Better balance in transportation possible as legislature swings to DFL

Just two years after the Minnesota State Senate and House of Representatives came under Republican control in the Tea Party wave of 2010, both houses flipped back to Democratic-Farmer-Labor majorities in the election this past Tuesday. This was a big surprise to local news outlets, who had expected Republicans to retain the upper hand. The state has had a string of Republican and third-party governors in recent decades, so this marks the first time since 1990—the Rudy Perpich administration—that the governor and the leadership in both chambers have been in DFL hands.

I won't try to decode what was going through voters' minds on Election Day, but this had certainly been the least popular legislature in memory: The public blamed them for the 2011 state government shutdown by a 2–1 margin over Governor Mark Dayton, and approval of the legislature dipped to 17% in February this year. Perhaps buoyed by the turnout against two constitutional amendments that grabbed serious attention, the electorate created a Democratic wave just as big as the one that brought many Tea Party-infused candidates into position just one cycle ago.


The change in Saint Paul, as well as shifts in power nationally, should lead to better outcomes for advocates of balanced transportation including infrastructure for walking, biking, transit and trains to complement our current system heavily biased toward auto and air travel.  This past legislature had reduced funding for or declined to fund projects including the Southwest LRT line from Minneapolis to Eden Prairie (now known as the "Green Line Extension") and the Northern Lights Express intercity train from Minneapolis to Duluth.  They had also reduced the biennial allocation of funding to Twin Cities-area public transit by 46%, slashing annual state support from $72 million to $39 million.

Oddly, that particular legislation included guidance for the following biennium to restore most, but not all, of that particular pot of money—perhaps someone knew their moment in the sun was fleeting.

Rep. Michael Beard (R–Shakopee) in particular caused infuriation for transit advocates in his role as chairman of the House Transportation Committee, particularly after proposing drastic cuts and making comments indicating he viewed public transit primarily as a social service for people of little means rather than a legitimate transportation alternative for the public at large. (Surprisingly, despite the anti-train record, Rep. Beard has been known to take rail excursions such as those offered by the Friends of the 261, though I don't know if he's taken them of his own accord or was invited along by rail advocates.)

Mr. Beard easily retained his seat in this year's election, but will no longer hold the chairmanship of the Transportation Committee. Other seats along the Southwest LRT corridor did flip to DFL hands, however. Up north, Chip Cravaack lost his U.S. House seat from the 8th District which includes Duluth, being replaced by Rick Nolan, a former congressman. Cravaack was opposed to the Northern Lights Express train service, but Nolan appears to support it (though his campaign website specifically calls out "high-speed light-rail"... Oh dear).

Another major rail project that stalled in 2010 was the high-speed extension of Amtrak's Chicago–Milwaukee Hiawatha Service to Madison, Wisconsin, which probably would have been extended to the Twin Cities a few years later.  Curiously, while Minnesota's government went all blue in the general election, Wisconsin's capitol returned to red as the slim 1-vote Democratic majority in their State Senate (due to recall elections in 2011 and 2012) was washed away.  With a governor whose campaign drew upon and fueled ire against the Madison extension, it seems unlikely that there will be significant movement on this front beyond the current effort to run a second daily train on the route of Amtrak's Empire Builder.

Similarly, the political winds didn't shift quite as much in Washington as they did here, so funding from the federal government may continue to slow down. Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate largely ran the table, but the power shift was much less pronounced in the U.S. House, where the GOP remains in charge.

Will either the U.S. House or the Wisconsin Legislature become more moderate this time around? I can't say. Hurricane Sandy has been used to focus attention on climate change, and we need to restructure our land use, transportation networks, and utility networks to deal with that. Rising oceans wouldn't seem to affect Wisconsin much, but the storm was big enough to whip up big waves on Lake Michigan. We've had some big storms in the Midwest as well, such as the one that caused massive flooding in Duluth this past June. Perhaps outside events like these will help shift some opinions on a variety of transportation projects.

When the humble bus stop is a little too humble

View Larger Map

This is the busiest transit stop in the state of Minnesota, seeing about 4,300 boardings daily, though you'd never know it by looking. It's on the south side of City Center on 7th Street and Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, and lacks most of the amenities you'd expect to find at a location with that volume: Shelters to provide cooling shade in the summer and heaters in the winter, as well as rain, snow and wind. There is a little seating, but not much. Good lighting, signage, and information kiosks are practically nonexistent.

