A lot of people I have had conversations with note that they would love to ride transit more often, but the time difference between riding the bus and driving is simply not acceptable to them. This is completely understandable. Take the following as an example.
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| A GCRTA bus in Public Square.Lisa DeJong, The Plain Dealer |
A couple of weekends ago, I was visiting a friend in West Park, on the west side of Cleveland. Since I do not have a car with me, I rode the bus. According to Google Maps, the bus ride to that side of town takes 49 minutes. The drive? 17 minutes.
Now I know I am probably not like most. Personally, I am largely not discouraged by this long travel time. It allows me to relax, read some articles on my phone, think, etc. The 49 minutes, to me, is not a huge barrier to travel. What else do I have to do anyway?
However, when it comes to a commute to work, I understand that this would discourage most people from riding transit. I think it stands to reason that more people would take transit if it made sense for them to do so, whether that be because transit actually takes less time than driving, as is the case in cities like New York and Chicago, or if they did not have to sacrifice as much to take transit. Time is money, as they say.
In a time of climate crisis, getting people out of cars should be an imperative policy goal. People are selfish. That's just our nature. So the most effective way to encourage people to use transit is to give them a selfish incentive for altruism. People are not going to choose transit unless using it benefits them more than it costs. Costs in this sense includes both direct costs, like the transit fare, as well as opportunity costs. The opportunity cost boils down to the time you spend on-board. Since you value your time, and could be doing other things with it, we need to minimize the opportunity cost. That is, we need to make transit faster. It is hard to get people to willingly use transit when it takes so much longer than driving.
So how can this be done? Let's run through a case study of a recent trip I made to my friend a couple of weeks ago. Through a combination of implementing transit signal priority, dedicated bus lanes, and a proof of payment system, the travel time along this corridor can be significantly reduced. But first, a quick discussion of transit signal priority
What is Transit Signal Priority?
Transit signal priority, put simply, is allowing buses and other transit vehicles to "talk" to the traffic lights and request that they get some special treatment at an intersection. This can take many forms, such as extending the green light so buses can pass through, truncating the red light so the bus gets a green light sooner, shifting the phases to line up with buses, and others. Check
this out for more information.
I was first really introduced to this idea in Amsterdam. I can remember riding on their streetcars there and noticing that we never had a red light. When a streetcar approached the intersection, the light magically turned green. I am not sure what sort of system they use behind the scenes to allow this, but the practical impact is very clear- no waiting at red lights.
The Case Study
As discussed, I was recently visiting a friend in West Park, and I hopped on the bus to get there. I rode on the 22, a high frequency route in Cleveland. It connects Downtown Cleveland and Westgate Transit Center in Rocky River via Ohio City/ W. 25th Street and Lorain Avenue. Below is a map of the route.
Once boarding, I pulled out my stopwatch to track both the total travel time and the time spent at red lights. Here are the results:
Total travel time: 51 minutes, 43 seconds
Time at red light: 10 minutes, 47 seconds
As you can see, about 20% of my total travel time was time spent not in motion at all- that is, I was sitting at a red light. This particular bus corridor does not have any signal priority. That leaves a lot of room for improvement by implementing transit signal priority.
Consider the best case scenario and say we eliminate all of the time spent at red lights. That is 10 minutes shaved off the travel time right off the bat. That pushes the needle in people's utility maximizing equation a little bit towards transit. If the drive takes 17 minutes, a 41 minute bus ride is obviously preferable to a 51 minute bus ride. We are getting closer.
Another large cause of transit delay stems from having to operate in the same space as other roadway users. That is, from sitting in traffic. I certainly experienced this on my ride. There was a point when the bus was over in Ohio City, and due to traffic congestion that is common there, the bus sat there for roughly 9 minutes just inching forward to turn right on Lorain Ave. If the buses had their own lanes, this delay could be practically eliminated. Now the bus travel time is at 32 minutes. Even better.
Once the bus gets onto Lorain, there is another source of delay. When the bus is at a stop, there is a temporary break in the on street parking- namely, it is not allowed in the areas of the bus stop. This is all well and good. However, after leaving a bus stop, the bus must change lanes, which requires them to wait until it is safe to do so. This added another, say, 4 minutes onto the travel time. Now the travel time is down to 28 minutes. That is a hell of a lot better than 51.
Now let's say there was a proof of payment system, and passengers were allowed to board from all doors on the bus. They are expected to purchase their fare before boarding, and instead of waiting for all of the passengers to pay their fare onboard, fumble around to find their pass, or deal with touchy ticket validators, they could just walk on. If they don't pay their fare, they are subject to some fine, but otherwise we essentially trust that they paid. This is very popular in Germany- the subways there have no turnstiles. Say that reduces another minute.
