Woodhaven Blvd. Q52/53 SBS Discussion

[BrooklynBus]

IDK, but what about having a different bus and subway fare. Lets say for a theoretical service increase, the subway fare would be 25 cents higher than the local bus. It could help to move some subway riders to the bus, even if it is just a little bit. Even with the offset of people taking the bus over the subway, the subway would be even more efficient, and the bus as well. I don't expect those going long distances to take the bus, they would just take the subway as they currently do.

The problem is that from an efficiency point of view, you want to do the exact opposite. Move people from the bus to the train because of the lower operating costs. Bus service is very labor intensive particularly on routes with low turnover. But you don't want to accomplish this by reducing bus service as the MTA attempted to do in 2010. Some cities do have a lower fare for buses because the trips are usually shorter.

 

Free bus subway transfers are the best thing that happened to the system. It took over 50 years to get that accomplished. We need the modes to be complimentary to each other. In fact there shouldn't be a fare penalty to take a bus to the subway to the bus, which may be the best way to make a trip. Many take longer two bus trips just to save a fare. That hurts the rider as well as placing an unnecessary strain on the bus system.

[JerBear]

I guess I mean efficiency in terms of farebox recovery. That's probably what I mean. When some folks were angling for a downtown express bus from North Shore Towers during the North East Queens Comprehensive Bus Study public workshop, I had to bite my tongue because there are just not enough people doing that trip to ever make it worth the cost of paying the drivers to drive the route. The QM3 has almost no service, but it's also not busting at the seems. Meanwhile try to board a local or limited bus at 6pm in Flushing. Watch as some new person tries to jump the line. How much are those people boarding the local buses packed to the gills paying in taxes to subsidize the people who don't want to ride a local bus to the subway like the rest of us so they beg for an express bus? What is the subsidy for express buses in North East Queens versus the farebox recovery of local and limited buses running through Flushing? That analysis was definitely not mentioned in the North East Queens Comprehensive Bus Study.

[BrooklynBus]

I guess I mean efficiency in terms of farebox recovery. That's probably what I mean. When some folks were angling for a downtown express bus from North Shore Towers during the North East Queens Comprehensive Bus Study public workshop, I had to bite my tongue because there are just not enough people doing that trip to ever make it worth the cost of paying the drivers to drive the route. The QM3 has almost no service, but it's also not busting at the seems. Meanwhile try to board a local or limited bus at 6pm in Flushing. Watch as some new person tries to jump the line. How much are those people boarding the local buses packed to the gills paying in taxes to subsidize the people who don't want to ride a local bus to the subway like the rest of us so they beg for an express bus? What is the subsidy for express buses in North East Queens versus the farebox recovery of local and limited buses running through Flushing? That analysis was definitely not mentioned in the North East Queens Comprehensive Bus Study.

With free transfers and unlimited passes, I don't know how you measure efficiency in terms of fare box recovery. Do you count the fare on the first vehicle or second? Do you split it? Not everyone has the same trip pattern both ways and some may make line seven trips a day. With an unlimited pass you may make more trips than if you paid for each trip individually. You also don't know which legs are part of the same trip. And if you do manage to associate farebox recovery with a route, what does it mean anyway? Would you lower service on routes with lower farebox recovery? I think not. Service has to be based on demand not on the amount of turnover which increases farebox recovery. Notice I said demand not crowding. That is because you need to include vans in determining demand. One of the mistakes the MTA makes is to reduce service when van ridership increases which causes further reductions in service. A prime example is the B41 which used to be the most heavily used route in Brooklyn before the fans came along. No other route was even close for like 50 years. The vans killed that route.

I guess I mean efficiency in terms of farebox recovery. That's probably what I mean. When some folks were angling for a downtown express bus from North Shore Towers during the North East Queens Comprehensive Bus Study public workshop, I had to bite my tongue because there are just not enough people doing that trip to ever make it worth the cost of paying the drivers to drive the route. The QM3 has almost no service, but it's also not busting at the seems. Meanwhile try to board a local or limited bus at 6pm in Flushing. Watch as some new person tries to jump the line. How much are those people boarding the local buses packed to the gills paying in taxes to subsidize the people who don't want to ride a local bus to the subway like the rest of us so they beg for an express bus? What is the subsidy for express buses in North East Queens versus the farebox recovery of local and limited buses running through Flushing? That analysis was definitely not mentioned in the North East Queens Comprehensive Bus Study.

[DetSMART45]

If you really cut the crap, MTA is NOT "efficient" in any which-way when it comes to Local bus service.  Marginally with Express.  Limited is just an excuse used when Local can't cut the mustard.

 

The ONLY reason SBS is being pushed is because somebody else (i.e the Feds) is footing the bill, and once that funding is removed, then whatever will happen will happen.

 

If the Feds cut outlays, you'd see SBS diminish -- except that the MTA would possibly get a little more leeway because of the many factors it has overall (the "ideal" public transport system, where a region is close-to or utterly dependent upon it).

 

Cut the Fed funding, and you'd see Locals turned into Limiteds, and the MTA saying, "Take it or leave it.  OR, how about another fare increase or more payroll tax deduction?"

 

They've been doing these routes for a long time, it's not as if population shifts have occurred THAT much over 10, 20, 30 years.  Oy vey.

[JerBear]

Do you count the fare on the first vehicle or second? Do you split it?

Aren't many of the subways already running as fast as they can during the peak? So for demand from a bus-to-subway trip I would just count the bus. For a bus-to-bus trip I would count it twice for demand. Demand means everything is needed, both parts.

But for farebox recovery I would split it evenly. For the purposes of analysis I would count the "value" more or less of each trip. So if Q10 passengers use unlimited passes more than Q6 passengers, there is still just as much value to the system.

 

Would you lower service on routes with lower farebox recovery?

Yes, I would because it just means that the land use in those areas is suburban like most of Florida and can't support good service. If the community doesn’t want to increase density or developers just don't make any money increasing the density there, then give it up for suburbia and give those buses and bus drivers to the overcrowded areas that need them.

 

 

Service has to be based on demand not on the amount of turnover which increases farebox recovery.

But aren't there big differences in farebox recovery between, say, the Q10 and the Q38? The Q10, Q70, Q25, Q65, Q17, and Q44 probably have great farebox recovery, and there's probably a big gap before you get to weird routes like the Q38. And then those are way better at farebox recovery than any of North East Queens express buses running two-thirds empty most of the day.

 

 

That is because you need to include vans in determining demand. One of the mistakes the MTA makes is to reduce service when van ridership increases which causes further reductions in service.

Is there any precedent for this kind of analysis? Do other cities have vans like this, and do those cities count the ridership as demand?

[BrooklynBus]

If you really cut the crap, MTA is NOT "efficient" in any which-way when it comes to Local bus service.  Marginally with Express.  Limited is just an excuse used when Local can't cut the mustard.