Less obvious in photographs is the simple lack of space. The sidewalk has frequently been getting filled up with bus patrons, leading Metro Transit to add some markings to the pavement to delineate the areas where bus passengers should stand to separate them from the flow of pedestrians.

Um... Great?

As part of a campaign dubbed "WalkSafe", the benches (mostly obscured in this photo from Metro Transit, but still barely visible in the distance) have been moved away from the wall of City Center, and some brightly-colored stickers have been added. A NexTrip sign indicating bus arrival times has also been added, but it's tucked away in a spot that's hard to see. Sure, some people will go along with the new separation of space, but this arrangement is uncomfortable for others who prefer to hug the side of the building in order to grab what little shelter they can, and simply to take a load off by leaning up against the wall. Unfortunately, the sidewalk is already crowded, so attempting to add shelters, benches, or other street furniture would only make it harder to move through the area.

There should be other options, including expanding the sidewalk area. While it might be possible to carve a space out of City Center, the better option is probably to add a bulb-out to extend the sidewalk area into the street. 7th Street is a one-way with three lanes for through traffic plus curb lanes on each side. The street could handle moving the buses into the right-most through lane and extending the sidewalk into the right-hand curb lane, more than doubling the room in the waiting area.  That would open up a huge range of possibilities for good designs that will pull those stragglers away from the wall of City Center.

Extensions like that have cost up to around $60,000 in other cities, including new shelters—this stop probably generates that much in fare revenue every 2–3 weeks. With a pace like that, there's a clear benefit to making a real investment in this stop to change it into a place where riders can feel like they're human rather than trash to be shoved out of the way. Believing that this site can be improved by simply moving the existing pieces around is patently ridiculous.

Update on Amtrak derailment in Niles, MI

The National Transportation Safety Board gave an update yesterday (Tuesday, Oct. 23) on the derailment of Amtrak Wolverine #350 this past Sunday, where the train hit a misaligned switch, sending it off the mainline and into a small rail yard. From this Chicago Tribune report and this Detroit News report, we get the following details:

• The train had a green signal prior to hitting the switch.
• The train hit the switch at about 60 mph. The jolt knocked the engineer to the floor, but he was able to hit the emergency brake.
• There was a derail device on the track to the yard, but it did not have any effect on the fast, heavy train locomotive. The train ultimately derailed 290 feet beyond the switch.
• The train came to a stop 21 feet away from empty hopper cars (for carrying ballast) that were parked in the yard.

As I mentioned in my previous post, this line is supposed to have Positive Train Control signaling installed to prevent dangerous situations like this from happening. The details thus far reinforce my belief that the switch involved was simply not wired into the signaling system, since a "reversed" switch would have changed the signal to either a stop or some other indication telling the engineer that the train could only proceed at low speed. But, other possibilities remain, such as an improper design to the PTC hardware or software, a fault that went undetected, or even a broken switch that failed just as the train went over it.

Amtrak derailment in Niles, MI appears to show weakness in Positive Train Control

This past Sunday, October 21st, an eastbound Amtrak Wolverine train from Chicago to Detroit/Pontiac derailed just outside Niles, Michigan, shortly after leaving the station there. While most news outlets have simply reported the derailment and the modest number of minor injuries that resulted, the Detroit Free Press noted in its reporting that the train ended up on the wrong track.


View Amtrak derailment, Niles, MI 2012-10-21 in a larger map

The mainline here only has a single track, so the "wrong track" appears to be a spur into an old yard area adjacent to the mainline. There is a siding right in Niles so that trains can pass each other at the station. Heading east, the line narrows back down to a single track about 1.3 miles out. Immediately after becoming single-tracked, there's another switch that leads off to the aforementioned yard area. According to Google Maps imagery, this is the only spot where it's possible to leave the mainline until another siding appears in Dowagiac, 12 miles away from Niles.

The track in this area is able to carry trains at speeds up to 110 mph in part because it has a Positive Train Control (PTC) system installed (specifically GE Transportation Systems's Incremental Train Control System, or ITCS) which is supposed to improve safety by preventing collisions between trains. Unfortunately, it looks like that system failed in some way, and disaster was probably only averted through the use of a very simple device actually known as a derail—a wedge-like hunk of metal that is locked onto a rail with the express purpose of derailing anything that rolls over it. This is generally used to prevent parked rail cars from accidentally rolling out of a yard or spur track and onto the mainline, but (as happened in this case) can also prevent a train inadvertently coming off the mainline from slamming into parked rail cars at full speed.

