Wanted: Better Buses
Cavan Wilk posts a DC area transit wish-list for both the near- and the short-term. But he leaves off what I think is one of the very most promising things a city like ours can do — improve bus service. Unlike rail projects, bus improvements can be feasibly undertaken in piecemeal ways rather than in quantum leaps. You can buy a few more vehicles and increase service frequency. You can add bus lanes just on parts of routes. You can build a handful of bulb-outs to speed boarding. Nothing needs to be done in gigantic, multibillion dollar leaps. And relative to rail, buses are disproportionately likely to be used by full-time residents (as opposed to tourists) and by poor people both of which are appropriate targets for our disproportionate concern.
One particular low cost thing that would improve DC’s bus service would be to redesign the little schedule cards that are posted at most bus stops. The way this information is currently displayed in DC does not reflect state-of-the-art thinking and should be changed. They should probably also consider eliminating stops on many lines so as to allow buses to run the route more quickly and therefore also arrive more often. Rather than walking two blocks and waiting five minutes for the bus which then moves slowly to your destination I think most people would rather walk five blocks, wait one minute for the bus, and then get where you’re going quickly. Beyond that — bus lanes, bulb-outs, more buses, better shelters — it’s all pretty obvious what would make for better bus service. It’s mostly an issue of financial and political commitment, but it can do a lot to improve quality of life in the area.
59 Responses to “Wanted: Better Buses”
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December 30th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I agree, although the elderly will fight that tooth and nail.
December 30th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Bus Rapid Transit
December 30th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Agreed. Also, more of the Cylon buses with the ominous lights flashing back and forth above the windshield.
December 30th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
It’s an interesting balance that needs to be maintained between few enough stops that buses can keep a relatively quick pace and at the same time enough stops so that access to buses is easy.
December 30th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
The most infuriating aspect of riding heavy-traffic bus lines in DC is that three, four, or even five buses invariably get bottlenecked together. If you miss one of these unfortunate caravans, you end up waiting the equivalent of, say, four buses (which even at rush hour means 15-20 minutes minimum). On the crosstown 30 lines, Metro has GPS-equipped workers ride the buses and try to keep them spaced out, although I’m not sure that has been successful.
The other (ironic) problem is that many times the RideGuide on wmata.com gives incorrect arrival times for a lot buses. If you open the ridiculously hard-to-use PDF files of the physical schedules, you can see that such a time doesn’t exist, but if you just by the RideGuide you’ll just end up in between buses. This happens a lot on Sundays, which is apparently the day of rest for buses as well. This is ironic because WMATA listed liability for inaccurate schedule info as a reason to not release data to Google Transit.
December 30th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
One particular low cost thing that would improve DC’s bus service would be to redesign the little schedule cards that are posted at most bus stops. The way this information is currently displayed in DC does not reflect state-of-the-art thinking and should be changed.
What’s wrong with the schedule signs? They’re missing at a lot of stops, but when they’re there they seem OK to me. (I live in and spend most of my time in Arlington, if it matters.)
Also, saying that bus stop signs do “not reflect state-of-the-art thinking” – pretentious much?
December 30th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
BRT is a highly unlikely prospect in D.C., not least because of the piecemeal way in which Jefferson and L’Enfant’s visions were preserved. Because subsequent officials chose to preserve this or modernize that without any real guide other than whim, the design and behavioral changes needed to successfully implement BRT are probably impossible. A simple example is a letter Jefferson once wrote (I forgot to whom) about the transportation network of D.C.; he wanted–and got–height restrictions for buildings to promote wide and airy boulevards. This same damned restriction is still in place.
No, D.C. is probably a much better candidate for fixed guideway transit options or, as Matt said, incremental improvements to bus service (someone call Third Way!).
December 30th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
How about this? A little LED sign with the estimated time of arrival for the next bus(es). Totally do-able with GPS. I saw this on the Portland MAX and wondered why it’s not in every city. (Cost is the likely suspect, but if you’re trying to spend money to improve service, this one would be great.)
