Bus Question

[mwadswor]

I was riding the light rail in Phoenix today, and it made me curious about why we make the effort to tailor rail transit to where we think most people will want it to go, but we just run busses in straight lines for the most part (at least here in Phoenix).

One of the biggest issues with transit in general is that transfers are a pain in the butt. So why do so many busses just run in straight lines along one road with maybe a very occaisional detour if a major activity center is very close to the route? Doing this virtually guarantees the need to transfer for even close destinations unless your origin and destination happen to be on the same road, which I'm sure stops a lot of people from taking transit. Or at least it stops me from taking transit a lot of times when my destination is close enough that I really should be taking transit.

We talk about factors like the stigma of busses or the speed/efficiency/capacity/smoother ride of light rail when we discuss why light rail routes tend to draw more people than similarly located bus routes, which are all valid points. But what if part of the reason light rail routes get such higher ridership is much simpler than that: because light rail, subway, even BRT routes tend to actually be tailored to the needs of the people. We put a lot of planning into rail routes to get it to go through high density areas, to major activity centers, and in general from where most people are to where most people want to be.

Why don't we put this sort of planning into ordinary bus routes? Why are we content to simply run busses in straight lines?

I guess the ultimate question is, would it increase bus ridership and be a more efficient use of transit dollars in areas that don't justify/can't afford rail or BRT if we were to radically redesign bus routes all across a city to better reflect people's needs, even if that involves a few more turns, and use smaller circulators to feed people from the areas that are skipped into the main lines? Are there any cities where something like this is done on a major scale? How successful is it there? Or am I just talking crazy talk?

[SFUVancouver]

That's what we do in Vancouver. We have a grid of arterial roads, almost all of which have one or more bus routes. They also tie into our SkyTrain rapid transit network.

City of Vancouver (http://www.translink.ca/~/media/Documents/Maps/Transit%20System%20Maps/vancouver.ashx)

Metro Vancouver (http://www.translink.ca/~/media/Documents/Maps/Transit%20System%20Maps/entire_system_map.ashx)

[emathias]

...
Why don't we put this sort of planning into ordinary bus routes? Why are we content to simply run busses in straight lines?
...

I can't speak to Phoenix, but any city with a robust bus system certainly runs buses for more than just straight-line routes. Portland does. Seattle does. New York does. Madrid does. Shanghai does.

In Chicago there are straight-line buses every 1/2 mile for most of the city. Most of those detour to hit additional major destinations, such as rail stations, or employment centers. In addition, there are quite a number of routes that don't follow straight lines, especially downtown and in high-density areas, or for routes that pick up people in a neighborhood but then run express for a while.

Could it be done even more? Probably, although if you have a good bus system, transfers aren't so onerous, and the system itself is designed to be flexible. A city also has to have enough general ridership to create specialty routes. Just because you want to go from Point A to Point Q doesn't mean very many other people do. I think any system where you can generally get between any two arbitrary points with one transfer is doing pretty good.

[brickell]

In miami we have some of one and some of the other. The biggest problem I see with non-linear routes is that when dealing with a grid, as we are, it can get very confusing where routes go and how long it'll take. When you have straight lines following the grid, there's little to no confusion.

[vid]

Many bus routes here wander around neighbourhoods in very confused patterns, and as a result, it can take two hours getting to where you need to go. We have one route that backtracks twice and takes 30 minutes to complete its loop without getting more than 3 miles from its terminal, and its average ridership is so low it's only operating half the time. The routes that follow the grid, however, are almost constantly crush loaded. They serve more people and travel faster. Making them squirm through smaller neighbourhoods takes too much time, especially when they have to make constant turns or navigate through crescents and cul-de-sacs.

[ardecila]

Of course, when the big grid gets extended out into suburban areas (i.e. Phoenix) development turns its back on the main roads, with fences or some massive brick wall between the arterial and the houses, which face onto an interior street. Grids of bus lines might work well in a city like Chicago or LA, but in Phoenix, the stops are difficult to get to since residents must walk down to a break in the wall and then wait out in some nether zone at the roadside. Routes along the smaller streets in the neighborhoods would be great, but I don't know if the road network is connected enough to support it.

