Transit questions

I'll know my personal pandemic is over when I again feel I can ride a bus. Though I'm fully vaccinated, that time has not yet come for me.

I've used BART (our subway) for a short distance this month. It felt fine -- drafty and empty actually. But perhaps irrationally, I'm not ready to try the buses yet.

I came to my enthusiasm for our underfunded bus system (that's "MUNI" in this city) late in life. Though I used public buses to get to elementary school and occasionally to get to jobs, I never liked them. But in the last few years, like NY Times columnist Farhad Manjoo, I've had a bus epiphany. If the system were just a little better, I'd be a vigorous evangelist for buses. Even as it is, creaky and not always on schedule, I love that I can get pretty much anywhere in the city in two bus rides.

The irritating but sharp Matthew Yglesias offers some reflections on what makes for good bus systems and what practices might make them more desirable to more riders.

The truth is that people ride the bus when it makes sense. ... When good transit exists, it’s broadly beneficial and useful to all kinds of people who — for whatever reason — don’t want to drive a car for that particular trip.  

First, there has to be someplace to go where driving your car has some downsides. Second, there has to be a frequent bus that goes there.  

... the key thing about reforms that maximize ridership given a fixed pool of resources is that getting more riders is the way to get more resources.  ...On a political economy level, the biggest problem with U.S. mass transit policy is it’s always conceptualized as something that someone else is going to ride, which is good because it reduces traffic congestion and now it’s easier for you to drive your car.

This is a city, a genuine urban agglomeration. There's plenty of disincentive to driving for most of us, at least into crowded areas and even into neighborhoods with regulated parking. So that points to needing better bus service.

Yglesias argues that transit systems would become healthier if designed to maximize ridership rather than extensive coverage. Bus riders vote! More bus riders vote more! Maximizing means more frequent buses on some lines and doing away with infrequent satellite lines that go where demand is lowest.

Even though I benefit from living adjacent to one of this city's most active bus lines, I find it hard to accept this -- isn't there something wrong with a public utility neglecting what are most likely both the richest (say Seacliff) and the poorest (say Bayview) off-the-beaten path neighborhoods? I think so.

Another Yglesias suggestion is for more widely spaced bus stops, as much as a quarter mile apart. I get it -- the buses would run more smoothly. MUNI has implemented some of this, to a firestorm of upset from small merchants who claim they lose foot traffic. And what about disabled riders and elders who don't walk well? Again, transit is a public utility -- it has to be useful to as many as possible.

Yglesias does help me understand why I can be a MUNI fan -- quite a rarity among San Franciscans who use the system. Because I'm retired and can control my time, I can make a system with relatively infrequent  service convenient -- I just plan on trips taking however long they take. I like to listen to audio books while riding, as buses proceed along circuitous meandering routes to outlying areas. And with my senior fare, it's dirt cheap! Those systemic conveniences don't exist for everyone.

He asks whether pandemic changes that render "the future of the commute in doubt thanks to remote work" might make bus systems less relevant.  Perhaps.

I ask a different question at this fraught pandemic stage: will people who have any alternative come back to the buses when this is over? These days, the buses look empty. Nobody is riding who has another option.