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Why Buses Need To Be More Dangerous
HughPickens.com writes: Is there such a thing as being too safe? Jeff Kaufman writes that buses are much safer than cars, by about a factor of 67 but buses are not very popular and one of the main reasons is that if you look at situations where people who can afford private transit take mass transit instead, speed is the main factor. According to Kauffman, we should look at ways to make buses faster so more people will ride them, even if this means making them somewhat more dangerous. Kauffman presents some ideas, roughly in order from "we should definitely do this" to "this is crazy, but it would probably still reduce deaths overall when you take into account that more people would ride the bus": Suggestions include not to require buses to stop and open their doors at railroad crossings, allow the driver to start while someone is still at the front paying, allow buses to drive 25mph on the shoulder of the highway in traffic jams where the main lanes are averaging below 10mph, and leave (city) bus doors open, allowing people to get on and off any time at their own risk. "If we made buses more dangerous by the same percentage that motorcycles are more dangerous than cars," concludes Kauffman, "they would still be more than twice as safe as cars."
A bus, depending on features, costs $100,000 to $1,000,0000 (a city bus is nowhere near a million though!) and requires very little additional supporting infrastructure. A tram or trainset costs $6,000,000 to $35,000,000, and requires track installed (typically $25-75 million per mile), plus stations at a cost of $5M+ each.
I love trains, but the argument for having them serve intracity traffic for all but the most traffic clogged of cities is very hard to make.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
It's discrimination no matter how you cut it. You cannot tell a person in a wheelchair that "Sorry, you have to wait 20 minutes for the next bus," while everyone else at the stop can hop on. And all for your convenience. This is classic discrimination.