 

The ONLY reason SBS is being pushed is because somebody else (i.e the Feds) is footing the bill, and once that funding is removed, then whatever will happen will happen.

 

If the Feds cut outlays, you'd see SBS diminish -- except that the MTA would possibly get a little more leeway because of the many factors it has overall (the "ideal" public transport system, where a region is close-to or utterly dependent upon it).

 

Cut the Fed funding, and you'd see Locals turned into Limiteds, and the MTA saying, "Take it or leave it.  OR, how about another fare increase or more payroll tax deduction?"

 

They've been doing these routes for a long time, it's not as if population shifts have occurred THAT much over 10, 20, 30 years.  Oy vey.

For about three to five years the communities were asking for the B82 to become a Limited. The MTA refused for that amount of time saying the demand was not there. Now all of a sudden now that federal funding is available for SBS and de Blasio ordered 20 SBS before his reelection, the B82 suddenly qualifies for SBS when a short time ago it didn't even qualify for Limited service even though B82 ridership declined slightly over the past five years.

[BrooklynBus]

Aren't many of the subways already running as fast as they can during the peak? So for demand from a bus-to-subway trip I would just count the bus. For a bus-to-bus trip I would count it twice for demand. Demand means everything is needed, both parts.

But for farebox recovery I would split it evenly. For the purposes of analysis I would count the "value" more or less of each trip. So if Q10 passengers use unlimited passes more than Q6 passengers, there is still just as much value to the system.

Yes, I would because it just means that the land use in those areas is suburban like most of Florida and can't support good service. If the community doesn’t want to increase density or developers just don't make any money increasing the density there, then give it up for suburbia and give those buses and bus drivers to the overcrowded areas that need them.

But aren't there big differences in farebox recovery between, say, the Q10 and the Q38? The Q10, Q70, Q25, Q65, Q17, and Q44 probably have great farebox recovery, and there's probably a big gap before you get to weird routes like the Q38. And then those are way better at farebox recovery than any of North East Queens express buses running two-thirds empty most of the day.

Is there any precedent for this kind of analysis? Do other cities have vans like this, and do those cities count the ridership as demand?

A bus to subway trip is a subway to bus trip in the reverse direction. So would you count the bus fare only if the bus comes first? What if the bus trip is a short trip that can be walked and the subway is the real reason the trip is being made and would still be made even if the bus isn't running? You would still count the bus fare?

 

As I stated, lower farebox recovery could be a function of most riders making longer trips not lower density, so I don't agree with you about lowering service.

 

I don't know what the farebox recovery is on the routes you mentioned so I won't comment. The Q38 has low ridership because the route is utterly ridiculous. It looks like an accident if history, that two unrelated routes were once combined to save a bus. It really needs to be restructured into a useful route. It us similar to the way the B21 in Brooklyn operated before 1978 when I got rid of it and incorporated its parts into other routes.

 

If you want your system to better serve the people you need to study in which neighborhoods there are many who are using car services or vans. It can be a sign that your routes are not functioning well. You may need to redesign them or add another route. There is always a line of car services at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn. I would bet that those who use those car services are making short trips not served well by the bus system fir example the service gap between Utica and Nostrand Avenue. If you are destined for like Albany Avenue and Avenue H, it is easier to hop a cab down Albany Avenue than first get over to Utica or Nostrand and then travel back and it would cost you two fares if you don't want to walk a lot. So if you are two people traveling together, a cab wouldn't cost much more and would be much more convenient and take less than half the time. By only looking at your existing ridership, you would never know that demand existed. Before I created the B1 between Brighton Beach and 86th Street, there was no way to make that trip on two buses. To get to 4th Avenue, you had to take the subway all the way to Downtown Brooklyn and then back to Bay Ridge. Now it us a very heavily used bus route. Looking only at existing bus ridership, that change never would have been made. I could tell the routes that existed at that time were inefficient and needed to be changed.

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

You and I seem to have different views of efficiency and effectiveness. Based on the dictionary definition of efficient which is maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense than a sardine packed bus with low turnover is inefficient because it is not maximizing productivity. Productivity in a transit system is ridership so you only need to look at farebox activity to judge how productive a service is. Express buses are wildly inefficient because of the zero turnover. You're limiting the number of boardings per trip (the productive value of the bus) to the number of seats available on the bus. That's wasteful considering the long mileage of express bus service is far from minimizing effort or expense. Even with sardine packed feeder buses you're limiting the number of boardings per trip to some number approximate to the maximum capacity of the bus. If the demand in both cases is for the particular service provided then full buses are effective because you've successfully served the demand with the service provided. Effective based on the dictionary definition is the success at achieving a desired result. In the case of a crowded express or local feeder bus because of the inherit inefficiency the only way for those routes to be effective is for buses to reach full capacity. One of the main problem with our bus system is that it's worried about maximizing the effectiveness of inefficient routes rather than first looking at efficiency. That means less feeder routes and express service and more coverage and major grid routes where high turnover would be expected. That does not mean bus service should stop feeding people to the subway, it should just be a small portion of the riderbase on any individual route. If you want to take time into consideration and make the argument that efficiency should be viewed through boardings per hour than that also makes sense but it's somewhat irrational to use a word that relates to productive value (efficient) to describe an outcome not directly correlated with production value (a full bus).

 

Yes turnover is dependent on passenger origins and destinations but given that's what service should be oriented around there is every which reason to use the information on that available to create routes maximizing turnover. The only constraints on turnover that should exist are mileage (routes shouldn't be ridiculously long) and run-time (single trips shouldn't be close to 2 hours long).

 

What's also lost on MTA heads is that effectiveness and to a degree efficiency is also reflected by the ability to attract more users to the service or to convert occasional users to regular users over time. If buses are consistently sardine packed potential new users are not going to be attracted to that and thus you're limiting the future productive value (efficiency) and signaling inability to accommodate the demand (effectiveness). One main focus should be attracting new users to the system because to be honest there is room for more and the lengthy process of subway upgrades works against increasing demand in the short term.

I appreciate your input. I was not considering turnover. Of course from a revenue viewpoint, a route with high turnover is more efficient than a route with low turnover. But the amount of turnover has to do with passenger origins and destinations and not with the service provided. Express routes have no turnover at all since all are destined from an outer borough to Manhattan. Does that make the route inefficient? No, if it has a seated load for most of the route. It's just the nature with that type of service.

You say that a bus that is sardine packed is inefficient. I disagree because it is filled. It would only be considered inefficient if you include the number of passengers that want to be served but aren't. Yes, of course that is important, but I consider that as part of the effectiveness of the service, not its efficiency. If the bus is operating at maximum capacity for its entire route, it is efficient even if there is zero turnover. Turnover increases revenue but not effuciency unless you are talking about efficiency from a revenue point of view which is a separate measure.

