Despite two decades of public investment in mass transit, the 2000 U.S. Census figures showed that only 9.5 percent of Bay Area commuters used transit to get to work, little changed from 10 years before. One of the biggest reasons Northern California commuters resist transit is that buses are caught up in the same congestion as cars, so the overall door-to-door travel time is actually shorter if you drive.
But what if buses had their own lanes everywhere on the freeway system? They could make that portion of their journey at the speed limit, in many cases bettering the door-to-door travel time of drivers stuck in traffic. But adding nearly 600 lane-miles of bus-only lanes to the freeway system would cost from $6 billion to $10 billion, according to a Reason Foundation study from 2003. Where would transit officials get that kind of money?
Read the full article, here