JubaionBx12+SBS

While there is a concern over the fact that local service has gotten worse on routes with SBS, my question is what would (really could) you do to have worked against that? On the Bx12 and M15 I can't see what you do to push the intense demand for SBS service over to locals outside of worsening SBS service and in the case of the B44 and 46 the locals were given an advantage with the 44 local having New York Av to itself heading north and the 46 local covering the Broadway section of the route. In spite of that local service on the Brooklyn routes got significantly worse. I can't speak to what's happening with the Q20 but the Q44 has comparable headways to the Q20 and a higher tendency to bunch so I'm pretty sure on Main St itself you don't have much of a disparity between Q20 and Q44 usage. My gripe with the Q44 is that it's headways are too high (8 min PM Rush is not acceptable for a route carrying the numbers the Q44 gets) and it would benefit the corridor and Bronx-Queens travelers if the Q44 was more frequent so I would advocate adding Q44 service and subtracting from the Q20 if necessary. See here, there really isn't a disparity between SBS and local service and I would seek to "improve" things by creating one. These heavy hitting corridors are just a different animal as far as bus travel is concerned so I wouldn't sleep too hard on how the locals have been operated (except for the B46, that move was just plain dumb).

and Bx19 buses are most crowded along 149th Street. What a great triple whammy.

At what point will BusTime recognize that Pelham Pkwy/Stillwell Av is now a Bx12 SBS stop and has been for months now?

The M101 is due for a restructuring but I see some problems. As far as the split in Harlem is concerned, a transfer between the M100 and M102 would accomplish exactly what splitting the M101 does. What happens along Amsterdam north of 163 becomes the issue but then you could easily run the Northern half of the M101 on coverage headways while adding service to the M100. Vice versa could happen on Lex where the M102 could become the LTD along Lexington and the M101 is reduced to a role worse than the M103. Merely shortening the route wouldn't do enough good since you would kind of need to have it's southern terminal in Midtown and that's where the real traffic headache is. If you didn't have the standalone portion of Amsterdam I would just get rid of the route entirely and boost M100 and 102 service in it's place. The concern here is you are placing a transfer along a trip that currently is a one-seater and the MTA will not boost M100 and 102 service enough to fill for the horse the M101 has been carrying 25-30k per weekday. There's no win-win with the M101 to be honest.

Just looking at the schedules for the M101 vs M100 would suggest there should not much of a disparity in service between them. What I think happens is that since the M101 is longer (and thus has more buses out on road for it) when the swarm of bunched M101's are running together along 125th and Amsterdam it looks like the headways are better than the M100. Personally i've seen Soutbound M101's frequently paired together in the late evening along Amsterdam. The pair will usually include a 96th St short turn along with a East Village bound bus.

Let me clear my throat... - I feel the Bx6 is being set up the way it is solely because of the antiquity of the payment system. This a route that has seen little to no push for LTD service to be implemented but now that we're adding bus lanes and payment machines into the equation we need a LTD variant Bx6? The MTA looked at the Bx6 and saw that the ridership numbers could call for off-board payment and knew that putting machines at every stop would be unfeasible. So they went and picked the busiest stops to give machines to and now that you have that it only makes sense to have a variant of the route only make those stops. In a world with a 21st century payment method the Bx6 would not be running Limited stop service. - The B82 Coney Island situation was taken straight out of the B46 'let the local cover the full route' playbook. That playbook is not working out well on the B46 so either there's gross incompetence at play or likely subterfuge. The elephant in the room here that I'm concerned with the B82 deals with frequencies and service span. The service span for the current B82 Limited ends early in the PM Rush for Westbound trips along most of the route with local service running every 8-10 minutes following the last LTD trip. Running both a LTD and a local variant without drastically increasing the number of buses dedicated to the route would be a huge loss vs existing service. The B82 is one of those routes where it's a low headway route for only the daytime hours on weekdays and the SBS/Local setup should be reserved for routes that are low headway routes pretty much all day every day. How do you provide service an appropriate level to both an SBS and local variant of the B82 without overserving the route? - As far as LIC is concerned the problem with bus travel there is that most of the commercial demand to LIC is satisfied by the subway. Something that I think could work would be a route that combines the Q101 and Q103. The northern terminal would be shared with the Q101 (or could be LGA or Rikers) and the southern terminal would be shared with the Q103. My thought process is that linking the condos along the waterfront and the industrial area surrounding 21st to the vibrancy of Steinway Street could be a winner in terms of getting spurring transit usage beyond the subway in LIC. The route would take (from south to north) Vernon - 44 Rd - 21st - 36 Av - Steinway - Ditmars - 49 St (Northbound), Hazen (Southbound)

I want to see how these frequencies are going to be split between the Bx6 local and Select. Also will the short turns in Hunts Point stay or will all SBS runs go the full distance?

