The PI has an interesting article about how Metro buses are falling late more than before because of the increased ridership. A bus is considered “not on-time” if it’s more than five minutes late, and the on-time percentage for buses is down to 74%, and overcrowding is to blame:
Two or three more people boarding or leaving a bus at a stop or elbowing past standees might add only seconds to the delay, but over the length of a route, it adds up, Obeso said. If the cumulative effect makes the bus more than five minutes late to a scheduled stop, the bus is categorized as not on time.
…
Bus ridership has gone up significantly over the last few years, driven by growth in population and employment and by increases in the cost of driving a vehicle because of rising gasoline prices. In 2007, Metro recorded 110 million passenger boardings, which was an all-time high and 7 percent more than in 2006.
Meanwhile, on-time performance has declined, dipping to a 12-month average of 74 percent in early 2007, the latest period for which Metro provided information.
It does seem Metro is working on solutions, and one of them strikes me as only too obvious.
Metro also applies other strategies to keep the buses running on time. In arrangements coordinated with city traffic engineers, some buses are equipped with devices that send a signal to traffic-light controls when nearing an intersection so that the light will stay green for a few extra seconds to let the bus through.Other bus-borne devices can trigger a red light for the curb lane to turn green a few seconds before all lanes get the green light, allowing a bus to pull away from the curb and merge into the travel lanes ahead of the traffic flow.
Metro also expects to take delivery in April of 22 60-foot articulated buses bought with the proceeds of a sales tax voters approved in 2006, allowing for expanded service.
The agency would like more riders to buy prepaid passes — and plans to introduce passes in the form of plastic cards embedded with computer chips detectable by proximity sensors — to “make the transaction quicker at the door,” Obeso said. And it will experiment with systems that let passengers board at any door on the bus.
Want people to buy more bus passes? Install pass vending machines at park-and-rides and in the transit tunnel. It’d be an easy way to ensure people have the proper fare when the bus comes around.
but the article states that buses one or more minute early is also not on time. What percentage of the trips not on time are early at estimated timepoints?
it’s very clear that the honor system is desperatley needed, it’s no fun waiting in the rain for idiots to dig out change…
justin, the honor system doesn’t work with buses. Try installing ten or twenty thousand ticket vending and validating machines – one at every stop.
honor system honor system!
and here here to pass vending machines – they can convert the parking kiosks into ticket machines really easily. wtf is taking metro so long to do this if every minute is “so much money”? those things have to be so cheap and such a great way to recoup expenses.
all of this also highlights how poorly bus systems scale – 74% o/t is actually surprisingly high but totally unacceptable as a form of reliable transportation.
someone needs to do the math for metro in terms of money saved on honor system vs futzing at the farebox. usually farebox revenues dip a little on the honor system but hardly enough to meaningfully offset the savings in terms of on-time performance, etc.
there are also some other things that could probably help a lot – i think the #48 route is really overdue to be split in two (it would be interesting to know if the 7/49 split helped o/t performance). overall ontime performance can be improved greatly by improving the routes with the most frequent service (for computer scientists, this is sort of like amdahl’s law for transit). there are a million low-tech, “free” things that metro can do to improve o/t performance and customer service/experience. they should get a few more people working on things like that as opposed to figuring out how quickly they can spend their new revenue streams…
kaleci, I don’t know how they’d accurately count early buses, as leaving a stop early is something drivers get in trouble for.
The solution to the on time performance problem is very easy, and doesn’t have to mean we ditch the fare box: Simply add more buses to the routes that run over 100% capacity. They’ve been adding new routes, so we know they have the buses and the drivers. All they need to do is add those buses and drivers to existing routes instead.
Easy. Safer and saner, too. It might result in greater ridership numbers, too, as people turned off by the bus in the past learn that they might actually get a place to sit on their next ride.
Instead of a straight-up honor system, how about this:
At stations or stops where ticket machines can be installed (tunnel & P&Rs to start with), install ticket vending machines, like the parking ones. When you buy a ticket, it will expire in a certain amount of time, just like a transfer; then you can simply show the ticket to the driver, again like a transfer. Imagine if all boardings were transfer flashes instead of coin rummaging while the bus dwells.
Ben Schiendelman the honor system works for buses many other places in the world, take my favorite Prague for example.
You don’t need vending machines at every stop, just the most popular ones and the ability to buy them from multiple sources like 7-11…
like other’s have said they only recover 10% of the costs from the fare boxes, and slow down routes considerably.
David,
The issue that sometimes crops up with adding more buses is that you get a caravan of buses because the first one gets far enough behind to start running on the second schedule. A caravan usually looks like two or three buses of the same route with only the first one full, and all the others kinda empty. This could be fixed procedurally by having busses switch to “express” mode once they’re on the schedule of the bus behind them. Express mode would make any stop a rider on board the bus requested, but would skip picking up any additional passengers.
Justin, Metro collects about 24% of costs at the farebox..