In fact, a derail device can be seen on another track in this shot of the derailment from the Associated Press. The mainline appears to be the track way off on the left, partially obscured by the orangish freight cars, while the derail appears below them (in the foreground):

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating this incident. Hopefully they will have an initial report coming on it soon, though their full investigations typically take a year to 18 months. The NTSB has been recommending PTC be installed on rail lines for many years now, so it will be interesting to see how they react to an incident in a zone where it is apparently in use. Perhaps this specific spot didn't have it. My gut is leaning toward the idea that the switch that led off to this spur was intentionally not included in the PTC signaling system. Is it a manually-thrown switch, or is it controlled remotely? Amtrak actually owns the mainline here, and dispatching is their responsibility. If the switch is remotely controlled, then the dispatcher out on the east coast probably screwed up.

It'll also be interesting to learn how fast the train was going when it entered the spur and when it (presumably) hit the derail, and when or whether the brakes were being applied. If the signals were all working correctly and the switch off into this yard area is actually wired into the signaling system, the train probably should have had a "stop" signal just west of the misaligned switch—either the engineer should have stopped there because of the signals he/she saw in the cab and/or in the signal heads adjacent to the track, or the PTC system should have automatically stopped the train.

However, there's a decent possibility that the expected outcome here would have been for a train to get a signal telling the engineer and PTC system that it could proceed at a slow speed into the yard (probably 30 mph at most, and likely less than that). But, looking at pictures of the derailment, it seems to me that the train was going much faster than 30 mph when it hit the either derail device or a warped-enough piece of track to cause it to start sliding along the ground. (That said, there's an incredible mass there, and my imagination may not handle it properly. I also don't know exactly where the derailment began.)

One complexity thrown into the mix here is that a train traveling between two points has a very different method of operation from a train working in a yard. Out on a mainline, two trains should never really occupy the same stretch of track, but yards, spurs, and sidings often involve partially-assembled trains shoving things around, attaching and detaching themselves to or from other train segments. In theory, the PTC system probably should have known that the Amtrak train is a passenger train and had no business going into a freight spur.

There's a possibility that the switch leading off the mainline actually broke either as the Amtrak train went through it or shortly before, but that seems pretty unlikely based on where the train ended up: The train probably would have derailed as it passed over the mainline switch, rather than managing to continue a couple train lengths beyond. Some of the train—particularly the lead locomotive—probably also would have continued forward along the mainline in that event. Stranger things have happened, though.

This line is really one of the primary test beds for PTC implementation around the country: Amtrak first installed ITCS in 2002 to test it out, and speeds have been raised progressively over the last decade. Starting out at 79 mph in 2002, the limit went up to 95 mph in 2005, and Amtrak trains finally began operating regularly at 110 mph in February 2012.

The derailment came just two days after Amtrak made their first 110-mph test run along the Chicago to St. Louis corridor, also enabled through the use of ITCS PTC. That line is owned by Union Pacific and has historically had a cab signaling system in place to prevent train collisions. The cab signaling system might have acted as a fallback if a similar situation occurred in Illinois, but it's not clear to me if the newer PTC system would override that or not.

Speaking as someone who wants to see passenger trains deployed much more broadly across the U.S. and operating at higher speeds to be more competitive with car and air travel, this is extremely frustrating. It really looks like someone did a half-assed job either in designing the underlying signaling technology, or at least in their implementation of it it on this line. For all that has been written about the problems leading up to that high-speed train crash in China last year, our signaling systems in the U.S. are generally far less able to prevent accidents than the system in use there. PTC is supposed to make things much safer, but it failed to do its job on Sunday.

[Edit: Please take a look at my update to this story.]

New light-rail vehicles bring a fresh look to Twin Cities transit

A new Siemens S70 parked at Target Field alongside a Bombardier Flexity Swift in new "METRO" paint.

Metro Transit officially unveiled their first new Siemens-built light-rail vehicle on Wednesday, previewing what most of the Twin Cities light-rail fleet will look like just a few years from now.  It also marked the first showing of vehicles with the new "METRO" branding which will be used on light rail and bus rapid transit lines going forward.  Both the new Siemens LRV and one of the original Bombardier LRVs showed up in a brighter paint scheme of yellow, blue, and light gray, but still following the general pattern established by the older units when they began service on the Hiawatha Line in 2004.

By now you may have heard the "Green Line" moniker that has been attached to the Central Corridor LRT project, and that the Hiawatha Line will soon be known as the "Blue Line".  The Southwest LRT project is now being called the "Green Line extension", and the Cedar Avenue and Interstate 35W BRT services are planned to be known as the Red and Orange lines, respectively.

