You may recall Arlo Guthrie’s wonderful song, “City of New Orleans” about the train from Chicago to NOLA.  In the movie “Risky Business,” the mystery of what a couple of young lovers were doing occurred on the ‘el’ (or elevated subway) in Chicago.  If you have trouble sleeping and have a device that provides soothing sounds to help take you into dreamland, you’ll find dozens of train and subway sounds, but virtually nothing from either a Greyhound or your metropolitan bus service.

But those of us who are rail lovers have to come to grips with the inherent limitation of trains and subways: They can travel only where tracks exist.  Laying new track is a major public works program.

Buses can essentially go wherever paved roads exist, thus they have unparalleled capacity and flexibility for mass transit.

As Aaron Renn has reported in “Urbanophile,”

Buses are what most people think of when they think of not getting anywhere: senior citizens waiting in lines, guys counting out change, double-parked cars. They are less sexy than subways and tend to be ignored until the MTA announces another round of service cuts. The last time buses were new was in the forties, when they were installed around the city as a cheaper, more flexible alternative to streetcars….But over the last decade, in a few transit-enlightened cities around the world, the bus has received a dramatic makeover. It has been reengineered to load passengers more quickly. It has become much more energy-efficient. And, most important, the bus system—the network of bus lines and its relationship to the city street—has been rethought.

Streetcars are making a comeback, but like buses, their speed and efficiency is limited by street lights and stop signs.  Unlike streetcars, buses have the flexibility to change routes when gridlock paralyzes their movement.

There is no inherent reason why buses can’t be more attractive and enjoyable.

Borrowing interior designs from airport vans, etc., municipal buses can provide passengers with comfortable experiences where they can be comfortable and relax.  Since buses are a slow means of point-to-point transit, passengers deserve a trade-off, and the most likely “reward” is comfortable seating with ample leg room.

Aaron Renn further states:

If New York City, the ultimate American city for rail transit, can see the wisdom of reinvigorating its bus system, then every other city in America should as well. No, New York is not cancelling its subway expansions. But it realizes that in a world of financial constraint, New Yorkers can’t wait decades for the relatively small number of projects that it has in the pipe to come online, much less develop new ones.

Buses came on the scene when metropolitan meant urban, and the automobile revolution was just beginning.  Streetcars faded when metropolitan came to include suburban. Fixed-rail couldn’t keep up with the growth.  The fact that core cities now have more open space than their surrounding suburbs simply proves the point that “things change.”  This is where the flexibility of buses can trump the romance of fixed-rail: A bus can change its route in a day while a streetcar, subway, or commuter train takes years.

Maybe the solution to enjoyable urban mass transit is to ride the bus while listening to the sounds of a train or subway on your headphones.

The post There’s nothing sexy about buses, but they work appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Aaron Renn is an opinion-leading urban analyst on a mission to help America’s cities thrive and find sustainable success in the 21st century. His particular focus is the oft-overlooked cities of the Midwest, which he reports on at his blog The Urbanophile. In a recent interview with Occasional Planet (OP), Renn (AR) shared his thoughts on the state of cities today.

OP: Why is it so hard for cities to think creatively about themselves?

AR: What often hobbles Midwestern cities is a resistance to change.  There’s a lot of nostalgia, a mentality about what has been lost, and bitterness about that. Older generations are mired in a past conception of what their city used to be. I might even suggest some places suffer from an oversupply of historical assets. Everybody says, “We have to build on our assets.” But relying only on legacy assets can end up being about defending the past, not building the future. The only reason why they have most of these assets in the first place is that previous generations didn’t build on assets.

OP: What other factors hinder new ideas?

AR: Ironically, sometimes powerful and effective city government itself is a hindrance. A strong city government can actually keep out creative ideas. In Chicago, for example, a frozen-custard stand by my house decided to put out of a couple of chairs for its customers. The city cited it for operating a café without a license for a sidewalk café.  City government in Detroit, in contrast, has so many problems that the attitude is, “If you want to try something, go ahead.” The Heidelberg Project is a great example of what you can do in Detroit that’s simply impossible anywhere else. Revitalizing our cities is to a great extent about grass roots changes. Don’t squelch it.

OP: Do other government agencies play a role?

AR: Yes. I’ve spent the past 15 years jousting with state departments of transportation. They’re very set in their ways. Highway engineers are trying to do a good job, but they’re trained in a particular way, and they rely on cookbook solutions—one size fits all. New ways of thinking are often foreign to them. Of course, you want engineers to be conservative, to build safe highways and bridges.  Highway design manuals are created to enforce consistency on a national level, and that’s not a bad thing. But I’d like to see the engineering profession evolve in its thinking, with new areas of specialization, such as a clearer distinction between urban traffic engineering and rural traffic engineering—similar to commercial vs. residential architecture.

OP: What city is doing a good job of re-inventing itself?

AR: Indianapolis is the #1 performing city in the Midwest. It didn’t have the historical assets of a city like St. Louis. It was almost an overgrown small town. They had to build a legacy, because they didn’t have the traditional things: miles of old, dense urban neighborhoods or a big-league baseball team. They were hungrier. Columbus, Ohio is similar, as are some of the Southern boomtowns.

OP: Where have you seen missed opportunities for creative, urban revitalization?

AR: There’s a potentially huge missed opportunity right now in Louisville. They’ve had a 40-year debate about where to locate a new bridge over the Ohio River. Then they reached a compromise: to build two bridges to satisfy the two warring political factions. The cost is estimated at $4.1 billion, and the design will create 23 lanes of traffic on the riverfront. Urban activists have a better plan to build just one bridge and tear down the existing riverfront expressway to reconnect downtown with the river. But no one in officialdom is interested, because, they say, “It took us 40 years to reach a political compromise. We’re not changing the plan now.”

OP: What do you think of the proposed “City to River” project in St. Louis? [To reconnect downtown St. Louis with the Arch grounds and the Mississippi riverfront, now separated by a highway]

AR: It’s an absolute no-brainer. Just do it.

OP: Here’s a chicken-and-egg question: Which comes first, better schools or more residents?

AR: The conventional wisdom is that it takes schools to attract people to a city. But I think that schools will get better when people move into the city. When people like an urban area, they say, “We’re not willing to move to the suburbs.” So they stay, they research the available schools, and they advocate for the schools their kids attend.

OP: Is there a difference between the Obama administration and previous administrations regarding cities?

AR: There’s a huge difference. President Obama is an urbanite. He established the White House Office of Urban Affairs, which is a first. In addition, under the Obama administration, the US Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency are now thinking with a tremendously different attitude toward geography. We’re very early in the game, and change will take time, but we’re definitely moving in a better direction. Cities have more clout than they used to. You know, it used to be said, in politics, that “nobody ever lost votes by running against New York City.” This President understands cities: he doesn’t have that point of view.

OP: What book, and which blogs, would you recommend to people interested in learning more about the future of American cities?

AR: Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a very compelling, easy-to-read book that I strongly recommend. It’s the rare classic that exceeds its reputation. As for blogs, I’d say take a look at Streetsblog, Human Transit, Broken Sidewalk, Urban St. Louis and Columbus Underground, to pick a sampling of the over 200 I read.

The post Q & A with The Urbanophile appeared first on Occasional Planet.