The Commute: What Is A Transit Advocate?

THE COMMUTE: What is a transit advocate? Is it someone who always proposes mass transit solutions to all transportation problems? No, it isn’t. Mass transit solutions are not always the appropriate solution for every transportation problem. Mass transit only works well when there are enough trips along specific transportation corridors between origins and destinations to justify it. Mass transit does not work well when the origins and destinations are too diverse, with relatively few trips between them. Automobiles may be the most efficient solution in those cases, in which one or both ends of the trip are in rural or suburban areas.

I consider myself a mass transit advocate. However, I also believe in being fair to everyone. Sometimes I receive much criticism on this site whenever I stand up for automobile drivers. If you bother to read the comments section of my columns, you will understand what I mean. Some conversations last for months. Last week, I learned that I have a new critic who goes only by the name of “Cap’n Transit” and has a blog called “Cap’n Transit Rides Again.”

Last week, I co-wrote an article that appeared in the Queens Chronicle. It is about the proposed Woodhaven Boulevard Select Bus Service (SBS), a topic we already discussed here several times. Cap’n Transit decided to take me to task on his blog, naming his piece, “Never Trust a Transit Advocate.” When I tried to respond to his two-page assault, in which he alleges that I cannot be trusted, my comments exceeded the space his blog allows.

So Cap’n Transit, This Is For You…

You know who I don’t trust? It’s people like you who pretend to be experts, when in fact their knowledge is very limited. What they don’t know, they assume, and then draw erroneous conclusions, like you did.

First, you claim to be trustworthy because you state your agenda right up front. Do you even know what all those items in your agenda mean? Obviously not. You claim one of them is “Increasing efficiency.” Do you know what the most efficient transit system would look like? It would be one with potential riders always waiting at each and every stop and when the vehicle stops for them, everyone crowds aboard so that at there is little room for others to board. Under those conditions, you may have to wait an hour or more until a vehicle stops with enough room for you to board and you probably would be very uncomfortable for your entire ride. However, when you measure the efficiency of such a system in terms of the numbers of passengers transported, the distances traveled and the speed of those vehicles, you may find its efficiency to be outstanding. Waiting an hour for a vehicle and being crammed in like cattle, for the rider, however, is not so good.

That’s why, while writing my Master’s thesis in urban planning more than 40 years ago, I quickly changed the title from improving the efficiency of Brooklyn bus routes to improving its efficiency and effectiveness. The latter is just as important as the former from the perspective of the transit user. Yet, you are looking at only half the equation.

You launch into a two-page assault of Joan Byron, the Queens Public Transit Committee, as well as Brendan Read and myself. However, it is mostly me whom you criticize because of the Queens Chronicle article I co-wrote with Read.

Now let me address what you said about Read and myself. Byron can speak for herself, and the Queens Transit Committee can address your statement regarding their promotion of “subways and the kind of government-monopoly bus service the city has been rolling out for the past eighty years.” Your first incorrect statement is that the MTA did not appreciate my “genius.” Perhaps you don’t understand or appreciate “my visionary plan,” as you call it, but the MTA certainly did. They showed it by hiring me three years later to head their bus operations planning department, simply called Bus Planning at the time. I was specifically told that I was hired precisely because of the 1978 bus routing changes I conceived and had implemented.

Second, you state that inconveniencing drivers is not a reason to reject a transit plan. Please tell me where you received your planning degree. I received mine from Columbia University. If you even went to school in Planning, you would have learned that the purpose of any plan is to help more people than you hurt since it is virtually impossible to help everyone. If more drivers and passengers are hurt than mass transit riders who are helped, that is certainly a reason to reject a plan. You never should plan exclusively for one segment of the population — in this case bus riders — while ignoring another. In this case automobile and truck operators.

Third, there are political realities and the notion that public funds should be used wisely. You are of the opinion that we can have both: SBS, as an interim solution, as well as Rockaway Beach reactivation. The sad truth is that we can’t.

Let me quote Brendan’s email to me:

Cap’n Transit doesn’t understand that in the case of corridors like Woodhaven where the road and potentially rail serve the same markets it is an either/or–you either built SBS and you don’t build the RBL, or vice-versa.

Woodhaven SBS is clearly being positioned as an alternative to the RBL. And any Federally-funded study of the RBL would entail examining the SBS as an option.

You title your piece, “Never Trust a Transit Advocate,” yet you believe that we should trust you because you are for both the RBL and SBS. You claim that SBS would help get people out of their cars when that is not the case at all. One of your agenda items is “Access for all” but “all” to you means bus riders only because you criticize my transit advocacy for considering all corridor users. You are solely for “efficiency” when you do not even understand the term.

Then you criticize “my perfect bus map.” I never pretended my bus routing proposals were perfect. I created a set of bus routes for discussion purposes to get the MTA to recognize a problem and to do something about it quicker than at a snail’s pace. You maintain a blog, but criticize me for contributing to one. You claim that I only care about myself. If that were the case, I would not have fought the MTA for four years so that Southern Brooklyn bus riders can now take a single bus to make a trip that previously required four buses, significantly decreasing travel time for thousands of daily riders. Your blog post is just full of contradictions.

In conclusion, I would trust someone who has devoted 40 years to fighting for mass transit and has a proven track record — not a blogger who contradicts himself, bashes others, pretends to be an expert and won’t even reveal his true identity. So next time, before you go bashing other people, Cap’n Transit, at least know the facts instead of making erroneous assumptions.

The Commute is a weekly feature highlighting news and information about the city’s mass transit system and transportation infrastructure. It is written by Allan Rosen, a Manhattan Beach resident and former Director of MTA/NYC Transit Bus Planning (1981).

Disclaimer: The above is an opinion column and may not represent the thoughts or position of Sheepshead Bites. Based upon their expertise in their respective fields, our columnists are responsible for fact-checking their own work, and their submissions are edited only for length, grammar and clarity. If you would like to submit an opinion piece or become a regularly featured contributor, please e-mail nberke [at] sheepsheadbites [dot] com.