OurView All aboard … the bus

OurView
All aboard … the bus

It’s time to ditch the fear of buses.

Arguments against buses as part of a rapid transit system should not be dismissed off-hand. Opponents to this mode of transportation being considered as one of the alternatives to ease congestion along the I-287 corridor from Suffern to Stamford in tandem with a new Tappan Zee Bridge seem to base their argument on the cost of oil.

Buses no longer just run on diesel; alternative fuels from propane to used grease are now running more vehicles.

Historically, the broad swath of New York state above the Bronx relied on buses only for short hops, often by students and workers fortunate enough to live and work along designated lines. The image of business people stacked like cordwood waiting to get to the office was reserved for railroad stations.

All of which does not make us train bashers. They work and work well and should be a part of the transportation mindset that too often features only train-car.

They stopped laying commuter rail tracks locally during the same epoch that has witnessed the explosion of roads.

We are not opposed to new rail lines, except as they might simply duplicate existing roads. Yes, an I-287 monorail might ease congestion, but the funds would be better spent speeding commuters along the highway in rapid-speed bus lanes and building the monorail elsewhere to serve other than as an option for people who don’t like buses. Light rail like New York City’s old trolleys works in cities around the world; it could work in our region, too, as a way to bring commuters from general to specific locations.

Our commutation formula worked historically, up to a point.

The day of reckoning when the fabric began to unravel is difficult to peg and is rooted in the individual experience, but that day has most definitely arrived. Traffic has morphed from not too bad, to bad, to hell itself. The bus may not have seemed so appealing when traffic glided along I-287 and the stretches west of the Hudson River were for camping out. Frankly, those halcyon days, if they ever existed, have gone the way of buggies and narrow-gauge pufferbellies. Today is a different, smog-choked story.

The success of buses in the equation will not really arrive, unfortunately, until they are proving their worth. And therein lies the rub. The best advertising for the E-Z Pass at regional toll plazas is to be sitting in a Great Wall of China-length cash lane watching the E-Z Passes blow past at 30 mph. It is the formidable task of BRT (bus rapid transit) proponents to sell a cultural sea change by inserting “bus” into the train-car lexicon. The EZ Pass system became its own advertising juggernaut seeing was believing. Buses have the same opportunity, but they must be seen zipping by bumper-to-bumper backups in their designated BRT lanes for car drivers to get the message.

Unless … the pitch to embrace buses is done the modern way: through message management. “Tired of wasting hours every week behind the wheel of your car?” a drive-time radio ad might ask. “Why not enjoy the bus? Run the company spreadsheets, write e-mails, or just look at the scenery while doing your part to save the planet and reduce local congestion.” This being important, the pro-bus crowd might enlist those Hollywood types who profess to be so big on the environment. For some reason, people seem to listen to Angelina Jolie at a rate proportionate to her beauty.

Buses at present remain big diesel belchers. Heaven help the asthmatic stuck in traffic behind one, certainly. But vehicles running on used vegetable oil smell like French fries, a distinct improvement. And remember if the bus has 40 passengers, that could be 40 fewer cars on the road, meaning the bus is producing a lot less exhaust than the sum of its passengers driving their own vehicles. And maybe hydrogen, which is a poor relation in the world of alternative car fuels, should be focused on buses.

Common sense could well be the overarching factor playing to the bus. Business people live by common sense and have made a healthy cottage industry of bashing government’s inability to do the same. Leaving the car for the bus could test that self-assessment because getting where you’re going faster, with less pollution and with less stress, just makes common sense.

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