For example if there was an express buss between Bellevue and the U District that didn't have to sit behind cars crossing Lake Washington, I think it would be pretty popular.
The chicken and egg problem is hard to crack. Not enough transit riders -> high car usage -> not enough transit riders -> ...
If we all throw up our hands and say "too hard" it's only going to get worse. Growing up in Seattle and Tacoma, it was pretty frustrating to hear about the supposed light rail connection between the two that's been promised and delayed countless times over the last 20+ years.
Novelty hill rd in the NE was supposed to be 4 lanes, even through the switchback, but because of bad contractor (likely back-scratching internally) and a lack of contractual protections, 4 lanes were paid for but 2 were obtained. If we can't even do simple things right (that road typically bottlenecks for ~20-30 miles straight during rush hour, and is single lane, so no bus advantage) and your aformentioned rail link, it's really a moot point, so the focus might need to be on governance than on the transit itself.
(To address your suggestions, I agree that dedicated bus lanes might be helpful, but worry that given the respective usage volumes 1. would it be effective and 2. can you convince everyone else potential further limitation to their lanes is worth it?. Not to say "throw hands up" but it might need to come coupled with a proposal to offer more car bandwidth.
I've always been skeptical of bike lanes on the longer-haul lines outside of city centers, because at least for the area I live in with huge gaps between "stuff", (and with our weather/geography) it's not a feasible form of long-term travel for most people, even for things like picking up groceries. If it can be built without impacting road bandwidth/significantly increasing cost, I obviously see that as a plus, but I'd need to be convinced that the tradeoff actually provided the right outcome.
My focus is typically on rail build-out, improving bus usage, and aforementioned governance/efficiency, as these seem to align incentives pretty well among various groups of transit users.)
Seattle is a really bad example if you want to talk about poor public transportation. Seattle is one of the few places where bus ridership is increasing. Living anywhere with 5 miles of downtown (beside some areas divided by water) makes having a car somewhere between optional and inconvenient. It's one of the few places where bus ridership is increasing, and Sound Transit 3's implementation will make the Link Light Rail much more accessible. The number of bike trails and separated bike paths is arguably at the point where we might have too many for bike ridership levels. The city is very anticar, increasing the area where minimum parking requirements are not required, making bus only lanes in high traffic downtown areas, and talking about a downtown toll.
Saying it takes 1.5-2 hours to ride a bus from the east side to the city ignores the fact that it takes more than an hour to do so in a car. Not to mention how important the I 90 floating bridge light rail project is to further connect the east side to the city.
Transportation sucks in Seattle because of the population growth and the lack of investment in the 60s and 70s. Most of the things Seattle and King County has done in the last 20 years in regards to public transportation is correct with a few notable but not critical exceptions.
But, that's a key part of the problem. It's easy to compromise and take public transit instead of a car when the public transit saves you time. For many trips between popular commuting destinations, Seattle doesn't have that yet.
Seattle doesn't have good public transit because it's getting better, it is getting better because it has so much catching up to do. Right now we're pretty good at filling busses with riders, then jamming those busses up in traffic.
There wasn't just a critical lack of investment in the 60s and 70s - the 80s and 90s didn't make great progress with infrastructure either. What did Seattle have to show by 2000? Less than a mile of monorail, a downtown transit tunnel, and a few retired streetcar lines?
Seattle's first light-rail line opened in 2009. By comparison, Portland's MAX opened in 1986 and had over 50 miles of light rail by that point.
I'm optimistic that things are getting better and heading in the right direction, but am sympathetic to the argument that Seattle's system is poor - because in many ways it is.
And/or money. The public parking in the city is prohibitive, alone.
I don't get this at all. Between parking and traffic I almost always save time by taking the bus or riding a bike for trips less than 5 miles long.
Prohibitive, or correctly priced?
