NYC Bus Slowest in Nation - Website Verifies How Slow Your Route Is

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Thursday, October 6, 2016

10 Comments

How Bad Is Bus Service on Your Route? Check This Web Site and See

by Brad Aaron

 

Image: busturnaround.nyc

 

Just how bad do bus riders have it in NYC? Today the transit advocates with the Bus Turnaround campaignlaunched a web site that lets you look up any route in the system and see how it performs. Spend a few minutes on the site and you’ll see why ridership has fallen 16 percent citywide since 2002.

There’s a fun (if you can call it that) visualization of the headaches a New Yorker must deal with on a typical bus trip — unpredictable arrivals, slow boarding, frequent stops — and a hypothetical look at the same trip on an improved system where buses are on time, direct, and don’t get bogged down in traffic.

The main feature of the site, though, is a report card for every route, with data on bus speed, bunching, and ridership. You can look up the buses you ride on regular basis or click on routes anywhere in the city. One pattern that emerges — the routes that the most people rely on are doing the worst.

The report cards are based on MTA Bus Time information — a testament to the power of open data.

The Bus Turnaround website was announced at a morning rally where advocats, electeds, and straphangers called for the MTA and NYC DOT to make citywide improvements to the bus network, ahead of a City Council hearing on the subject. Stay tuned for coverage of the hearing later today.

 

Source: http://www.streetsblog.org/2016/10/06/how-bad-is-bus-service-on-your-route-check-this-web-site-and-see/

[B22viaAtlanticAv]

Well thanks to this website I got  proof I take the worst bunched bus routes in the city; with no surprise the B12 clocks in at 20.8% bus bunching followed by the B6 at 19.1% with the B15 at 19% and they wonder why bus ridership is taking nose dive. Ain't nobody got to time waiting for them drivers playing games whether its tag or hide and go seek, the MTA needs to monitor there drivers better. I've seen and experienced lot to know, which routes to avoid simply because they're not reliable at all and the real truth is people aren't stupid. Most have come to the same understanding too resulting in this situation. Years of Neglect have caused the problems we face today, not the sudden popularity in " taxi apps" many use today instead of "the old fashion waiting years for a crowded bus only to have two other empty ones pass you by" method the MTA has been using.   

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Well thanks to this website I got  proof I take the worst bunched bus routes in the city; with no surprise the B12 clocks in at 20.8% bus bunching followed by the B6 at 19.1% with the B15 at 19% and they wonder why bus ridership is taking nose dive. Ain't nobody got to time waiting for them drivers playing games whether its tag or hide and go seek, the MTA needs to monitor there drivers better. I've seen and experienced lot to know, which routes to avoid simply because they're not reliable at all and the real truth is people aren't stupid. Most have come to the same understanding too resulting in this situation. Years of Neglect have caused the problems we face today, not the sudden popularity in " taxi apps" many use today instead of "the old fashion waiting years for a crowded bus only to have two other empty ones pass you by" method the MTA has been using.   

 @ hide and go seek... What's amazing to me is that even the short routes average LESS than 9 mph. The B2 and B31 are both very short routes, and both of them average less than 8 mph.  

[B22viaAtlanticAv]

 @ hide and go seek... 

I'm not crazy it drives me up the wall, when i'm tracking a bus route for the nearest bus with no success only to find a bus on said route

show up in service after changing my route to work... it gives me the impression the drivers have the ability to turn on and off the tracking device on their buses...

[Via Garibaldi 8]

I'm not crazy it drives me up the wall, when i'm tracking a bus route for the nearest bus with no success only to find a bus on said route

show up in service after changing my route to work... it gives me the impression the drivers have the ability to turn on and off the tracking device on their buses...

Well they can indeed manipulate it, be it intentionally or not. I had a guy doing that on the BxM2.  His bus was NEVER on BusTime, and then he would come 10 - 15 minutes late consistently.  Once I noticed the trend, I started filing complaints, noting the bus#, time, bus route, etc. and how his bus could never be tracked.  If it's the same guy with a different bus, it's hard to believe that every bus he gets can have issues with the tracking device.  One night there were a bunch of us waiting at Broadway and 63rd and several of us were trying to track the bus to no avail.  Then suddenly we see the bus coming around from Columbus Circle and a guy I was speaking with, I noted how this particular driver likes to play games and how I would be reporting him. He (the guy I was speaking with) didn't get that particular trip regularly, so he assumed that the tracking device on the bus must've not been working which was why none of us could see where the bus was, but that wasn't the case.

[Q43LTD]

Some of this isn't accurate

[Via Garibaldi 8]

Some of this isn't accurate

For example??

[CDTA]

For anyone interested in a spreadsheet version so that you can sort by speed or bus bunching

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TpGgk54GgRW2RX7Ju8_xeeGF5W8u5MS23kCd2jCY6Ik/edit#gid=0

[Q43LTD]

For example??