December 30th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Maybe DC needs to start from scratch to maximize what it already has. Or at least take a fresh look at its bus system. Lots of transit systems have design elements in them that made sense when they were rolled out 30 or so years ago that remain for no better reason than systemic inertia. Priorities have changed as much as the cityscape has.
Here in Pittsburgh the Port Authority has been doing just that over the past couple of years. They hired consultants to examine every route, did peer studies, initiated cooperation measures with surrounding systems, etc… Next year they are overhauling the system and starting from scratch. Instituting a smart card system, recalibrating bus stop positions, shuffling around service to eliminate routes that make little sense while adding service where it does, and all sorts of other things.
Route analyses, peer review and so forth for transit system nerds here and interested locals.
December 30th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
In NYC, this is generally handled by having buses run on both “local” and “limited stop” routes. I can take either the M5 or the M7 home from work, but the M5 runs “limited” during normal (non-late-night) hours, meaning that it only stops every 8-10 blocks, while the M7 runs “local” and stops every 3 blocks. They do diverge in their routes further down the line, but for a lot of people, this is pretty handy. Of course, I usually just get on the first one to show up.
December 30th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
As a recent transplant to DC and newbie in all things public transit, one of the most infuriating things about trying to learn to use the buses was the constant need to check bus maps and schedules. As matt says, mostly locals use the buses because they are too confusing for tourists. Too often buses take winding paths through the city that take a while to memorize.
My idea to fix this is to utilize the (somewhat) grid system of district streets and just send buses straight east-west or north-south across the city on a loop. Say, all even numbered streets have buses heading south and then those buses go back north on odd numbered streets. Same thing going east-west. Then, I’d also put buses on a loop on the diagonal state-named boulevards. Instead of schedules, just say “every 4 minutes 7-9am and 4-7pm, every 10 minutes all day.” If you want a super-expensive system, matt’s “state-of-the-art thinking” digital signs could be even more specific to times, conditions, etc. This would be easy for new people and easier for locals if they are in an unfamiliar parts of town. I know this would need to be modified for some areas where the grid breaks down and to contend with one-way streets, but isn’t that easier than wasting 30 minutes on the WMATA route finder?
December 30th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Lots of transit systems have design elements in them that made sense when they were rolled out 30 or so years ago that remain for no better reason than systemic inertia.
Longer ago than that. A lot of the DC bus lines (or so I understand) follow long-vanished streetcar tracks. But the point is well-taken.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
There are a few problems with having fewer stops. Here in NY, the crosstowns, which have fewer stops, can take 10 minutes or more to load at each stop, because (a) tons of people (b) faster people having to wait behind slower folks and (c) general confusion. Also, all the stops always have boarders.
Conversely, I also often take the M3, which has frequent stops, usually lasting 10 seconds to 1 minute, and often skips stops altogether if no one is boarding.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Rather than walking two blocks and waiting five minutes for the bus which then moves slowly to your destination I think most people would rather walk five blocks, wait one minute for the bus, and then get where you’re going quickly.
Having parallel, staggered routes helps: if you know that you’ve missed bus A, but can walk a couple of blocks and catch bus B which goes close to your destination. Frequent stops aren’t necessarily a deal-breaker, either, if the routes are planned smartly and provide overlaps in areas of high use. A bunch of stops where only a few people are getting on board evens out with a few stops where a bunch of people get on board.
And there’s a reason why buses tend to become the “local” mode of transport while metro or surface rail is a bigger draw for tourists and visitors: there’s never the sense on a train that you’ll miss your stop in a way that dumps you out in an unfamiliar area. London has has gone some way to address that with its new mapping and flat fare scale, and while it’s still more daunting than the homogenised enclosed spaces of the Tube, bus use has gone up year-on-year since the first fare reforms.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
The new bus service in the greater Toronto area (where I live) includes a lot of these improvements and it has made commuting by bus immeasurably less annoying.
The LED signs that tell you in real-time how long till the bus arrives are probably the single greatest innovation on buses since electric doors.