[Trainmaster5]

For about three to five years the communities were asking for the B82 to become a Limited. The MTA refused for that amount of time saying the demand was not there. Now all of a sudden now that federal funding is available for SBS and de Blasio ordered 20 SBS before his reelection, the B82 suddenly qualifies for SBS when a short time ago it didn't even qualify for Limited service even though B82 ridership declined slightly over the past five years.

The sad part is that you, detSMART45, B35 and a few others can see right through the SBS "gimmick" while many others are seduced by the promise of "quicker" bus service. All this Federal funding to be spent but if the offer was rescinded the same supporters wouldn't have a leg to stand on. New buses, street and highway restructuring, a new "Yellow Brick Road to Utopia" so to speak to garner support from those who fail to think the whole idea through. I've pointed out earlier that this new funding is a one time take it or leave it deal. After the "bait" is swallowed the City of New York is responsible for the upkeep, meaning the local taxpayer is on the hook from now on. Not the state, not the , but the city taxpayer. Meanwhile the city DOT has slowed the speed limit city-wide which means that all trips on the city roadways will be slowed down. Bus and auto. Why go all in with every SBS proposal when the most cost-effective idea appears to be streamlining the existing local/limited routes first ? That's my peeve with this whole process. There are certainly routes in this city that can be improved before SBS is even mentioned but there wasn't any study done city-wide about improving bus transit before this Federal money was dangled, was there? I'd love to see what would happen if this Fed money is somehow withdrawn or some new restrictions are imposed. IMO the whole bus system in the city needs a complete overhaul and restructure before the terms SBS or BRT are ever uttered by anyone in political office. Just my random thoughts. Carry on.

[B35 via Church]

NYC's bus system is far too large for it to ever be (highly) efficient.... It's that simple.

 

When an analysis is of a per route basis, yeah there are some routes are efficient than others.... There are variables that determine a route's efficiency..... Effectiveness however, is determined on a constant - does it take a rider(s) to a desired/needed destination.... That's basically it....

 

Turnover really has squat to do with a route's efficiency.... Turnover b/w two routes & the individual effectiveness of said routes, are polar opposites....

 

The problem I have with the MTA as it pertains to our system isn't really efficiency, it's the effectiveness of a lot of these routes....

 

There's more I wanna say, but I'm pressed for time.... So I'll stop here & check back later...

[JerBear]

But there's a turnover-vs-sardine issue. I don't like that the bus maps show a solid line for a route when it goes through areas that it doesn't stop. There's that maybe-it-exists stop at Citi Field for westbound Q19 & Q66 buses, but I don't need to see how it gets from Flushing to Corona if it doesn't stop along the way. I know there are some other examples, I just can't think of them right now.

But so this relates to what I have read about transit service providing access and mobility to the population. So for a bus to provide that, there must be room to get on the bus. The MTA should do a systematic study of when buses put on the "next bus please" sign. They should take the schedule and strike through those buses that aren't picking up passengers and then look at the remaining service that is provided. Because that's the true access and mobility available in those locations at those times. And for routes like the Q64 eastbound in the afternoon where the bus leaves the first stop full and maybe nobody gets off until the 4th stop. Stops 2 and 3 have no bus service at that time, contrary to what the schedule says.

So I don't care about turnover ad much as having some room on the bus.

San Francisco is experimenting with variable pricing on smart parking meters because a book says you should have like 20% empty spaces at any given time. If there are no empty spaces, increase the price tomorrow. If half the spaces are empty, decrease the price tomorrow.

The MTA should adjust service so there's always a little room on the bus. If there are routes where the bus is half-empty during the rush, reduce service there and give the buses and drivers to routes that have nothing but "next bus please" after the first stop.

[BrooklynBus]

The sad part is that you, detSMART45, B35 and a few others can see right through the SBS "gimmick" while many others are seduced by the promise of "quicker" bus service. All this Federal funding to be spent but if the offer was rescinded the same supporters wouldn't have a leg to stand on. New buses, street and highway restructuring, a new "Yellow Brick Road to Utopia" so to speak to garner support from those who fail to think the whole idea through. I've pointed out earlier that this new funding is a one time take it or leave it deal. After the "bait" is swallowed the City of New York is responsible for the upkeep, meaning the local taxpayer is on the hook from now on. Not the state, not the , but the city taxpayer. Meanwhile the city DOT has slowed the speed limit city-wide which means that all trips on the city roadways will be slowed down. Bus and auto. Why go all in with every SBS proposal when the most cost-effective idea appears to be streamlining the existing local/limited routes first ? That's my peeve with this whole process. There are certainly routes in this city that can be improved before SBS is even mentioned but there wasn't any study done city-wide about improving bus transit before this Federal money was dangled, was there? I'd love to see what would happen if this Fed money is somehow withdrawn or some new restrictions are imposed. IMO the whole bus system in the city needs a complete overhaul and restructure before the terms SBS or BRT are ever uttered by anyone in political office. Just my random thoughts. Carry on.

I agree with everything you said. It's all about the federal money. In the 1980s when there was federal money to study bus routes, the MTA applied and received millions of dollars. (They promptly wasted all or most of it. I do not know if federal money was involved with the Bronx 1984 changes.)

 

They received $850,000 for a Brooklyn Transit Service Sufficiency Study which I directed for a year and a half taking the study over after someone else already screwed it up and I was hired to salvage it. The MTA fired hundreds of temp workers on a Friday and rehired them the following Monday to save in vacation and sick time. The workers retaliated by sabotaging the data costing three months of work to weed out the bad data. Then after I formulated at least thirty route change proposals, my boss made my staff and I spend a year redoing all the proposals five times, each time making them less feasible. The result is none of the proposals moved forward to share with the communities and a useless 500 page report with only ten pages of text was submitted to USDOT for reimbursement. The report made no proposals and yet the Feds reimbursed the MTA for the entire study because no one ever looked at the report or someone instructed them to just approve the reimbursement. Two bus routes were changed as a result of the Staten Island Study and none fir Queens and Staten Island. Other monies were spent for a study of Co-op City routes in the 1980s and in 1993 for southern Brooklyn which also resulted in no changes. The MTA proposed an F express in Brooklyn and one other change. They also looked at a bus route from Bay Ridge to JFK but rejected all their own proposals saying there was no money in the budget. They did not consider additional revenue the improvements might have generating, but only gross operating expenses. The proposal for the Bronx were met with counter proposals from the community and the MTA refused to alter their proposals to satisfy the community so again nothing was done. Like SBS, none of those studies would have been performed without federal monies. The MTA promised improvements for years before the studies were completed but never delivered.

 

 

 

NYC's bus system is far too large for it to ever be (highly) efficient.... It's that simple.

 

When an analysis is of a per route basis, yeah there are some routes are efficient than others.... There are variables that determine a route's efficiency..... Effectiveness however, is determined on a constant - does it take a rider(s) to a desired/needed destination.... That's basically it....

 

Turnover really has squat to do with a route's efficiency.... Turnover b/w two routes & the individual effectiveness of said routes, are polar opposites....

