For the record I'm a huge fan of busses and highly skeptical of trains. I'm sure that there are some places in the world where the Mayor's statement is true. Those places are rare.
In a downtown corridor during rush hour? Sure - I could totally see a lane full of just busses. However, most dedicated bus lanes won't be that busy. This isn't to say that there aren't good reasons for dedicated lanes - just that the reason the Mayor gave was at best hyperbolic and at worst maliciously deceptive.
> more people will take the bus and so you will add more buses.
In a well run business that would be true.
In the first world, most busses are heavily subsidized. This means that the more busses that are run, the more money the system loses (not strictly true, but roughly).
What you say should make sense, but it doesn't for important institutional reasons.
> In the first world, most busses are heavily subsidized. This means that the more busses that are run, the more money the system loses (not strictly true, but roughly).
So what? Transportation infrastructure for single-passenger vehicles is also subsidized in the US (the gas tax doesn't come anywhere near paying for roads, for instance), and it gets more expensive with more users too (in the form of increased wear on roads requiring more maintenance, or the need to expand roads to accommodate increasing use). But we do it anyway, because transportation infrastructure is a public good. I've never understood the inclination that public transit should stand alone among transportation modes and operate without subsidy.
>In a downtown corridor during rush hour? Sure - I could totally see a lane full of just busses. However, most dedicated bus lanes won't be that busy.
These are precisely the places where dedicated bus lanes and BRTs exist. BRT is called bus rapid transit because there is a planned frequency for these buses - therefore a need for consistent, uninterrupted rights of way.
>In a well run business that would be true.
In the first world, most busses are heavily subsidized.
Only because highly popular bus routes (and train routes) subsidize unpopular routes that exist for the public good and not to make money - neighborhood routes, night buses, etc. In the US, routes are highly subsidized because of a lack of density compared to Europe or Asia.
> In the first world, most busses are heavily subsidized.
Public transport makes it possible for more people to use the roads it makes it faster for people that have to go by car. So what you call subsidized is actually a way to activate capital sunk into expensive infrastructure and make it more effective.
> I'm sure that there are some places in the world where the Mayor's statement is true.
In Europe this is predominantly true (maybe not the UK outside London). There's still massive traffic jam problems but buses certainly during rush hour are full and special lanes are provided for them.
In a downtown corridor during rush hour? Sure - I could totally see a lane full of just busses. However, most dedicated bus lanes won't be that busy. This isn't to say that there aren't good reasons for dedicated lanes - just that the reason the Mayor gave was at best hyperbolic and at worst maliciously deceptive.
> more people will take the bus and so you will add more buses.
In a well run business that would be true.
In the first world, most busses are heavily subsidized. This means that the more busses that are run, the more money the system loses (not strictly true, but roughly).
What you say should make sense, but it doesn't for important institutional reasons.