Workers would be able to
get to
any job
CMT would enable working people to get from any home to
any job in a reasonable amount of time.
Since most jobs are in zip codes with fewer than 3000 jobs per
square mile,
serving trips to low density employment areas is the most
important job a mass transit system can do.
Doing this job well will require transfers from express bus to local
circulator van.
Taxi vans would take riders the last two miles.
If we integrate the transfer with access to basic services, then a
single
trip can accomplish several tasks.
A rider returning to her home transit center by express bus could
collect her child from day care,
pick up a few groceries, and then catch the van route to her
apartment.
Travel Time would be reduced
An example trip, shown below, has three legs: first 2
miles
by taxi-van,
then 18 miles by express bus, and last 2 miles by taxi-van.
The express bus would be fast because it would run on roads with signal
control and
queue jumpers.
Red dots are transit centers (TCs) with air conditioning where riders
transfer from circulator to express.
Wait
time
would
be
reduced
from 30 minutes to 12
Taxi vans, on short circulator routes, would
depart
every
5
to
12 minutes with CMT.
The current system has circulator routes with 30 minutes or more
between bus runs.
The large, 40 foot long buses that Capital Metro
runs cost $99 an hour. This is $9 a mile.
Yet taxi vans can be run for only $2.50 a mile.
That is why it would
cost the same to run a van every 8 minutes as it now costs to run a bus
every 30 minutes.
Taxi Vans are cheaper for small groups
Vans are the more economical way
to connect a transit center
to the hundreds of employers
scattered over a 12 square mile cell.
Most jobs (70-80%) in Austin are in low density areas.
Computer modeling
predicts that most circulator trips in low density areas will have 14
or fewer riders.
It is cheaper to take 14 riders by taxi-van than by 45 seat bus.
.
Express
Roads permit fast travel by express bus
Express routes would only stop at the transit centers
(TCs) which are
the colored circles.
As seen below, green roads have
queue jumpers and signal control to
permit bus travel at 30 mph.
Think of North Lamar or Parmer Lane with Queue Jumpers every mile or
so, at major intersections.
On orange HOT lanes the express would do 50+ mph. A HOT lane is planned
for MOPAC.
Yellow roads are tolled. If managed right, the express could do 50+ mph
The light blue is the new 30 mile Commuter Rail from Leander to down
town.
Shoulder lanes for buses could be used on 183, IH-35 and MOPAC.
Buses on
the shoulder has been used successfully in Minneapolis.
CMT would be a combination of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and shared taxi
van.
The Taxi-Bus, in Rimouski, Quebec, provides all public transit with
taxi cabs.
Typically, 2.6 riders share a cab. All rides are reserved ahead of time
by phone.
Ten thousand taxi vans provide the majority of public transit in
Capetown, South Africa.
BRT has proven cost effective
in Los Angeles, Curitiba, Bogota, Ottawa,
and Miami.
On a BRT route in Miami the ridership went up 250% after the bus
started running on a dedicated busway.
The busway allowed the bus to average 35 mph while car traffic on a
nearby road was doing 5 mph.
BRT can connect 29 transit centers, but vans are also needed to get
riders the last
two miles to employers spread out over low density parts of the city.
Transit Centers and Transfers
Transfers would occur at Transit
Centers located adjacent to
shopping centers that include grocery,
day care, and other basic
community services.
The TC, shopping center, and a community center would be within a few
blocks walk.
Transfers will be
acceptable if they are brief, comfortable and secure.
Transfers should be brief. Both
local van routes and express bus should
run every 12 minutes.
The worst case wait time, at a transfer, would then be only 12 minutes.
Transfers should be comfortable and
secure. A transit center would be a
roofed and enclosed structure
with air conditioning and cushioned seats. A security guard would
be on patrol.
Fast board gates would enable quicker boarding and speed the transfer.
Spatial Mismatch and Decentralized Jobs
A lack of commercial density and the spatial mismatch problem
ensure
that conventional mass transit won’t
work well in modern American metropolitan areas.
Most jobs are outside the city center and spread
thinly over large areas.
From an article in the LA Times:
"Researchers
refer
to
it
as
spatial
mismatch:
In virtually every major U.S.
metropolitan area, job growth in
the low-skill sectors is moving
outward, while the workers most likely
to fill these jobs continue to be concentrated in the inner city. "
"Jobs are decentralizing but
affordable housing is not,"
said Bruce Katz, director of the
Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the
Brookings Institution in Washington D.C.
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IntroductionB.htm