Austin planners are considering a law designed to ensure bus service performance by requiring drivers to allow buses to merge after making a stop, but transit advocates point to a body of research that casts doubt on the efficacy of such laws.
Caleb Pritchard reports from Austin: "Mayor Steve Adler’s sales pitch for his successful $720 million transportation bond promised the creation of new bus pullouts along major city corridors so that, in his words, 'cars can keep on going when the bus pulls over.'"
That's where the challenge arises. "Transit advocates and the Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority countered that notion with concerns that endless platoons of zooming vehicles would pin buses inside the pullouts, thus kneecapping City Council’s directive to staff to use the bond money both to ease congestion and improve transit operations," according to Pritchard.
Thus a new state or local law is under consideration to "require drivers to yield to buses attempting to re-enter the flow of traffic," but the track record of such laws in other states and cities has not made a case for the potential success of the law in speeding up transit service.
FULL STORY: Corridor plans could yield new traffic law, but buses might not benefit as promised
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Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
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