JubaionBx12+SBS

What did that have to do with the bus flagging passengers?

And GH would have 40 footers popping up on the Bx9 out of nowhere while on the Bx5 it's all artics.

I have to say I agree.

I guess i'm mistaken here. The discussion seems to be about transferring from the subway to bus as opposed to bus to subway which I mentioned. I'm aware of the subway to bus transfer there and don't really find it problematic.

I remember using the Q46 and being let off on Queens Blvd eastbound only having to walk a few feet to the subway stop. Since when did buses do differently?

To further elaborate on B35's comment here's a list of routes in the Bronx separated by artic presence Routes running mainly artics: Bx1/2, Bx4/4a, Bx5, Bx9, Bx12/12 SBS, Bx15, Bx19, Bx22, Bx39, Bx40/42, Bx41/41SBS Routes with mainly 40 footers which are given artic runs regularly during rush hour: Bx28/38, Bx36 Routes using mainly 40 footers: Bx3, Bx6, Bx7, Bx8, Bx10, Bx11, Bx13, Bx16, Bx17, Bx18, Bx20, Bx21, Bx23, Bx24, Bx26, Bx27, Bx29, Bx30, Bx31, Bx32, Bx33, Bx34, Bx35. As we can see there are a lot more routes using 40 foot buses then artics in the Bronx but there are almost as many artics as 40 footers which supports B35's argument that artic routes are running at higher frequencies than the 40 foot routes. I would like to add that on average the aritc routes are longer than the 40 foot routes which adds to the service requirement as well. For kicks let's see how Manhattan fares in this discussion since there's a good deal of artics there. Routes using mainly artics: M14, M15/15 SBS, M23, M34/34A SBS, M60 SBS, M79, M86 SBS, M101, M102, M103 Routes using mainly 40 footers with a regular artic presence: M35, M100 Routes using mainly 40 footers: M1, M2, M3, M4, M5, M7, M8, M9, M10, M11, M12, M20, M21, M22, M31, M42, M50, M57, M66, M72, M96, M98, M104, M106, M116

The Bx12 is just a hot mess today. Wide gaps in service all over the place and just too many short-turns. Why on earth do Westbound SBS short-turns to Sedgwick insist on using the local program? Even a pro like me gets confused as to whether those buses are local or Select. I ended up on a Bay Plaza bound bus earlier that ended up short-turning at PBP leaving me to wait for a packed bus to go into Co-op. Sad thing is when this bus pulls into PBP there was a bus just ahead of it which was more crowded the whole way along Pelham Parkway and ended up going ahead to Co-op so the passengers which were dropped off of the short turn didn't get the chance to just quickly change buses which is what usually happens with PBP short turns. On a side note the NYPD was out playing the role of Eagle Team at Pelham Parkway/WPR checking Eastbound buses. Those who didn't pay (everyone on my bus paid assuming they didn't take a ticket from someone who got off earlier) may have gotten a booking in addition to their fine depending on what the NYPD records could find. Also, is there some official rule which gives the NYPD the authority to fill in for the eagle team if they are at an SBS stop or can the cops just do anything that even remotely relates to enforcement?

The Metrocard in and of itself isn't bad. The major issue is the collection infrastructure. Subway turnstiles are pretty unreliable in terms of reading first swipes and many times riders get rides eaten off their card when the card is misread. As far as buses are concerned, collection at the front of the bus only is time consuming and that time ends up resulting in additional labor costs you could save with a contactless system. I don't give a crap what our next fare card looks like as long as it can read from all doors of a bus (i'm not a big fan of off-board bus payment) and riders can tap and go at busy subway stops.

Would anyone happen to know if WF got any loans from FB? I saw a RTS on the Bx31 this afternoon with what looked like a FB sticker on it.

