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MTA to Eliminate 400 Bus Stops in the Bronx as Part of Bus Network Redesign


Via Garibaldi 8

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1 hour ago, checkmatechamp13 said:

As I've stated numerous times, it is not accurate that the further you walk, the greater your chances are of missing the bus. On average, the additional travel time will be equal to the time of the additional walking. Some of the time you are walking when the bus is approaching, but most of the time (depending on the frequency of the bus), you are walking during time you would've spent waiting anyway. 

Then in those cases it may very well make sense to just walk the whole way. But yet at the same time, you have to consider the longer-distance riders who benefit from the faster speeds. Also keep in mind that bus stops should be placed near major activity centers and transfer points, so the majority of people will not be walking the 500 feet. 

Slow trip times are also why people use Uber or car service (or dollar vans). Many stops are skipped....ehhh....depends on the route and the neighborhood it is passing through at a given time. I can definitely name neighborhoods where you will be stopping at every single stop for most of the day for pickup and/or-drop-off (and keep in mind that overnight, Request-A-Stop is in place).

Also keep in mind that these small stops where you may or may not stop there contribute to unreliability and bunching. At the big stops, you know you're going to have to stop. But all of the little stops, you stop for one person, you miss the light, you stop for another one, you miss another light, and before you know it the following bus is right behind you.

Keep in mind that the MTA planned on making cuts to the express service anyway (they mentioned in earlier committee meeting documents). So of course people are going to protest outright service reductions.

That being said, not every single aspect of the plan received protest. The Central Bronx restructuring seemed to be pretty popular and the few comments that I heard about it were positive.

I disagree with you that the chance of missing a bus is not greater the further you walk along the route to the bus stop. Yes, most of the time it makes no difference in trip time because you are walking instead of waiting. But for some trips it does make a difference. My stop was removed in 2006, so I have been able to compare the differences for 13 years now. When the bus did stop, I just missed a bus about 10 percent of the time. Since the stop was removed, that increased to about 30 percent and I only had to walk an additional 200 feet. If I had to walk an additional 400 or 500 feet, there would be a much greater chance of missing a bus that I would have been able to catch at my corner. 

Missing a bus usually adds 10 minutes. If buses are bunched it could add 20 minutes. That would turn a trip previously taking 30 minutes to one taking 50 minutes. Even if that happens only ten percent of the time it is still significant. More significant than the ten seconds the bus may save by skipping the stop. And as I stated before, because of the low usage of stops in the area and only one bus in six was previously stopping anyway.  The time savings by eliminating this one stop was insignificant even if you multiply the ten seconds by all the people on the bus.

And how many people know about request a stop since it is barely publicized? And I don’t see how stopping at lightly utilized stops affects bus bunching and unreliability.     Wheelchairs and traffic are a much bigger factors affecting bunching.

As far as buses stopping at major activity centers, that may account for one end of the trip. Few are starting and ending their trip at an activity center. And as I stated the 500 feet to walk with 1,000 feet spacing does not take into the account the walk to get to the bus route. If you have service gaps like no bus between Utica and New York/Nostrand Avenue, the additional walk with further spaced stops would put both routes B44 and B46 out of reach for many. 

As far as longer distance riders, on local routes they account for a small minority of riders, since the average local bus trip is only 2.3 miles. And don’t forget many routes are SBS or Limited, so you have many bus routes with widely spaced stops anyway for longer distance riders. Why would we want to make every route, even low usage routes, Limiteds? 

In areas where you have the choice of taking a subway or a bus, the bus stops definitely need to be closer together.

I never said that some stops couldn’t be removed on a case by case basis. But applying a standard of something like 750 to 1000 feet all over would be a huge mistake. You would lose many more riders than you would gain. Walking long distances in bad weather is not inducive to attracting riders and certainly not for someone who has difficulty walking. Those people have to be considered. 

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I don't have time to respond to this post in its entirety except to say that the systems that have implemented stop consolidation policies (whether here or in Europe) are the ones which are seeing ridership growth, and indeed bus stop consolidation has been demonstrated in the US to have no adverse impact on ridership. I try my very hardest not to disagree with data and to give full consideration to best practices; this seems a situation where both are pretty unified on the subject.

