[anigbrowl]

Widening a street to put extra lines isn't a small undertaking. I like taking the bus and chose where I lived based on transit availability but I would much prefer small buses that run more frequently. Bigger buses are only full a small amount of time each day, but then run slower because they have to make more stops, and when they're not full they still take up a lot of room and require a lot of energy to run.

I'm so down with small self-driving buses.

[ericd]

At the risk of stating the obvious, you don't have to add extra lanes to make dedicated bus lanes, you just have to take lanes away from cars. Would not be popular, but if you could guarantee that these things didn't get stuck in traffic, and they ran frequently, I think they'd steal a huge amount of share from cars, and it would lessen the sting for many people.

[anigbrowl]

Walk around a real neighborhood, most of the roads have only two lanes. There are no lanes to take away unless you want to convert every second street into a one-way, and that (by definition) is going to double the distance people have to walk to take a bus because they won't be able to run buses in both directions on the same street. You don't have to sell me on the virtues of public transit, but it's just a fact that large buses are not efficient in many respects because they are carrying only a fraction of their capacity most of the time.

Small buses that run more frequently address this problem.

[Dylan16807]

> that (by definition) is going to double the distance people have to walk to take a bus because they won't be able to run buses in both directions on the same street

No it won't. At most it adds about a block. At best the new route is closer.

[ericd]

True, I mean mostly for main roads. Sibling post also had a good point that we could remove street parking and make another lane, in many cases.

[acdha]

In most cities you don’t even need to take a traffic lane: just the subsidized parking. Let people use garages or, better, take the bus and the entire area works better for everyone.

[ericd]

Oh yeah, great point.