell or outer Issaquah or the existing Weyerhouser headquarters. That’s what we need to get away from.

      1. >> ST ridership patterns will change little because there was little reverse-commuting to Weyerhouser in the first place

        Don’t tell Sound Transit that. They will freak out. For some weird reason they think the suburbs (and cities like Tacoma) will grow much faster than Seattle in the next twenty years. It is hard to imagine, even with 1980’s style suburban office growth. It is even harder to imagine without it.

        >> pretty soon downtown will fill up and they’ll have to go elsewhere.

        Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. Cities don’t “fill up”. Amazon is growing like gang busters and it just meant that they moved to a different part of the city (South Lake Union). Even companies like Attachmate — a company that has been making millions off of a product that was supposed to be obsolete ten years ago — moved from Factoria to downtown (and not very far from Weyerhouser. In other words, if that building gets too big, they will get another one, and it will probably be nearby.

      2. There are only so many spaces where new office buildings can go between Mercer Street, Weller Street, and I-5. Especially if a company needs more than one of them as Amazon does.

      3. The biggest block to growth in the Pioneer Square neighborhood seems to be the mission. the clients of the mission hang out in just about every public space that’s covered, often bringing their personal problems with them. It can make waiting for a bus very unpleasant at certain bus stops.

      1. With the really nice 100% low floor cars made by Bombardier, Alstom, Kawasaki, Siemens, Nippon-Sharyo and others with USA manufacturing facilities I’m not sure why anyone would want these older designs that have raised floors at the ends. I’m not sure that the cars built by Oregon Iron Works in the Portland area are going to look so great once a USA city starts using one of these modern designs.

      2. Off wire capability. Inekon said no problem. Not sure why kinkisharyo’s Ameritram wasn’t considered. Possibly because we already have 3 Inekon trams.

        Only other off wire capable tram will be made by brookville but that’s still only paper.

      3. Alstom and Bombardier have also built off-wire trams for use in areas of Europe that didn’t want wires draped across their central plaza, and TIG-M in California has built a few 100% battery tourist streetcars, with one being 100% solar – battery.

        Brookville should be able to deliver what they promised as well. They build electric mining equipment, and if anyone knows how to get decent battery life it is a company that is used to providing shift work battery powered vehicles to the mining industry.

  5. It seems like a small “do not block” area (like those found in front of fire stations) would do wonders for outbound buses turning from Broad St onto 1st Ave. They’re often backed up literally for blocks during the afternoon rush because they need room in the two general-traffic lanes to negotiate the turn into the bus-only lane.

    Maybe there’s a good reason why it would be unworkable, but It seems like a few gallons of paint could shave 5-10 minutes off the commutes of thousands of riders a day.

    1. +1 Especially because drivers only block that when traffic is way backed up anyways. Nobody is getting anywhere any faster by taking up that space.

  6. MUNI, a horrifically incompetent, poorly run transit agency, managed to implement rear-door entry with readers, yet it’s somehow wildly implausible for Metro. Telling.

    1. The excuses used are the inability to handle multiple zone fares (good reason to get rid of those and go single-fare) … that and fare evasion

    2. Seattle is twice as large geographically as San Francisco, and King County is, what, ten times as large? All the long-distance buses in San Francisco are non-MUNI agencies, so that’s how the “2-zone fare” is manifest. Metro needs to adapt but it can’t just eliminate the zone surcharge with no other changes, and it can’t raise local fares to $3 or it’ll lose riders. (Although it probably will reach that anyway in a few years if the legislature doesn’t move on funding.) What Metro needs to do is charge premium fares on certain routes, i.e., the longest peak expresses, not on every route that crosses Roxbury Street or 145th. And certainly not on the E, which is supposed to be the high-quality proletarian route.

      1. Simple Solution, Sound Transit already uses it on the trains, Tap on, Tap off. Solved.

      2. I agree. The two zone fare is also very problematic. I sometimes ride the 373 and I’ve often been charged a two zone fare even though I’m in the city. The bus starts outside the city, but I’m not sure what the problem is. Maybe the bus driver needs to flip a switch or something (and forgets). It is annoying, since I either have to swallow the charge, or call up the Orca folks and get my money back.

        It makes sense to apply the two zone fare to certain routes, as you suggest.

      3. Does someone taking Metro from Evergreen Point to the Montlake Flyer stop have to pay a 2-zone fare?

    3. Alex. Tap on tap off won’t work because people will tap off before they actually leave … fare evasion … Or at least that is the concern.