Virginia recently passed a law forbidding cul-de-sacs, so the suburban developments should become a little more connective. Suburban dwellers always grouse about through traffic, but enjoy having multiple ways out of their neighborhood. It cuts both ways... I'm not sure how suburbanites would feel about the prospect of bus service in their neighborhoods. Of course, there are the predictable complaints about giving thieves a direct route to the good stuff, but I think suburbanites would appreciate being part of a transit network that often seems invisible in these areas due to how poorly it is planned.

[cabotp]

^ The problem isn't so much the cul-de-sac. But the fact that they build a house at the end of the cul-de-sac. If they built them with a nice green path way connecting one road to another for bikes and pedetrians. It would mean people would have a more direct path to the nearest bus stop.

Sub divisions were a great idea, with there cul-de-sacs. To minimize the number of cars trying to take short cuts through residential streets. But they went too far and also made it impossible for a pedestrians, and bikes to go through as well. Which to me is the two groups you want to allow to cut through.

On the topic of bus routes.

Straight routes, work very well when each route has a nice high frequency. Minimizing the time you must wait at a transfer point.

[Doady]

In the Toronto area, which has a very grid-like transit network, the cul-de-sacs and crescents in the suburbs usually have pedestrian walkways if they are adjacent to arterials, so there is no barrier to walking or transit. Most of the newer subdivisions (i.e. from the 90's onwards) do not have houses in-between the crescents (or cul-de-sacs) and the adjacent arterials at all, to maximize the accessibility of transit.

Most of the suburban arterials here have bus frequencies between 3 minutes and 30 minutes. Though some corridors have as high as 70 second frequency and some as low as 60 minute frequency. So frequency is important but not as much you expect.

The completeness and comprehensiveness of the grid network is more important, maximizing the amount of routes that each route connects with. And at quick glance at Phoenix's transit system, knowing almost nothing about the area, I see that the system has too many gaps and missing connections. That is the main problem, I think.

A system with many gaps means the distance of people's workplaces and residences to bus stops increases and greatly reduces ridership. Like the issue of pedestrian barriers, walking distances also greatly influence the accessibility of transit. This also suggests that subdivisions should be designed in such a way so that parallel arterials should be reasonably close to each other, around 1 km spacings maximum, for an effective grid-based transit system.

[BTinSF]

I was riding the light rail in Phoenix today, and it made me curious about why we make the effort to tailor rail transit to where we think most people will want it to go, but we just run busses in straight lines for the most part (at least here in Phoenix).


In San Francisco "we" don't do things that way. Bus routes are thought about a lot and are sometimes changed to reflect population and neighborhood changes. There is a large program now happening to revise bus routes, make them more efficient and, hopefully, save a little money. However the issue is very political. When people lose bus service or think they are getting service they need, they scream to their city Supervisor who puts pressure on Muni.

On the other hand, rail transit is less ubiquitous and even more thought (and politics) has to go into those routes. The last 2 rail lines built--the T line and the Central Subway--have been extremely political. The T line was a major project of Willie Brown, SF's one and only black mayor, to connect the isolated Bayview (SF's main black) neighborhood to the rest of the city. The Central Subway is largely intended to give Chinatown better service, something they were promised as compensation when the Embarcadero Freeway was torn down.

[cabotp]

A system with many gaps means the distance of people's workplaces and residences to bus stops increases and greatly reduces ridership. Like the issue of pedestrian barriers, walking distances also greatly influence the accessibility of transit. This also suggests that subdivisions should be designed in such a way so that parallel arterials should be reasonably close to each other, around 1 km spacings maximum, for an effective grid-based transit system.

The city of Vancouver is like that as well. Each major route whether it is going E-W or N-S is about 1Km from the next route. So even if someone were living in the dead center of an area bounded by 4 bus routes. They in theory would be 500M from any of those 4 bus routes. Which is a reasonable distance for anyone to walk.

The frequency part helps for transfers. If you need to take one bus running lets say every 5 mins, but the next bus only runs every 20 mins. It makes you wait on average 10 mins a day at the transfer point. But if the other route is 5 mins as well. Then your average time is only 2.5 mins.

[VivaLFuego]

Because a grid allows you to serve the maximum number of origins and destinations with 1 transfer. For transit-dependent riders, a grid is the most efficient method to provide accessibility to a region.

