Archive for Buses
Nov
02
The trouble with assessing bus satisfaction
Posted by: | CommentsWhen the MTA released its subway satisfaction survey last week, it also published a similar one concerning the buses, and I didn’t pay it much attention. As with the subway survey, the bus examination used a similarly flawed scale and still found 70 percent of riders satisfied with local bus service. In one sense, that’s a shockingly high number considering how unreliable and slow local bus service can be.
This week, Allan Rosen at Sheepshead Bites drilled down on both the results of and the process behind the MTA’s bus service, and he too is less than impressed. As bus service varies wildly across routes and boroughs, Rosen, a former bus planner with the MTA, is critical of the sample size, the rankings and the way the survey ignores customer feedback on proper bus routing. His conclusion on the survey: “They first draw their conclusions, then pick and choose the data they want to show to back up those conclusions. In this case the MTA wanted to show that a majority of riders are content with the service they provide.”
That, in a nutshell, is why the bus surveys don’t tell us much. But there’s a bigger issue at work here: The bus surveys targeted only those who ride the bus. If the MTA wanted to find out why people aren’t satisfied with bus service, the agency needs to find people who don’t or no longer ride the bus and ask them why. In such a survey, one would find routing issues, speed (or lack thereof) and an unreliable schedule to be the prime disincentives and a clear reason why bus ridership is on the decline. That’s a survey worth doing.
Oct
24
MTA eyeing April ’13 for city-wide BusTime rollout
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Bus riders throughout the five boroughs will enjoy real-time bus tracking by early 2013.
While Londoners can now track their city’s buses, New York City isn’t too far behind. According to MTA documents released this week, if all goes according to plan, the MTA’s BusTime system, in use in Brooklyn and nearly ready on Staten Island, will be available city-wide by April of 2013. It could revolutionize the way New Yorkers use the bus system.
For the past few years, as surface travel has grown slower and bus service less frequent, the MTA has noted a marked decrease in bus ridership. According to numbers released this week by Transit, average weekday bus ridership in August was below 2.3 million for the first time in years. Although some of that decline was due to the total shutdown of the transit system in advance of Hurricane Irene, the bus system has not enjoyed an increase in ridership in years.
We could spend hours debating the reasons for the declining bus ridership. The vehicles are slow and uncomfortable. They don’t run on or close to the MTA’s posted schedules. Facing congestion and long boarding lines, crosstown trips in Manhattan, in particular, are often slower than walking. It’s no coincidence that as Select Bus Service improvements are rolled out across the city, bus ridership along those lines are among the highest around.
One of the key drivers behind the lack of faith in the city’s bus service concerns reliability. Although the authority posts schedules, buses come when they feel like it, often in bunches and rarely on time. Bus tracking projects, similar to the ones in place along 34th St. in Manhttan and the B63 route in Brooklyn, take the surprise out of bus travel and better allow riders to program their trips. If all goes according to plan, every bus will be equipped with such a tracking system by April of 2013, and riding the bus in New York City should become convenient again.
According to the presentation (found in the Capital Program Oversight Committee materials), the MTA is moving forward aggressively with plans to outfit the entire bus fleet with the tracking software. It will be activated in all 830 Staten Island buses by December of this year, and the project is coming in within the allocated budget. The city-wide rollout will begin next year.
Already, the project in Brooklyn, according to the MTA, is drawing high praise. The authority reports 1500 daily requests each day, and 94 percent of current users want to see it available through the city. I wonder what the other six percent want, but I digress. A “small percentage” of users find the text messaging function or website interface “difficult to use.”
For Staten Island, meanwhile, the project has been exceedingly simple to introduce. The authority awarded three contracts — one for on-bus hardware, one for back-office software and one for text message services — and installation began on the first of this month. Once the service is nearly ready, the MTA will begin a publicity blitz to prepare Staten Islanders for bus tracking.
Meanwhile, this project has an added benefit in that it will help drive forward the plan to replace MetroCards with a smart card tap-and-go payment system. The project was budgeted with $6.9 million from the New Fare Payment System initiative, and the $1.2 million in technology the MTA purchased for Staten Island’s bus tracking system will work with the new fare system as well. Furthermore, they’ve locked in software development through the city for $7.5 million, a total that includes development and six years of maintenance and hosting services. All in all, that’s not a bad deal.