      1. Plus people would have to line up to tap as they’re getting off, and we’re trying to shrink dwell times, not expand them. And people usually take more buses than trains per day, and they may be transferring and getting off two stops later (as in the proposals to delete the 43), so they may get frustrated with having to tap-tap-tap-tap every time they turn around.

      2. Forget the multiple fare zones. If it’s express, charge express. If it’s peak, charge peak. If it’s local, charge local. They’re different service types. Charging by distance only makes since if you have a superior service, which a standard local is not. Metro needs to get over that and bite the bullet. In fact, it may make them choose to be rational by truncating routes that are redundant to superior service. My favourite example: Metro’s 150 that should end at Rainier Beach Station.

      3. Tap on/tap off works fine on buses in terms of fare evasion as long as you have occasional fare inspectors. Sydney is in the process of implementing their smartcard ticketing system and they have two readers per bus door and use tap on/tap off. The readers only accept taps when the bus is getting close to a bus stop, which also helps reduce fare evasion.

  10. I love the idea of the overhead bin for buses. Now if folks will actually use them. I’ve used them when standing in the aisle of the 522 but I sometimes get glares.

    1. It seems like it would be too easy to forget your bag when you leave the bus. When I bring a backpack, it fits pretty well in my lap when seated. It makes more sense to use the rack if you’re standing.

      1. But if you are standing, you either have to move the bag each time you move (i.e. every time the bus stops) or risk having to shove your way back to where you left it when you reach your destination. At least as deployed on the ST coaches serving the Eastside, the racks make getting a good grip when standing in the aisles more difficult.

        Overall, I suspect that the racks would be at best useless.

      2. I agree, I could see racks on airport routes but I’m having a hard time seeing commuters and other riders using them regularly.

        The back door button, on the other hand, that would be a useful bit of technology.

      3. I use them sometimes when I’m sitting on ST buses but I don’t see many other people doing it. It can be nice to free up leg room, though if your bag is big enough that it would take up a lot of leg or lap space it might not fit on the luggage rack.

      4. With the ST racks, you have to have a pretty big bag not make it work. Certainly if you have a bag larger than what goes in an overhead compartment in plane, it probably won’t fit. I don’t think the average rider is toting that kind of luggage around–even if there weren’t an overhead bag rack. But I take a suitcase to work semi-frequently for after-work trips to the islands or East King County, and I haven’t had a problem yet with my large luggage piece.

        I most often do what Aw does though since I have a small backpack. It’s when I have additional goods that I bother to stow it above or if I’m standing for an extended period of time.

        William does have a point though that it could pose a problem on a packed bus. But ideally people stowing their bags would actually alleviate congestion in the aisles. Obviously usage is discretionary and case-dependent, but they’re frequently used on the ST Expresses to/from Everett.

    2. There isn’t enough headroom in buses for these types of racks. Get up out of your seat and smack your head. And even less suitable when seats are removed to increase capacity.

      1. The Orion buses have more than enough headroom. Really is a design issue more than anything else

      2. There’s plenty of room actually. I’m not short by any means, and I’ve only bumped my head a handful of times for the 100s of times I’ve ridden an ST bus with one. They’ve mastered placement within the coaches, so that’s not a reasonable concern.

    3. I have never seen anything in the overhead racks on ST buses. To me it’s a tradeoff between the length of the trip and the risk of forgetting to retrieve my stuff. It makes sense for a 3 hour trip, but not so much for a 30- or 60-minute trip. Also, the space is not very high so I’d have trouble getting my deep backpack in and out of it.

    4. We have them on the C-Tran hybrid expresses, along with reading lights. It’s quite nice, but I don’t remember ever seeing anyone use them.

  11. If these new lithium bus batteries have 3x the capacity of the old batteries, does that drastically change how the bus operates? Are they able to run on battery power alone? It just seems like such a huge leap that it should have some interesting implications.

    1. As I read the article, they’re just a plug-in replacement for the current batteries. If the bus couldn’t operate on batteries alone before, it wouldn’t be able to after the replacement.

      1. I’d love to see a side-by-side comparison of weight, volume, energy storage and charge/discharge rates. If you can get more energy storage in the same volume at lower weight it would be a real improvement. Won’t change the world, but it would be a great.

        Now if I can just get a Li-ion replacement to the NiMH battery I currently have in my hybrid.

