Transit-only lanes are a colossal waste of space. Let's say we have a 5-mile long route with 12 minute headways. In San Francisco, buses move about 8.1mph, so that's 3 buses. (Each bus completes a loop every 36 minutes, and we'll "assume a spherical cow" by saying that bus bunching doesn't exist and they're evenly spaced. We'll also assume that the extreme ultra-luxury decadance of a mere 12-minute wait somehow got past SFGov).
Three buses, 40 feet long, on 26,400 feet of road. Only 0.45% of the road is utilized. 99.55% of the bus lane is being wasted.
It would be smart to keep the road below the point of saturation, where it declines in utility for everyone, but demanding that 99.55% of it sit empty is certainly not an efficiency-minded position.
I'm not sure if you're being satirical or not, but the efficiency of a road (or any transport method) is not, and should not, be the density of vehicles able to be contained on it.
At least go approximately by how many people can use it in a given amount of time, at what cost, to get people from their trip start to their destinations.
Lets not even get started on the additional considerations for transport logistics (where you park, fill up, what you block via each option, who pays), because at the very least you first need to understand the notion of throughput rather than vehicle density :\
>, but the efficiency of a road (or any transport method) is not, and should not, be the density of vehicles able to be contained on it.
Great! Then you will not ever point to parking space to claim that cars are inefficient, and will join me in calling out people that do?
>at the very least you first need to understand the notion of throughput rather than vehicle density
Yes! And although a road packed with buses has higher throughput than a road packed with cars, in practice our choice is between a road packed with cars and a road which sees a bus every 10-20 minutes. Since each bus has 8800 feet to itself to carry 45 passengers, each passenger can actually have 195 feet to themselves at breakeven. The bus route with realistic headways has much lower throughput than heavy private car traffic. Although I agree, it would be nice to see wall-to-wall buses with multiple buses stopping per minute.
(Obviously all of this is crude since at some point stopping and starting at red lights, and waiting for pedestrians before turning, becomes a major concern).
Three buses, 40 feet long, on 26,400 feet of road. Only 0.45% of the road is utilized. 99.55% of the bus lane is being wasted.
It would be smart to keep the road below the point of saturation, where it declines in utility for everyone, but demanding that 99.55% of it sit empty is certainly not an efficiency-minded position.