As an information geek and transit advocate, I’m excited for the potential that BusTime should realize. If riders of any bus route can easily look up how far away the next bus is, they can better plan travel of all kinds. It should encourage people to use the buses as a way to supplement their subway rides, and it will take the sheer mystery out of riding the bus. Eliminating both the surprise of the schedule and the frustrating aspects of the wait should only increase customer satisfaction and use.
The buses have had a tough go of it lately, but things are starting to look up. Now if only we could bring a pre-boarding fare payment system to the entire bus network as well.
Oct
18
US DOT doles out dollars for NYC buses
Posted by: | CommentsThe U.S. Department of Transportation released nearly $1 billion in funds for localities to spend on various livable streets and bus facility upgrades this week, and New York City and the MTA secured over $134 million of that total for a variety of badly-needed projects. “These grant funds will make sure that bus service in our communities remains reliable and desirable while putting thousands of Americans to work at the same time,” Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff said.
According to the grant list (available here as a PDF), the MTA will spend on the money on vehicle replacement and a bus command system while the NYC Department of Transportation will invest $3.4 million into a plan to improve bus access in and around the Broadway Junction area. The new command system, which will receive $34 million in federal funding, has been to designed to address communications failures that arose during last winters crippling blizzard.
Meanwhile, as the MTA’s bus fleet ages and buses break down more often, the authority will use over $60 million in federal funds to purchase 112 new vehicles. “This is welcome new funding and is a much needed investment that will go a long way toward updating our equipment and bus fleet,” authority spokesman Kevin Ortiz said to the Daily News. “It will help improve service and reliability for our customers.”
Oct
18
For London, a comprehensive bus tracking system
Posted by: | CommentsBus riders in London are for a treat as Transport for London announced yesterday that its real-time bus tracking system is now available “anytime and anywhere.” With over 8000 buses running via 700 routes and making 19,500 stops in the U.K. Capital, the system is one of the most complex in the world, and the new system allows bus riders to check the locations of all buses within 30 minutes of a select stop, street or post code. The information is available via the web, mobile browsers and text message.
TfL officials also announced they will be replacing 2000 digital signs and adding 500 more in an effort to better inform riders at popular stations throughout the city. Later this year, the agency will release datasets so that mobile developers can release bus tracking apps. “Over six million bus journeys are made every day in London and this fantastic application of bus data will now enable people, wherever they are, whatever they are doing, to have at their fingertips the power to know exactly when their bus will reach any one of the Capital’s 19,500 bus stops they want to use, at any time of day or night,” Kulveer Ranger, Director of Digital London, said. “This technological step forward will revolutionise the way people use London’s buses and will banish the need for them to ever wait at a bus stop again.”
New York, meanwhile, is working its way toward a similar system. Transit teams are developing a bus-tracking platform for Staten Island that will be modeled after the B63 pilot. If all goes according to plan, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx will see a rollout over the next few years as the technology grows and funds are released. Our system won’t come with MTA-installed screens; rather, that’s a decision local merchants can make using the live streaming data. Still, it’s a worthwhile endeavor, and one, as London will show, that can truly change the way people view and use the bus system.
Oct
12
Balancing parking, driving and bus lanes along the B44
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Plans for the B44 SBS include bus bulbs.
Over the past few years, the battle for street space has become a headline-grabber in New York City. On the one hand are folks who support vibrant street life. These folks argue for dedicated bus lanes, bike lanes and policies that promote pedestrian safety and mass transit over parking. On the other are those who believe that taking away a lane for driving or parked cars is an affront to liberty and freedom and that bike lanes are a part of the tenth circle of hell. Clearly, you know which side I’m on.
While the bike lane battles have been brewing in Park Slope and Williamsburg, the MTA and New York City DOT have been S-L-O-W-L-Y laying out plans for Brooklyn’s first Select Bus Service route. The new service will follow the path of the B44 along Nostrand and Rogers Avenues from Williamsburg to Sheepshead Bay, and throughout the planning process, it has received the usual array of windshield criticism. Community Board 15 voted it down due to its potential impact on parking while drivers complained that pedestrian-oriented improvements would take away space for their cars.