I agree that we're probably paying for a lack of investment; to the point of my comparison with Philadelphia where the infrastructure was in place. I'd reference my other comment questioning governance, since while you say a few notable but not critical exceptions, I find massive build-out times (Overlake Transit Center, for instance, will be closed until 2023, assuming I'm not confusing dates), lack of funding (discussed this issue at a local city council meeting, apparently it's partly a state/federal problem), and mismanagement (see other comment) to be quite prevelent. I may well be seeing a small slice of this, but my slice's commute is looking anywhere but up, even considering future development.
I'd also add that I didn't ignore that it takes an hour in the car. I'd agree, it takes an hour in a car. But you're in your own car, which many people see as a positive despite the mental overhead of driving, and that's still less time, variance, and inconvenience than the bus. I can only speak to the # of cars I see in the lots at work, these are clearly sufficient dis-incentives to the bus as it currently exists, and we can't ignore that if we want to improve the situation. (I'd also note that your mention of "less than 5 miles of downtown" makes me think we may be looking at very different strata of things; perhaps I should have said initially "Seattle Area", the trains I was referring to in Philly go 20+ miles out in many directions)
[0]https://www.kingcounty.gov/independent/forecasting/King%20Co... [1]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Qyj31NiW1kc30GX9PCNr...
I feel like zoning regulations that altogether prohibit housing density in US cities play an extremely large part in this, and that shitty US transit and strict land-use regulations in US are not two independent phenomena. Allowing landowners to build apartments (or single-family homes on very small lots with high lot coverage and no setbacks, or duplexes/triplexes/quadplexes, etc) with density commensurate with the market need allows transit to suck far less (as does letting transit operators to build their rights-of-way along sensical alignments and allowing commercial density around train stations).
Parking /silos/ owned by the city, right at transit transition hubs, at the edge.
The use case is driving in from the 'savage lands', having ample (free (paid for the same way roads are)) parking, and transferring to the local rail/bus/people-mover-belt system of the dense urban core.
In my area, the government will use its monopoly on violence to keep you from building in a lot smaller than one third of an acre. Yet, in my pre-code subdivision (exempt from the minimum), houses are being built on 1/12 acre lots and selling just fine. In the rest of the county, the low density you see doesn’t reflect what people want. It reflects what a minority of people who control the local government have imposed on everyone else.
A more reasonable way to develop a city would be to have a cramped, urban core where everything is well connected, has low parking minimums, and minimal zoning restrictions, surrounded by areas of gradually decreasing density, and holding parking in "rings" around these areas. In my mind, I'd like to organize the city in these rings: walkable, bikable, short-drive/suburban, long-drive/rural.
The big issue is the US has made up-zoning impossible. There are no mandatory zoning changes as people move to an area, or anything of that nature. Add to this that many American homeowners derive a significant portion of their equity from their house value and you have a situation where it is very difficult for any area of the US to expand to accommodate to an influx of population.
In Seattle, if I want to get from a suburb on the east side into the city, during ANY trafficked time, it's going to be at least 2 busses (usually crowded, late, or full, so add another ~1), a decent amount of walking, and a 1.5-2 hour total trip. This compounds with the fact that many of the fringe buses only come once every half/hour, and not at all on weekends.
Compare this to a city that had proper infrastructure to start, Philadelphia. I lived a comparative distance, and the population is MUCH higher and denser. But a 5 minute walk and a single 20-30 minute train ride put me anywhere I wanted in center city. While Seattle "has light rail" it's an honest joke next to the coverage in the north-east.
As such, there's _no option_ to tax balance, it would end up being highly regressive punishing those forced to live further out and with no option but to use a car. The vicious cycle comes into play as the increased car traffic makes public transit less emphasized, convenient, and more of a perceived negative, leading to increased car traffic, etc etc. (compounded by less people wanting to take the tax burden they don't see a personal benefit to; there are a few different "tragedy of the commons" type effects in this mess.)
If we had trains that could get me to work like the sister post says about Stockholm's, no need for additional motivation, I wouldn't own a car for an instant, and didn't until my mid/late 20s when I left the east coast, but that's not the reality of the cities we've built, and now we're in a bit of a hole that I'm not sure how to incentivise people out of.