The Q113 is still listed as a LCL/LTD

[IAlam]

As a side note the website developers did a great job

[B22viaAtlanticAv]

The Q113 is still listed as a LCL/LTD

Similarly to how certain routes are paired together like the bx1/2 or Sbs/Lcls where it applies;one can make the argument that one the Q114 is a new route and that it's the local variant of the Q113.

[CDTA]

The Q113 is still listed as a LCL/LTD

 

 

Similarly to how certain routes are paired together like the bx1/2 or Sbs/Lcls where it applies;one can make the argument that one the Q114 is a new route and that it's the local variant of the Q113.

 

The data is from 2014.

[B35 via Church]

The data is from 2014.

That explains some of these numbers.

 

Call me a pessimist, but I actually thought these numbers (mph) were kind of... high!

[BM5 via Woodhaven]

IDK about me, but some of those bunching statistics seem low too. On routes like the B44, B46, etc., there's bunching throughout the whole day.

[B22viaAtlanticAv]

High or low Bus speeds and bunching has not improved citywide... Wait times are increasing while service is decreasing it's the sad truth about the

Meanwhile in other news the new paint scheme,USB ports and free wifi will certainly make my trips seem a lot faster than they're....

[checkmatechamp13]

Well thanks to this website I got  proof I take the worst bunched bus routes in the city; with no surprise the B12 clocks in at 20.8% bus bunching followed by the B6 at 19.1% with the B15 at 19% and they wonder why bus ridership is taking nose dive. Ain't nobody got to time waiting for them drivers playing games whether its tag or hide and go seek, the MTA needs to monitor there drivers better. I've seen and experienced lot to know, which routes to avoid simply because they're not reliable at all and the real truth is people aren't stupid. Most have come to the same understanding too resulting in this situation. Years of Neglect have caused the problems we face today, not the sudden popularity in " taxi apps" many use today instead of "the old fashion waiting years for a crowded bus only to have two other empty ones pass you by" method the MTA has been using.   

 

The thing is that a lot of those routes with high percentages of bunched buses tend to be the more frequent routes. For example, you take a route like the S76 that only has 5.20% of buses bunched, that looks pretty good, until you realize that some of that bunching is when the buses run on 30 minute headways (which means you have around an hour gap, and then 2 buses come at once).

 

By contrast, you take a route that runs every 5 minutes that bunches up, you could have gaps of 10-15 minutes and while that's annoying, it's not quite as much of a hindrance as bunching on infrequent routes.

 

In other words, at least some of that bunching is made up for by the frequent service. I agree that ideally, there should be little to no bunching (since on some routes, buses are literally scheduled every 2 minutes at some times) but to make routes like the B12, B6, etc seem like the "worse bunched" routes in the city is misleading.

[Jdog14]

 

 

In other words, at least some of that bunching is made up for by the frequent service. I agree that ideally, there should be little to no bunching (since on some routes, buses are literally scheduled every 2 minutes at some times) but to make routes like the B12, B6, etc seem like the "worse bunched" routes in the city is misleading.

 

To be fair the B12 is one un reliable bus route. You can have a huge crowd waiting for a bus at Alabama Ave and sometimes buses don't show for awhile. The B15 is also pretty un reliable despite having frequent service (I have observed waits well above 30 minutes during the rush hr aswell as several instances of atleast 6-8 buses all within 1 minute of each other with no buses in the other direction.)

 

For instance:

 

 

Either the bus drivers really felt like goofing off this day, or the TA just doesn't give a rats rear about bus serivce anymore in this city unless its SBS.

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

To be fair the B12 is one un reliable bus route. You can have a huge crowd waiting for a bus at Alabama Ave and sometimes buses don't show for awhile. The B15 is also pretty un reliable despite having frequent service (I have observed waits well above 30 minutes during the rush hr aswell as several instances of atleast 6-8 buses all within 1 minute of each other with no buses in the other direction.)

 

For instance:

 

 

Either the bus drivers really felt like goofing off this day, or the TA just doesn't give a rats rear about bus serivce anymore in this city unless its SBS.

Even on the Bx12 +SBS which has better headways than the B15, gaps of 20-30 minutes are not unheard of during the PM Rush hour. Bus service all over the city is ridiculous. I'm shocked that the % of bunching found on the Bx12 SBS was so low, I was expecting a # around what the Bx19 or 36 has. Way too often these days you have Bx12 SBS buses in groups of three and four and wide gaps elsewhere in the route. 

 

Although I'm at a loss with what to do with the Bx12 on Fridays. I was out there yesterday and traffic was bumper to bumper for almost the whole route and comments have been made with regards to Friday traffic along the Pelham/Fordham corridor being worse than other weekdays.