I'll sum up the Bx12 (+SBS mainly) schedule changes with the good, the bad and the ugly. The Good: 1.Morning Rush service has been added and the headways are more even then previously scheduled. A comparison in bus departures from Co-op in the 7-8 am hour looks like this... September 2015 schedule (which for weekday service carried over from Fall 2014): 7:00,03,06,10,14,18,22,26,30,35,40,45,50,55,59 April 2016: 7:01,04,07,10,13,17,21,25,29,33,38,42,46,49,53,56 While only a couple of buses are added in 2016 we notice a tightening of headways across the hour. Gaps between departures currently jump from 3 minutes, to 4 to 5 somewhat randomly where the revised schedule will have only one gap of 5 minutes and most of the gaps either 3 or 4 minutes apart. Given that I normally ride Westbound at this time this looks fine by me. Eastbound service during that hour looks like this... September 2015 (departures from B'Way-207): 7:03,07,11,15,19,23,27,31,35,38,41,44,47,50,53,56,59 April 2016: 7:01,06,10,14,18,22,26,30,34,37,40,43,45,47,50,55 While there is technically a loss of a bus (due to less extras starting from Edson in the 6 to 7 am hour) the schedule tries to mask it by placing 2 minute gaps in between a couple of buses later in the hour. The problem I have with such is that buses on a route where bunching is commonplace should not be scheduled so closely if it can avoided (which it can) and what do you put on the signposts as the headway this round. The current ones have '3 to 4 minutes' where gaps can range anywhere between 2 and 5 minutes with the revised schedule. This is in the good section since I wanted show the changes in both directions but I'm neutral on this. I might work out better in practice then it looks on paper. Service is added at other hours of the day as well. We now see 5 minute gaps appearing during the midday hours where a solid 6 minute headway has been the norm. Westbound service sees 11 buses instead of 10 during the 11am,12pm and 1 pm hours. Eastbound service sees an extra bus added in the 1-2 pm hour. The bad: Service was lost at other times of the day where the route is really busy and local service is either lousy or cut itself. During the 3pm to 4 pm hour Westbound SBS service runs at a 4 minute headway to deal with the masses of schoolkids that are using the route which is good because eastbound service returns to start the PM Rush at a 4 minute headway which was deemed necessary by the MTA to avoid overcrowding. We see in the new schedule that Westbound service during the schoolkid rush now runs once every 5 minutes and PM Rush service eastbound does so as well completely undoing the service that was added during Fall 2014 to deal with these crowds. In fact you now have following the 4:58 trip eastbound one starting at 5:04, 5:10 and then 5:16. During the peak of the PM Rush you can get service similar to what's offered during the midday hours which will not work to reduce crowding. The Ugly: Local service was cut as well during these same PM hours that SBS service was reduced. Crowding during these next couple of months won't be good at all.

I feel subway fanning has lost intrigue as well and that has partly to do with the system's permanence. If I can see the same trains and stations next year why should I fan today? That feeling may be crossing over to buses in some ways so I'm not shocked to see B35 post what he posted regarding fanning in NYC. The presence of new buses joining the fleet keeps things a little interesting there but new buses generally get scattered around the city so there's little reason to watch one particular route or neighborhood just to see some buses. If anything my fanning when it comes to buses is more in the watchdog light given that I'm observing ridership levels on busy routes so I can see where the MTA should and should not make cuts. The Bronx spots I recommended were all along the same route and that was not a coincidence.

Bronx- Fordham Plaza, Pelham Parkway/WPR, Bay Plaza (best on a Saturday afternoon/evening) Manhattan- 86th Street on the East Side. I particularly like stopping at the Papaya King on 3rd Ave for a bite to eat which puts me in that area on occasion. I am insensitive to this area given my four years as a Baruch student but around Madison Square Park there's a decent array of express and local buses to check out. Queens- Flushing is boring to me as a neighborhood but every now and then I take the to the Q50 as an alternative out of Manhattan so I end up there fanning sometimes. Brooklyn- Haven't fanned anywhere outside of downtown although there are a few spots that someone like me would appreciate for example around the Brooklyn College station, and Ridgewood Terminal to name a couple. Staten Island- No go zone for me. Given I live in the North Bronx there's not enough bus action down there for me to make trips to Staten Island.

The problem is that if the spacing is poor enough you could have buses with passenger loads of 20 passengers or lower in the sample of buses being observed. Even if most buses are carrying 54 passengers or above all it takes is a couple of 20 counts to drop the average load low enough to where the MTA may want to cut service. If you have a crushloaded bus with 70 passengers and right behind it a bus with only 20 passengers on, the average load between them is 45. That's below the guideline of 54 passengers so the MTA may want to cut service. On a high frequency route where most buses will be closer to the 70 than 20 what incentive would passengers have to wait for the bus with 20 passengers unless they were flagged or both buses were seen pulling in together? In statistics means are sensitive to outliers and low-end outliers like empty buses weigh just as heavily as the other buses being counted. On low headway routes the median bus load (the load that half of buses meet/exceed and half do not) is more of an accurate picture of what's going on then the pure average because it is possible to have half of buses meeting or exceeding loading guidelines while the average is below the guidelines. If you have a low headway artic route with a guideline load of 85 passengers and the sample of buses comes up 85, 90, 100, 62, 50, 100 the average comes to 81.1 passengers. That's below the guidelines but more than half of buses either met or exceeded the guideline. 81 is close enough to 85 where service wouldn't be cut anyway but you get the point. I think we've hijacked this Montreal thread enough. Unless someone here can speak on city specific situations i've said enough.

Three things: 1) Many times the average bus is above loading guidelines and that's when service gets added. 2) Guideline loads also have a headway and network function component where guideline loads for low headway routes are higher than for mid and high headway routes while feeder routes are afforded higher loads then grid routes. What the MTA may consider overcrowded on one route may not be for another while riders consider crowded buses to be crowded buses regardless of what route it is. 3) Guideline loads do not provide a 100% clear picture of crowding. If in a 2 bus sample you have 100 riders where 70 riders are on one bus and 30 are on the other, 70 riders are on the bus above guideline loads and 30 were on the one below. This means that 70% of the riders experienced overcrowding and thus 70% of the riders will think the route in question is overcrowded if such happens on a consistent basis. The average bus carried 50 passengers but none of the riders are able to determine that based on the loads of the buses they themselves used. There are better ways to determine where overcrowding is occurring in the system. A better picture of crowding would include stats like the percentage of riders on buses exceeding guideline loads, percentage of buses which exceed guideline loads, percentage of revenue hours buses are in excess of guideline loads (this requires looking beyond peak load points since duration of crowding is the main concern). On low headway routes where you're likely to be providing some service that misses the crowds since riders will show up at random times and service gaps will fluctuate along the line it's better to take a more in-depth look at the crowding to see if you are running the right amount of buses.

