Crown Center to Union Station (bus stops) is 360 metersbeautyfromashes wrote:I've never understand the mental chasm that some people seem to think there is between Union Station and Crown Center and why we have to jog the buses to get to CC. There is a temperature controlled tube to get from one to the other, or take a short walk two blocks. Dump the jog and put Max just on Grand.
http://humantransit.org/2011/04/basics- ... ansit.html
This study states that in all cities reviewed no more than 40% of riders would be willing to walk that far and in some cases it's nearly none.
I don't think we need jogs but we do need a system that works for multiple parts of downtown. 400 meters is about 4 blocks E-W and 2.5 N-S downtown. So that means stop spacing every 2-3 blocks is about the maximum distance people will walk. So a bus on Grand means users will walk about as far as Wyandotte to the west. So a streetcar direct transfer increases the reach of transit by 50% to 6 blocks west of Grand
In the end it's obviously hard to have busses every 5 streets or so and we know it hurts the bus line to add jogs. The best solution would be to cut the jog and provide 2-3 downtown circulator bus routes more like Bridj but that cover fixed routes and connect destinations to the streetcar or bus. Like one could loop clockwise Charlotte to Truman to Broadway to 9th. The 11th/12th spine pair would give coverage ~10th to 13th, Truman would give ~16th to 13th, 9th would give ~7th to 11th. So now looking north to south you've just covered most of downtown with a respectable walk from a stop and everyone has a simpler ride to get downtown.
And then the streetcar can be the streetcar.