Fare boxes are certainly a problem, but I’m with david. If a bus ever reaches 100% capacity it slows way down. Every stop means people cramming past each other in both directions, then once everyone’s settled you still have to deal with the 5 people that tried to cram themselves in the back door stairs. The driver anounces that they need to leave the bus, opens the back door, people run over thinking he’s letting more on, he closes the back door, finds out there are still 2 people on the stairs… I’ve waited 5 minutes or more at a stop because of this.
Of course bus-only lanes past traffic would be the ideal solution – you could move more people with the same number of busses when you can move them faster.
nickb, awesome. I dig the idea of having them “go express” with regards to pickups, so long as they continue to stop at every stop when the cable is pulled (so people can rely on the bus to get them to their destination).
It may end up that this only saves a few minutes per day, but as said in the original article, they add up.
Regarding the caravan: That’s definitely a problem. Maybe they could create additional express routes and stagger the stops (although if they do this, they should change the route numbers. I’m tired of there being 4+ different routes for a particular number (28)). Heh, sorry for the rant there, had to get it off my chest.
The honor system doesn’t solve the delay at the farebox. It only makes the payment optional. People will still fumble at the farebox when paying the fare, even if not required.
Also, in a city where people are expected to wait on an empty street for the “Walk” signal, the honor system would be effective in semantics only.
Also, any elimination of the fare structure is a political non-starter and would be immediately tagged by the anti-transit folks.
“People will still fumble at the farebox when paying the fare, even if not required.”
???? Take a trip to Europe, most run on the honor system. It sounds like you don’t know what that entails.
Raise fares and then use the revenue to buy vending machines.
Problem solved.
I’m also curious to see what the on-time rate is during rush hour. I’m guessing it’s far worse than 74% when people actually use the bus.
A much less expensive route to go would be to scroll down this blog and ready why the BRT is going to the proof of payment system…
justin, you’re riding in-town Prague buses. I’m thinking of the whole system – we can’t switch from one payment system to another halfway through a route.
In a dense area, sure, honor system is fine. I suspect that the cost of installation for those systems wouldn’t even come close to making buses faster.
Most of the problem here is traffic congestion, not passengers.
Again, they shouldn’t get into trouble leaving early if it is an estimated timepoint. However, if the system recording the on-time performance doesn’t know that on certain routes and at certain places it is okay to be early, then the on-time performance is actually higher than 74%.
“we can’t switch from one payment system to another halfway through a route.”
Sure you can. In London with your Oystercard it’s seamless. Let’s say you pay for your commuter train from the burbs with it, then you hop on the tube or bus, it knows you are in the time frame for a free transfer, if not then you are charged for the next leg. Simple, easy and fast.
More. Bus. Only. Lanes.
justin, Oyster is not honor system. I may have skipped a post, or maybe I’m responding to the wrong thing – I meant we can’t switch easily from honor system to pay-as-you-board when leaving areas where it makes sense to sell tickets.
I noted this in the quote:
The agency would like more riders to buy prepaid passes — and plans to introduce passes in the form of plastic cards embedded with computer chips detectable by proximity sensors — to “make the transaction quicker at the door,” Obeso said.
Sounds like ORCA! Can we press them for the ORCA rollout schedule?
(Also addresses Justin’s comments about Oystercard.)
Or…
They could promote mybus more and get people away from planning their trips around timetables and more towards planning with real-time information.
[ben] I’m not sure why you can’t have the honor system in the ‘burbs. In one bus system I used (I think it was in Florence), you pay at a little station in the middle of the bus (like in the SLUS) that prints a ticket. In theory, every now and then someone walks on and checks everyone’s ticket – but it never happened when I was on it. The bus driver is completely disconnected from the payment system, and people pay once they’re already on the bus (I paid while it was moving).
Of course you could install outside pay stations at heavily used stops, but it’s not required at smaller stops. Why would this not work outside the city?
the great thing about the honor system is exactly as matt says – it’s simple and works anywhere.
the “control” (as it’s called in germany and a few other places) system works very well, and as a wonderful side-effect also can help increase security on the bus. i know first-hand, having been fined for fare evasion in sarajevo, that the system can and does work, and having been burned once (and having had to pay a pretty good fine), i am a lot more leery of trying to cheap out on the fare. it can and does work.
if we can afford to install the parking meters (which are the same as the ticket kiosks) throughout the city, how exactly is it a money loser?
i’ve just never understood why anyone would rail against an honor-system fare payment scheme. you know, because the current system works so damn well with all the dirtbags who don’t bother to pay the fare today?
I always thought it was the wheelchair folks that slowed down the buses. Seems like it’s an extra 1-2 minutes every time they board and exit. I’d like to see more of the small buses for them that they could call like a taxi.
Buses are considered on-time if they are 1 minute early or five minutes late to a timepoint. Any earlier than the 1 minute, yes the driver can get into trouble. That is why you see them wait at a stop or stall to let time catch up if they are early.