buuyytp
I think you run Peoria Station, past the university hospital, down Peoria, cut through to Havana, the commercial districts (The Gardens) on Havana, hit Kaiser hospital, and end at Nine Mile station. Those anchors are high volume destinations -- workers, shoppers, students. It also ties into two regional rail lines, so commuting into Denver becomes a lot easier.
Over all route length is maybe 8.5 miles. Put 8-12 stops along it, particularly along the big anchors. Convert some of those six lane roads into four plus two lane roads. Havana is perfect for mid lane platforms -- these provide not only good transit dwellings time, they also reduce pedestrian panic over having to cross six or seven lanes at once.
Get across town, park n ride to park n ride, in around 35 minutes, protect that time using infrastructure changes. Car trips off the same distance can be faster, but are often slower due to traffic. Once people realize their median transit time can go down by bus, they'll come. Additionally, BRT can spur investment in mixed use development along the corridor.
It would be unpopular at first, because it would mean making choices that prioritize buses. But anyone who has ever tried parking at a medical center knows how expensive and painful that can be. That region already supports some of the highest traffic on transit in Aurora, with three of their heaviest routes running along that corridor. Retail and medical workers have to get in to those workplaces. So they either commute by transit or would be served well here.
You'd need ~6 buses in fare collecting service at a time to hit <15 minute service.
If you want some comparisons, look at SWIFT Blue line in Snohomish county, a suburban sprawl outside Seattle. Or Indianapolis's IndyGo Red line. Both took highly car centered infrastructure and became their highest ridership lines, exceeding the buses they were replacing in very car centric environments.
Everyone is out here thinking I'm policing, correcting, eradicating, or some other verbing. When really I'm asking you to inconvenience yourself to stop inconveniencing me.
You are well within your rights to be like, "no". I don't understand this compulsion to make either party into some villain.
There are words we use because they are familiar that are nevertheless hard to hear for some groups.
When that happens, one absolutely can share the impact of the words AND acknowledge no malicious intent. When I was a kid, "gay" meant bad. Tell you what, didn't feel good to hear it. "Hey, I'm gay" was met with, "Oh I didn't mean it like that". Like, sure, but also can we find another word for bad?
And it's never couched as a correction. It's always an expression of the impact on me, "Hey all, I know this is a bit of a hang up, but the use of 'guys' feels exclusionary to me, any chance folks would try alternatives? Folks, peeps, y'all, etc?"
From there, if I only see you once every few months I don't expect you to remember flawlessly. The only time I judge someone is if they say no.
As for pronouns, they are a useful signal, but not the entire signal. Like, their presence indicates "this person might be safer", their absence indicates nothing.
The scenario here is, "I feel excluded by 'guys', would you all feel ok using something else?"
You are a grown up, you can just say "No".
The consequences will be me having a slightly lower opinion of you as a person.
There's no eradication. I'm not asking you to stop using the word guys.
You are free to consider my request unreasonable. The consequence is a minor one -- I'll know I asked and you declined, and you'll lose some fractional amount of social capital with me.
Where in that does it say I expect my preferences to be catered to?
The whole interaction goes like this: "I feel excluded by 'guys', any chance we could settle on something else?" "No" "Ok" (-1 reputation with me)
Why do you make this out like it's some major thing to have someone ask, and then decline? You have agency, you are allowed to say no. I genuinely don't understand the intensity with which you and others respond with.
People deliberately choosing not to try to honor those preferences are making a choice with a small impact. No one is claiming it's a big deal. But honoring preferences can make people feel unhappy.
As can honoring a preference that you find silly.
It turns out, this is pretty simple human negotiation stuff -- we can all express a preference and we can all choose to not honor it. And we have to be comfortable with the idea someone might think less of someone else a little bit as a result.
You are, in essence, saying, "I want you to think differently."
I made no claim that it costs nothing. Changing language use is non trivial. Which is why I never demand it. I make a preference known, you can act on it or not.
I made the claim that: a) it does not offend me and b) I prefer others not use it and c) if I've expressed my preference and you choose not to honor that preference, it will diminish my opinions towards you.
This is how preferences work. We communicate them. Others find the request reasonable or not and act accordingly. If my preference was no music playing in desk areas, and you played music in the desk area, I'd think less of you as a result. If you gave me a nickname and I asked you not to use it, and you still used it, I'd think less of you.
Other folks, myself included, do feel excluded by "guys" as a gender neutral term. I'm not offended, but I do appreciate when people offer something else.
But to your later point, I don't think it's either/or. We can do both.
People get lumped into "guys" and feel excluded. That's such a different bar than feeling offended.
It's ok for you to say, "I'm sorry my language makes you feel excluded, but I'm not going to change" and it's ok for someone to think less of you as a result.
Why does everyone jump to the idea that people who want more inclusive language are offended? Or that the critique being offered here is that the language is offensive?
(Granted, sometimes that is the critique. Plenty of casual racism or ableism is offensive. But that's not the case with "guys".)
I tend to think of city limits as the boundaries of a city -- not the broad metropolitan area. Shorline is not Seattle, neither is Bellevue or Renton.
Edit: That said, we used to have streetcar suburbs as a prevailing model. Spokes that radiated out to the suburbs on relatively fast, uncomfortable streetcars. A similar model with trams or BRT could function.
I'd focus on the college corridor. (Airport, Fox River Mall), Appleton Transit Center, Downtown Appleton, Lawrence university, maybe a little east. Theres some decent anchors along that line, but it might make sense to deviate from college ave to hit them.
Because this is a small town, this route is small. Probably need only 4-5 buses in active revenue service to achieve those 15 minute time tables.
Then I'd probably prioritize an intersecting route from Richmond, Oneida, and Memorial.
Both would need light and right of way changes to prioritize bus traffic.
Route 15, which strongly parallels my suggested route, Carries 15% of the whole transit network's total load and is considered a high revenue route despite only hourly service. This route heavily serves workers and students.
The route was decreased in frequency not due to flagging demand, but because they could not sufficiently staff the route. Their general manager is quoted as saying, "we are having trouble finding enough drivers to drive the buses". They lost like a third of their drivers over the past five years.
If the route was staffed and had priority right of way, making it a key means to get across town, you'd definitely see riders come back.
No one made this claim.
"If only most cities could have this today"
Seattle has this. No one claimed or required it to be universal within the city.
Pick a US city, then pick a neighborhood within that city you feel is emblematic of the pattern you observe. We've selected a few -- Seattle, Minneapolis -- go ahead and you pick one where a US city would not be able to support it. Then we can look at that example together.
"Transplant this pattern onto a suburb and it breaks." Well, we're talking about the city, aren't we?
Let's pick a city, I'll let you choose, and tell me which suburb within that city is a classic example of the pattern you feel is commonplace. Then we can discuss a concrete plan.
Pretty far fetched.