Edited by RR503
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10 hours ago, BrooklynBus said:

I disagree with you that the chance of missing a bus is not greater the further you walk along the route to the bus stop. Yes, most of the time it makes no difference in trip time because you are walking instead of waiting. But for some trips it does make a difference. My stop was removed in 2006, so I have been able to compare the differences for 13 years now. When the bus did stop, I just missed a bus about 10 percent of the time. Since the stop was removed, that increased to about 30 percent and I only had to walk an additional 200 feet. If I had to walk an additional 400 or 500 feet, there would be a much greater chance of missing a bus that I would have been able to catch at my corner. 

Missing a bus usually adds 10 minutes. If buses are bunched it could add 20 minutes. That would turn a trip previously taking 30 minutes to one taking 50 minutes. Even if that happens only ten percent of the time it is still significant. More significant than the ten seconds the bus may save by skipping the stop. And as I stated before, because of the low usage of stops in the area and only one bus in six was previously stopping anyway.  The time savings by eliminating this one stop was insignificant even if you multiply the ten seconds by all the people on the bus.

And how many people know about request a stop since it is barely publicized? And I don’t see how stopping at lightly utilized stops affects bus bunching and unreliability.     Wheelchairs and traffic are a much bigger factors affecting bunching.

As far as buses stopping at major activity centers, that may account for one end of the trip. Few are starting and ending their trip at an activity center. And as I stated the 500 feet to walk with 1,000 feet spacing does not take into the account the walk to get to the bus route. If you have service gaps like no bus between Utica and New York/Nostrand Avenue, the additional walk with further spaced stops would put both routes B44 and B46 out of reach for many. 

As far as longer distance riders, on local routes they account for a small minority of riders, since the average local bus trip is only 2.3 miles. And don’t forget many routes are SBS or Limited, so you have many bus routes with widely spaced stops anyway for longer distance riders. Why would we want to make every route, even low usage routes, Limiteds? 

In areas where you have the choice of taking a subway or a bus, the bus stops definitely need to be closer together.

I never said that some stops couldn’t be removed on a case by case basis. But applying a standard of something like 750 to 1000 feet all over would be a huge mistake. You would lose many more riders than you would gain. Walking long distances in bad weather is not inducive to attracting riders and certainly not for someone who has difficulty walking. Those people have to be considered. 

10% of 10 minutes is 1 minute. 30% of 10 minutes is 3 minutes. So the removal of that stop only added 2 minutes on average to your trip, which was probably just around the extra walking time to the bus. You just proved my point.

It's publicised when you see all the other passengers do it and you ask the driver to do it as well...

It might not be the biggest factor but it is one of the factors in bunching/unreliability.

Maybe the average bus trip is so short because the stop spacing discourages longer-distance trips ;)

And that's what they did here...they eliminated stops on a case-by-case basis and as a result the spacing is still on the shorter end (the average spacing I think was 1092 feet which means there wwre plenty of cases of shorter spacing where necessary)

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1 hour ago, checkmatechamp13 said:

10% of 10 minutes is 1 minute. 30% of 10 minutes is 3 minutes. So the removal of that stop only added 2 minutes on average to your trip, which was probably just around the extra walking time to the bus. You just proved my point.

It's publicised when you see all the other passengers do it and you ask the driver to do it as well...

It might not be the biggest factor but it is one of the factors in bunching/unreliability.

Maybe the average bus trip is so short because the stop spacing discourages longer-distance trips ;)

And that's what they did here...they eliminated stops on a case-by-case basis and as a result the spacing is still on the shorter end (the average spacing I think was 1092 feet which means there wwre plenty of cases of shorter spacing where necessary)

Request a stop is only for getting off the bus right? You can't ask a driver to stop for you at a non bus stop when you get on. So it only works half the time. 

And if they removed stops on a case by case basis, I have no problem with that. I was basically responding to the 1,000 foot standard that another poster proposed. 

I still believe it makes little sense to remove very lightly utilized stops that 70 percent of the buses skip anyway which was the case with my stop. Heavily utilized stops should not be removed either even if all are close together because the remaining stops would become overloaded and more prone to fare evasion. Only closely spaced moderately used stops should be considered for elimination. 

But a law requiring cars to give the right of way to buses pulling out from bus stops would save much more time than eliminating bus stops. A bus saves an average of 12 seconds by eliminating a stop. Buses sometimes wait 30 seconds to a minute until they get the right of way when pulling out. Two states have such a law. 

Edited by BrooklynBus
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3 hours ago, checkmatechamp13 said:

10% of 10 minutes is 1 minute. 30% of 10 minutes is 3 minutes. So the removal of that stop only added 2 minutes on average to your trip, which was probably just around the extra walking time to the bus. You just proved my point.