The far away bus stops were also created so that there is only a stop at every major intersection but not at all of the cross streets, making the ride much quicker, and the wait at each stop is less because the routes are faster.
No rail here yet, but a transportation wonk can dream cant he?
December 30th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
Chris Anderson’s revolutionary idea of real-time arrival information panels has been widely realized in Europe for a while: eg trams in Strasbourg, buses in Brighton. It makes a lot of difference in reducing the main anxiety of bus travel (how long do I have to wait?) Link here to photos of Singapore examples.
December 30th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
December 30th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Longer ago than that. A lot of the DC bus lines (or so I understand) follow long-vanished streetcar tracks. But the point is well-taken.
Uh, try again.
Generally speaking, it’s the routes that just have numbers (rather than letters+numbers or numbers+letters) that are the remnants of the streetcar lines. Some of them are more recognizable than others.
December 30th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Los Angeles has, over the past several years, developed a pretty extensive system of limited-stop lines called Metro Rapid, and those are a nice way of getting around town. The Metro Rapid routes run at least every 20 minutes (some run as often as every 6 minutes) and stop about every 1/2 to 1 mile or so. All of the routes are doubled by regular bus routes that stop every couple of blocks and generally run later at night.
Another very helpful innovation are the low-floor buses that make boarding a lot faster, especially when someone in a wheelchair gets on or off.
This is all in addition to the “Metroliner” Orange Line, which is BRT, and a couple of other lines that run on busways along freeways.
For many, many years the public transit in L.A. was awful, but they’ve made a lot of progress toward making it better over the past couple of decades, and with the passage of Measure R, they’ll continue making progress.
December 30th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
I think this is the 6th MY urban planning thread without an appearance by Mixmaster. I am starting to suspect that the Scaife Counter-Blogging Project was hit hard by the financial downturn and that the person behind the Mixmaster persona was laid off.
Cranky
December 30th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
No rail in Toronto? Huh?
This is [roughly] how Chicago’s bus transit is set up – buses at specified intervals, running along a single street for the majority of the route. It is night and day better than DC’s infrequent and byzantine “system.”
December 30th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Sweet god, why don’t more cities use GPS to track buses, then put the information online!!!
If you did this, you wouldn’t even need fancy displays at the stops, just allow people to send a text message with a stop-specific code to find out when the next bus is coming. Also make a website with the info, and overlay bus locations on map.
I guarentee that if you put each bus’ GPS coordinates online, various tech minded individuals would create, within the month, the necessary web services simply for the sake of ad revenues. The per bus GPS cost would be tiny, and you could easily start with just a few routes.
Increased service is great, and way cheaper than train-based transit, but for the cost of a SINGLE new bus, you could GPS enable literally hundreds of existing buses, or just give the drivers GPS enabled cellphones
Waiting 15 minutes for a bus stinks, but if you know when to leave your house, your work, or the restaurant/bar you’re at, then you can easily avoid long waits. It’s crazy that no US city other than Portland seems to be taking advantage of this technology.
December 30th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
Actually, that’s another thing Chicago has on many routes, and is implementing across the system. That’s in addition to being tied in to Google Maps the way DC wouldn’t.
December 30th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
If you did this, you wouldn’t even need fancy displays at the stops, just allow people to send a text message with a stop-specific code to find out when the next bus is coming.
A lot of transit-dependent people are not so tech-savvy. You’d reach a lot more people with a simple LED display at each bus stop — one tied to the actual location of the bus, not its scheduled arrival time.
December 30th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
Old people are another large population that take the bus, and they would not rather walk five blocks for less wait.
December 30th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Old people are another large population that take the bus, and they would not rather walk five blocks for less wait.
…which is probably one of the main reasons why L.A. keeps the route with frequent stops when they add a Metro Rapid line.
