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ChineseAspiring to mediocrity
Uploaded by johnbullas on Flickr; used with a Creative Commons License
Australian transit consultant Jarrett Walker lit the spark for another heated discussion on his Human Transit blog. In “Hard questions: Should we ride mediocre transit?” Walker writes:
We are constantly told that if we want to support transit, we need to ride transit. Current ridership figures are routinely cited by both supporters and opponents of transit as evidence justifying a proposed level of transit investment. This implies that by riding transit, or not, we are effectively voting in a consequential poll. …
Note that you can’t control how your vote is interpreted. Your ridership may be counted as evidence of why transit should have more service and higher standards of quality, but it may also be counted as proof that the current service is fine as it is, because people are clearly using it.
I chimed in with two points that helped spur along much of the comments. First, I included the definition of mediocrity and said that most transit agencies in the U.S. don’t even provide a middling level of service to their customers.
While for most riders the worst transit system in the world is always the one they ride every day, what is the impression a non-rider or a new rider gets when they go by just schedules and maps? Transit can never be a viable mode when 30-minute service is considered frequent or if a bus cannot take you directly where you want to go because it has to serve every part of the city along the way.
I posited a solution. Cities and regions, big and small, should make an effort to make transit “fit for human consumption.” A transit system should reflect the effective movement of passengers, not the fulfillment of minimum policy objectives that morph into maximum service potential. Hourly (or less frequent) service, one-way loops, wide gaps between routes and buses that stop running when the sun goes down, can be called a transit system, but it is not something riders can really depend on. This just narrows the ridership pool to elderly shut-ins or the very bottom rung of workers who are trapped in a cycle of taking crappy service to a dead-end job.
The remedy to this: Policy Service. Every transit system needs a guaranteed minimum headway, a guaranteed maximum gap of distance between routes and a minimum span of service that at offers some trips at night. I suggested the basic foundation of 30 minute headways, no more than 1 mile between bus routes and 16-hour-a-day service. This is what mediocrity is. Now let us build a transit system that can meet these goals.
The repost of my comment details this concept. It can be read after the jump.
From Webster’s online:
Main Entry: me·di·o·cre
Pronunciation: \?m?-d?-??-k?r\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle French, from Latin mediocris, from medius middle + Old Latin ocris stony mountain; akin to Latin acer sharp — more at edge
Date: circa 1586
: of moderate or low quality, value, ability, or performance : ordinary, so-so
Note the etymology. Mediocrity implies the quality of something in the middle. So are transit systems only halfway decent, then?
No. Most people would regard subsidizing what is U.S. transit as the famous Groucho Marx quip about moving up from nothing to extreme poverty.
Virtually all but a dozen or so transit agencies must first aspire to mediocrity. :>
I have a solution for these systems who first need to aspire to mediocrity: Policy service.
Consider it a revolution of a thousand increments. A revolution has to start somewhere.
This is targeted at the places that do not have the ridership or population density to support rail service of any kind, and/or have some rudimentary form of bus service that is at best marginally useful. In other words, this is for nearly every American transit system.
Basically, set a basic guaranteed service floor to make transit “fit for human consumption.” In other words, no bus line should ever run less frequently than 30 minutes. Many urban (!) transit systems typically set 60 minutes as their service floor. That doesn’t cut it for anyone except for elderly shut-ins.
Even 30 minutes is not within the realm of becoming a serious choice alternative to the car. But it helps build a strong base. An hourly bus line has the dilemma of maintaining existing services or cancellation. A 30-minute route will have the ridership base to either keep it where it is or grow to 20 minutes, then 15 minutes, and so on.
Again, 30 minutes sets a good foundation.
Second, there should be a policy span of service. No transit agency, anywhere — not even in the sleepiest jerkwater burg — should ever shut down at dusk. Bus service must run at least 16 hours a day. That’s two 8-hour driver shifts, but it also provides needed buses to people who are already customers: service workers. Every city has wait staff, bartenders, cashiers, security guards, domestics and other such jobs. These jobs don’t follow 9-to-5 schedules. This is why 16-hour service is so crucial, and it’s a foundation to providing 20-hour service.
I wouldn’t go as far as saying 24-hour service is a requirement, because owl service in most cases is unsustainable — even in “24-hour cities”.
Third, there should be a guaranteed spatial span of service. The bare minimum needs to be 1-mile bidirectional service. Yes, there is the transit agency mentality that a route is a route, and they may try to economize by covering the city with one-way loops.
As Jarrett pointed out, people don’t travel in loops. A loop is a creation for “reasons of state,” something that fulfills bureaucratic diktats but not the wants or needs of passengers.
A 1-mile service grid (even when routes cannot actually conform to the street grid) implies that the farthest a person is ever away from a bus stop is half a mile.
In sum, the Service Policy for all agencies should be:
1. Minimum frequency of 30 minutes.
2. Minimum service span of 16 hours a day.
3. Minimum Maximum distance between routes of 1 mile bidirectionally.
This is within the reasonable grasp of every transit agency everywhere. It can be done cheaply and easily, and these conditions allow any city to become a transit city.