Yes, for choice riders, the need to transfer is usually the single biggest deal-breaker as to why they don't take transit. Light Rail is almost exclusively justified by the ability to attract new choice riders from their cars, rather than improving transit for the transit-dependent, who are generally better off by spending money maximizing the geographic coverage of the bus system rather than improving a single corridor to rail capacity/speed.

Considering Phoenix recently slashed bus service and is apparently looking at even more cuts and or even more fare increases, the light rail seems like that much more of a bad use of resources from this outsider's perspective in terms of its adverse impact on the transit-dependent.

[cabotp]

^ I was just thinking about that earlier today. About how with a grid system you can get anywhere with only 1 transfer. And if all routes have a good frequency. You should not loose much time on the transfer.

Also having limited stop routes helps a lot as well.

Also in the City of Vancouer. The vast majority probably 95% of the routes end up or go past either a University, Downtown, mass transit line, Shopping mall. Or else a bus loop.

[jamesinclair]

Huh? What universe are you from. The main complaint of many bus lines is that theyre routed to hit as many hot spots as possible, meaning a very indirect route and very long travel times. Trying to get from work to home? I hope you dont mind the 7 block detour to get to the mall!

[cabotp]

Huh? What universe are you from. The main complaint of many bus lines is that theyre routed to hit as many hot spots as possible, meaning a very indirect route and very long travel times. Trying to get from work to home? I hope you dont mind the 7 block detour to get to the mall!

I never said the buses go out of their way to hit a hot spot. All the E-W buses go in a fairly straight route. The odd one my jog over a block or two, but that is because of the road lay out.

And all the N-S buses drive in straight line. Just that when the get the northern part of the City of Vancouver they turn towards downtown and through it before turning and finishing off the rest of their route by going south on a different road

All of the routes are predominantly in very straight lines. They just happen to have them set up as well to go to one of the post secondary schools, downtown, or some major mall.

I'd rather a grid system than a system where the routes are all over the place.

[nname]

I'd rather a grid system than a system where the routes are all over the place.

It really depend on how many routes that the city can afford. If there are many many routes in the city, going all over the place is much better than grid system.

Here in Greater Taipei, we have around 700 different bus routes, crammed in an area that's probably half of the size of Greater Vancouver. In major arterials, there may be 30-50 different routes going along the same road. If I want to anywhere that's not far away, most likely it can be done with 0 transfer. Even if I want to go longer distance (> 40km), it would be doable in just 1 transfer. Note that I live near the outer edge of the city. This would not be possible with a grid system.

[volguus zildrohar]

Generally speaking, bus routes in Philadelphia follow the same one or two streets for their entire route - not always necessarily a straight line but always generally moving in one direction. Every major artery in the city has at least one bus route that runs its entire length and several routes that operate along that thoroughfare for varying lengths to expedite transfers.

The bus system operates more or less as the carrier network for the subway/trolley system. As there are may places in Philadelphia that our relatively small subway system doesn't go the majority of mid- to long-distance trips require a bus-subway/subway-bus transfer and indeed the vast majority of trips within city limits are intentionaly laid out to operate that way to avoid the issue of a long slow bus ride from one end of the city or having to find one's way to a destination quite a distance from the nearest rail station.

[cabotp]

It really depend on how many routes that the city can afford. If there are many many routes in the city, going all over the place is much better than grid system.

Here in Greater Taipei, we have around 700 different bus routes, crammed in an area that's probably half of the size of Greater Vancouver. In major arterials, there may be 30-50 different routes going along the same road. If I want to anywhere that's not far away, most likely it can be done with 0 transfer. Even if I want to go longer distance (> 40km), it would be doable in just 1 transfer. Note that I live near the outer edge of the city. This would not be possible with a grid system.

I do admit when I talk about the grid system I'm only talking about the City of Vancouver not the Metro area of Vancouver. Once you leave the city of Vancouver the bus service more or less becomes pathetic.