December 30th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Unfortunately, for many years now the trend has been not to improve bus service in Washington but to maim it in ever more horrible ways. The biggest blow came in, I think, 1996, when huge cuts in service were made, with many entire lines being eliminated, others being truncated, and frequency cut across the board. It’s been downhill from there. Repeatedly, declining ridership has led to less service and higher fares, which depress ridership still further. If you can’t get a bus that goes where you want to go, or if the bus runs only every half hour and shows up two minutes early, leading to a one-hour wait, then you’re unlikely to use the buses. I live near Connecticut Avenue just south of the Taft Bridge. Until 1996, I could get a bus to the Kennedy Center. That bus route now ends at Dupont Circle. No way for me to use public transport to get to the Kennedy Center now exists.
What’s wrong with the schedule signs?
A lot. For one thing, they bear no actual relationship to the bus stop you’re standing at. To take the example of where I live, again: My part of Connecticut Avenue is served by the L1 and L4 routes. The L1 runs only during rush hour, only in the rush direction. The L4 runs at other times. The schedule posted at the bus stop near me overwhelmingly documents the schedule of the L2 bus, which does not serve that stop (it runs up 18th Street). This is difficult enough for me as a local to figure out; imagine how tourists deal with it. The sign shows Saturday and Sunday service, which is only on the L2; there actually exists no bus service on the weekends on that part of Connecticut Avenue. The schedule sign at a bus stop ought to tell you when you can expect a bus at that stop, and not when you might expect a bus at some other stop.
A simple example is a letter Jefferson once wrote (I forgot to whom) about the transportation network of D.C.; he wanted–and got–height restrictions for buildings to promote wide and airy boulevards. This same damned restriction is still in place.
The height restriction dates to 1910, rather a long time for Mr. Jefferson to wait. Tall buildings did not exist during Jefferson’s lifetime, so there would really have been no point in outlawing them.
December 30th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Tall buildings did not exist during Jefferson’s lifetime, so there would really have been no point in outlawing them.
See how forward-thinking the author of the Declaration of Independence was?
December 30th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
The schedule sign at a bus stop ought to tell you when you can expect a bus at that stop, and not when you might expect a bus at some other stop.
That’s the minimum requirement for effective signage. So many posted timetables waste paper on what time the bus is scheduled to leave the depot or reach every preceding stop. You care about when it’s scheduled to arrive at that stop and how long it should take to reach stops further down the route — combine that with a local map for orientation that lists nearby stops on other routes and you have the makings of an usable system.
December 30th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
I used to know a fellow who lived just across the DC city line in Silver Spring and worked in a building at 7th and D Streets SW. He took an express bus to work that went down Georgia Ave. and made no stops to pick up passengers until arriving at Constitution Ave. Since virtually everybody taking that bus worked in the federal area, the service was actually faster then driving because the bus drivers habitually ran red lights and the only parking available was several blocks away while the bus made a stop right next to his building.
December 30th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
So many posted timetables waste paper on what time the bus is scheduled to leave the depot or reach every preceding stop.
The timetables posted at the bus stops are simply the timetables that cover whole routes, or whole clusters of routes. These may make some sort of sense (although I doubt it) as handouts for people to take home, but make no sense whatever as signage at bus stops. And of course most stops are not among the stops actually listed on the posted timetables: The timetable at the stop near my home lists Connecticut and Calvert, and then Dupont Circle–without revealing that the L2 bus that stops at Connecticut and Calvert at such and such a time, and then at Dupont Circle at such another time, doesn’t actually stop at this bus stop at any time at all. It’s hard to imagine anyone thinking this is a good idea. (And for those following along from afar, please don’t imagine that my local bus stop is a weird exception to the general rule: this is common all over Washington.)
December 30th, 2008 at 9:46 pm
No way for me to use public transport to get to the Kennedy Center now exists.
Just to clarify: I mean that no public transport from my home to the Kennedy Center, a distance of about two miles, is as fast as walking the whole way. I could, of course, take the L4 (but not on weekends!) to Dupont Circle, Metrorail from there to Metro Center, change to the Blue/Orange line, go to the Foggy Bottom station, and either walk the 3/4 mile from there, or take the Kennedy Center-provided shuttle bus, but all of that would take at least an hour, and I can walk there in a little more than a half hour.
December 31st, 2008 at 9:51 am
The schedules for DC Metrobuses are random.