 

The problem I have with the MTA as it pertains to our system isn't really efficiency, it's the effectiveness of a lot of these routes....

 

There's more I wanna say, but I'm pressed for time.... So I'll stop here & check back later...

I agree with you also.

 

But there's a turnover-vs-sardine issue. I don't like that the bus maps show a solid line for a route when it goes through areas that it doesn't stop. There's that maybe-it-exists stop at Citi Field for westbound Q19 & Q66 buses, but I don't need to see how it gets from Flushing to Corona if it doesn't stop along the way. I know there are some other examples, I just can't think of them right now.

But so this relates to what I have read about transit service providing access and mobility to the population. So for a bus to provide that, there must be room to get on the bus. The MTA should do a systematic study of when buses put on the "next bus please" sign. They should take the schedule and strike through those buses that aren't picking up passengers and then look at the remaining service that is provided. Because that's the true access and mobility available in those locations at those times. And for routes like the Q64 eastbound in the afternoon where the bus leaves the first stop full and maybe nobody gets off until the 4th stop. Stops 2 and 3 have no bus service at that time, contrary to what the schedule says.

So I don't care about turnover ad much as having some room on the bus.

San Francisco is experimenting with variable pricing on smart parking meters because a book says you should have like 20% empty spaces at any given time. If there are no empty spaces, increase the price tomorrow. If half the spaces are empty, decrease the price tomorrow.

The MTA should adjust service so there's always a little room on the bus. If there are routes where the bus is half-empty during the rush, reduce service there and give the buses and drivers to routes that have nothing but "next bus please" after the first stop.

I agree with you about the bus map. The situation you describe with the Q64 also occurs on the B1 and I gave been complaining to the MTA now for well over five years about it. I also have been netting with them about it. They agreed that they have been relying too much on "Next Bus Please" and have agreed to use it less often now that they finally have BusTrek up and running. They showed he how it works and I was impressed. It should really help. We will see. I did notice that they really do care and are trying. We will meet again in a few months. Please post or PM me about any specific problems you would like me to tell them. They can't fix what they are not aware of.

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

If we can agree that the goal of any system to get the most out it's operation then the ultimate goal for the NYC bus system to maximize the number of riders that board for each bus that is used. My point is that such can be done poorly even when buses are reaching or exceeding guideline loads.

 

There is a huge difference between the number of passengers filling a bus at it's most crowded point and the number of riders that board the bus per trip.  From a purely logical standpoint the efficiency of a bus route is based on the latter when BrooklynBus has articulated that it's based on the former. There is overlap in the sense that efficient routes tend to be crowded and demand frequent service but that does not mean crowding is the end all be all of a successful operation. 

 

I don't get the way effectiveness (which gets conflated with transit equity) is being thrown around as if there's some sort of trade off between effectiveness and efficiency. Riders are not going to use buses that fail to get them to their destinations so from my point of view the way to measure the effectiveness of a route is the same way you would measure it's efficiency. From a transit standpoint effectiveness and efficiency are essentially one in the same. Therefore from a numerical point of a view there's no trade off and I'm going to judge routes mainly based on boardings per trip. If I'm looking at a route like the Bx19 which pulls an impressive 101 riders per trip, i'm going to say it's effective regardless of delays and other issues. For the record, I used the ridership stats and scheduled trip counts to determine average boardings per trip for weekday service among Bronx bus routes. What I ended up getting is a top 10 of...

 

Bx19 - 101 riders per trip

Bx40/42 - 97 riders per trip

Bx12 SBS - 91 riders per trip

Bx1/2 - 82 riders per trip

Bx39 - 77 riders per trip

Bx36 -  74 riders per trip

Bx9 - 69 riders per trip

Bx15 - 68 riders per trip

Bx41 SBS - 64 riders per trip

Bx21 - 63 riders per trip

 

These ten routes produce more than half of the ridership in the borough, therefore they're effective and as we can see highly efficient given an average weekday trip in each case boards more people than the seated capacity of the buses used. A good standard to hold boardings per trip to is the capacity (fully seated since off-peak trips are being counted as well) of the typical bus used. This boarding per trip stat encompasses the entire weekday so it's reflecting both peak trips (which will have numbers much higher than the average) and off-peak trips. If peak Bx19 trips are pulling in significantly more than 101 passengers on buses that can seat 50-60 and fit 100 the only way that can happen is with high turnover which is why I have mentioned turnover. It has all to do with efficiency when you boil down the numbers. 

 

I bring that up because there are routes (particularly in Queens) that seem almost exclusively purposed for feeding riders to subway stops and those routes tend to have peak service levels equal to or if not better than more successful routes like the ones I listed above. In that case lots of money (in terms of bus labor) is being spent to move fewer riders overall then if origins/destinations were more spread out along a major corridor. Even if riders are getting to destinations on these routes (and thus meeting their purpose effectively) they're not great at all from an operational standpoint and you're essentially asking riders of routes like the ones above to subsidize the low headways provided on money losing routes elsewhere in the system. This is the kind of crap that leads people to overstate the "expensiveness" of running buses thus wanting cost intensive subway expansions to areas not dense enough to support it (a recipe for transit diaster).

 

 

Also our bus system is by no means too large to be highly efficient. It's actually rather small compared to our Latin American, European and Asian counterparts. London for example generates 6 million bus journeys per day compared to a paltry 2.5 million for NYC. RATP provides nearly a billion bus journeys each year in Paris and the suburban region. Despite their new ultramodern rail lines, places like Beijing and Shanghai have bus usage rivaling their record subway usage. To say NYC is an alpha city, it's bus system is nowhere near alpha material when put on the world stage so there's tons of room to get larger and be more efficient in the process. 

[JerBear]

If we can agree that the goal of any system to get the most out it's operation...

Maybe the MTA itself has that as its goal but I want the system to spur more efficient development as well. When DC was building the Metro, two Virginia counties reacted differently. Arlington put the subway down real streets and upzoned around it. Fairfax put the subway in the middle of the highway and surrounded it with parking lots. Arlington continues to develop better urbanism while still having nice neighborhoods nearby, while Fairfax is suburban hell. People have to drive to get to the subway. So if transit doesn’t promote good urbanism then the system is not as good as it could be.

 

I bring that up because there are routes (particularly in Queens) that seem almost exclusively purposed for feeding riders to subway stops...

This is what the Q64 is. I have seen some people get on and off throughout but the majority are going to the subway. Does the MTA produce some sort of ridership analysis that shows the route with the peak load point and turnover along the line? Because the Q64 would be like a triangle with the 90-degree angle created by the route path and the high ridership from the first stop dropping off somewhat evenly as it empties out down the line towards the end.

[bobtehpanda]

If we can agree that the goal of any system to get the most out it's operation then the ultimate goal for the NYC bus system to maximize the number of riders that board for each bus that is used. My point is that such can be done poorly even when buses are reaching or exceeding guideline loads.

