Don’t be fooled by middling transit frequency
Most bus routes here are infrequent, with buses no more often than every 30 minutes. What would count as frequent? I’m sure the majority of those who don’t use transit think every 15 minutes is frequent. But I’d bet most would change their minds after going to a bus stop and waiting 10-15 minutes (or more) for such a “frequent” bus. In the abstract 15 minutes isn’t much time, but at a bus stop it’s forever. Which is why truly frequent service is every 8 minutes or better, which doesn’t allow much time for getting annoyed with waiting.
If using schedules or trip planners, any frequency increase certainly improves the transit experience. But though we are tempted to think of 15 minute service as being frequent, it just is not good enough to be painlessly used without schedules. The difficulty with middling headways of 15-20 minutes is that while it seems like one should be able to use the service without a schedule, in practice doing so is not advisable. Even schedule-using riders may be more lax following the timetable than with avowedly infrequent service, and so more likely to just miss the bus — leaving them to wait the full 15 minutes until the next one.
Transit agencies, politicians, and transit advocates should call a spade a spade, and only refer to transit services as frequent if they can be used painlessly without a schedule by most people — and not just the transit-dependent, either.
The curse of flexibility in transit
You hear it all the time. Buses are more flexible than rail. From point A, bus routes can take you to your favorite points X, Y, and Z, each in a single ride. They can detour around an accident. The routes can be altered to accord with population shifts.
But the curse of flexibility is that it gets used. It sounds like a truism, but bear with me. I believe the theme applies rather broadly, but I want to talk about the curse of transit flexibility.
The other day I was at the University of Waterloo after 7 pm and had to unexpectedly make it to downtown Kitchener. The 8 bus could get me there, but it was running at a 30 minute frequency. By that hour the 7 was running at a 30 minute frequency, on just one of its routings. The iXpress had the furthest stop and at that hour was also at a 30 minute frequency. I had the luxury of a choice between three different buses with separate schedules and bus stops — and infrequent service. Had the iXpress been running at a 10 minute frequency, I would’ve gone to that stop and not have wasted my time and energy trying to plan such a simple trip.
In contrast, transit infrastructure like light rail forces a choice of a corridor — and that’s where the service is concentrated, without being diffused among many routes.
Buses can detour. For some time this week road construction closed the north UW campus entrance, and separate construction closed the east side of Ring Road. That meant hell for transit users, who first had the realization that their bus wasn’t where they expect it, then had to figure out where it actually was, and of course the schedules were screwed up anyway. The iXpress did a detour of over 3 km between the UW stop and the R&T Park stop, taking a long time and getting stuck in the construction-related traffic along the way. Getting out and walking that same distance would have been faster.
Light rail can’t detour, so it forces construction to be done quickly, with minimal impact — and at night whenever possible.
Buses can have their routes moved in accordance with change in transportation demand, and the flip side is the absence of commitment that transit along a corridor will be provided in the years to come. So the location of transit routes cannot be used to directly inform decisions about where to live, or where to build. If you build fixed transit infrastructure (e.g. light rail), however, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is a tangible commitment to providing transit along that corridor, which is used to determine where to live and where to build, thereby itself shaping the transportation demand.
Precisely due to their flexibility, buses can do little to shape or direct urban form and land use. So they have no choice but to react. They can demand little of any forces that hinder their operations. And a bus system’s flexibility in providing service from any point to any other point makes it difficult to consolidate service into select, high quality routes that are easy to understand and use.
Bold lines: Guaranteed high-frequency bus routes
I’ve written before about the complexities and uncertainties of bus systems. Here I outline one simple way to make transit networks more accessible to riders and would-be riders: guaranteed high-frequency routes. Creating such routes and marking them in bold on maps makes clear what portion of a system is accessible without a schedule, making possible spontaneous trips and more natural transit use.
Lines should be marked in bold on route maps if they run (for example):
- At least every 10 minutes Monday through Saturday from 6 am to 10 pm and Sundays and holidays from 8 am to 8 pm;
- At least every 30 minutes the rest of the time.
Express routes should be clearly delineated from other routes on the same corridor. Branching is okay, but only sections of a line meeting the frequency criteria may be marked in bold. Streetcar lines, if any, should meet bold line standards, perhaps being drawn in a separate color for clarity. Maps should list the service frequency for bold lines, and bus stops along bold routes should clearly indicate their status as such.
Currently there is not a single Grand River Transit route that qualifies. Route 7 mainline is pretty close to bold between King & Ottawa and King & University, but lacks night service. On University between Westmount and Weber, routes 8 and 12 could together be close as well.
Bus routes necessitating a schedule are only accessible to committed bus riders, and are unfriendly to casual users. A guaranteed high frequency on selected routes makes those lines easier and more pleasant to use for the choice rider as well as for the regular transit user. Minimum nightly service assures users that they will not be stranded, which encourages use during all hours.
Transit systems without bold lines should try implementing a small network of them. And systems that already have lines that qualify should be making a big deal of it. Simplified pocket-size maps ought to be freely available to show the transit-novice and the transit-averse which routes are easy to use.
It is difficult for low frequency service to spur enough ridership to “justify” high frequency service; it’s an uphill battle of incremental service increases in tandem with small ridership increases (and sporadic service cuts for good measure). Bold lines allow a transit network to pull itself up by the bootstraps through strategic allocation of resources into a network structure that is qualitatively different and more accessible to riders.
The opportunity of full buses
“Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” -Yogi Berra
It’s rush hour and you’re going home. You’re driving along a freely moving road with no jams. In front of you a bus stops to pick up a few passengers. It looks like it will take a while, so you pass it, and look in while doing so. The bus is jam-packed.
Will this make you more or less likely to consider taking the bus? Unless you are a pickpocket, I imagine the answer is the latter.
It seems to me that transit advocates like seeing full buses, and I admit I’ve been one of that number. Full buses mean that people are riding transit, which is good! But full buses are actually a bad thing for a number of reasons, and they may be detrimental to the growth of transit mode share in areas where transit does not predominate.
It is plain uncomfortable to be on a crowded bus. Difficult to get on, difficult to get off. When the bus lurches or grinds to a halt, standees — often unable to get a good grip — get thrown all over the place.
A full bus takes longer to get everywhere. As a result of having so many people, it is likely to make more stops. Plus, it takes much longer each time someone needs to get on or off. It’s even worse in the case of buses running every 15 minutes or more frequently, as the later a bus arrives, the more people will be waiting for it. The next bus is comparatively less burdened, and is able to catch up. This bus bunching decreases effective frequency.
There is always some variation in how many people ride the bus. If the bus is full as a matter of course, there is no room for it to handle an upward deviation in ridership. Every time someone gets left behind at a bus stop, that has a real chance of adding another driver back to the roads. And it certainly doesn’t invite new riders.
It is an order of magnitude better to run half-full buses at twice the frequency than running crush loaded buses. The difference in quality of service between the two choices is huge: higher frequency is itself attractive to riders, as is having more space available and having shorter dwell times. This higher frequency would of course be particularly effective if it crossed the schedule-free threshold. I suspect that in many cases of full buses in K-W, running at twice the frequency might actually lead to running 2/3 full buses (not just half-full) as a result of increased use by choice riders. These would be serious effects on overall ridership figures and on transit mode share.
Full buses are a better problem to have than empty buses, and it is probably appropriate to consider it not just as a problem but as an opportunity to increase the number of people using transit. We should think of every full bus as having missed out on a certain number of would-be riders, which riders will materialize if offered less crowded service.
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