Low Hanging Fruit?
Richard Layman, at Rebuilding Places, blogs about improving bus service and quotes James Hamre, a transit manager in the Washington DC area:
"According to Mr. Hamre, to run the bus line, if it ran on time, would require 22 buses, to provide the current level of service. Instead, they have 42 buses in service on the line daily, to provide the service required."
IOW, this bus line, if intensively managed, could cut equipment requirements almost by a half. Surely that is a goal to aim for!
*Somewhere else* on the internet today is a post about a student in Portland who, as an experiment, acted as a dispatcher for one bus line in Portland, and managed to maintain on-time performance by having empty buses leapfrog full buses on the route.
It might seem extreme to detail one person full time to dispatch one route, until we compare it with saving the costs of twenty drivers and twenty buses.
And this stuff will matter, eventually. Eventually, we will reach the $6-7/gallon gas prices that will supposedly make people "change their behavior", and from what we've seen so far, "change their behavior" in this context will mean "a tsunami of new ridership swamping already overloaded buses". It's time for the transit systems to start thinking outside the box.
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I talked about it in my post from earlier this week. Here is the link. Scroll all the way down for a PDF and news clip. Although he manually managed it this type of system is perfect for automation which he mentioned. From my understanding metro will adopt this system to some extent with rapidride.
http://www.orphanroad.com/blog/2008/05/new-service-allocation-if-i-had-m...
Thanks for posting the link. I just kind of wilted at the thought of searching all the websites I'd seen that day.
This is where trollies and rail become a problem, they can't leapfrog. (Okay well trollies could, but it would take too much damn effort.)
That being said the 36 could really use a dispatcher on it. That also being said I've heard rumors that the 36 is going to go all trolly. Which worries me somewhat because you can't leapfrog. (It happens right now folks, there just isn't any planning to it.)
Something that needs to be addressed is people's habits. I think one of the problem with heavier loaded routes with local service is it takes too long to get everyone on and off. We need to get rid of some stops and force people to walk some more.. Honolulu's transit system did it, so should we.
I don't think this is as great of a problem for rail except maybe trolleys. Rail doesn't need to leapfrog because it won't experience traffic delays like a normal bus would. Trolleys may experience the delays but since most have a right of way and there should be traffic laws where trolleys always should have priority to street traffic it shouldn't be a problem. If it becomes a problem than where ever that trolley is operating would be a perfect candidate for a heavy service (light or heavy rail).
Here's a start.
"Use front doors only after 7PM" Is that for real? Has anyone ever ridden on a full bus, if you could only use the front door, one stop alone can set you back about 5 min. Its ridiculous. Luckily no drivers I've ever ridden with actually use that rule.
But what this really points toward is that a two door, skinny bus, simply doesn't allow people to get on and off. The truth is, our metro buses are designed for long rides with few people. And for this they are great, but we are going to have to reconsider this in the future.
As far as being nervous about no leapfrogging on rail, I think using the no passenger rule could work pretty well.
Of course, a full subway system would also work wonders...sigh...
Well, briefly, there are several ways rail handles high usage.
The most effective is all-door boarding at platforms where only paid ticket holders are allowed. Combined with larger trains, higher speeds, and shorter headways, this can carry incredibly heavy traffic.
For street running, where speeds, incidentally, are always limited by the public nature of the street (just as we have speed limits for cars), longer and more frequent trains are used. You can still use all-door boarding if you use an 'honor system' or do away with the fare altogether.
It's important to remember that leap-frogging buses are not a triumph of transit to be aimed for, but are an attempt to deal with an underfunded and somewhat obsolete reality. There is always a virtue to regularity and especially so when a large system moves large things like buses over large distances carrying large numbers of people. The buses need to be re-fueled, the drivers need meals and breaks (as do the dispatchers), the vehicles need to be parked in a way that ensures they can be found the next day, and the institutions and people that interface with the buses also need regularity. IOW, it's a good thing when you always see the same driver when you always get on at the same time.
Or, you could do the short form- Curitabo, having been lauded around the world for their bus rapid transit, is now building a rail system. It's where you come when you're through playing games.