Maybe the average bus trip is so short because the stop spacing discourages longer-distance trips ;)

Your logic is flawed The added three minutes and two minutes do not cancel each other out. They are cumulative. So if my trip previously was 30 minutes, it is now 35 minutes or about 16 percent longer. 

As far as short stop spacing discouraging longer trips, all heavily used routes either have limited or SBS service or a subway alternative. Buses are usually for shorter trips. 

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2 hours ago, BrooklynBus said:

Your logic is flawed The added three minutes and two minutes do not cancel each other out. They are cumulative. So if my trip previously was 30 minutes, it is now 35 minutes or about 16 percent longer. 

As far as short stop spacing discouraging longer trips, all heavily used routes either have limited or SBS service or a subway alternative. Buses are usually for shorter trips. 

So you're saying this, but once again, pretty much all the evidence points towards these effects as being counterbalanced by benefits/overstated by you. So I guess my question is how do you square papers like this or this with your claims? Why should I believe you over people who are, you know, published authors on the subject?

4 hours ago, B35 via Church said:

So what happens when buses are still crawling along a route with increased stop spacing?

Increase them some more? Shorten the routes? What?

The notion that any given solution has to be a panacea by itself is deeply flawed. Just because something _alone_ will not solve a problem doesn't mean that it isn't a valuable part of some group of interventions.

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32 minutes ago, RR503 said:

The notion that any given solution has to be a panacea by itself is deeply flawed. Just because something _alone_ will not solve a problem doesn't mean that it isn't a valuable part of some group of interventions.

..... and increasing stop spacing, by itself, isn't a panacea for improving a commute on a bus.

My point isn't that of seeking any cure all, it's that increasing stop spacing will not make the difference that the MTA apparently believes that it will... It ignores other factors that can & often does exacerbate someone's commuting time on some bus.

 

Edited by B35 via Church
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1 hour ago, RR503 said:

So you're saying this, but once again, pretty much all the evidence points towards these effects as being counterbalanced by benefits/overstated by you. So I guess my question is how do you square papers like this or this with your claims? Why should I believe you over people who are, you know, published authors on the subject?

I guess I supposed to be impressed by the two papers you cited. I am not. Just because a paper is published in a journal or someone writes a Masters Thesis doesn’t make everything stated correct.

The data needs to determine the results, not predefined conclusions deciding the data collected. First, here are my problems with the first undated paper.  First it is undated, so we do not know how old it is. 

The entire tone of the paper is how the operator can be benefitted with goals to reduce operating costs. I am not disputing the conclusions that wider spacing reduces costs and improves reliability. But what about the impacts to the passenger which are glossed over?

Here are a few quotes: 

“The findings indicated that bus stop consolidation had no significant effects on passenger activity, whereas bus running times improved by nearly 6%.”

What is meant by “no significant effects on passenger activity” and how do they determine what is significant? Where is the discussion on passenger trip time? The time spent on the bus is not the only variable that needs to be considered. Where is the discussion on the effect on ridership?

Another quote:

“For example, Benn (footnote 5) cited a 1992 study conducted by New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority showing that after an increase in the distance between stops of more than 40%, resulting accessibility declined by only 12%.”

So who decided that “only 12%” is insignificant? If I stated ridership declined by “only 12%, wouldn’t you have problems with that statement and say 12% is significant? So why is 12% insignificant when talking about accessibility? Also, I was once interviewed by Benn, and wasn’t impressed. He also was fired by the MTA for inappropriate conduct.

 Quote 3:

“In contrast to the existing 37 stops, the model indicated that the optimal number of stops was 19, with several at new locations. Average spacing increased from approximately 200 to 400 m. Passengers’ average walking time increased 0.60 min, whereas their in-vehicle times declined 1.8 min.” 

How can an increased walk of 100 meters, over 300 feet, take a little over a half minute? Who can walk 600 feet in one minute? That would mean a mile in under nine minutes. Someone would have to be running to the bus stop. 

Now the Masters Thesis. 

“Bus stop consolidation was found to have reduced bus travel times and improved schedule reliability on the route, without adverse impacts on ridership.”

Again, the entire focus is on speed and reliability, not the effect on passenger trip time. 