 

I wonder what B35 has to say about the B12 (a route he has ranted about here a few times) having the highest percentage of bunching in the city.

[R10 2952]

Last I heard MTA had a rule that buses on the same route heading in the same direction aren't allowed to pass each other; there's also been scheduling crackdowns by the dispatchers to the point that drivers are so afraid of showing up somewhere ahead of schedule that they deliberately drive slow and wait for the signal to change to red in order to 'keep time'.  Not to mention boarding takes forever when you have forty people in a line and only one available entrance; many places in Europe have had all-door boarding and ticket-punch/scanning for decades and it works wonders; the Europeans also don't take their sweet-ass time changing drivers mid-route.  In New York I've witnessed  driver changes that took 10+ minutes; in Europe it never took more than 45 seconds- and they have unions, too, so if they can do it, I'm sure we also could.

[checkmatechamp13]

Although I'm at a loss with what to do with the Bx12 on Fridays. I was out there yesterday and traffic was bumper to bumper for almost the whole route and comments have been made with regards to Friday traffic along the Pelham/Fordham corridor being worse than other weekdays.

 

The only thing I can think of is to have a few gap-filler buses stationed near key points in the route (I guess PBP, Fordham Plaza, WPR, and maybe even a couple at the two end terminals if traffic is that bad to the point where you have large gaps even at the terminals).

 

Last I heard MTA had a rule that buses on the same route heading in the same direction aren't allowed to pass each other; there's also been scheduling crackdowns by the dispatchers to the point that drivers are so afraid of showing up somewhere ahead of schedule that they deliberately drive slow and wait for the signal to change to red in order to 'keep time'.  Not to mention boarding takes forever when you have forty people in a line and only one available entrance; many places in Europe have had all-door boarding and ticket-punch/scanning for decades and it works wonders; the Europeans also don't take their sweet-ass time changing drivers mid-route.  In New York I've witnessed  driver changes that took 10+ minutes; in Europe it never took more than 45 seconds- and they have unions, too, so if they can do it, I'm sure we also could.

 

Other agencies (I know PalmTran in Florida is one, or at least was one a few years ago) have that policy, but I remember a thread on these forums where we had that discussion, and the consensus was that each bus follows it's own schedule, so if it happens to pass another bus en route, but still sticks to its own schedule, that's OK.

 

Now even then, that policy can cause problems for no reason. For example, let's say you have a bus scheduled to leave the timepoint at 3:00PM & 3:10PM (and for simplicity's sake, lets say it only takes 30 seconds to board passengers, so they can leave at 3:00PM & 3:10PM). One bus runs 3 minutes early and arrives at 3:07PM, while the other bus is 10 minutes late and arrives at 3:10PM. Technically the 3:07PM bus should wait 3 minutes before departing, even though in practice, it is taking the place of the bus that was supposed to arrive at 3PM, and the 3:10PM bus is taking its place.

 

I agree that it's annoying when B/Os drive slow to avoid arriving early. I've always said that the schedules should be adjusted to reflect what actually happens on the road, and I would prefer that buses arrive a few minutes late, and keep it moving, instead of crawling to keep time. 

[bobtehpanda]

In essence, above a certain frequency I don't necessarily care that the bus isn't matching the schedule exactly; I care that the headway is maintained. If the bus comes every ten minutes, the buses showing up on the 8 instead of on the 6 is not that big a deal to me, but three buses showing up and then no buses for the next half hour is a very big deal.

[JubaionBx12+SBS]

In essence, above a certain frequency I don't necessarily care that the bus isn't matching the schedule exactly; I care that the headway is maintained. If the bus comes every ten minutes, the buses showing up on the 8 instead of on the 6 is not that big a deal to me, but three buses showing up and then no buses for the next half hour is a very big deal.

 

This is standard operating procedure for low headway routes in NYC these days. 

[B35 via Church]

The thing is that a lot of those routes with high percentages of bunched buses tend to be the more frequent routes. For example, you take a route like the S76 that only has 5.20% of buses bunched, that looks pretty good, until you realize that some of that bunching is when the buses run on 30 minute headways (which means you have around an hour gap, and then 2 buses come at once).

 

By contrast, you take a route that runs every 5 minutes that bunches up, you could have gaps of 10-15 minutes and while that's annoying, it's not quite as much of a hindrance as bunching on infrequent routes.

 

In other words, at least some of that bunching is made up for by the frequent service. I agree that ideally, there should be little to no bunching (since on some routes, buses are literally scheduled every 2 minutes at some times) but to make routes like the B12, B6, etc seem like the "worse bunched" routes in the city is misleading.