Those routes are going to be unified under the "METRO" name.  This seems like an attempt to keep everyone thoroughly confused, though it does have a purpose: At least one of the BRT lines will be operated by the Minnesota Valley Transit Authority.  The METRO system will represent a unified brand across two different agencies and service regions.  It's an interesting political tool, but will any riders actually notice?  We'll have to wait and see.

The new branding has been rolling out slowly and has been most noticeable up until now along the Green Line where information kiosks at new stations have incorporated the METRO name.  While the train that rolled in to Target Field this week was described as "the first Green Line car", it will first see revenue service on the Blue Line.  This first car actually arrived in the Twin Cities last month and has been undergoing some initial testing.  Along with a second vehicle that arrived this week, the pair will be tested extensively, with overnight runs in the tunnels under MSP airport, before going into service around January.  Later arrivals will probably only need about one month of testing each before being officially accepted into the fleet by Metro Transit.

59 vehicles are currently on order for the Blue and Green lines, and there are options in the contract for 40 more.  The Hiawatha Line had 24 Bombardier LRVs operating by the end of 2004, but the line's ridership blew away expectations and Metro Transit ended up operating more trains and longer trains than anyone had anticipated.  They were able to exercise options for 3 additional vehicles a couple of years later, but that was the maximum allowed in the contract.  After those three were completed, Bombardier shut down the Flexity Swift manufacturing line for good, and Metro Transit has been making do with an undersized fleet for several years now.

12 of the new trains will go toward beefing up the Blue Line fleet, while the remaining 47 in the order are intended for the Green Line to Saint Paul.  Most or all of the last 40 options will probably be picked up once the Southwest extension gets approved for funding.

Metro Transit has been preparing for quite a while to receive the new trains.  The Franklin Avenue shops have been undergoing an expansion for the past year to make room for the new vehicles, and some operations that don't require direct access to the train chassis have been moved into a new Light Rail Support Facility about half a mile south.  Some vehicles officially intended for the Green Line may have a temporary home by Franklin Avenue until the new maintenance facility in Lowertown Saint Paul becomes complete enough to receive the new trains.

The new trains have some improved features as well as reduced weight compared to their older counterparts.  The older Bombardiers weighed in at 53 tons each, while the newer Siemens model is only 50.  That reduction by 6,000 pounds should help with overall efficiency and reduce electricity consumption, though it falls short of what could be achieved.  The Bombardier Flexity Swift model was primarily sold in Europe, and Metro Transit turned out to be the only American buyer.  The LRVs on the other side of the Atlantic only weighed in at 41 tons.  Federal regulations for crash requirements appear to be the culprit in porking out our original fleet as well as the newer vehicles, increasing energy consumption and adding extra wear and tear to the rails—and, of course, having the perverse effect of making it harder to absorb the energy of a crash in the first place.

The new Siemens S70 trains are a bit boxier than their elders in the fleet, which isn't to everyone's liking.  However, they have been made a bit sleeker through the removal of rear-view mirrors, replaced by rear-facing video cameras with displays inside the cab.



The interior features light gray surfaces rather than the Bombardiers' yellow walls. The new trains have 68 seats rather than 66 in the Bombardiers.  The seating arrangement has changed a bit, with seats up on the high-floor sections above the driving wheels facing toward the middle section of the vehicle, rather than the face-to-face seating found in the Type 1 cars. There is some face-to-face seating in the enlarged middle section of the Type 2 cars, though.




The new trains also have a beefier heating system than the Bombardiers, and the unit on display this week was actively pumping out heat as the media and other onlookers gathered to check out the first article on a fairly cool and blustery day.  Improved insulation should help keep the interior warmer and quieter than older trains as well.

But I shouldn't forget to mention the Bombardier train painted in new colors which was also displayed on Wednesday.  These trains will probably still be with us for another 20 years, and it was good to see them getting spiffed up with a new paint job.  While I think the old paint scheme had aged relatively well, some trains have begun to look quite dirty despite getting washed on a regular basis.  The old paint has been physically aging, and deserves a refresh.

Metro Transit tweaks planned Central Corridor bus routes

Map of recommended bus routes to be implemented once the Green Line (Central Corridor) begins operation in 2014.

In preparation for the opening of Green Line light rail 2014, Metro Transit has been busy over planning out how to rearrange connecting bus routes. Since the light-rail line will take over as the primary service in between downtowns of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, operator hours currently dedicated to bus routes 16, 50, 94 will be freed up and redistributed to other lines in the system.

