Chicago has a few express buses and is playing with the idea of more. Things like only 1 stop per half mile, a special lane to travel in, raised platforms, and magic that flips traffic signals for them.

http://www.transitchicago.com/ashlandbrt/

They are going for a 16 mph average speed, vs 21 mph that the subway gets. Obviously still a bit slow, but way better than a normal bus (which I think is 5-10 mph)

I know street space is a bit more of a premium in SF over Chicago, but it seems like a pretty good help. Not as good as a subway, but in theory much much cheaper to use, it uses existing streets with just a few rule changes.

It really depends on the route in SF; some DO have express busses.

For San Francisco I’d settle with “not smell of feces/vomit so badly you can’t stomach riding in the first place.”

That's the barrier for riding public transit in much of the country to be honest. I'd be happy to take the local light rain or commuter busses with my kids but the fact they're usually used as toilets and air conditioned sleeping areas with wheels for vagrants means I'll be driving. Even if it's less convenient.

This is a basic contradiction which I am not sure is solvable. If the stops are too far away, you (or somebody for whom walking is harder, like older people, less physically fit people, etc.) won't be able to use it. If stops are too close, getting through them takes a lot of time. I know there is a body of work that tries to find optimal setup for such cases, but I'm not sure it's possible to make everybody happy here. If you want good coverage, you'd have to sacrifice speed, the bus can't go everywhere and be fast at the same time, at least not within a single mode of transportation.

In SF, this is made worse by the people's behavior. There is a dedicated line for the buses, but cars routinely drive on it to turn, get in/out parking or just feeling they can outsmart everybody by doing so. So in fact, the bus stops not once but 3-4 times per block to deal with these. And then there are traffic lights of course. And yes, as a result it's not too much faster than walking (though somewhat more relaxing, if you get a seat :)

> This is a basic contradiction which I am not sure is solvable.

Why do people say things like this? Have you ever been to a major European city? Most have well designed public transit systems that are much more convenient than driving. They usually manage this through a combination of local subways, regional trains to go into and out of the city core, and high speed rail to travel between cities. Chinese and Indian cities are implementing the same thing.

If SF actually cared about making public transit convenient (i.e. if Transit First was anything other than an empty slogan), they would have police ticket those cars that drive in the bus only lanes.

I just don't understand this bizarre behavior of insisting that problems are insolvable, when plenty of others have implemented adequate solutions.

To be fair, European cities are often terrible for driving, because the road system is poorly designed. And expanding public transport takes precedence.

That is also technically achievable in US, but much less politically achievable.

One partial solution is to have local and express trains/busses using the same route. Muni does this in SF, but the express busses generally only run in small windows around commute hours.

It's not a contradiction. The buses only go down main roads. But on those roads they stop at every block. I'd be happy to walk three or even four blocks to catch a bus. So the bus could stop every 6-8 blocks on the roads it goes down. Now that those buses are faster we might be able to add additional routes on roads that were previously more than 3-4 blocks from a stop.

Also other countries were able to solve this. It's a uniquely American problem.

If we kicked cars out of the city, the buses would be less delayed, and more passengers would me an more frequent routes.

Yes, there is a tradeoff to more vs fewer stops. A stop at each small city block is still too far in the fewer direction: very few lost riders, very slow effective speed.

> > expand routes, increase availability, update their equipment.

> ... and be faster.

mere reliability would be a nice start. denver's RTD system can't deal with predictable spikes in usage like the start of a semester at universities, or adjust itself when three or four of the high-frequency buses stack up on top of each other such that buses that should show ever 15 minutes don't appear for an hour.

everything in a smartphone that makes uber/lyft possible would've been cost effective to cram into a bus 20 years ago. but as far as i know they're still just talking (intermittently) on a radio.

coming into market st, and depending on which bus you take (islands or sidewalk exit) there is a huge gap on 2nd st if you are on a bus that exits onto the sidewalk. but yes 3rd and up has an exit every street

and same with heading out of market st, but i mean...the point of the buses is to pick up workers on market st so why wouldn't they try to stop on every street?

i think the issue is there are too many buses based on market st, thus causing tons of congestion. there needs to be more buses going through mission st. or further southeast in soma that eventually comes back up on van ness.

also most buses during rush hour for people getting off work by the time you get to 6th st the bus is entirely full and you can't get on. for that i'm not sure what the solution is other than having buses on that route start somewhere on 6th st rather than from the transit station or embarcadero..

I've always thought bus stops were too frequent outside of downtown Pittsburgh as well. Probably half he stops could be removed and that would speed up bus routes.

I've experienced that frustration first hand in SFO, and when I was at uni in Nottingham - it might not have actually been quicker but the constant stop/start was becoming so annoying that I got out and walked in the end just because it meant I was moving.

Even biking works if you have bike racks on the bus and light rail. But most buses can only accommodate 1-3 bikes and light rail has no racks onboard at all.

Just get a skateboard or scooter. You can even carry them on in crush conditions, and there's no setup/teardown. I commute 4.2 miles each weekday on a skateboard, and I see a few other's doing so too.

well a folding bike aka the Brompton works better for this use case

Would love a Brompton. I ride a Dahon (less so with Lyft) for the commute and Cannondale on the weekends. Once we move to a larger flat I'm going to gift myself a folding electric bike.