 

There is a huge difference between the number of passengers filling a bus at it's most crowded point and the number of riders that board the bus per trip.  From a purely logical standpoint the efficiency of a bus route is based on the latter when BrooklynBus has articulated that it's based on the former. There is overlap in the sense that efficient routes tend to be crowded and demand frequent service but that does not mean crowding is the end all be all of a successful operation.

 

I bring that up because there are routes (particularly in Queens) that seem almost exclusively purposed for feeding riders to subway stops and those routes tend to have peak service levels equal to or if not better than more successful routes like the ones I listed above. In that case lots of money (in terms of bus labor) is being spent to move fewer riders overall then if origins/destinations were more spread out along a major corridor. Even if riders are getting to destinations on these routes (and thus meeting their purpose effectively) they're not great at all from an operational standpoint and you're essentially asking riders of routes like the ones above to subsidize the low headways provided on money losing routes elsewhere in the system. This is the kind of crap that leads people to overstate the "expensiveness" of running buses thus wanting cost intensive subway expansions to areas not dense enough to support it (a recipe for transit diaster).

 

That's just down to the structure of the city. London and Paris are both heavily polycentric; New York has one, strong core that draws in riders. Unless you significantly change business and housing patterns, there isn't a way to make the network more "efficient." If you cut down on the buses feeding people into the subway, all you'll end up doing is tanking subway ridership in those areas. Likewise, the bus network in Queens is "inefficient" because the subway does not stretch very far into the borough at all; instead of forming a coherent network grid buses must all turn off their otherwise gridlike routes and feed into the congested Jamaica and Flushing areas to get to the subway. The Bronx certainly has a more efficient bus network, but that's possible because the lines stretch deep into the borough instead of arbitrarily stopping halfway in at, say, East 180th St. It's easy to say that there's enough subway when your own borough already has decent subway coverage  .

 

Secondly, just because an area is lower density does not mean it isn't worth building a subway. Most of the Bronx was undeveloped when we built the subway, as was most of Brooklyn and most of Queens. We built the subway not because there was a lot of congestion in these areas, but to ease development pressure by allowing more people to commute from these areas. In fact, modern cities still do this; London, a city you are so eager to cite, is building the Northern Line Extension and Crossrail 2 for this very reason. New York could do with a little easing of development pressure, and Queens east of Jamaica and Flushing is still mostly low-density housing ripe for upzoning. So to just dismiss it out of hand is pretty close-minded.

[B35 via Church]

If we can agree that the goal of any system to get the most out it's operation then the ultimate goal for the NYC bus system to maximize the number of riders that board for each bus that is used. My point is that such can be done poorly even when buses are reaching or exceeding guideline loads.

 

There is a huge difference between the number of passengers filling a bus at it's most crowded point and the number of riders that board the bus per trip.  From a purely logical standpoint the efficiency of a bus route is based on the latter when BrooklynBus has articulated that it's based on the former. There is overlap in the sense that efficient routes tend to be crowded and demand frequent service but that does not mean crowding is the end all be all of a successful operation.

You assume that the goal of any system & the MTA's motives specifically with bus service in this city are one in the same.... That is simply not the case..... It isn't about the most of its operation with the MTA as it pertains to its bus system, it's about putting (I'd argue keeping) asses in seats, which is all this agency cares about.... That much is evident when you have as many inefficient routes as there are in this system....

 

The efficiency of a bus route is based on the number of people using the buses... Period.

How that usage is distributed is immaterial; You're conveying that BrooklynBus is wrong when he states (in disagreement to you) that a sardine packed bus is not inefficient, when he isn't (wrong).... The real is, neither one of you are wrong in that particular regard.....

 

"The number of passengers filling a bus at it's most crowded point" is a part of "the number of riders that board the bus per trip."

 

 

I don't get the way effectiveness (which gets conflated with transit equity) is being thrown around as if there's some sort of trade off between effectiveness and efficiency. Riders are not going to use buses that fail to get them to their destinations so from my point of view the way to measure the effectiveness of a route is the same way you would measure it's efficiency. From a transit standpoint effectiveness and efficiency are essentially one in the same. Therefore from a numerical point of a view there's no trade off and I'm going to judge routes mainly based on boardings per trip. If I'm looking at a route like the Bx19 which pulls an impressive 101 riders per trip, i'm going to say it's effective regardless of delays and other issues. For the record, I used the ridership stats and scheduled trip counts to determine average boardings per trip for weekday service among Bronx bus routes. What I ended up getting is a top 10 of...

 

 

Bx19 - 101 riders per trip

Bx40/42 - 97 riders per trip

Bx12 SBS - 91 riders per trip

Bx1/2 - 82 riders per trip

Bx39 - 77 riders per trip

Bx36 -  74 riders per trip

Bx9 - 69 riders per trip

Bx15 - 68 riders per trip

Bx41 SBS - 64 riders per trip

Bx21 - 63 riders per trip

 

These ten routes produce more than half of the ridership in the borough, therefore they're effective and as we can see highly efficient given an average weekday trip in each case boards more people than the seated capacity of the buses used. A good standard to hold boardings per trip to is the capacity (fully seated since off-peak trips are being counted as well) of the typical bus used. This boarding per trip stat encompasses the entire weekday so it's reflecting both peak trips (which will have numbers much higher than the average) and off-peak trips. If peak Bx19 trips are pulling in significantly more than 101 passengers on buses that can seat 50-60 and fit 100 the only way that can happen is with high turnover which is why I have mentioned turnover. It has all to do with efficiency when you boil down the numbers.

Depends how far you stretch the term "essentially"..... I mean, measuring a route's efficiency is more involved than concluding that a route is effective or not; it's not about a trade off..... It is far easier to portray & prove that a route is effective, compared to efficient....

 

Case in point, these Bronx routes you make a talking point of here.... They're effective, but I don't get how you can claim these ten routes are highly efficient based on their riders per trip numbers alone.... I suppose trip times doesn't factor into anything here.... I scoff at the notion of the Bx21 being highly efficient - when that is one of the most slowest, unreliable route in the borough.....

 

 

Secondly, just because an area is lower density does not mean it isn't worth building a subway. Most of the Bronx was undeveloped when we built the subway, as was most of Brooklyn and most of Queens. We built the subway not because there was a lot of congestion in these areas, but to ease development pressure by allowing more people to commute from these areas. In fact, modern cities still do this; London, a city you are so eager to cite, is building the Northern Line Extension and Crossrail 2 for this very reason. New York could do with a little easing of development pressure, and Queens east of Jamaica and Flushing is still mostly low-density housing ripe for upzoning. So to just dismiss it out of hand is pretty close-minded.

I don't like the way he's dismissive of Queens' bus routes (they're not great at all, or whatever), but glorifying just how highly used those Bronx routes he listed are, either.... As if Queens doesn't have highly effective bus routes.....