With artics the B15 would have 10 minute PM Rush headways which would be quite high for a route that would be running artics. I would find another route for them.

BusTime does not recognize it after months of being active. SMH. I'm not concerned about riders lacking knowledge about short-turns. I'm concerned about dispatchers lacking knowledge about the effects of short turns, especially on the Bx12.

Subway shuttles should absolutely be included in BusTime. One route that's really been screwed up and i'll screenshot it for tomorrow is the B46 local. Half hour wide gaps during the afternoon rush hour have not been uncommon.

Based on pure ridership levels alone it's one of the busiest routes in the city so i'm sure it feels that way even when we exclude farebeaters. By the way how bad is fare evasion on the Bx15?

If you're going to get rid of any Nereid Av trips it would be best to switch them to Dyre Av trips. Ridership on Dyre Av trips is severely underestimated and during AM Rush trains are already SRO in most cars approaching Gun Hill Road. One thing I'm adamant about when it comes to the is to get more trips running to/from Dyre Av.

If most routes in the system are performing like your C and D scenario how the schedule is written is the least of your problems. In your B scenario there's no wait above 14 minutes and the only people experiencing that are those who just miss the :11. In other words nearly every rider will have a wait equal to or less than the headway despite the fact that the buses did not show up like clockwork. Telling riders of route B that every bus arrives on the threes (assuming the first showed up exactly on time) allows riders to perceive it's OTP as worse than it is in realty and suckers riders who timed the :13 into a 12 minute wait (assuming the :13 showed up 2 minutes early as the :11 thus screwing riders around). If you just say 'every 10 minutes' riders will randomly arrive at stops expecting short waits so some of those who would have timed the :13 and missed it on route B may have shown up earlier at the bus stop and caught it thus saving the wait. Less riders get screwed when spacing between buses is communicated and individual bus timings are left ambiguous. I think that's why SBS schedules are headway based.

In a bus system where buses are either struggling to keep with the schedule or are outright disregarding the schedule the headways are more useful to know because then I can estimate the chances that a bus will arrive within a few minutes of me appearing at the stop.

I would rather the headways get posted in lieu of a schedule at bus stops for mid and high frequency routes. We already see this on the SBS routes.

Two major things that stand out here are.... 1) Bronx to Queens bus travel revolves around the Q44. Selling Bronxites on a ride that is not a Q44 and on top of that runs along Kissena Blvd (a street most Bronxites couldn't even tell you exists) is likely not to work. 2) Bus to bus transfers become a little more difficult. Now you'll be asking riders to walk across Main St at the junction with Kissena to transfer between Q44 and Q25 buses. What about a Q13/16/28 passenger seeking Q44 service?

There was likely a wide gap between that bus and the one ahead of it.

Speaking of RTS's I saw a broken down one at Eastchester Rd/Mace Av around 5pm today. Two northbound Bx31 buses passed shortly after I saw this and both were sardine cans. I wonder if said RTS broke down in service on the Bx31 and screwed things up.

I've settled on a Northern terminal at the Fleetwood MNRR stop with the route traveling along W 1st, Gramatan and Broad St W going up from WPR/241. Next consideration of mine is an express bus type set-up to reach Yonkers on a one seat ride from the NE Bronx but I have even begun to think about a physical routing for it.

So you're expecting a considerable increase in B17 usage? If anything I would expect the B103 to benefit most from this.

BusTime is showing 7 Bx41 SBS buses Northbound and only 1 Southbound. SMH. I've about had it with the local buses (all of them).

I've only taken the BxM7 and 10 as far as express buses go.

The Bx28/38 do get occasional artic trips during Morning Rush Hour and GH will not hesitate to put an SBS wrapped bus on one of those trips if necessary. Dealing with another busy route, should B46 service be revised to where every other SBS trip on weekdays starts/ends at Williamsburg Bridge Plaza (as with the B44) with local trips going no further than Malcom X/DeKalb? I don't see how local B46 service needed to be screwed with the way it has (and yes 20-30 minute gaps in local service during rush hour are quite common based on my BusTime checks) in order for SBS to work when SBS B44 buses run the full route distance on a longer route to boot.

I was waiting for an Eastbound Bx12 bus at Fordham Plaza this evening and noticed that on Webster Av two northbound Bx41 local buses pull in back to back. I'm thinking to myself that 12 minute headways (or maybe 10, given it's rush hour) is rather high for buses to be showing up back to back. About 30 seconds later I see two northbound Select Bx41 buses show up back to back. Now i'm thinking what the hell is this. Funniest part is that ALL of the buses in this caravan were carrying below a fully seated load. Isn't the Bx41 a high ridership route? Why were so many buses pulling into one of the busiest stops on the route empty?

I've seen this happen on the Q50.