KCRag Forum

the wyandotte jog will definitely be a casualty. it generates little ridership and only adds trip time (plus it was a political request, not an engineering one).

I'd love to see the S. Plaza jog eliminated as well.

chingon wrote:I'd love to see the S. Plaza jog eliminated as well.

don't hold your breath on that, but i guarantee you the streetcar won't align that way (grade issues + turns are probably too tight at 51st).

DaveKCMO wrote:turns are probably too tight at 51st).

Turns are too tight for the bus. But, yeah, I'm not holding my breath. I still think its aqn even more bone-headed jog than downtown, since jogging 1 block over takes about the same amount of time as jogging 4, but serves the exact same block.


Regardless, I'm happy to see the drums beating for a downtown straightening...that's a big, important step forward for the MAX route.

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Yeah, the Union Station jog is odd but overall a much better route, any of the variations you suggest would work too. And agree it should no longer be called Main St MAX, maybe DT-Plaza MAX or back to Orange Line. I'm just glad they'll improve the time it takes to get from Plaza to RM, which we do often on or Sat morning City Market routine.

pash wrote:But the proposed route introduces a significant new jog to meet the streetcar route at Union Station, while failing to stop at the actual streetcar stop on northbound trips.

take the survey and tell them to eliminate that last remaining jog.

earthling wrote:Yeah, the Union Station jog is odd but overall a much better route, any of the variations you suggest would work too. And agree it should no longer be called Main St MAX, maybe DT-Plaza MAX or back to Orange Line. I'm just glad they'll improve the time it takes to get from Plaza to RM, which we do often on or Sat morning City Market routine.

the troost MAX doesn't run exclusively on troost (and not all in greater downtown). and prospect MAX will not run exclusively on prospect.

the list of streets main street MAX is abandoning is like a "who's who" of non-main streets: wyandotte, 16th, 12th, 11th, Oak, 9th, and 8th.

no reason to change the name. KCATA never really got religion with the route colors, so no reason to expect that now.

it's worth noting that southbound MAX trips now have a queue jump at union station's new mid-block crossing thanks to streetcar. this allows MAX to jump ahead of cars (with a transit only signal) to get to the left turn lane at pershing before anyone else. of course, if it stayed on grand the whole time there would be no awkward left turns north of 27th.

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pash wrote:

DaveKCMO wrote:take the survey and tell them to eliminate that last remaining jog.

Well, like I said, I do think the MAX bus should hit at least one streetcar stop. It just doesn't quite manage that in the proposed routing.

Huh? It hits two stops with the proposed routing.

The NB Union Station stop is right across the street with a ped crossing between the two and SB is maybe 50 feet to the north (15 seconds walking time)

3rd and Grand is a little further at half a block away.

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pash wrote:My objections are spelled out in detail above. Perhaps if you read them, you will be less confused.

With the focus on saying only one bus line should run on a different street downtown when the goal is consolidation, not consolidating one line seems arbitrary and misguided, I didn't feel the rest of the arguments were important to cover.

Walk to a Grand except to catch this one bus line is even stranger.

Except the naming. That's worth discussing. It's not hard to understand the names and setup.

Its not named for the street they run on across its entire route. Sometimes the name is for the street run to or destinations run between or both or just one of the many streets run on.

Liberty Express, Crossroads-Plaza, Ward Parkway Express. None runs only on streets with those name or only in those locations . Main St Max south of downtown is not only on Main outside downtown either.

I can see cutting the jog if we wanted to be stupid. This max line is kind of the future extension for the streetcar so the connection provides the functional route that way.

If there's a reason to legitimately cut the jog it doesn't provide the numbers to sell expanding it. Having years of numbers showing what percentage of max riders transfer to the streetcar is a key piece to sell getting federal funding.

And that's why the Union Station connection makes the most sense. Because it's literally the point we need to see people connecting at. If you change farther into downtown you have some riders that will stay on the bus, or might not ride because it's two blocks further away. The other end at 3rd provides good data for northland to midtown connections. It shows what percentage want to take the streetcar and what percentage the bus to midtown. So you can get a good idea on downtown Main St vs grand and then midtown transit demand from the north.

i'd rather tell visitors that walking to 11th/12th at grand will get them any bus in the entire city -- perhaps with ticket vending machines soon -- than to explain why main street MAX isn't on main.