[BrooklynBus]

Not to address every point so I will just say this. Routes can be efficient because they carry a high number of passengers. That does not mean they are effective. What I mean by that is you can have a well utilized route that is indirect and causes many of its riders to go out of their way and waste ten minutes needlessly per trip. Riders will still use it however, if it us their best choice.

 

The MTA really cannot control the amount of turnover on a bus route which is more dependent on land use, so to favor routes with higher turnover by granting them more service is also wrong. A bus with fewer passengers per bus trip because of lower turnover deserves just as much service as another one with similar crowding levels.

 

Queens routes are ineffecrive because since so many of the routes are geared to serve the subway, more bus transfers and fares are required there to make bus trips than in the other boroughs. That means also that trips take unnecessarily longer and bus travel for short trips requiring multiple vehicles is in greater competition with taxis if multiple riders are traveling together where the cost difference for taxis is worth the superior service.

 

Of course it us advisable to have the ridership spread out on a route than having everyone board and leave between the same two points. That's what short line service is for instead of having all the buses run the entire route.

 

Too much of a deal is made with the idea of efficiency. You must accept the fact that every route cannot have a high level of ridership. Ridership on the B4 is low, but that doesn't mean it need not exist. The walking distances to the B9 and B1 would just be too great for many people. Last Labor Day, people had to wait in excess of 90 minutes to board a Q35 because it was extremely crowded. There should gave been additional service to Riis Park where over half the ridership boarded, but there wasn't. All buses operated for the entire route and it was jam packed at least in one direction all the way from the Junction to Riis Park much of the day. It may have made the route efficient since many stops were skipped, but it certainly was a very ineffective route on that day.

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

You assume that the goal of any system & the MTA's motives specifically with bus service in this city are one in the same.... That is simply not the case..... It isn't about the most of its operation with the MTA as it pertains to its bus system, it's about putting (I'd argue keeping) asses in seats, which is all this agency cares about.... That much is evident when you have as many inefficient routes as there are in this system....

 

The efficiency of a bus route is based on the number of people using the buses... Period.

How that usage is distributed is immaterial; You're conveying that BrooklynBus is wrong when he states (in disagreement to you) that a sardine packed bus is not inefficient, when he isn't (wrong).... The real is, neither one of you are wrong in that particular regard.....

 

"The number of passengers filling a bus at it's most crowded point" is a part of "the number of riders that board the bus per trip."

 

 

Depends how far you stretch the term "essentially"..... I mean, measuring a route's efficiency is more involved than concluding that a route is effective or not; it's not about a trade off..... It is far easier to portray & prove that a route is effective, compared to efficient....

 

In order for it to be easy to prove whether a route is effective you would have to know what it's desired outcome is, given effectiveness (by dictionary definition) is the degree to which something is successful in achieving a desired result. You're now into the fallacy of begging the question because the first thing I'm going to ask when someone mentions effectiveness (in any context) is "Effective at what?" .  For me, there is at least an answer to that question and that answer is buses should be effective at moving people. The question I would pose not just to you but others reading this, is what do you use to measure the effectiveness of the overall bus network at moving people. Since each route makes trips and moves people boardings per trip makes sense as a baseline measure that can be applied to each route while subsequently averaged across the system. There are other important aspects beyond that but without a baseline measure to hold all routes to in terms of efficiency or effectiveness then the nuances of their individual performance becomes a matter of splitting hairs in the sense that something beneficial to one route may be detrimental to another and there would would no singular focus on improving mobility for the entire city.

 

Case in point, these Bronx routes you make a talking point of here.... They're effective, but I don't get how you can claim these ten routes are highly efficient based on their riders per trip numbers alone.... I suppose trip times doesn't factor into anything here.... I scoff at the notion of the Bx21 being highly efficient - when that is one of the most slowest, unreliable route in the borough.....

 

Trip times can certainly be factored in and boardings per hour in many cases in taken more seriously than boardings per trip given the driver's cost in reflected in time. The thing is that a route like the M101  (to use an example) doesn't finish a full trip within an hour. Therefore boardings per hour will be lower than boarding per trip and a poor reflection of the route's actual dynamics.

 

As much as it's important to have a full picture of route performance considering things like speeds, reliability, loading guidelines and what not if there's no baseline comparison on which to gauge overall success then we're back to splitting hairs because those individual aspects all tie into one another which then tie back to ridership so there's no singular goal other than setting up a patchwork conglomerate of routes that don't really fuse together to enhance mobility. This is why I made the post I did in response to BrooklynBus. If you're as a whole planning around efficiently moving people then you've (sunk costs aside) also been effective so there was no need to use the MTA's mentality with crowding as a way to show some kind of difference that doesn't exist.

 

I don't like the way he's dismissive of Queens' bus routes (they're not great at all, or whatever), but glorifying just how highly used those Bronx routes he listed are, either.... As if Queens doesn't have highly effective bus routes.....

 

There are effective (again based on whatever criteria you can come up with) routes in Queens and if you want you can say all them are. Where I'm somewhat dismissive is that the hub-spoke model of bus service within Northeast and Southeast Queens does not maximize mobility for the borough as a whole. Last time I checked there are hospitals, secondary schools, colleges and various popular businesses in areas other than Flushing or Jamaica. Frequent, vast reaching service is needed to Flushing and Jamaica for subway access but the amount of buses just stopping dead in Flushing or Jamaica having flushed passengers from one direction is just too damn high. A route like the Q25 works well because you have passengers flowing into Flushing from the north (College Point) and the south (the areas along Kissena) and for each direction that reverse flow allows for more ridership each trip. The Q44 is the same way. You can definitely have buses feeding people to the subway (to contest bobtehpanda's points) without that being a largely unidirectional, peak hour driven mess. Many of the users of those "efficient" Bronx routes do use it to get to the subway.

 

To further the points I was making in the last reply I had thought of some ideas for improvements in Queens and my initial thoughts are:

- Merge the Q66 and Q26 into one route. 

- Extend a pair of either the Guy R Brewer or Merrick Blvd routes northward mirroring the Q30/31 until Union Tpke sending one service to QCC (east along Union Tpke and then Springfield Blvd) and the other west along Union to the at Queens Blvd. This would effectively re-allocate Q46 and Q30 service to routes that serve a larger unique riderbase and thus increase the efficiency while maintaining usefulness to riders. For SE Queens users this is a net benefit given that there is now an opportunity to use a bus that travels north of Jamaica without transferring.

- Merge the Q43 and Q40 into one route. 

- Merge the Q112 and Q42 into one route.

- Extend one of the Flushing feeders serving Bayside west to Queens Center Mall using Roosevelt, Junction and 51 Av 

- Encourage NICE to run open-door service in Queens. 

- Extend the Q64 to Middle Village using Austin < Yellowstone < Cooper < Metropolitan 

 

That's what I've thought of for now. If I come up with anything else i'll get into the Queens proposal thread. 

[NewFlyer 230]

To further the points I was making in the last reply I had thought of some ideas for improvements in Queens and my initial thoughts are:

- Merge the Q66 and Q26 into one route.

