[btheunissen]

I wouldn’t be surprised if this was across the board for buses into lower Manhattan/around bridges into Manhattan. When living in cities I usually use both buses and trains but when living in NYC I tried to avoid buses when possible as you are at the behest of an insane amount of traffic usually; meaning you can’t reliably be places on time if you are using the bus.

[jon_richards]

I like the theory of traffic that basically says traffic will always make the best mode of transportation as bad as the second best.

The problem with buses is that car traffic can never be bad enough to make cars worse than buses. Buses are doomed to always be worse than cars unless they have dedicated lanes or parking is unbearable. So cars slow down to equal the metro system, bikes, ferries, etc.

A dedicated bus lane can speed up cars more than another car lane because it pulls traffic off the road until driving convenience equals bus convenience.