I had to ride a pair of DC Metro buses to work a couple years ago when my car was in the shop. They were suburban buses, which ran infrequently, so I wanted to get the times just right. I had a pamphlet and checked the website, and the schedules for both were different. So I called, and got a third set of times. When I went to the stop, they had a schedule posted there. It was different from the other three. With four different schedules, you’d think that the bus would have to come pretty close to one of them, but no. The first bus I caught on my way home only had 3 stops after leaving the satation, but it was still wildly unpredictable.
When I lived in Philadelphia, SEPTA had only one schedule, and stuck to it, roughly. Bad weather or unusual traffic could affect it, but it wasn’t completely random like DC.
December 31st, 2008 at 10:42 am
My own personal transit dream is for a limited-stop 42 (Mt Pleasant-Farragut North) route during rush hour that goes under Dupont Circle rather than around it. Mysteriously (a protest in the circle, perhaps?) my 42 ride last night did just that (at least the going under the circle part) and it shaved about 20 minutes off my commute. Heaven.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:09 am
Not a miracle — Metro just introduced the 43 bus, a new rush-hour bus that goes under Dupont Circle in the Connecticut Ave. tunnel. Runs only in the mornings and evenings, but is sure to improve that sometimes painful trip through Dupont to Metro Center.
A point that occurred to me while traveling home late last night (32 bus from Georgetown, walk from H & 16 to catch an S2/S4 at I & 16). At the S bus stop at I & 16, there is a schedule posted showing arrival times for *that stop only*. This was perfect. No guessing approximately when the bus was going to arrive between two larger stops. I just looked at the schedule and new it would come at 12:13 or so. This would be ideal for tourists, who have no idea the distance from, say, Metro Center to I & 16 — they just want to know when the bus will come.
December 31st, 2008 at 11:37 am
Herchel: yeah, the ’stick the page from the timetable book on the bus stop’ approach is what happens where I am, and it’s what I’ve seen in lots of American cities. It’s cheap and dumb and lazy.
Most bus stops in my home town list the route and time each bus is due at that stop, with indicators for any particular instances that vary from the standard route. That’s minimalist, but it does the job. High tech stuff with GPS is nice, but sticking someone with a stopwatch on a bus for a few days to work out rough times for each stop isn’t that difficult.
December 31st, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I feel the same way about the Valley Transportation Authority in Santa Clara County (i.e. San Jose and Silicon Valley). Its such a huge, suburban area to cover, and many of the longer bus routes have way too many stops for such long routes. There is a decided lack of express/limited stop routes, and it really would be better for the longer routes to utilize highways and freeways rather than sicking to surface streets.
BART and MUNI light rail in SF actually have tv screens with a graphical display of a map to show the latest train schedule.
December 31st, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I could, of course, take the L4 (but not on weekends!) to Dupont Circle, Metrorail from there to Metro Center, change to the Blue/Orange line, go to the Foggy Bottom station, and either walk the 3/4 mile from there, or take the Kennedy Center-provided shuttle bus
Somewhat better would be to Metro (or walk) from Dupont to Farragut North and catch the 80 bus that runs down I Street and ends at the KenCen. But your overall point stands.
December 31st, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Bless you, m6, for straightening me out on that point. I swear the bus I got on said ‘42 – Mt Pleasant’, but I recall the other day riding behind a ‘43′ bus, and I reached for my coffee, because I assumed I was seeing things.
December 31st, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Fare collection is a big time waster. The unspoken attitude is “Better that this whole busload of slobs has their trip take 25% longer than let one of them sneak on for free.” Buses on busy routes should have big doors so people can hop off and on quickly. A simple honor system of paper tickets and commuter passes with enough spot-check enforcement to keep most people honest would cost less than high tech farecards and fare collection equipment.
December 31st, 2008 at 2:46 pm
What really stands out from the post and the comments is how bad buses are. Oh, sure, you can make some small changes without applying for federal grants, but that probably won’t help much if the transit agency is cutting service and changing routes.