Second quote:

“Review of coverage area

Generally, a quarter-mile walk is considered to be a reasonable distance that customers will walk to a bus stop. With a detailed neighborhood map, the quarter-mile coverage area was sketched out by tracing all of the possible walking paths, following only legal walkable paths (usually streets, but sometimes also sidewalks, public paths, stairs, etc). Areas that would lose quarter-mile access to a bus stop as a result of a bus stop closure or relocation were scrutinized carefully; if high-ridership generators such as schools or multifamily dwellings existed within the lost coverage area, then alternative bus stop placement scenarios were evaluated. In areas with a regular grid street system and existing bus stop spacing of less than 1000 ́, the lost coverage area from revising the bus stop spacing to 1000-1200 ́ is typically small. However, irregular streets and gaps in the grid may make the lost coverage much larger. Figure 5 shows an example of a sketch of the coverage area.”

The important sentence here is the last one. What percentage of New York City has an irregular grid system? Probably 75 percent. The only places it is fairly regular is Manhattan north of 14 Street, Bedford Stuyvesant area, and southwestern Brooklyn. Even central Brooklyn’s grid is broken by Kings County Hospital and Holy Cross Cemetery. Queen’s grid is totally irregular, Staten Island has no grid, and the Bronx has many topographical issues. So one can assume that increasing bus stop spacing will have a negative effect in those areas since many would now be outside the quarter mile they would be willing to walk. And the data presented does not dispute that. 

Third quote: 

“This represents a 7% ridership increase, at a time when many of Metro’s other inner-city bus routes saw a slight decrease in ridership. However, it should be noted that some additional service, approximately 8 trips both directions, mostly in the late evening period, were added to the route between 2002 and 2003.”

We all know that there is a direct relationship between increasing service levels and increasing ridership. Had there been a 7% increase in ridership or no reduction in ridership, without a service change, we could conclude no negative effects due to bus stop removal. But that is not the case. 

We have no way of knowing, that with the same service increase, and with no bus stop removal, the ridership increase would not have increased by 10 percent. So to conclude there were no negative effects or no significant negative effects by removing bus stops, from the data presented, would be irresponsible. 

Edited by BrooklynBus
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1 hour ago, B35 via Church said:

..... and increasing stop spacing, by itself, isn't a panacea for improving a commute on a bus.

My point isn't that of seeking any cure all, it's that increasing stop spacing will not make the difference that the MTA apparently believes that it will... It ignores other factors that can & often does exacerbate someone's commuting time on some bus.

Did anyone ever say it was...?

Once again, the data disagree. 

10 minutes ago, BrooklynBus said:

The entire tone of the paper is how the operator can be benefitted with goals to reduce operating costs. I am not disputing the conclusions that wider spacing reduces costs and improves reliability. But what about the impacts to the passenger which are glossed over?

First, we need to do away with this reductive image of operating cost reduction as somehow being bad. Reducing ops costs means you can run more service with the same amount of money -- which means you can increase your ridership. That's a very worthy goal. 

11 minutes ago, BrooklynBus said:

What is meant by “no significant effects on passenger activity” and how do they determine what is significant? Where is the discussion on passenger trip time? The time spent on the bus is not the only variable that needs to be considered. Where is the discussion on the effect on ridership?

If you had actually read the paper, your question would have been answered. Page 6:

Th2I6ap.png

15 minutes ago, BrooklynBus said:

So who decided that “only 12%” is insignificant? If I stated ridership declined by “only 12%, wouldn’t you have problems with that statement and say 12% is significant? So why is 12% insignificant when talking about accessibility? Also, I was once interviewed by Benn, and wasn’t impressed. He also was fired by the MTA for inappropriate conduct.

1. Accessibility to stations isn't the only salient variable. We could have the (6) stop at 18th St, which would undoubtedly increase accessibility -- but is it worth the time cost for riders? A 40% decrease in trip time is a ton -- you can go that much further, opening access to that many more jobs/social hubs/places. That's accessibility, too. I'm surprised these sorts of tradeoffs are so foreign to you. 

2. I can't vouch for Benn's person, of course, but that's beside the point here. Either attack the findings of the research, or...say nothing. Attacking people is quite the childish form of debate. 

24 minutes ago, BrooklynBus said:

How can an increased walk of 100 meters, over 300 feet, take a little over a half minute? Who can walk 600 feet in one minute? That would mean a mile in under nine minutes. Someone would have to be running to the bus stop. 

You're assuming all riders' starting positions are laid out in one dimension, which they are not. The world of two dimensions makes it eminently possible that an increase in stop spacing of such a magnitude would just cause someone to make a different turn, negating the noted effect. 