An initial plan was released back in June and presented at some open house meetings and made available online. 650 people and organizations submitted 800 comments to Metro Transit, and they say the feedback was mostly positive. Several routes in the Central Corridor area will see higher frequency service and expanded service hours, including new weekend service in some cases.

Two hot topics were the addition/restoration of a route 83 bus on Lexington Parkway and the frequency reduction on the route 94 express bus which links the downtowns of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

Route 83
Route 83 generated 176 comments—22% of the total—and was a mix of positive and negative. A route 83 bus had been tried on Lexington about a decade ago, but hadn't generated enough traffic at the time to continue operating. Metro Transit was revisiting the idea since Lexington Parkway is in the middle of a 2-mile gap between the 84 on Snelling Avenue and the 65 on Dale Street.

The June version of the plan had the route 83 bus running north only to Energy Park Drive to reach Snelling Avenue before finally terminating at Snelling and Como Avenue. One major reason not to continue farther north on Lexington is the BNSF Railway bridge just north of Energy Park Drive: it has low vertical clearance and requires low-slung buses to have a safe operation.

However, the community around Como Park pushed heavily to have the route extended farther north, and it appears their wish has been granted. Route 83 is now planned to run north to Horton Avenue and then loop around the western edge of the park on Hamline before running east to the intersection of Lexington and Larpenteur Avenue.

Near the south end of the route, the idea of a new bus line was much less popular. The bus is now planned to detour away from Lexington at Jefferson Avenue, make a modest zig-zag, and enter Interstate 35E from Randolph Avenue to make the short hop to West 7th Street.

Hopefully the new version of this route will be successful and stick around longer than the last shot at it did.

Route 94
Route 94 service received 85 comments, or just over 10% of the total. There was a lot of concern over the initially planned reduction in service, which would have brought the 94 down to just "expanded peak" hours, with service going away entirely during midday hours on weekdays. Route 94 is also planned to be reoriented to enter and leave downtown Saint Paul via the 5th Street ramps, bypassing the typical route used today which often loops around the State Capitol area and frequently runs past the Ravoux Hi-Rise on Marion Street.

Metro Transit has decided to continue running the 94 during midday hours on a half-hourly basis (down from a roughly 15-minute interval today). And to address the concerns of Ravoux residents, the route 16 bus will be rerouted to run along Marion Street rather than circling around the State Capitol grounds.

The June plan had suggested that route 94 buses skip the stop at Snelling Avenue, and that recommendation has been carried forward despite some requests to keep it. The drop-off stop in the middle of the Interstate 94/Huron Boulevard interchange will still be available, however.

As the original plan stated, route 16 will only run from downtown St. Paul to University & Oak Street on the UMN campus, and will not operate all the way into downtown Minneapolis (except late night). Transfer to UMN campus buses, Green Line, routes 2 and 6 to get to other locations.

Other routes
Some proposed changes to existing routes have been rolled back. The path of route 87 along University Avenue and across Interstate 94 had been put up for possible changes, but the revised plan retains the original routing. Since route 63 along Grand Avenue is now planned to be extended up Cretin Avenue to Raymond and University Avenues at its western end, there wasn't as much need to reroute the 87.

In general, bus routes in the Central Corridor area are going to have frequencies increased -- often bumping up from current intervals around 30 minutes down to 20 minutes. Some routes will do even better, such as route 84 along Snelling Avenue, which is still planned to bump up to to 10-minute service along the bulk of the route compared to the 15-minute cycle today.

I'm happy to see that Metro Transit officials did take heed of many of the comments from riders in the corridor area. I felt it was a good plan to start out with, and while the new version won't make everyone happy, the changes strike me as being very positive for the most part.

The height (and length) of confusion

Passengers like to lean against the front wheel wells on Metro Transit's buses, often despite open seats.

I found myself pleading my case to board a Metro Transit route 3A bus the other day. Classes were mostly wrapping up at the University of Minnesota, and I found myself as a random outsider among a crush of students who had collected along Pleasant Street as they waited to head home. I told the driver I needed to get to Hamline Avenue in Saint Paul, beyond the reach of the 3E and 3C buses coming up behind, and on a different branch than the 3B which was also sure to come before the next 3A. He grimaced but relented and let me board—I could have been stuck waiting another half-hour otherwise.