If, OTOH, you bite the bullet, and build your rail transit line, the solution becomes incredibly simple- move as close to the transit line as you can, figure out how long it takes to walk to the station, and enjoy. No cell phone displaying a pdf file required.
This really shouldn’t come as a big surprise. The bus was never the destination, it was just an interim step between cities built around rail transit and the land of the future where everybody owned cars. If the American worker is one of the most productive in the world, it hardly makes sense to employ huge numbers of them driving buses serving two traffic peaks a day, not to mention problems like congestion arising from adding more buses to meet rising demands.
And really, there will be a certain tension between elderly and disabled riders and the yuppie, lounging in a fern bar until the time arrives for a hundred-yard dash in 9.8 seconds to catch the 23A.
Well, buses may survive the rock-my-world clash of Peak Oil, AGW, and international oil futures traders, if the system of funding costs is completely rebuilt. Of course, if you did that, you could just as easily build rail transit. A tough choice, to be sure.
December 31st, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Here in Seattle we are almost finished with the first stretch of our light rail.
But given Seattle’s geography of hills and water, as well as the earthquake risk/expense Buses make alot of sense here.
My 0.02 – Midday disinfecting of the entire interior of each Bus, people have a very reasonable fear of uncleanliness and germs on public transport, whether fixed rail or bus.
Also a better conception of security on public transport would up ridership, driving a bus is one of the most dangerous jobs in town.
December 31st, 2008 at 5:49 pm
Feckless forgot to tell you, that in Seattle, mobs are gathering with pots of hot tar and bags of feathers for the leadership that made the buses not run, in the recent snowstorm.
I’m guessing that when the LINK light rail starts running in Seattle it will survive a snowstorm a lot better than the buses did.
January 2nd, 2009 at 1:19 am
Actually, adding bus lanes is completely impossible, politically. Sure, it *seems* easy, but it’s a total nightmare, involving negotiation with city mayors, councils, and street departments, all of whom resist — and if you’ve got unified city control and they back you, then the *businesses* resist, and the (car-using) residents resist, and the car drivers resist. Then if you actually make the bus lane, you find that it’s widely ignored by car drivers, and you have to send police out to ticket them, and then you get bad press for that.
Signal preemption is almost as impossible to implement.
London is the only city in the *entire world* which I know of which has implemented significant amounts of bus lanes on existing roads (rather than building new ‘busways’ for future conversion to general purpose roads), and successfully enforced them, and actually gotten the desired result of buses speeding past congestion.
Every other city has its buses stuck in traffic.
January 3rd, 2009 at 4:12 am
Simply sticking a GPS device on a bus doesn’t go very far toward telling you when the bus will actually arrive at a particular stop. At a very minimum you have to know how fast the bus is traveling, and on top of that you probably also have to know how much it will be delayed at other stops along the way, at traffic lights, etc. There are several competing systems on the market that serve this purpose, combining GPS units with extensive databases of past bus performance to predict when buses will reach their destinations. Metro has been trying for years to implement a real-time bus tracking/prediction system, without much success so far. It has been done with some success in other cities, though.
January 3rd, 2009 at 9:57 am
You didn’t mention the ability to push green lights. That’s not so simple, but it will be critical in the future. Some of the lights around here are totally out of whack.
Also, I have no idea what a bulb out is.
And, as far as the display thingies being state of the art, I could not care less. Make the print bigger, and make them ACCURATE. Ie improve the accuracy of the drivers.
But overall, thank you for doing this. You are one of the only people I’ve seen talk in detail about the buses.
January 3rd, 2009 at 11:26 am
Nathanael – You bring up an excellent point. Bus improvements could be made, but aren’t, that are much less drastic than signal preemption and dedicated lanes. Roads in this area are generally managed on the principle that one car equals one bus, meaning that 40 bus passengers sit at a light while drivers amble by one at a time. This recent letter from the Action Committee for Transit requests some specific improvements in Montgomery County – we will see what the response is.