I see the point being made, but I can't agree with the general premise of it.... What you're really getting at is the affect of the bunching, and not the occurrence of the bunching itself.... The fact that the more frequent routes are more prone to bunching doesn't make the problem of bunching any less so.... I say that because you make the statement "seem like the worse bunched routes" when referring to the B6's, B12's, etc. of the world, as if routes running on high frequencies somehow nullifies the problem of bunching....

 

You can't really try to redefine what worse bunched means....

 

To be fair the B12 is one un reliable bus route. You can have a huge crowd waiting for a bus at Alabama Ave and sometimes buses don't show for awhile.

Lol.... Yep, IDK how many posts on here I've stated this very thing....

 

I'm convinced that it's purposeful & not mere coincidences all of these times; e/g. - How many (J)'s (Manhattan bound, specifically - because that's where the masses of B12 riders from Alabama av are coming from.... Very few of them are coming off Q24's, Q56's, the LIRR, and the Jamaica bound , compared to the Manhattan bound J... Virtually none of them are coming off the B25 from the west, and both the B20 & B83 from the south) pass by (Alabama) before we schedule a WB B12 to arrive & depart... Because WB buses (esp. during the PM rush) do NOT follow that posted timetable, not in the slightest.... Too many buses are going OOS coming from the west (meaning, approaching Alabama) during the PM rush specifially...

 

I wonder what B35 has to say about the B12 (a route he has ranted about here a few times) having the highest percentage of bunching in the city.

Even though this is based on old data, there isn't much more to say..... Can't say I'm surprised of the specific statistic, but what I will say about the bunching on the B12 is that it is consistent; the grave occurrence of it tends to happen at the same time instances without fail - like the bunching is scheduled/purposefully done or something.... When I hear at least 2 MTA workers out of ENY depot make issue about the B12 itself, something is rotten in the state of Denmark....

[B35 via Church]

Just saw these 2 posts...

 

In essence, above a certain frequency I don't necessarily care that the bus isn't matching the schedule exactly; I care that the headway is maintained. If the bus comes every ten minutes, the buses showing up on the 8 instead of on the 6 is not that big a deal to me, but three buses showing up and then no buses for the next half hour is a very big deal.

While true, those are two extremes though.... I'd like to then ask, what is your breaking point AFAYC?

 

To me, it's not so much about matching the schedule exactly, as much as it is how far off the schedule that buses are running - in conjunction with the headways of that bus.....Using your example of 10 min headways, 2 min. off the schedule wouldn't really bother me, but anything at & after 5 would.... If buses are constantly/consistently running 5 mins. off schedule on a route w/ 10 min. headways, that bugs me.... Sets off a trigger in my mind; it opens the door to those buses being 10 mins late...

 

Anyone that used to take the Q11 before the advents of the Q52 & the Q21 (to QCM) knows exactly what I'm getting at with this....

 

This is standard operating procedure for low headway routes in NYC these days. 

Even though the exception doesn't swallow the rule, I don't know if I'd go that far.... Yet.

 

I say that as someone that lives within << a 5 min walk from 2 routes where it's not the case.....With the B35 & B46 (well, if you want the SBS anyway... locals are another story, which has been talked about on here), if you miss a set of 4 bunched buses, 2 or 3 more buses will come within a 5 min. or so, span.... Aside from late night & overnight service, something has to be seriously wrong (like a police investigation, some sort of accident, construction hindrances, etc) with Church & Utica (respectively) for buses to be that late/delayed.....

 

The morning WB B103 is (or at least, used to be) like that also, you miss a bus in a bunched set of 2's or 3's, and another set of 2 will arrive in less than 10 mins..... Of course, this specific example is dependent on if you're riding past the junction or not.... IDK if it's still the case, but when I used to take the BM2 in the morning, in a 10 min. span, you'd see about 6-8 B103's; with no more than 3 of them going the full distance (Downtown Brooklyn)... I used to say to myself, these things are arriving more frequent than 6's, shit.... I remember when the B103 was severely underserved, now look at the thing....

[bobtehpanda]

Just saw these 2 posts...

 

While true, those are two extremes though.... I'd like to then ask, what is your breaking point AFAYC?

 

To me, it's not so much about matching the schedule exactly, as much as it is how far off the schedule that buses are running - in conjunction with the headways of that bus.....Using your example of 10 min headways, 2 min. off the schedule wouldn't really bother me, but anything at & after 5 would.... If buses are constantly/consistently running 5 mins. off schedule on a route w/ 10 min. headways, that bugs me.... Sets off a trigger in my mind; it opens the door to those buses being 10 mins late...

 

For me in the PM peak trying to get home, I know that my bus and the subway are both so frequent that matching up their schedules would be impossible to achieve. What I care about at that point is that I'm not spending more time than an average five minutes waiting for the bus if it's supposed to show up every ten.