Given we may have a direct link to the board, I would recommend that as many members as possible (and those from other influential positions in the agency) join NYCTF and offer their valuable insights into the transportation industry and how they would like it to evolve with the needs of the city in the years and decades to come. #United4NYCTF

Transit standards in North America must be pretty low because it's obvious to any passenger with two eyes and places to go during rush hour that our system and efficient do not belong in the same sentence. The idea that I have is given the MTA is a state chartered agency the heads there don't have a direct connection to the local government and thus could care less how local buses within the city operate. That's a recipe for cost-cutting and mismanagement. When you have high-ridership routes being undercut by Uber and dollar vans the system is failing it's customers and it's just a matter of who would mismanage it less. I feel at this point the city would mismanage less given they have to be held directly accountable and they're getting a large pre-scaled operation to work with rather then a bunk of hinky-dinky private lines.

Would it make sense to just hand the whole bus operation (both NYCT and MTAB) over to the DOT? Given they own the roads the buses run on and control stop placement they have more than enough skin in the game to be operating the buses on their own terms. It would also lower the need for MTA funding since the city would have to come up with the cash for the buses and the MTA would just have to worry about the subway, commuter rails and bridges and tunnels. The DOT is the major force behind the SBS push so instead of having to go through and work with the MTA they can just do their thing.

Those stops definitely needed extra machines so that's great. I saw three not counting the coin machine at Valentine heading east a couple of weeks ago. We've gotten to such a sad state in the bus system that I'm actually going to commend the MTA for running buses on schedule. I was over in Co-op just before typing this and Bx12 SBS buses were running like clockwork along Bartow Ave. Buses were coming 5 minutes after each other as the schedule says they should and compared to what riders have come to expect from the MTA it was a thing of beauty.

Including or excluding the coin collector? I have yet to see four machines at one stop minus the coin collector.

It's nice to see that some of the busier Bx12 SBS stops have three Metrocard machines instead of two.

I don't see anything wrong with the Bx17 using 187th and then hitting Third Av taking that up to Fordham Plaza that way the route avoids using Fordham Road entirely yet the transfers at Fordham are still preserved. With all the traffic and atrics on Fordham Road it might be beneficial for the route to be revised in this fashion.

I was going to add that they'll use fudged up stats to justify their pre-planned half baked solutions that serve more of their interests than those of the riders but what you said is enough for a rep.

Checkmate is right on with his sentiments. In an urban area like NYC even the poor people are living a fast paced lifestyle with a thousand and one things chipping away at your time and only so much time in the day. So for transit to be attractive it should be minimizing the amount of time you have to spend on it or time wasting to access it. The breath of transit coverage in the city is far from a complaint and for me it's the biggest selling point to using transit in this city. The problem is that transit is primarily used for work commutes (especially in the outer parts of the city) and for work people need to make it on time (without being excessively early). Transit in NYC for some reason has a huge penchant for running delayed meaning trips can be at least 20 minutes longer than scheduled not just on occasion but as a habit. If you add 20 minutes to your scheduled trip to allow for those delays and no delay occurs you now have 20 minutes of time with little productive use. If a delay longer than that occurs, you're late and allowing that extra time had no benefit. The former scenario sucks because those 20 minutes by which I am early just to assure being on time could have been used for extra sleep or to chill at home before getting out. Things more productive then being in an office chair 20 minutes before scheduled. There's not just that but the issue of how your allocated commute time is being spent. This goes into issues such as number of modes used, waiting time, speed of the modes used and each individual will have different preferences in those regards but for me at least my main value in commuting is low waiting time. I find the prospect of standing idle at a subway or bus stop to be extremely wasteful of my valuable time and there isn't a single activity that I've been able to do waiting that I cannot do on the bus or train itself. Waiting time is an issue for many commuters given that our busiest lines can leave riders behind on many occasions due to overcrowding which widens their advertised low headways, and those same lines have issues of bunching on many occasions which can lead to wide gaps in the service as well. Other lines offer high headways that very few riders would bother waiting on and would only time the bus/train exactly if on-time performance is close to perfect. People in fast paced urban areas will pick commute methods that make the most out of their time and if transit fails to do that the individual doesn't have to submit to agency interests and 'commute earlier'. I don't blame people in places like East Queens, Staten Island, South Brooklyn or Northeast Bronx for buying cars since mobility increases tenfold with one.

What would this accomplish except acting as a short-turn for the Q20A or 44?

R.I.P to two recent Fordham Prep students who have decided to use Metro-North as a means of committing suicide. The later of which occurred this afternoon in the Bronx. I hope that the families can come to some sort of emotional healing and that if the school is fostering a culture of depression that can be addressed. It's a rather expensive Jesuit high school so the students there come from some position of financial privilege and gain an excellent education from places like Fordham Prep.