19 minutes ago, BrooklynBus said:

The important sentence here is the last one. What percentage of New York City has an irregular grid system? Probably 75 percent. The only places it is fairly regular is Manhattan north of 14 Street, Bedford Stuyvesant area, and southwestern Brooklyn. Even central Brooklyn’s grid is broken by Kings County Hospital and Holy Cross Cemetery. Queen’s grid is totally irregular, Staten Island has no grid, and the Bronx has many topographical issues. So one can assume that increasing bus stop spacing will have a negative effect in those areas since many would now be outside the quarter mile they would be willing to walk. And the data presented does not dispute that. 

Grid irregularity is only salient to walkshed when said area crosses a grid boundary. Needless to say, for many bus stops a quarter-mile grid will bridge no such boundary even if they are located in areas where the overall street grid is disjointed. There are moreover cases when grid irregularities may actually increase accessibility -- diagonal streets or crosswalk delay-free pathways through parks are great ways to reduce walking time. 

More generally, issues such as topography are absolutely important to consider. But foisting them as a reason to generally oppose stop consolidation (rather than generally supporting it with reservation for such edge cases as the hilly sections of the Bronx)? Nah. 

26 minutes ago, BrooklynBus said:

We all know that there is a direct relationship between increasing service levels and increasing ridership. Had there been a 7% increase in ridership or no reduction in ridership, without a service change, we could conclude no negative effects due to bus stop removal. But that is not the case. 

We have no way of knowing, that with the same service increase, and with no bus stop removal, the ridership increase would not have increased by 10 percent. So to conclude there were no negative effects or no significant negative effects by removing bus stops, from the data presented, would be irresponsible. 

Eight trips is not all that much service, especially on a line that already ran good headways throughout the day already such as the 48 did in 2003. Also worth noting that the transit system in Seattle had already been experiencing growth. I agree that separating out those effects would be optimal, but let's also not pretend that an increase as incremental as that is transformative.

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10 minutes ago, RR503 said:

First, we need to do away with this reductive image of operating cost reduction as somehow being bad. Reducing ops costs means you can run more service with the same amount of money -- which means you can increase your ridership. That's a very worthy goal. 

It sounds wonderful, but the (MTA) doesn't think this way...

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Just now, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

It sounds wonderful, but the (MTA) doesn't think this way...

Don't have time to do a complete rundown of the MTA's institutional psychology, but you'd be surprised as to what the thought processes are these days. The issue of service cuts was always much more nuanced than "cut moar," but now there is even pushback to cuts internally -- budget solutions like shortening runtimes to increase service levels (and thus revenue) at low/no/negative cost may well have their day under Byford. 

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Just now, RR503 said:

Don't have time to do a complete rundown of the MTA's institutional psychology, but you'd be surprised as to what the thought processes are these days. The issue of service cuts was always much more nuanced than "cut moar," but now there is even pushback to cuts internally -- budget solutions like shortening runtimes to increase service levels (and thus revenue) at low/no/negative cost may well have their day under Byford. 

I'll believe it when I see it...

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23 minutes ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

I'll believe it when I see it...

You'll see it when politicians let the agency control its operating budget (no more interference in bargaining, loading the agency down with debt service, forcing the preservation of pet routes/projects, Triborough Amendment), which, is, uh....

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1 minute ago, RR503 said:

You'll see it when politicians let the agency control its operating budget (no more interference in bargaining, loading the agency down with debt service, forcing the preservation of pet routes/projects, Triborough Amendment), which, is, uh....

I don't see that ever happening...

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1 minute ago, Via Garibaldi 8 said:

I don't see that ever happening...

Ditto here. Unless we get productivity reform (which, by the way, very much encompasses such things as increasing bus speeds) the agency will suffer fiscally...which likely means service cuts. That said, given the opportunities for rider-positive interventions such as speed increases, I wouldn't immediately write off some contained actions linking speed, frequency and net-zero ops costs. 

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37 minutes ago, RR503 said:

First, we need to do away with this reductive image of operating cost reduction as somehow being bad. Reducing ops costs means you can run more service with the same amount of money -- which means you can increase your ridership. That's a very worthy goal. 

If you had actually read the paper, your question would have been answered. Page 6:

Th2I6ap.png

1. Accessibility to stations isn't the only salient variable. We could have the (6) stop at 18th St, which would undoubtedly increase accessibility -- but is it worth the time cost for riders? A 40% decrease in trip time is a ton -- you can go that much further, opening access to that many more jobs/social hubs/places. That's accessibility, too. I'm surprised these sorts of tradeoffs are so foreign to you. 

2. I can't vouch for Benn's person, of course, but that's beside the point here. Either attack the findings of the research, or...say nothing. Attacking people is quite the childish form of debate. 