[JordanL]

Here's some high traffic Portland routes:

http://trimet.org/images/schedulemaps/19-simple.gif http://trimet.org/images/schedulemaps/12-simple.gif http://trimet.org/images/schedulemaps/04-simple.gif http://trimet.org/images/schedulemaps/17-simple.gif http://trimet.org/images/schedulemaps/15-simple.gif http://trimet.org/images/schedulemaps/06-simple.gif http://trimet.org/images/schedulemaps/08-simple.gif http://trimet.org/images/schedulemaps/35-simple.gif

As you can see, not all cities use plain, strait bus lines. :tup:

[Doady]

It really depend on how many routes that the city can afford. If there are many many routes in the city, going all over the place is much better than grid system.

Well, a system with "many many" routes will have a strong grid network AND a strong radial/nodal network. A truly well-funded system will be comprehensive, and therefore will provide both kinds of transit service. In truly well-developed and well-funded systems, major arterials will often have multiple routes, or a single route with multiple branches, or both.

In reality, routes that go all over the place are usually the result of lack of funding. If there are gaps in the system, then usually the agency tries to compensate by having routes that go all over the place. So single routes are being used to provide service that should be provided by multiple routes. If there is truly an abundance of routes, it is not necessary for each route to serve multiple functions.

[JordanL]

If there are gaps in the system, then usually the agency tries to compensate by having routes that go all over the place. So single routes are being used to provide service that should be provided by multiple routes. If there is truly an abundance of routes, it is not necessary for each route to serve multiple functions.

Actually if the lead times are good and there is a central transfer point, there's no real reason to separate routes like that, unless your goal is to spend more money than necessary.

Several routes in Portland are like that. The 4 serves Division St, then stop downtown for transfers, then continues on to North Portland. But the lead times are less than 15 minutes in any direction, so the single route very effectively serves more than one corridor.

[Doady]

Actually if the lead times are good and there is a central transfer point, there's no real reason to separate routes like that, unless your goal is to spend more money than necessary.

Yes, there are very good reasons. If you force everyone to go through the transfer point, you inconvenience the people who just want to bypass it.

Several routes in Portland are like that. The 4 serves Division St, then stop downtown for transfers, then continues on to North Portland. But the lead times are less than 15 minutes in any direction, so the single route very effectively serves more than one corridor.

Combining multiple routes into one is simply not a good practice. Different corridors have different levels of demand and a one-size-fits-all solution doesn't always work. Also, when routes are extremely long they can become extremely unreliable. Remember, a delay or disruption on one part of a route will affect the whole route. The running time of bus route should probably be no longer than 60 or 70 minutes in each direction.

Instead of looking at Portland, look at a city like Toronto. In Toronto, the bus service along the east-west arterial roads are arbitrarily split where they intersect with the north-south Yonge subway line. So the western portions of these corridors have completely different routes than the eastern portions, like for example, the 36 Finch West bus servicing Finch Avenue West and the 39 Finch East bus servicing Finch Avenue East. They service the same corridor, but different parts of that corridor. And there are good reasons for this, which I already explained.

[JordanL]

Yes, there are very good reasons. If you force everyone to go through the transfer point, you inconvenience the people who just want to bypass it.



Combining multiple routes into one is simply not a good practice. Different corridors have different levels of demand and a one-size-fits-all solution doesn't always work. Also, when routes are extremely long they can become extremely unreliable. Remember, a delay or disruption on one part of a route will affect the whole route. The running time of bus route should probably be no longer than 60 or 70 minutes in each direction.

Instead of looking at Portland, look at a city like Toronto. In Toronto, the bus service along the east-west arterial roads are arbitrarily split where they intersect with the north-south Yonge subway line. So the western portions of these corridors have completely different routes than the eastern portions, like for example, the 36 Finch West bus servicing Finch Avenue West and the 39 Finch East bus servicing Finch Avenue East. They service the same corridor, but different parts of that corridor. And there are good reasons for this, which I already explained.

I think the point went over your head... you oversimplified my point, and I don't really feel like arguing.

[Doady]

I think the point went over your head... you oversimplified my point, and I don't really feel like arguing.

Au contraire, I think it was my point that went over your head. You argued against the splitting of routes into mutually exclusive routes even though I was talking about something completely different. When I said "multiple routes," I was talking about multiple overlapping and parallel routes as an alternative to having a single route deviating excessively from a corridor to do the work of multiple routes. I would have thought from the context of this thread that it would be obvious what I was talking about.