Yes, I know it’s political will. I am not saying the government has to force this down the throats of every U.S. city, but local residents should push for these measures. And many of them will succeed.
If you look at last November’s U.S. elections, 23 of 32 transit-related measures passed — a 72% success rate.
See http://www.cfte.org/success/2006BallotMeasures.asp
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
Couldn’t agree more. I’m from Santa Clarita and a few of the routes here run every 80-120 minutes. It’s a “catch 22″ where they cut service because not enough people utilize public transit, but with service that infrequent, people use it less because the bus never comes.
Ah, would that there was MONEY to run transit service the way Chris and his rose-colored glasses proposes.
The problem is that not all streets are equal in terms of transit ridership, and it costs just as much to run that once-hourly bus that barely attracts a dozen passengers as it does to run a bus every five minutes on a heavier-used street.
Come on, Chris. You know the realities. Why this pie-in-the-sky piece when you know perfectly well every agency in the state was screwed out of their operations funding by the Governator and the lapdog Legislature?
A few more pieces like this, and your credibility level is going to be somewhere around zero degrees Kelvin.
Kym, again, bravo on the people skills.
The background of this post had to do with a discussion on Human Transit. Click the link to read its context.
What I had said elaborates on a point Jarrett made: Why should people ride transit if it is so much of a burden to use and mediocre? I added that we must first define what would be good transit, and what do we have to do to get there halfway.
The root word of mediocrity is “middle.”
Fortunately, a lot of parts of L.A. County meet this standard of mediocrity. A lot do not, but that’s besides the point right now.
I actually laid out a framework for planning as to what can be defined as mediocrity. I said 1)A service floor of 30-minute midday service; 2)A maximum distance between routes of 1 mile; and 3)A minimum revenue service span of 16 hours per day.
Do you honestly think I don’t know the whats or whys of not being able to accomplish this much? I know very well, but I also posited a solution that gives riders, transit systems and even taxpayers alike a point of reference to work from. I’m not issuing any edict here, and every local area must be given some flexibility into meeting these goals. Like: How can modern exurban-style subdivisions prepare to offer so much service when it’s unpleasant or impossible to even walk to a bus stop? Answer: Use flexible routes or dial-a-cab for services with a very low anticipated demand. Of course, the key planks of this service also depend on things like what destinations are there on weekends or how many employers need workers on a swing shift. If the town shuts down on Sunday, don’t run service or run a special route that ties together churches and open shops.
Kym, I know your temperament well and you can take it as well as you dish it out, so … no shit, Sherlock.
And when debating, making your argument by using a false dichotomy is considered gauche. Run that phrase or “logical fallacies” through your search engine for more information. It’s stuff you oughtn’t do.
Forget the 5-minute buses. Look at the 60-minute bus.
You know what the problem is with a bus that runs every 60 minutes? It runs every 60 minutes.
Hourly service might have been considered good enough at the beginning of the 20th century in a town of a few thousand people and fewer options. It might have been possible to align the bus schedule with whatever else there is in town.
Now, most hourly buses are stuck between the choice of maintain bare-minimum service for stagnating ridership or cancel service. Hourly bus service is only feasible for elderly shut-ins.
No transit system should risk from going from bad to the best (hourly to headway-based schedules). It’s virtually never done for the same reason you don’t expect to see sumo wrestlers set track and field records.
A more attainable risk and reward is to aspire to mediocrity, in other words, double down from 60 to 30 minutes. With 30-minute service, you could at least meet the needs of the transit-dependent population and for many workers and students. In many cases, you will then see the level of ridership at least double to meet productivity, and if it goes higher, productivity also improves.
Half-hourly service gives you something to build on. Doubling from 30 to 15 minutes also has the same risk and reward than quadrupling from 60 to 15 minutes. Or, there’s an even more conservative approach that puts it on the approach to good transit: stair-stepping, or going up to the next increment of clock headways (30 to 20 to 15 to 12 to 10, etc.).
Is the ridership not there because the bus is so infrequent or is the bus so infrequent because the ridership is not there?
I often think about a bus route near my school, Cal State Fullerton. It’s the 26 and it’s actually quite convenient if you’re a train rider. It’s a 10-12 minute one-seat ride to Fullerton train station, where you can connect with Amtrak, Metrolink or other bus lines. The buses aren’t empty or anything.
However, headways during rush hour are just over 30 minutes. There are three evening departures spaced over an hour apart. This leads me to believe that potential ridership is there, but it isn’t materializing because the service just isn’t there.
My school also has a huge parking problem that is going to be exacerbated this semester by construction. It seems that with a little marketing of the route you could encourage more people to take Metrolink to Fullerton station, and take the bus to the school. Unfortunately, with the state budget being what it is, there just isn’t any money to provide enough service to attract riders.
I think it’s a combination of both. Santa Clarita is not a city made for public transit – everything is incredibly far apart and many homes are built on top of giant hills. Although I don’t mind the actually riding of the bus, getting to/from it is brutal.
I agree that marketing/overall communication is an area that could be improved on. Many people seem to be intimidated by the bus in terms of not knowing the fare, where the bus goes, or what transfers can be made. I bet if people were more aware of these things, they’d be more apt to utilize the bus every once and a while.