- Extend a pair of either the Guy R Brewer or Merrick Blvd routes northward mirroring the Q30/31 until Union Tpke sending one service to QCC (east along Union Tpke and then Springfield Blvd) and the other west along Union to the at Queens Blvd. This would effectively re-allocate Q46 and Q30 service to routes that serve a larger unique riderbase and thus increase the efficiency while maintaining usefulness to riders. For SE Queens users this is a net benefit given that there is now an opportunity to use a bus that travels north of Jamaica without transferring.

- Merge the Q43 and Q40 into one route.

- Merge the Q112 and Q42 into one route.

- Extend one of the Flushing feeders serving Bayside west to Queens Center Mall using Roosevelt, Junction and 51 Av

- Encourage NICE to run open-door service in Queens.

- Extend the Q64 to Middle Village using Austin < Yellowstone < Cooper < Metropolitan

 

That's what I've thought of for now. If I come up with anything else i'll get into the Queens proposal thread.

I don't agree with your idea of combining two routes together for the sake of making improvements.

For example why would you combine the Q66 which is a long route prone to bunching and shows up late with a part time route like the Q26 making that unreliable. The MTA already screwed with that route back in 2010 when they cut off peak service. It doesn't need to be messed with anymore.

The Q112 and Q42 merge would have the same effect I just mentioned above

The Q40 and Q43 combination leads me into my next thought.

Your plan actually reminds me of the way some routes in Queens were operated a real long time ago. They would have a route like the Q17/Q30 which one run the 17 route and at Jamaica for example it would turn into a 30 and would run the reverse direction as the Q30/Q17. I was trying to find out more information about it but I believe they stopped that practice because it caused routes to suffer reliability wise.

And what is your purpose for extending the Q64. It sole purpose is to feed the subway station in Forest Hills. The only changes I see happening in the future concerning that route would be the addition of articulated buses.

[BrooklynBus]

 

Queens Public Transit Committee issues rebuttal to DOT's answers to the communities' questions.

 

(Cannot be viewed on a mobile device.)

 

 

 

http://qptc.org/rebutal.html

[bobtehpanda]

I'm going to respond to Jubai's specific comment:

 

 

 

There are effective (again based on whatever criteria you can come up with) routes in Queens and if you want you can say all them are. Where I'm somewhat dismissive is that the hub-spoke model of bus service within Northeast and Southeast Queens does not maximize mobility for the borough as a whole. Last time I checked there are hospitals, secondary schools, colleges and various popular businesses in areas other than Flushing or Jamaica. Frequent, vast reaching service is needed to Flushing and Jamaica for subway access but the amount of buses just stopping dead in Flushing or Jamaica having flushed passengers from one direction is just too damn high. A route like the Q25 works well because you have passengers flowing into Flushing from the north (College Point) and the south (the areas along Kissena) and for each direction that reverse flow allows for more ridership each trip. The Q44 is the same way. You can definitely have buses feeding people to the subway (to contest bobtehpanda's points) without that being a largely unidirectional, peak hour driven mess. Many of the users of those "efficient" Bronx routes do use it to get to the subway.

 

Many of these routes already stop at major hospitals or shopping areas or universities. The Q5, for instance, terminates at Green Acres Mall. The Q46 serves St. John's University and terminates at North Shore LIJ. The Q27 stops by and short turns at QCC. Yet demand on these routes, even with some of the largest employment destinations and educational institutions in the borough on the other end, is heavily peaked towards the subway. This is a factor of land use, not of the network itself, and where it is a factor of the network, it is usually more dependent on the subway network; all the routes you listed, with the exception of maybe the Bx1/2, connect to multiple subway lines along the way.

 

I have a major issue with your example of the Q25 for various reasons. First of all, the route is able to connect to two subway stops on either end. For practical reasons this is not possible with most of Queens, because the subway network does not extend that far east; it's not like the Bronx, where the subway stretches as far as Wakefield, Co-op City and Dyre up to basically the county line or close to it. The MTA already goes out of its way to do this; a route like the Q65, were the subway to reach further east, would probably not divert into Flushing or Jamaica. It's simply not realistic to try and connect both ends to a subway line, particularly for those routes that reach as far as the county line.

 

Second of all, there are length issues to consider. College Point is able to get through routed buses because College Point is not actually that far from Flushing at all and demand is high there; by private vehicle the drive is ten minutes max. Merging routes like the Q43 and Q40 would be terrible, because there would be a huge demand mismatch; the Q40 does not need Q43 levels of service. Matching routes that actually have more similar demand requirements, like the Q6 and the Q43, would result in a route that is too long to be reliable. Even the short stub of the Q25 to College Point makes that line a shitshow; the Q25 and Q65 are pretty unreliable because traffic in Flushing is so terrible.

 

To make a point about unreliability; look at the . Post-2010, everyone hated it (and still hates it) because all of the congestion issues made the route extremely unreliability. But when Montague was closed and the route was split in half, reliability shot up. Why? Because you could now isolate issues in the half that they occurred in, improving reliability. When the tunnel reopened, reliability went back down. Combining bus routes that have to pass through the hubs of Jamaica and Flushing would cause similar problems.

[B35 via Church]

To Jubai (don't know why his handle isn't showing up in the quotes for)......

 

In order for it to be easy to prove whether a route is effective you would have to know what it's desired outcome is, given effectiveness (by dictionary definition) is the degree to which something is successful in achieving a desired result. You're now into the fallacy of begging the question because the first thing I'm going to ask when someone mentions effectiveness (in any context) is "Effective at what?" .  For me, there is at least an answer to that question and that answer is buses should be effective at moving people. The question I would pose not just to you but others reading this, is what do you use to measure the effectiveness of the overall bus network at moving people. Since each route makes trips and moves people boardings per trip makes sense as a baseline measure that can be applied to each route while subsequently averaged across the system. There are other important aspects beyond that but without a baseline measure to hold all routes to in terms of efficiency or effectiveness then the nuances of their individual performance becomes a matter of splitting hairs in the sense that something beneficial to one route may be detrimental to another and there would would no singular focus on improving mobility for the entire city.

 

Knowing what the desired outcome is would be the easiest way to portray & prove how effective a route is.....

There is no circular reasoning involved with me telling you that it is far easier to portray & prove that a route's effectiveness over its efficiency....

 

The thing here apparently is you're talking about bus routes effectively moving people & I'm talking about the utilization of bus routes (for their purpose) in our system..... Way I see it, that is why you can feasibly force the narrative of effectiveness & efficiency as being essentially one in the same....

 

What do I use to measure the effectiveness of our network at moving people?

I'm not saying this to be snide, but you don't "measure" effectiveness.... It's wholly opinionated.

