Public Transport

We have had a lot of experience over the past 21 months with public transport systems in different European cities. We both agree (I think we agree) that Amsterdam seems to have the best, with Geneva and Munich rounding out the top three. We (okay, I) may be completely wrong, but since I am the one writing this post, I will be subjecting our readers to my opinion.

Where we lived in England you needed a car. You could get to the nearby towns on the buses, but they tended to be milk runs. Kari had to take the bus to Leicester for work and that was at least an hour each way. To take the bus to the nearest train station was about 30-45 minutes. It was sort of like living in Pacifica and trying to get anywhere on Sam Trans. From what we were told, if you lived in the bigger cities, the bus systems where better. From what we read (and still read) the train system in the UK suffers from a lack of investment.

Here in Antibes, the bus system is much better, and we are only a 10 minute walk to the train station. There is also a bus to the Nice Airport every half hour, although it does take about 45 minutes. Apparently, the bus system (Envibus) has been about 10 years in the making, and the main reason is because of Sophia Antipolis. This is the area just north (west? east?) of us where Kari works, along with thousands of others who live here on the Cote D'Azur. Nearby Nice has finished a Tram system and is supposedly going to be expanding it. You can get to the surrounding towns on the bus, but service is more limited on weekends and holidays. The bus fare in the Antibes area is only 1Euro, and you get a transfer that is good for 3 hours. A monthly bus pass is only 22Euros.

In Amsterdam there is a good tram system. It is inexpensive, it went everywhere (as far as we could tell), and it did so frequently. There is also a train station in Amsterdam with frequent trains going all over the Netherlands. True, it is a tiny country, but they had it together as far as the public transport. Bicycles are another big transport method (you should see the rows and rows of bikes at the train station) in the Netherlands, and there are bike lanes everywhere. From what we have been told, you can bike all over the country.

Geneva has a tram system also, but it did not seem to be as vast as Amsterdam's, but their bus system was really good. There was a bus about every 10-15 minutes, 7 days a week including New Year's Day. The hotel we stayed at gave us free passes that we were able to use on all the buses, trams and trains that ran in the Geneva area, so I don't know anything about the cost for the buses or trams. It was probably something that all the hotels do through the Geneva tourism association.

Here are my thoughts, based upon my observations, on how to build an effective public transport. First of all, it needs to be cheap, and this in turn will necessitate it being subsidized. Think of it as an investment in infrastructure and benefiting the public health.

The second thing is that the bus and train depots have to be incorporated together. You take the train to the station, get off the train and then get on the bus. A sort of star-system, with the bus routes radiating out from the train stations. In San Mateo County, it might work best if each city had at least one main bus terminal. If the city had a BART or CalTrain stop, the bus terminal would be there. Local routes within a city would originate from the terminal. Then there would be express routes from terminal to terminal, with no local stops. This might make it more efficient as far as getting people around the Peninsula and serving the local areas. And you don't have to have only big buses. Here in Antibes, several of the routes are run with small shuttle buses. They match the bus to the usual number of riders.

The next thing that is you need is to run a lot of buses. I mentioned before how in Geneva, there was a bus about every 10-15 minutes, so even when we missed one bus, we never waited more than 15 minutes for the next bus. More buses give more people an option for taking the bus.

There would also need to be mandatory coordination among the different systems (CalTrain, BART, etc). This would require what I choose to call a transport czar. It would also require a substantial commitment to make it happen, both in funds (because it has to be subsidized) and time, because it would take time for people to move from the use of their cars to the use of, what would hopefully be, an efficient public transport system.