The MTA and DOT have been listening though, and now they’re making a case for their plan. Last week, they unveiled the latest iteration of the B44 SBS service, and while it still takes away some space for parking and auto lanes, businesses are rallying behind it because DOT has preserved capacity. In other words, by reallocating space from parked cars to vehicles in motion, the street will be more active. The latest presentation is available here as a PDF, and Streetsblog’s Noah Kazis offers up a thorough summary of the plans. He writes:
Nostrand Avenue SBS will, as in the Bronx and Manhattan, create dedicated bus lanes enforced by automated cameras and use high-capacity buses and off-board fare payment. With fewer stops, the bus will also spend more time in motion and less time starting and stopping. The Nostrand project will add another new feature: bus bulbs. By extending the sidewalk out to the street, bus bulbs mean that drivers don’t have to pull to the curb and back into the lane, resulting in a smoother and speedier ride. A raised curb means more level boarding onto the bus, advantageous for the elderly and the mobility-impaired. The extra space also means that the bus stop won’t crowd the sidewalk…
In order to preserve the same number of motor vehicle lanes during rush hour, where a bus lane is being installed DOT proposes turning the left parking lane into a through lane during the morning and evening peaks. This shouldn’t have too much of an impact on local merchants. At Nostrand and Empire Boulevard, only 14 percent of shoppers had driven to the area (and not all had parked on Nostrand). Further south, at Glenwood Road, only 13 percent of shoppers had arrived in a car.
Moreover, there’s a lot of room to add parking in other ways. On much of Nostrand and its cross streets, parking is currently free. The installation of meters will encourage drivers to move on once done shopping, freeing up space for others. The use of Muni-Meters will also allow more vehicles to park in the same area. Finally, loading zones and delivery windows will ensure that trucks have space at the curb rather than being forced to resort to double-parking.
This is transportation planning as it should be. In total, the amount of space constantly available for parked cars will dwindle, but what good are parked cars? They may provide transportation, but once idle, they sit lifeless in vibrant urban shopping areas. Muni meters will encourage turnover of parking spaces while buses, a major mode of transportation, will move more freely up and down the avenues. Cars won’t lose lanes, and businesses will gain loading zones. It’s a close to a win-win-win as one will find on the city streets these days.
Ultimately, though, this Select Bus Service suffers from the same problems that most of the MTA’s bus offerings do: While the route ends at the edge of the borough, most riders want to continue beyond that arbitrary border. The B44 SBS service would be far more useful if it crossed the Williamsburg Bridge and provided a direct connection with the M15 SBS as well as the F train at Delancey St. That’s a dream for another day though. Next fall, Brooklyn will finally get its first faster bus route.
Sep
26
Abridged BRT coming to 34th St. in November
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The latest plan for 34th Street will arrive in November.
It’s been over six months since 34th Street NIMBYs killed NYC DOT’s ambitious plan for a 34th Street transitway and equally as long since the agency announced modified plans for semi-dedicated bus lanes. Now those plans are coming to fruition, and DOT is eying a November roll-out for its so-called Select Bus Service along the 34th Street corridor.
As The Daily News reported today, instead of a dedicated transitway along 34th Street, we’ll get the M34A SBS, a BRT-lite route that will improve travel for all of one bus route in the city. The M34A will replace the M16, and it will be equipped with the same SBS features found along 1st and 2nd Aves. and Fordham Road: pre-board fare payment with proof-of-purhase; surveillance cameras to enforce bus-only lanes; three-door, low-floor buses; and eventually, signal prioritization.
These measures can’t replicate bus rapid transit. Rather, they are simply a start, but it’s tough to say if these efforts to speed up bus travel will go anywhere. Even after the city dumped the plans for a Transitway, residents are still complaining about curbside access and want DOT to carve out an exception to the bus-only lanes from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every weekday.
DOT has rightly refused. “Although we appreciate the concerns of the residents of the 34th Street block between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, the current curb configuration on 34th Street provides significant benefits to bus riders,” a spokesman said to DNAInfo. This is a battle over transit speed and street space that won’t end soon.
Sep
21
From LI Bus, a case study in the purpose of transit
Posted by: | CommentsHere’s an interesting question for you: Should public transit systems and the public authorities that run them be trying to turn a profit? In other words, at what point should authority heads such as Jay Walder cease running a transportation network as a public good and start running it as a business?
The answer to this question isn’t an easy one in an age of austerity. By and large, public transportation networks are inherently not operated as a business as the service level. In New York, for instance, the MTA runs mostly empty trains at 3 a.m. and allows buses to run routes with a cost-per-passenger high enough to make any private CFO cry. That’s how New York City exists as a huge economic hub and tourist destination today, and that’s how mass transit is operated as a public good.