      2. It would be really interesting to see information on today’s battery performance on various routes. I assume that when a freeway-running hybrid pulls off and comes to a stop its battery is fully charged, and that when it finishes descending a fairly large hill it’s fully charged. But otherwise I’d guess the battery is close to empty most of the time. Higher capacity would mostly help in situations where the battery gets up to full charge. The question is how often that happens.

    2. I’m sure those battery buses will work as well as the DBT tunneler did.

      And by the way.

      I’m never voting for a tax increase for Metro ever again.

      1. There are quite a number of cities that are using battery buses. The design that e-bus was making 10 years ago could go 100 miles on a charge, and battery technology has only gotten better.

        Furthermore, it is a state mandate to move this direction. If you have a problem with it, talk to your state legislator and see if you can get them to stop forcing transit agencies to make investments in stuff without providing them with money to do so.

      3. From a Mass Transit Magazine article on Kitsap Transit testing electric buses:

        “The state Clean Fleet and Fuel Usage Act requires stage agencies to run vehicles, vessels and construction equipment on electricity or biofuel by June 1, 2015. Local governments such as cities, counties and transit agencies would have to comply by June 1, 2018. Existing gas- or diesel-powered equipment can continue to be used until the end of its useful life.

        Transit agency maintenance managers have asked for requirements to be changed to allow propane and hybrid vehicles, Seymore said.”

        http://www.masstransitmag.com/news/11518685/kitsap-transit-tests-electric-bus-on-bremerton-routes

        You will find similar articles about pretty much all transit agencies in Washington testing various electric – battery or similar vehicles.

      4. And somehow with many large cities utilizing fuel cell buses powered by hydrogen, eco-minded Washington only dabbles in battery buses? Even though a fuel cell bus has the range to go to the mountains and beyond? Something is rotten in Olympia.

      5. I know that a few have tried fuel cells, but the clean fuel technology used in many large cities as well as smaller ones has been natural gas. Pierce Transit as well as Los Angeles have gone 100% that direction.

      6. One thing that surprised me not long ago riding the 208 to Snoqualmie was how poorly the diesel bus performed going up the hill along I-90. All the cars surrounding the bus were doing at least 70 mph, while the bus itself was struggling and couldn’t even break 40.

        Are the hybrid or fuel cell buses better at this type of thing, or are they all the same. Clearly, this is not an issue inherent in buses, as I’ve ridden Amtrak buses and charter buses up that same hill before, and they were able to keep up with the traffic just fine.

      7. @asdf, I think it’s a problem with the specific bus or driver. I’ve ridden the 215 up that hill twice; the first time the bus was going almost as slowly as yours, but the second time kept up with traffic perfectly well.

  12. So basically, Tysons Corner won’t ever resemble a city at all.

    Oh wait, it’ll resemble the modernity and grade separations of Hong Kong… except 1/10th as dense… and with no people whatsoever at street level… and zero small businesses… and nothing organic or messy or visually dissonant… and mall cops!

    So, the future is… Calgary? Fascinating and depressing.

    1. The interesting thing is that grade-separated walkways where precisely what Futurama and Disney and General Motors proposed, in their visions that led to suburbia. One road for cars, another for trucks, a high-speed rail track (maybe), and a separate “road” for pedestrians. That Hong Kong description is essentially it. But what we got in the US was a combined freeway for cars and trucks, no high-speed rail, and sidewalks with stoplights wherever the superior cars crossed it, and pedestrian-unfriendly crossings like 405 at NE 8th Street or 92nd or Northgate Way in Northgate.

      2. I’m curious how well they work in Hong Kong, now that there’s an actual live example of it. Are the fears of naysayers true that there’s no “there” there and it’s a soulless/unsociable/stressful environment? Or do they function like a regular city street or a well-used subway transfer tunnel once people get used to them?

      3. The point is that the article is misleading. That’s not the defining feature of bustling Asian metropoles, except in willfully sterile business developments like the justifiably-maligned Pudong.

        Hong Kong and Tokyo indeed have some massive thoroughfares with pedestrian-diverting skybridges, and they have indeed integrated the bustling with the modern. But they also have non-masterplanned architecture and surprising examples of infill, civic places that have developed organically, and pedestrians by the ton at all possible levels.

        The comparison to Tysons is grossly inapt.

