Express bus services generally utilize the largest and newest vehicles in the municipal bus fleet, often introducing articulated and other expanded capacity models for cross town or commuting routes with limited stops. The quality of interior features, ride and performance of express bus vehicles is generally superior to other bus services, due primarily to the newness and exclusivity of the longer range bus service.
Offering an alternative to automobile commuting and to indirect, multi-transfer bus service, express buses can cut significant time and logistics from users’ commutes or cross-town travel. Wherever express buses can use street or freeway lanes dedicated to express or high occupancy vehicles, they can travel at significantly greater speeds, with fewer delays than within the masses of commuter traffic and otherwise congested arterials. Continuity and consistency of street and freeway lanes used by express buses is the key factor in their efficiency and ability to deliver passengers in significantly shorter time than general traffic conditions permit the majority of other vehicles on the road.
Express bus services connecting suburban communities and neighborhoods with central city and workplace locations are dependent on continuous series of faster moving street and freeway lanes and intersections to effectively deliver passengers in shorter time than automobile traffic would permit. In general they are also dependent on convenient local bus transit at the destination end of the average commute.
The history of express bus service in the Southern California region has been in place for many years but has not attracted a significant percentage of the commuting traffic. The commuting public has demonstrated their evaluation of the service provided by express bus systems. Reducing the ridership levels by the number of transit dependent riders, those who do not have the choice to commute by automobile, of express bus service users would further reveal the public’s judgment of the quality of express bus service. It would not be a favorable judgment.