On the other hand, though, are a few competing demands. First, the MTA must operate these services efficiently through a streamlined bureaucracy and a procurement process that isn’t beset with red tape. Second, it cannot become an organization beholden to pension costs and lifetime benefits. Third, it will require public subsidies from a government whose constituents depend on public transit for their daily lives, and politicians will have to recognize that the MTA or a similarly situated organization may not operate as efficiently as a corporation that answers to stock-holders. The demands are different, and the expected benefits are different.
Recently, a few good minds in the transit realm have been debating the way transit authorities operate. David Levinson has called for financially sustainable mass transit systems while Jarrett Walker has called upon those funding transit systems to better outline their goals. The competing demands of ridership vs. coverage are at odds with financially self-sustaining transit systems. I’ve simplified their arguments, and it’s worth reading their pieces at length because we’re seeing this debate play itself out in real life on Long Island.
The Long Island Bus saga has been a debacle. In its original agreement with Nassau County, the MTA agreed to operate the service as long as the county paid for it. Over the years, the county’s contributions had decreased while the MTA’s had increased, and the authority threatened to pull out of Nassau if County Executive Edward Mangano didn’t agree to upping the county’s contributions from $9 million to $26 million. Mangano called the MTA’s bluff and decided he could run the bus system for less by farming it out to a private company. He claimed no service cuts or fare hikes would follow.
From the start, the privatization process has been a mess. The county used a non-transparent process to pick Veolia, a company with close ties to Mangano’s campaign, and they failed to meet a July deadline for an agreement. The MTA will operate the buses until December 31, and at that point, Nassau County will reduce its contributions to just $2.5 million — $6 million less than the cost of fuel alone. Veolia will then be expected to cover the difference. Without subsidies, no one, including the company’s CEO, knows how.
Earlier this week, Michael Setzer spoke about how the company would save the millions it stands to lose from the MTA and state when it takes over the LI Bus network. “You can’t save $35 million by turning off the lights,” Setzer said. In other words, there’s virtually no way Veolia can operate the bus system with its current route structure and fare system while breaking even or turning a profit.
On their website, if you read closely enough, Veolia has said as much. They are threatening “adjustments” of bus timetables that will reduce frequency, and while they say there is no plan in place to raise fares next year, they also say that “it’s possible that modest service redesigns and fare increases will be recommended.” You can’t just save $35 million by turning off the lights.
Veolia is a private company long used to operate bus systems with large public subsidies. If they can’t turn a profit in Nassau County with a meager subsidy and the current route plan or fare structure, something will have to go. Relatively empty buses that provide a transit lifeline for people who can’t afford anything else will be cut, and fares will go up. A public good won’t be so public any longer.
As this grand experiment rushes toward a launch, we’ll watch Nassau County closely. It could be a model for how transit agencies can operate, but it sounds as though it’s going to be an example in government failure and the decline of a once-proud bus system. Perhaps Nassau County will come to its senses and recognize the purpose of its bus system before it’s too late, but I’m not counting on it.
Sep
15
Along the Bx9, a third driver assault in as many months
Posted by: | CommentsAs we’ve learned over the last few years, bus drivers are among the most vulnerable of MTA employees. There is no physical barrier between them and passengers, and irate riders often take out their frustrations on drivers. Over the years, the MTA has promised more cameras to enable them to catch perps who assault drivers, and they are slowly working on a bus partition pilot that will better protect drivers. The hits just keep on coming though.
CBS News’ Lou Young spoke with Maria Hogan, a driver in the Bronx who was assaulted this weekend. She had to deal with an irate passenger when she passed a stop closed for construction. The passengers yelled and then, on the way out, he punched her. As Young recounts, this happened in the middle of the day on Saturday afternoon “all of 300 yards from the passed stop.” It was the third such assault on this same bus line in three months.
Both the MTA and driver’s union reps said the right things. The MTA is committed to improving safety, and the union wants to work closely and quickly with the authority in doing so. Officials attribute a recent uptick in driver assaults to frustration over the economy, but whatever the cause, driver security has to be a priority. Protective measures should be implemented as soon as possible, and if the authority can’t speed up the pilot program, increasing police patrols on high-violence bus routes could be an answer.
Sep
15
Bike share a new opportunity for unused bus shelters
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A rendering of a proposed bike share station in front of the Atlantic Terminal in Brooklyn.