Through these fairly simple interventions, the travel time on the bus was reduced from 51 to 27 minutes. Since this bus services downtown, I think the 10 minute difference in travel time would be acceptable to a lot of people. Sure, it takes 10 extra minutes, but you don't have to worry about parking, traffic, or being sober enough to drive home. I would take that any day of the week.
Caveat
My analysis above assumes that I was on a bus that represented a typical trip to West Park. While I am not sure if this is true or not, I don't think it really matters that much. Requiring buses to operate on the same right of way as other vehicles, and not giving buses priority at intersections, we introduce tons of variability in the travel time. One day, traffic could be light and we hit all of the green lights. But the next day we could be heavily delayed, and then you're late to work. By taking the steps listed above, we can reduce that variation. If customers can be confident that their trip will take x minutes, they will be more inclined to ride than in a scenario when one trip takes 51 minutes but the next takes 40.
Issues
Transit agencies often have no political power over the streets on which they operate. They often have the power to levy a sales tax, but have little power in changing how streets look. That is ultimately up to the city government, state government, etc.
Transit agencies also don't have control over traffic signals. That, again, rests in the hands of city, county, or state governments (mostly city). Therefore, to implement any sort of system like that described above, a lot of collaboration must be done with many stakeholders. Buses operate in cities other than the City of Cleveland. Therefore, to give a whole corridor signal priority, we would have to get the blessing of numerous municipalities or other government entities. If one of them is not on board, the whole thing can fail. Same goes for bus-only lanes.
So, for what I described above to come to fruition, lots of government agencies have to be on board. That might not always happen.
What about the cars? Isn't transit signal priority unfair to cars?
Think about this: the majority of cars only have one person in them- the driver. Buses have tens of people on board. At any given time, there may be 20+ people on the bus. Intersections often do not have that many cars at them. Say 10 or so.
Let's think about a scenario when there are 10 people waiting at an intersection, but 20 on a bus. The 10 vehicles in question are traveling perpendicular to the bus. Let's assume the delay at a red light is one minute. If the 10 cars have to wait a minute, that is 10 minutes of person-delay.
If the bus has to wait, this is 20 minutes of person-delay. It makes sense, then, to give priority to the bus, right? Society stands to lose less by letting the bus go through whenever it approaches that intersection.
This example is admittingly contrived, but it may not be too inaccurate. In any case, buses in the City of Cleveland run at a MAXIMUM once every 15 minutes. So this means, if we had signal priority, car traffic would only be disrupted once every 15 minutes AT MOST. There is a good chance the signal priority of the bus would not even impact a car driver, since 75% of the hour operates under "normal" conditions. Even without signal priority, there is a good chance cars will have to wait at the intersection anyway. Given all of this, the City of Cleveland
still did not risk this trivial inconvenience to motorists on the Healthline Corridor, which has/had signal priority. Motorists complained, despite likely not becoming any worse off due to the signal priority for buses, and the City bent over backwards for them. Again, if the buses weren't there, they would still have to wait at that light sometimes. The buses just provide an easy scapegoat.
Other benefits of faster service
Obviously, getting people where they need to go faster is a huge benefit from traffic signal priority and bus-only lanes. But there are other benefits that could accrue.
Let's say that in its current state, the 22 bus takes 2 hours to complete its cycle- one hour out, one hour back. In order to operate at 15 minute frequency, they must utilize 8 buses (2 hours/15 minutes = 8).
Let's say that through various interventions, such as TSP and bus-only lanes, the total round trip cycle can be reduced to just one hour. In this case, only 4 buses need to operate at any given time to achieve 15 minute frequency (1 hour/15 minutes = 4). Therefore, the same level of service can be achieved with half the number of buses. That is 4 fewer buses that need to be maintained, four fewer operators that need to be paid, less fuel that needs to be consumed (and therefore fewer greenhouse gas emissions), etc.
With this newly found capacity and savings of 4 buses, the transit agency has multiple options:
1. Save the money- the least desirable option in my opinion.
2. The 4 newly freed buses and operators could be allocated to other, lower frequency lines. Instead of coming once per hour , the bus can now come once every 30 minutes. This substantially increases the freedom of transit riders, as they, on average, have to wait less for the bus. People would be much more likely to ride a bus that comes every 30 minutes than one that comes every hour, assuming they have a choice to do so.
3. They could keep the 8 buses on the same corridor, but since the round trip time is significantly lower than before, they could run frequencies of 1 hour/8 buses = 7.5 minutes. This is another substantial increase in freedom because it reduces the average wait time even more. When frequency is sufficiently high, you no longer need to structure your life around a timetable. You just walk outside, and there is a good chance a bus will be there in fewer than 4 minutes. That is almost as good as being able to just hop in your car at the drop of a hat.
As you can see, there are incredibly large benefits from reducing transit travel time. But the policies that need to happen require a lot of effort, collaboration and convincing. If we are able to do it, we can make transit better for everyone, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and live a more sustainable future.
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