What could a transit alternative actually look like?
Hint: We (still) do not support adding HOV lanes!
This week we’ve been asking you to write to MDOT to ask them to partner with AAATA to study a transit alternative for US-23. Since then, we’ve been heard some questions about what exactly this might entail. While we need to be clear that we are not professional transportation engineers, we do have some thoughts.
Of course, our preferred solution would be … TRAINS!
However, we expect a system of regional commuter buses will be more feasible in the near term. Other communities in Michigan already operate systems like this - for example, the Flint MTA runs regional commuter routes to Brighton, Howell, and Auburn Hills. And in fact, last week, the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority (AAATA) announced they are willing to partner with MDOT to study a transit alternative for US-23 along exactly these lines, drawing on concepts in their TheRide 2045 long-range plan!
The way we see it, aside from the logistics and funding needed to operate the buses themselves, there are two main infrastructure questions that would need to be addressed - and perhaps, could be addressed as part of this highway project…
Where will buses pick up / drop off riders?
It turns out that the AAATA already has a very clear answer to this. From their press release:
TheRide has an approved long-range plan (TheRide 2045) that includes specific recommendations for diverting roughly 8,000 cars/day away from the US-23 corridor and local streets like Plymouth Rd. and Washtenaw Ave. through the use of Park & Rides.
Park & Ride is a tested and successful service, with several small scale parking lots (200 stalls) already in the Ann Arbor area. TheRide envisions scaling this service up to a size common in larger cities, with several much larger 2,000 stall lots situated further away on approaching freeway corridors such as US-23 north and south of Ann Arbor, and M-14 and I-94 east of Ann Arbor.
Users would then be shuttled into Ann Arbor destinations on highway coaches like those used for AirRide or D2A2.
“This isn’t an engineering challenge, it’s a funding challenge,” said [TheRide CEO Matt] Carpenter. “If the money were available, TheRide has the vision, capacity and expertise to execute a service like this. So this is worth at least considering.” The vision calls for large parking lots to be constructed about 10 miles outside the Ann Arbor freeway ring, along existing interchanges.
“We understand that building Park & Ride lots is maybe a little outside of MDOT’s traditional role, which is why we are offering our assistance. These sorts of ideas will become more common in a multi-modal future. And MDOT did already build a Park & Ride lot along US-23 and 8 Mile road as part of the Flex Lane project,” says Carpenter.
It’s worth pointing out that MDOT actually has already built hundreds of carpool lots throughout the state. However, Mr. Carpenter is not wrong that building park-and-ride facilities specifically intended for bus commuters - with capacity for thousands of cars and designated space for bus loading and unloading - would be a bit different. MDOT has apparently been cracking down on use of their existing carpool lots as bus stops for intercity travelers, ostensibly because many such lots are not engineered to withstand regular use by large and heavy vehicles. It will be critical to ensure that any new lots are built specifically and intentionally for use by buses.
How will buses travel efficiently to their destinations?
Another way to put this question - the way that we’ve heard from some of our friends and supporters - is, “won’t these buses just get stuck in the same traffic backups as everyone else?” Some have even gone so far as to suggest that embracing a transit-focused solution actually means we should proceed with widening US-23 to add an HOV lane.
We strongly disagree with this perspective, for a few reasons:
We are not convinced that the congestion experienced on this section of US-23 will actually cause significant problems for commuter buses. Many of the bus routes outlined in TheRide 2045 might not travel on this section of freeway at all, instead entering Ann Arbor via M-14, or perhaps even Plymouth Road. We also question how much of the current perceived congestion might be solved by improvements which would be implemented by the no build/reconstruction alternative - for example - simply by re-designing the obsolete and unsafe full-cloverleaf interchange at Washtenaw and US-23. (We do support MDOT’s efforts to improve this interchange, especially to the extent that doing so can improve safety for everyone driving, walking, and biking). This is a topic we plan to address more fully in a future blog post.
We do not see how MDOT’s proposal for HOV lanes would help buses at all, in this particular scenario. Per their renderings, the HOV lanes would be the leftmost lanes of the freeway. However, buses traveling into Ann Arbor would need to access local exits. The challenge of merging across multiple lanes of traffic would likely outweigh any benefit from traveling a mile or two in an HOV lane.
As we’ve noted before, widening US-23 to add HOV lanes would significantly increase both up-front and long-term maintenance costs. It would also induce as many as 44 million miles per year of additional vehicular trips (per the RMI SHIFT calculator), working directly against the stated climate-action goals of our community, and ensuring that any congestion relief would be temporary at best.
However, TheRide 2045 has a different answer for this as well: bus-on-shoulder operations.
Allowing buses to operate on highway shoulders is far from a new idea. Seattle has had buses running on shoulders since the 1970s. As of 2015, at least thirteen metropolitan areas across the US have bus-on-shoulder programs, including our Great Lakes neighbors in Columbus, Ohio and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota.
It’s worth noting that shoulders must be engineered and built to support part-time use by buses - Minnesota’s standards, for example, require that such shoulders be at least 10 feet wide, with a pavement depth of at least 7 inches.
Now, at first glance, this might sound a lot like another of MDOT’s proposed alternatives - “flex lanes”. However, the similarities are only superficial:
The proposed flex lanes, just like HOV lanes, would be the inside (leftmost) lanes/shoulders. A bus-on-shoulder solution could allow buses to operate on the outside (rightmost) shoulder.
While they are more compact than “general purpose” travel lanes, flex lanes would still require that considerably more width, pavement, and infrastructure be added to US-23 vs. bus-only shoulders.
Bus-only shoulders would only allow buses, thereby eliminating our concerns about induced demand.
A number of additional restrictions - including e.g. a 35 mph speed limit - would almost certainly apply to buses operating on shoulders (again, per Minnesota’s regulations), to ensure safety for all. Flex lanes allow drivers to operate at full freeway speeds.
According to comments from TheRide CEO Matt Carpenter at a recent City of Ann Arbor Transportation Commission meeting, state laws would need to be changed to allow bus-on-shoulder operations. However, this should not prevent MDOT from considering this approach, or even from building the infrastructure needed to enable it. In fact, there’s very recent precedent for MDOT designing a highway in a way that required state laws to be changed: MDOT built HOV lanes on I-75 over the past several years, even though state law did not actually permit HOV lanes until October 2023!
Once again, we are not transportation engineers, so we cannot say for certain whether bus-on-shoulder operations would be appropriate for this section of US-23. However, we believe that this is exactly the sort of question that should be considered as part of a transit alternative in MDOT’s US-23 study! So again, if you haven’t already done so, please write to MDOT and ask them to study a transit alternative.
¹ by SounderBruce on Flickr, CC-BY-SA 2.0
