Bus Rapid Transit

All across America, city buses are waiting. Waiting at stoplights, waiting behind long lines of cars, waiting to pull back into traffic, waiting at stops for growing crowds of passengers. And no, it's not just your imagination: Buses are doing more waiting, and less moving, than they used to. A recent survey of 11 urban transit systems conducted by Daniel Boyle for the Transportation Research Board found that increased traffic congestion is steadily eroding travel speeds: The average city bus route gets 0.45 percent slower every single year. That's especially discouraging given how slowly buses already move, with a typical bus averaging only 13.5 mph.

When I visited Los Angeles earlier this winter, I took a ride on the Orange Line, a bus rapid transit route that offers a preview of what fast, reliable bus service will be like for transit riders on Ashland Avenue.

The budget proposal released by President Obama yesterday fleshes out the transportation ideas put out by the White House last week and includes specific grants for transit upgrades and expansions in 2015, but many of them won't be part of this budget unless Congress agrees to increase funding for transportation.

Yesterday Blue Cross spokesman Michael Deering told me about how the Central Loop Bus Rapid Transit project will make it faster and easier for hundreds of the corporation’s employees to access it downtown headquarters. This morning I spoke with Peter Vilim, co-chair of the real estate investment firm Waterton Associates, about why his company supports BRT.

With 560 acres of medical research facilities, labs, and classrooms, and more than 40 healthcare facilities, visited by some 50,000 people per day, the Illinois Medical District is a major economic engine. People need convenient access to the campus and to get around within it. With this in mind, a volunteer thinktank submitted a master plan for the district to the IMD leadership, with several ideas to improve transportation options. Last month, the IMD voted to incorporate the ideas into its official master plan.

When I worked at the Chicago Department of Transportation’s bicycle program, from 2001 to 2006, it was a very different department than it is today. While there was an interest in improving conditions for walking, transit, and cycling, the city’s main transportation goal, as it had been for most of the previous century, was to move cars. The most blatant example of this attitude during my time at CDOT was the 2005 removal of the pedestrian crossing between Buckingham Fountain and the lakefront to speed traffic on Lake Shore Drive.

Appearing on Chicago Tonight last month, 12th Ward Alderman George Cardenas made a number of ill-informed statements about the plan to create fast, reliable transit on Ashland Avenue. Most egregiously, he painted BRT as an "expressway" where "no one’s going to stop," when in fact the project is going to help more people access Ashland Avenue.

As I’ve written many times on this website, 32nd Ward Alderman Scott Waguespack has done some good things for the city, and he’s a likeable person. So it’s painful to see him take an increasingly reactionary stance against the CTA’s plan to create a more efficient and equitable Ashland Avenue by building a bus rapid transit system.

Tuesday’s South Side hearing for the city’s bus rapid transit plan had light attendance, with about 50 people, most of whom seemed to be proponents, showing up to check out materials, talk with CTA staffers and leave comments. Wednesday’s open house, held at Pulaski Park, 1419 West Blackhawk in Noble Square, had a bigger turnout, with about 130 people and, according to attendees, there was a more even split between supporters and opponents. The latter included members of Roger Romanelli’s anti-BRT group, the Ashland-Western Coalition.