It has been rare for me to be told that a bus is too full for me to board, so I spent a moment wondering what was different this time. Soon I realized that I had boarded a standard, non-articulated bus with far less capacity than the "bendy" units I've become accustomed to on route 3. The extra room inside doesn't get used much in my own neighborhood, but passenger loads spike as the buses travel toward the University of Minnesota. If not for the heavy traffic near the university, the route would probably only use standard-sized buses 35 to 40 feet long, rather than the articulated ones which stretch close to 60 feet.

This reminded me of an open house I'd attended several months back where I'd gotten to talking with Metro Transit representatives about the pros and cons of the different bus types they have: Articulated, non-articulated, high-floor, and low-floor.

Some of the busiest lines in Minneapolis such as the 21 on Lake Street and the 5 on Chicago Avenue rely heavily—if not exclusively—on standard 40-footers. Some of the same lines also remain heavily-populated with high-floor buses where steps in always slow down the flow of boardings as many older and mobility-challenged riders try to ascend. While the ideal would seem to be a low-floor articulated unit because of the high capacity and relative ease of boarding, there are some drawbacks worth considering.

One of the biggest problems with urban mass transit is speed: Because of the large number of stops on bus routes and their poor maneuverability compared to cars, they can get dragged down to a snail's pace.  While articulated buses are great for improving capacity on a route, they tend to lengthen travel times because they can't accelerate or decelerate as quickly, and are harder to pull into traffic because of the larger size.  Over the course of a 40-minute route, an articulated bus could end up taking about 2 minutes longer (a slowdown of about 5%).

The huge accordion-like joint in the middle also has negative effects on handling—Occasionally, the buses can jackknife or spin out of control due to pendulum-like effects.  This usually isn't a problem in the hands of an experienced driver, but Metro Transit sometimes has to pull articulated buses off the roads as winter weather passes through.  Articulated buses are propelled by the single axle in the rear section, so the front end of a bus can easily end up sliding sideways on slippery hills.  (This is a significant contrast with light-rail vehicles and streetcars, which typically have several drive axles for traction and have rails to keep the vehicle segments aligned).

Artics still have important advantages, though: The greater seating capacity generally keeps the center aisle clearer, allowing more freedom of movement for passengers.  Dwell time (the time spent waiting for people to board and disembark at bus stops) is usually reduced or kept constant even with higher passenger loads.  The longer buses also tend to attract more riders (a modest instance of induced demand), apparently since some people are often turned off by the cramped quarters in smaller units.

Low-floor buses also have some interesting trade-offs: There's usually a reduction in seating capacity compared to high-floor buses, partly because the front wheel wells intrude into the cabin so much that it's impossible to place seats on top of them.  In some designs, there have been attempts to compensate by shaving off a corner of the wheel well to let people lean up against it more comfortably.  Unfortunately, that has turned out to be too comfortable—passengers can often be found hanging out up at the front of the bus despite plenty of open seats farther back.  This wouldn't be a problem except that there are more passengers getting on at other bus stops.  As people try to squeeze through, they get slowed down a lot, leading to lengthened dwell times.

For whatever reason, this appears to be a design fluke on Metro Transit's low-floor, non-articulated fleet.  The longer articulated units generally have squared-off wheel well covers, which seem to discourage that behavior.  The next-generation non-articulated bus that Metro Transit has been showing off this past week on route 10 uses those squared-off wheel wells, so hopefully the problem of crowded entryways will go away over the coming years.

Aside from that oddity, the case for low-floor buses seems to be much more clear: They reduce the need for lifts to be deployed for mobility-challenged riders.  No more steps to climb also means that anyone with poor knees or carrying heavy purchases also have an easier time when boarding.  There is a problem that the steps have simply shifted to the back of the bus—many riders are reluctant to climb them as the vehicle approaches crush loads, and calls by the driver for riders to move back often go unheeded.  I also personally find the ride to be a bit better on low-floor buses, with less rocking and rolling (I think the center of gravity is lower, or I'm at least closer to it when riding).


So, while it seems that a decision to go with a longer bus or a low-floor bus should be a no-brainer, there are a bunch of factors to consider.  Articulated buses in particular have been favored for bus rapid transit, but their poor handling really means that BRT has to be implemented with as few compromises as possible: They should have exclusive lanes more consistently, for instance.  And whether  implementing BRT or simply attempting to add capacity to an exsiting route, things like bulb outs, stop consolidation, removing unnecessary turns, and transit signal priority to give buses more green lights should all be considered to counteract the bigger vehicles' weaknesses.  In some cases, shorter buses turn out to be the better option.