Whenever I leave my apartment for a stroll around my neighborhood, I walk past a former bus route. The B71 used to run, now and then when it felt like it, up and down Union St., and the CEMUSA shelter sits unused around the corner. Now, though, the city could find a use for these useless structures.
The bus shelters that are remaining on now-defunct bus lines are pretty much the pinnacle in useless infrastructure. Unless one believes the MTA is going to one day restore those bus lines — an unlikely proposition that would still be years off — the shelters serve only to satisfy an advertising agreement the city has signed with CEMUSA. They take up valuable sidewalk space, burn bright in the night sky and exist only to serve ads in high-traffic neighborhoods. What’s the point?
Today’s useless structures could have a purpose tomorrow for the city is starting a new initiative that could change the way we get around. The short of it is bike share. As Janette Sadik-Khan and city politicians announced yesterday, the city has signed an agreement with Alta Bicycle Share for an extensive bike share network. Included in this plan are 600 bike-share stations and 10,000 bikes. It would be, as Streetsblog noted, “a network of comparable size and density to bike-share systems in cities like London and Paris.”
The initial reaction from transportation advocates who have long fought for such a program focused on the integration of the bike network into the rest of the city’s public transit infrastructure. “Bike share will be the latest and greatest addition to New York’s menu of transportation choices,” Paul Steely White, Executive Director of Transportation Alternatives, said in a statement. “A subway or bus trip is rarely door-to-door and New Yorkers make hundreds of thousands of short trips a day that could benefit from the convenience of a public bicycle. This affordable and practical transit choice will empower New Yorkers with a new freedom of mobility and will harness the potential of bicycling to make our lives easier.”
Kate Slevin, from the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, issued a statement with a similar sentiment. “In cities like Washington, people use bike share to get to the train station, pick up the groceries, and visit that park or restaurant that was always a little too far of a walk,” she said. “Bike share will give New Yorkers another way to get around and improve everyone’s quality of life.”
The bike share, in other words, will complement the subways and buses, but how? To include the public as much as possible in the planning process, DOT has opened up a website asking for the public to request bike-share locations, and nearly every corner in Brooklyn and Manhattan seems to be claimed already. People clearly want access to bikes.
A clear answer came to me immediately, and I posted it to Twitter yesterday morning: “The obvious solution for bike share stations would be to use abandoned bus shelters along axed routes.” These shelters exist already, and many of them are along well-established routes. The city doesn’t have to use every bus shelter, but those, for instance, along Union St. would be ideal for cross-Brooklyn bicyclists. Reactivating wilting infrastructures whose only current purpose is to serve ads could do wonders for the streetscape.
Those responding to my plan questioned the location. It’s better to have bike share kiosks near major retail locations, of course, but the point of the bike share is to reach all neighborhoods. With 600 stations — that’s over 130 more than the number of subway stations in the city — DOT can blanket residential neighborhoods as well as key retail hubs, and the shelters, especially those at key intersections, provide them with a clear location.
As proponents have noted, the city will have to tred carefully over the next few months. The media is always skeptical of bike initiatives, and even though this bike share program will be paid for via private contributions and user fees, it’s going to arouse those who want to keep fighting the battle for city space between cars and everyone else. Once the fervor dies down, though, and the city begins to whittle down the list of bike share locations, they can look to former bus routes for guidance. The bikes can’t fill the holes left by the service cuts, but it’s a start.
Aug
28
Some bus service – with no fares – to start at 4:30 p.m.
Posted by: | Comments4:00 p.m., Sunday – Limited bus service will resume in Manhattan and the Bronx beginning at 4:30 p.m. this afternoon, the MTA has announced. Queens and Brooklyn will see some service come back on line later while, as the authority said, “conditions in Staten Island continue to prevent restoration of service at this time.” The MTA will not be charging anyone for bus service today.
“Conditions vary greatly across our system, but we’re working hard to assess storm damage and will begin to restore service wherever we can do it safely, starting with limited bus service this afternoon,” MTA Chairman and CEO Jay Walder said in a statement. “The actions we took to protect the system have helped limit damage, but there were still storm impacts across our system and we will keep customers informed as we work to restore service across our 5,000 mile territory. I can’t say enough about the hard work of our employees first in evacuating New Yorkers and now in bringing service back.”
The MTA has not yet said which routes will be serviced. They are urging customers to check MTA.info for the latest. I’ll update as information becomes available.