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Well Robotic Ghost, mind if we wait to see the results of Pittsburgh first?! The thing is, DC’s bus system as it is now is not all that bad. There are enough things annoying or wrong about it to make us all at one time or another go to the brink of giving up on it. I would give it a C. We don’t want to make it worse than it already is, that’s for sure. And we are always on the lookout for cuts, which by the way are happening now, and must be acknowledged by readers and bloggers.
As far as whether or not to eliminate stops, I agree with the writer from NY who pointed out the use of local and express. This is the best idea so far. Also, people should really study traffic lights, and how they really and truly hold up buses.
I also like LA’s idea with the rapid buses. Excellent! Glad to hear there is progress out there.
It’s so frustrating to read so many people citing Portland (and to a lesser extent Seattle). As if that city is comparable not just to DC but to any other city. Come on people! Get off it! Get real!
I agree with Adam. Contrary to the views of most bloggers and blogging participants, I believe that most bus riders do NOT carry around blackberries and stuff like that with them. It may be that now it’s trending more toward 50/50, but still. And, think of people who don’t take transit that frequently. Make it easy for them too. (So they’ll take it.)
Herschel, I hope you are / were in regular contact with Graham.
Andrew – intriguing.
January 3rd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Yet another way the bus system confuses beginners: route letters/numbers that have zero correlation to the origin, destination or waypoints the bus will take. I mean, Metro has a bus that only goes to one place, BWI airport, so do they call it the BWI bus? No, it’s the B30 bus. Same thing for the bus to Dulles, which is not marked IAD but 5A. The packed one you take to H Street? It’s not any of the H-series buses, but the X2. Then you’ve got 30-series buses that go up and down Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, except for the 38B that takes the Key Bridge (far too infrequently) into Arlington.
I know it’s not easy coming up with memorable two- or three-character abbreviations for routes, and that people would squawk about having to relearn them after any revision, but there’s gotta be a way to make these names a little more human-readable.
January 3rd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
There are lines like the 52/54 that serve many disabled people, mothers with small children, etc. Fewer stops won’t help them. OTOH, tit’s probably not rocket science for Metro staff to ride these buses and see why they bunch up in the middle of the afternoon on Saturday when traffic is light and they are supposed to run every 10 min rather than every 30.
January 3rd, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Agreed. And supervisors do ride the bus to make sure the drivers are on time. The problem is, it’s not enough. And then of course when the supervisors are on the bus, everything’s fine.
Sometimes, it’s the drivers purposefully bunching.
Other times, it’s crazily timed traffic lights that’s holding up traffic too long.
The 43 is much needed. Let’s hope service on the 42 is not compromised as a result.
January 5th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Yet another way the bus system confuses beginners: route letters/numbers that have zero correlation to the origin, destination or waypoints the bus will take. I mean, Metro has a bus that only goes to one place, BWI airport, so do they call it the BWI bus? No, it’s the B30 bus. Same thing for the bus to Dulles, which is not marked IAD but 5A. The packed one you take to H Street? It’s not any of the H-series buses, but the X2. Then you’ve got 30-series buses that go up and down Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, except for the 38B that takes the Key Bridge (far too infrequently) into Arlington.
Years ago, when David Gunn was GM, he proposed renaming and reorganizing routes so that they would have some relationship to the streets they ran on. For example, he wanted to rename the X2 to “H” and the 30 series to “PA”. This was shot down by advocates for the poor and immigrants who worried that they would be confused by the new system. Just what we need, advocates who think their constituents are stupid.
This same David Gunn sucessfully reorganized NYC’s bus service. For example, the M42 goes along Manhattans’ 42nd Street. New Yorkers seem to have adjusted well.
So, in this vein, let me make a few proposals, where “n” is a number or letter and “X” is a letter:
“PAn”, the Pennsylvania Ave. Line.
“GAn”, the Georgia Ave. Line, where “GAL” (GA-Limited) replaces the 79.
“BWI” for the B30 and “IAD” for the 5A, as already suggested.
“X16″: 16th St. Line.
“COn”: the Columbia Pike line (VA).
Alternatively, these could be prefaced, as in NYC, by a letter or two to indicate the jurisdiction.
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