The Mystery of the Missing Bus Riders
nytimes.com
The Mystery of the Missing Bus Riders
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Re: The Mystery of the Missing Bus Riders
#2In our area it has been a cycle for the last 10 years. Lower funding means route contraction. Route contraction means lower ridership leading to lower funding. Lower funding leads to route contraction. Wash. Rinse Repeat.
It is a metro area where most of the jobs are spread out among distinct suburb areas. The remaining routes do not travel among the suburbs with regularity; the focus is on suburbs to downtown and within the city proper.
Re: The Mystery of the Missing Bus Riders
#3If they took the 2% least savory bus riders and kicked them off, even calling them an Uber Black, I think they’d triple their ridership.
Re: The Mystery of the Missing Bus Riders
#4A very thorough analysis. I'd assume that the newer generation, the ecologically-conscious one, will be taking public transportation more, for sure. And even though many of these people also fall into the category of those 'working from home', they're also the more outgoing ones. So there's not really a reason to say buses will keep suffering, it's likely to be a cyclical thing.
Re: The Mystery of the Missing Bus Riders
#5In our area it has been a cycle for the last 10 years. Lower funding means route contraction. Route contraction means lower ridership leading to lower funding. Lower funding leads to route contraction. Wash. Rinse Repeat. It is a metro area where most of the jobs are spread out among distinct suburb areas. The remaining routes do not travel among the suburbs with regularity; the focus is on suburbs to downtown and wi…
We did the opposite in Seattle and have seen impressive results. In 2014, we voted--in the city, after a countywide measure failed--to tax ourselves to buy a whole lot more service hours from the county transit agency. Originally this was because slumping sales tax income was going to force the county to cut service but, instead, sales tax income came roaring back and the city was able to buy so much extra service from the county that we hit the limit for number of buses, places to put them, and drivers to drive them.
Routes that had been 15-minute some of the day and dropping to 30-minute or an hour on weekends (or did not run at all) were upgraded. Major trunk routes, not just ones to downtown but crosstown routes and routes through underserved areas, got upgraded to sub-10-minute frequency during peak commute and many now run all day at no less often than every 15 minutes. Add in two new light rail stations opening in the densest part of the city and ridership has been up.
But, of course, no good thing goes untouched. Last year, statewide voters approved an initiative that guts Seattle's ability to tax ourselves for transit ("$30" car tabs, which are nothing of the sort since even that initiative doesn't reduce vehicle registration costs to $30). If the initiative is upheld--still in doubt because the sponsor of the initiative is not known for writing initiatives that are legally sound, because if they stayed in effect he wouldn't get paid to keep running them--it's going to not only blow a hole in our light rail construction but also cut local bus service by 20-30%.
In any rate, we've proven that if you invest in good service that runs a lot of the time, people will use it.
Re: The Mystery of the Missing Bus Riders
#6Just too inconvenient. I was tired of driving my teenager 15 minutes to her job, so I looked up the bus route. From our house it is basically straight down a single major road to her job. But to get there on the bus meant transferring two times and would take her an hour and a half. Insane.
Re: The Mystery of the Missing Bus Riders
#7In New York, specifically, it's not much of a mystery - the incredibly close stop spacing and inefficient boarding procedures make it so the bus is barely faster than walking.
Most buses stop almost every block, they board through a single door, and they use the two slowest payment methods available in almost any system (cash and magnetic strip cards).
However, I don't expect this to change anytime soon, because many existing riders are very invested in keeping buses the way they are. To be clear, their concerns are valid - for a variety of reasons, it may be difficult for many people to walk an additional block to their local bus stop, vs. having a stop in front of their building. Many of the current riders are also long-time residents who are more likely to go to community board meetings, contact their city council members, and protest changes in other ways. If you're a policymaker, it's hard to weight the costs that would be imposed on this vocal set of people vs. the benefits that would accrue to a much less vocal group of people who would benefit from a faster and more consistent bus.
Re: The Mystery of the Missing Bus Riders
#8Busses are very very slow. Unless you're in a very dense urban area, the extra time to take the bus is unpalatable. The segment of the population that doesn't have a car but can afford Uber Pool will take it because it's about 3x faster and more reliable.
Re: The Mystery of the Missing Bus Riders
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Re: The Mystery of the Missing Bus Riders
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