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One of the reasons the street car is so successful is its simplicity. Something buses should note.

pash wrote:And then they'll take an Uber.

Nobody wants to get on any bus in the city; people want to get on one particular bus that's going where they want to go, and that bus is the Main Street MAX for 99% of people who do not regularly use the bus system. Jamming all the bus lines into the same stops harms, not helps, people who don't well understand how the system works. Isolating the streetcar route from longer-distance bus service is a great way to ensure that people only ever use the streetcar.
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That's a bit of a stretch. Someone who is looking for the bus isn't going to pay the premium for car sharing.
And putting them all at one stops makes it stupid easy to find a bus. Go to one place, figure out the number on the front you need, get on the bus with that number. There's very little in life that simple to do.

The streetcar covers about 0.3% of the transit network. (2 miles of streetcar for 650+ miles of bus). Isolating the streetcar is going to happen no matter what we try. Trying to share stops with the train would just jam all service onto the same stops too. Most places I've seen transfers in other cities the train is near the bus stops, not also the bus stops.

its really hard to make a bus line that works for both local service and express service. Troost has two lines, Main it doesn't work as well as it could. The best systems seem to provide both with seperate systems where possible. Look at Houston. They have a 7x larger rail network and even with a major redo of their bus system to work with the train about half the routes never connect to it. They have some busses that end miles from downtown and dump people onto the train and they have other busses that parallel the same train into downtown to provide local service to more places.

Yes, we could do this pairing with busses too. But we need that more complex, slower local service to go along with it. And on many corridors you kill the slow service because you take too many riders from it. The streetcar did this on Main. It's a dead street for local service busses at this point where it does exist.

Down the line when the train can be a true spine it would make sense to rethink bus service routing en mass again. There's a lot of routes that could be redone as simpler point to point routes, but until then the city will have a better bus system for 5-7 years and it just won't connect wonderfully to the streetcar.

flyingember wrote: I can see cutting the jog if we wanted to be stupid. This max line is kind of the future extension for the streetcar so the connection provides the functional route that way.

If there's a reason to legitimately cut the jog it doesn't provide the numbers to sell expanding it. Having years of numbers showing what percentage of max riders transfer to the streetcar is a key piece to sell getting federal funding.

Please tell me a situation where it makes sense to transfer to or from the streetcar with the new route. You're going to add a transfer to potentially get you 2 blocks closer to your pickup/destination (and that's only true for destinations east of Main, half of destinations will be closer)? I just don't see the point. If you're already on the bus or getting on the bus, why wouldn't you just keep it simple and save time and cut out the streetcar?

TheBigChuckbowski wrote: Please tell me a situation where it makes sense to transfer to or from the streetcar with the new route. You're going to add a transfer to potentially get you 2 blocks closer to your pickup/destination (and that's only true for destinations east of Main, half of destinations will be closer)? I just don't see the point. If you're already on the bus or getting on the bus, why wouldn't you just keep it simple and save time and cut out the streetcar?

Two blocks is a big deal for someone with mobility issues. Always imagine what you would do when using crutches and you'll get closer to figuring out everything around public transit and ADA

I also recommend looking up the concept "network effect"

flyingember wrote:

TheBigChuckbowski wrote: Please tell me a situation where it makes sense to transfer to or from the streetcar with the new route. You're going to add a transfer to potentially get you 2 blocks closer to your pickup/destination (and that's only true for destinations east of Main, half of destinations will be closer)? I just don't see the point. If you're already on the bus or getting on the bus, why wouldn't you just keep it simple and save time and cut out the streetcar?

Two blocks is a big deal for someone with mobility issues. Always imagine what you would do when using crutches and you'll get closer to figuring out everything around public transit and ADA

I also recommend looking up the concept "network effect"

But, Grand is closer to half of downtown than Main. So, if you're wanting data from this, you're cutting the number of users transferring by at least half. For most people that don't have issues walking two blocks, they're going to do the thing that takes the least amount of time which is to stay on the bus and walk 2 extra blocks and not sit at the streetcar stop.

On top of that, your argument is just an argument to keep all the jogs in place. Why have transit move in a straight line if we can jog all over town and give front door service?

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.