Stop ‘hub-and-spoke’

The Daily News wrote another article on the anticipation of Metro Connections, completely overhauling MTA’s current route structure in favor of routes that look more like a “hub-and-spoke” system used by airlines.

Generally, I try to avoid soapboxy rants as my entries on MetroRider LA, instead focusing on personal rider essays such as What A Rush or articles of an informational nature. But as a transit rider, I am alarmed by what the bus system might look like once MTA “improves” the routes.

The same way William Tecumseh Sherman “improved” Atlanta.

The motivation for the service restructuring: 1)to save money and resources, 2)change is necessary since the last major routing overhaul was in 1980-1981, 3)hub-and-spoke is what customers demand.

Point one is not necessarily a problem, but keep in mind that “efficiency” is a fiscal-conservative shibboleth and the term means mutually incompatible terms for the agency and its customers. A bus rider, for instance, thinks an “efficient” service is a bus that runs so frequently that a schedule is not needed, like the DASH buses in downtown L.A. A transit planner, on the other hand, recognizes that such a service is inherently inefficient based on methodologies of the trade. Also, transit service is not a for-profit business, and without the profit motive in place, there must be another justification to save money. Transit is also odd in that there is very little incentive to save money. Ridership grows very slowly, and the marginal costs of improving service on low-frequency lines is very high while increasing service on high-frequency lines yields very few improvements. Giving the money back to the riders in the form of a rebate is great populist showmanship, but service really suffers when there is a contingency (such as high fuel costs) and the money can’t be recovered. Leaving a rainy day fund, however, becomes a bargaining chip for union workers who want the savings put in their pockets. Since unions are the only constituency that maintains a full-time political action arm, they’ll often inherit the savings.

Efficiency may be the most valid justification for a route restructuring, but the key is not how much money is saved but where the money goes. The odds are against riders seeing much out of the “efficiency dividend.”

Next is the appeal for change. Most bitter MetroRiders, who read this blog or not, think anything may be better than the current mess we have. But, my warning to these riders is the same as the speed of a Los Angeles bus: not so fast.

Change for its own sake is a conspiracy concocted by consultants and systems analysts to make work for themselves. In public transit, passengers are like the malodorous riders with their underwear: they fear and loathe change. Go just once to see the spectacle that is a public hearing on service changes. See people from all walks of life comment publicly to demand inertia.

Do not reroute the line. Do not eliminate this service. Do not reduce service if ridership falls. Planning knows what the riders do not want. What they do want, that’s guesswork.

Planners figured out that riders hate transfers and torturously slow buses, yet somehow came to the conclusion that riders must be forced to transfer many more times and that there would be some fast bus in the middle that makes the entire trip faster.

Los Angeles is a terrible place to put hubs. For one thing, most of Los Angeles has both streets laid out on a grid and frequent bus service. And dig this. Either through fiendish calculation or pure coincidence, bus lines stay on a single street! It’s spooky, yes, but look at the Metro system map. Buses on the grid? It’s so simple it’s complicated, much in the same way the greatest minds in modern science haven’t been able to improve on the design of the circular wheel invented by those primitive cavemen.

What’s the ideal passenger distribution in this situation? Hubs? Of course not! The number of transfers at an ideal hub are smaller than the combined transfer at every intersection of routes. It’s preferable to make transfers at the intersections, since it’s faster and less confusing.

Where are hubs used? At places where service is so infrequent that the only place where connections are guaranteed is at a central transfer point. Hubs are better suited for the suburban areas of the county, where passengers must use buses that run every 30 minutes or less. One hub is easier for several low-frequency routes than to try to ensure timed transfers at all points in the grid.

Otherwise, the Crackton Turnaround becomes the norm for all routes. Crackton, located at Pico and Rimpau boulevards, forces riders to transfer from one local bus to another, despite the fact that the frequencies of the two routes are the very same. Because two bureaucracies could never come to terms on which one should operate a single bus on Pico long after the streetcars stopped running, people transfer due to inertia.

In a few years, all bus riders will be subject to this pleasurable experience. What is one bus on one route may be two, three, four, even more … and possibly on different systems. MTA has long been trying to only operate its buses as far west as UCLA and throw the riders at the mercy of Big Blue Bus.

If more transfers and the greater potential for standing in place waiting for a connecting bus to show up when one slow line might have done the job better is considered an improvement, I’d hate to see what happens when MTA threatens to reduce service.