I can tell you that a route like the Bx27 is effective, but you may disregard it as being so because it's not much more than a feeder route (which said type of routes you're apparently not too fond of, so it seems)

 

Efficiency of our network (all 5 boroughs), or (each individual borough) can be measured (local, express, local & express), but I'd fathom it being a long, arduous task to compute - of which in the real world would mean absolutely nothing.....

 

Trip times can certainly be factored in and boardings per hour in many cases in taken more seriously than boardings per trip given the driver's cost in reflected in time. The thing is that a route like the M101  (to use an example) doesn't finish a full trip within an hour. Therefore boardings per hour will be lower than boarding per trip and a poor reflection of the route's actual dynamics.

 

As much as it's important to have a full picture of route performance considering things like speeds, reliability, loading guidelines and what not if there's no baseline comparison on which to gauge overall success then we're back to splitting hairs because those individual aspects all tie into one another which then tie back to ridership so there's no singular goal other than setting up a patchwork conglomerate of routes that don't really fuse together to enhance mobility. This is why I made the post I did in response to BrooklynBus. If you're as a whole planning around efficiently moving people then you've (sunk costs aside) also been effective so there was no need to use the MTA's mentality with crowding as a way to show some kind of difference that doesn't exist.

I understand that it's easier for you to claim & conclude how successful @ being efficient highly efficient those Bronx bus routes are, as you're only using one variable (ridership) to illustrate how efficient those routes are.... I'm telling you that does not tell the whole story in regards to efficiency, there's no way to dance around that.... Telling me that factoring in trip times as it pertains to a route's efficiency is splitting hairs, is like telling me showering with no water is splitting hairs because you went in there with a towel & a bar of soap!

 

There are effective (again based on whatever criteria you can come up with) routes in Queens and if you want you can say all them are. Where I'm somewhat dismissive is that the hub-spoke model of bus service within Northeast and Southeast Queens does not maximize mobility for the borough as a whole. Last time I checked there are hospitals, secondary schools, colleges and various popular businesses in areas other than Flushing or Jamaica. Frequent, vast reaching service is needed to Flushing and Jamaica for subway access but the amount of buses just stopping dead in Flushing or Jamaica having flushed passengers from one direction is just too damn high. A route like the Q25 works well because you have passengers flowing into Flushing from the north (College Point) and the south (the areas along Kissena) and for each direction that reverse flow allows for more ridership each trip. The Q44 is the same way. You can definitely have buses feeding people to the subway (to contest bobtehpanda's points) without that being a largely unidirectional, peak hour driven mess. Many of the users of those "efficient" Bronx routes do use it to get to the subway.

IDK, is the implication that our bus network be structured separate from the subway somehow? That's what I'm getting from this paragraph here....

 

I mean, I don't really quite get what your gripe is with feeder routes, but efficiency-wise, they tend to be the highest efficiency rated routes in the system.... JerBear mentioned the Q64, and I'll give you a Brooklyn route - the B74.....

 

The hub & spoke model isn't the problem..... The MTA gets into trouble when/where they don't revise bus routes on a frequent enough basis.... You look at a route (the actual routing & how it's (barely) used) like the B24 & you say to yourself, what the f***....

 

Anyway, think I got to what I wanted to say with all this....

[B35 via Church]

To further the points I was making in the last reply I had thought of some ideas for improvements in Queens and my initial thoughts are:

- Merge the Q66 and Q26 into one route. 

- Extend a pair of either the Guy R Brewer or Merrick Blvd routes northward mirroring the Q30/31 until Union Tpke sending one service to QCC (east along Union Tpke and then Springfield Blvd) and the other west along Union to the at Queens Blvd. This would effectively re-allocate Q46 and Q30 service to routes that serve a larger unique riderbase and thus increase the efficiency while maintaining usefulness to riders. For SE Queens users this is a net benefit given that there is now an opportunity to use a bus that travels north of Jamaica without transferring.

- Merge the Q43 and Q40 into one route. 

- Merge the Q112 and Q42 into one route.

- Extend one of the Flushing feeders serving Bayside west to Queens Center Mall using Roosevelt, Junction and 51 Av 

- Encourage NICE to run open-door service in Queens. 

- Extend the Q64 to Middle Village using Austin < Yellowstone < Cooper < Metropolitan 

 

That's what I've thought of for now. If I come up with anything else i'll get into the Queens proposal thread. 

...and not one of those routes would be efficient... Not one.

 

 

I don't agree with your idea of combining two routes together for the sake of making improvements.

For example why would you combine the Q66 which is a long route prone to bunching and shows up late with a part time route like the Q26 making that unreliable. The MTA already screwed with that route back in 2010 when they cut off peak service. It doesn't need to be messed with anymore.

The Q112 and Q42 merge would have the same effect I just mentioned above

The Q40 and Q43 combination leads me into my next thought.

Your plan actually reminds me of the way some routes in Queens were operated a real long time ago. They would have a route like the Q17/Q30 which one run the 17 route and at Jamaica for example it would turn into a 30 and would run the reverse direction as the Q30/Q17. I was trying to find out more information about it but I believe they stopped that practice because it caused routes to suffer reliability wise.

And what is your purpose for extending the Q64. It sole purpose is to feed the subway station in Forest Hills. The only changes I see happening in the future concerning that route would be the addition of articulated buses.

I don't want to turn this into (another) idea thread, so what I'm going to say right now is that it goes completely against his narrative.....

 

He was better off not even posting any of that after his italicized retorts to my reply.....

 

You can't convey to me you want this very efficient system, then bring up a combination of (any of these) routes, really....

The Q40 & the Q43? Open door service on a route like the n22 along Hillside av? Yikes!

 

Too much of a deal is made with the idea of efficiency. You must accept the fact that every route cannot have a high level of ridership.

I swear I was saying this to myself as I was responding to him this morning, almost verbatim....

[NewFlyer 230]

...and not one of those routes would be efficient... Not one.

 

 

I don't want to turn this into (another) idea thread, so what I'm going to say right now is that it goes completely against his narrative.....

 

He was better off not even posting any of that after his italicized retorts to my reply.....

 

You can't convey to me you want this very efficient system, then bring up a combination of (any of these) routes, really....

The Q40 & the Q43? Open door service on a route like the n22 along Hillside av? Yikes!

 

I swear I was saying this to myself as I was responding to him this morning, almost verbatim....

Well actually I was against his idea and I was also mentioning a example of how service used to run on some routes in Queens.

I know a Q40-Q43 combination wouldn't work that why I mentioned how I found out the Q17-Q30 had a similar combination as the one he wants and it was broken up because it was unreliable.

I don't know why he wants to change all these subway feeder routes into long drawn out messes.

[JerBear]

http://qptc.org/rebutal.html

From BusChat:

Posted by BrooklynBus on Fri Feb 12 19:38:18 2016:

DOT spells the word "Glossary" as GLOSSERY in big bold print because they are too lazy to even use spell check.

 

 

How you gonna hate on DOT for that mistake and then put up a link where 'rebuttal' is misspelled in the link itself?