      4. In fairness to Tyson’s (I hate being fair to ugliness, but I guess my sense of justice compels me) it’s had all of a few weeks to respond organically to the condition of people accessing it other than by driving alone.

        To be sure, a single train line will never make it Hong Kong, or even DC, by the numbers. It will probably never bear density with grace any more than it bears sparseness with grace. Every attempt to bring humanity and character to the place, to build real public spaces, to apply any of the lessons of pre-auto-age cities, will be a struggle against entrenched interests, often developers and land owners themselves! Tyson’s may be a name we all curse in a generation. But big buildings, skybridges, and even malls don’t have to be anti-urban if they come with some density and use mixture, and some density and use mixture is possible now. Tyson’s could have some projects we admire in a generation, too.

        I don’t know DC that well — there are probably neighborhoods that need and deserve rapid transit more. As here there are neighborhoods that need and deserve rapid transit more than our many mini-Tyson’ses that are getting it. But we’re going to need to learn from what happens there in the next 10 years, good and bad, because no plausible amount of population and political shift in this region is going to get us to drastically re-orient our rapid transit priorities.

      5. My point was not to superfluously beat up on present-day Tysons Corner, whose awfulness is widely understood, but whose prominence as an employment locus / commute node / regional center of gravity easily justifies the 3.5-mile extension of Metrorail to reach it, as well as the attention paid to its attempted remaking.

        Again, my problem was with the central fallacy of the Vox piece, which boldly claims that there is no chance whatsoever that the lessons of pre-auto cities will be incorporated here, but that it’s totally okay because skyscrapers and grade separations and mall-like environments are the very things that make modern Asian cities awesome!

        As usual, Yglesias is trying to bean-count/contrarian-logic/winkingly-subvert-common-wisdom his way through a gaping intellectual shortcut, and is landing in a steaming pile of b.s.

        The referenced Asian cities thrive because the bustle is so intense that it thwarts any attempt to hem it into manufactured superterranean environments, and because the liminal economies wedge megacorporate franchises right up next to the tiniest local infill businesses, preventing spaces from becoming overly orderly or visually monotonous.

        Basically, the types activities we associate with pre-auto urban spaces continue to infiltrate and dominate, especially at street level, in spite of the skyscrapers and mall-like interface. Prevent such activities — which Tysons Corner seems content to do — and the mall is all you have left.

        No, Matt Yglesias, that isn’t a recipe worth duplicating.

    2. d.p.

      I couldn’t agree more. My folks recently moved to NoVa. …and I hardly consider anything Tyson’s Corner worth something King County should ever emulate.

      Wide roads, horrible pedestrian connectivity. It was a miserable walk from Tyson’s Galleria to Tyson’s II. One of the glaring issues I’ve had in many of these plots is the lack of cohesion between parcels/developments. The individual development may be “walkable,” yet the development doesn’t connect with the grid or surrounding developments.

      As for big pedestrian bridges, the walk across Leesburg Pike was painful. The crosswalks took me across a weird frontage road. …and talking to the I-495 overpass, pedestrian crossings weren’t provided any warning signs or visibility for drivers. It was painful…even from my perspective. So much so that I wrote VDOT after my visit in December to complain.

      Tyson’s Corner December 2013

      2. For those who don’t know, Tysons is only a dozen miles from the heart of the district. It’s not as far out as some think – it’s choking traffic makes it seme further than it actually is.

        The Silver Line will help in Tysons transformation, but I’ve read articals recently calling it a failure & nothing has opened yet other than the bridge to Tysons Corner Center & the ajoining plaza. What did these critics expect a month after the rail link opened! Sheesh!

      3. The criticism is not of present progress, but of future plans that learn nothing from any example of thriving urbanity, on this continent or any other.

  13. Overhead luggage racks wont do much for metro. I don’t seem the ones on ST Express used much.

    However, converting the rear doors to passenger activated would be a big help. After a brief study in the tunnel the other day, implementing POP on the tunnel routes, and installing the passive W/C restraint system would be a big help in keeping things moving down there. Having buses with 3 doors would be even better, but a little more costly to replace the fleet.

  14. I’m curious where the recharging stations for the electric buses will be initially and in a full roll out. It seems problematic to put them on downtown streets as they’ll have to dwell for several minutes (5 or 10?) just to recharge.

    Perhaps it makes sense to roll this out in the suburbs with routes that have terminals at transit centers? This way more than one route could be supported by recharging infrastructure.

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