You're assuming all riders' starting positions are laid out in one dimension, which they are not. The world of two dimensions makes it eminently possible that an increase in stop spacing of such a magnitude would just cause someone to make a different turn, negating the noted effect. 

Grid irregularity is only salient to walkshed when said area crosses a grid boundary. Needless to say, for many bus stops a quarter-mile grid will bridge no such boundary even if they are located in areas where the overall street grid is disjointed. There are moreover cases when grid irregularities may actually increase accessibility -- diagonal streets or crosswalk delay-free pathways through parks are great ways to reduce walking time. 

More generally, issues such as topography are absolutely important to consider. But foisting them as a reason to generally oppose stop consolidation (rather than generally supporting it with reservation for such edge cases as the hilly sections of the Bronx)? Nah. 

Eight trips is not all that much service, especially on a line that already ran good headways throughout the day already such as the 48 did in 2003. Also worth noting that the transit system in Seattle had already been experiencing growth. I agree that separating out those effects would be optimal, but let's also not pretend that an increase as incremental as that is transformative.

No one ever said operating cost reduction is bad. It is only bad when it has a negative effect for the passenger. Consider the fact that non-revenue miles was once considered a bad thing that should be minimized. Now it is considered good because  non revenue trips can be made at a lower operating cost than when passengers are picked up. So as a result many partial trips to and from depots which used to carry passengers, now run in non-revenue service. So we now have some trips traveling half-way across boroughs out of service and in the MTA’s misguided thinking, this is deemed a more efficient operation. The MTA decides which trips run not in service when the passenger loading guidelines can still be met without these trips. Okay In theory, but doesn’t work in practice because the wrong assumption is that all buses are running on time which of course is not the case. So in practice, you can have an overloaded bus bypass a stop because it is late and too full and right behind it is an empty bus not in service that won’t pick up the passengers that were bypassed. That never happened when those partial trips were passenger trips. 

Of course if you reduce your operating costs, you can use that money to run more trips but that doesn’t happen. If it did, every routine schedule change would show a net zero change in operating costs. Instead, those savings are used to help balance the budget not to provide additional service. We know that happens because every time a schedule change is announced, it is associated with an operating cost savings of several million dollars. 

Where are you getting a “40 percent” decrease in trip time from? I don’t see that anywhere. Are you saying buses are operating 40 percent quicker because of stop consolidation, or passenger trips are 40 percent quicker because of it? What I do see in what you quoted is this: “this indicates that stop consolidation had no appreciable effect on service reliability”. I thought it was supposed to improve service reliability. 

I don’t consider diagonal streets “grid irregularities”. They supplement the grid. A grid irregularity is a street without through service like Albany Avenue in Brooklyn, so there is a wide gap between the remaining north south routes creating long walking distances to them.

 

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On 10/23/2019 at 12:10 PM, RR503 said:

Eliminating stops *does* make buses faster -- normally about 12 seconds/stop. Totally agree it has to be a part of a larger plan to deal w/ traffic, bus priority, dispatching, etc, but making sure your spacing is in line w/ international standards is a very worthy goal (at which this plan totally fails).

So weird question:

Has anyone ever studied if having stops next to a red light or stop sign makes buses faster?

So in Sacramento (where I grew up), roughly 90% of all RT bus stops are located after the bus would exit the intersection. I always assumed it was due to how Sacramento streets are designed - lots of unmarked right turn lanes entering the intersection, and “merge” lanes exiting the intersection, with bus stops there to “discourage” people from making unsafe rights on red (see pictures). 
 

The flaw to it, in my logic, is that the bus has to make two stops: one for the red light, and the other for the actual stop.

Seems like a lot of (NYCT) stops are after exiting the intersection. So would moving them to the entrance side speed up routes?

This image is an up-close view of an unstriped right turn lane by where I used to live in Sacramento.

5425-FD09-6-A4-A-46-E8-BA35-1-DD128-A295

Wider image of the above pic:
804-B9-CD9-F875-4290-AED5-3-F66205-E6611

This is the exit side of that same intersection. The rectangular green sign has the bus stop under it (colored blue)
FDB2-A978-EF09-4-DF2-B3-EA-4-ADD9-E4-BF6

Wider angle of the above picture from the east:
1-DB9-B45-B-99-B2-42-BC-827-E-20-DFA061-

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15 minutes ago, Deucey said:

So weird question:

Has anyone ever studied if having stops next to a red light or stop sign makes buses faster?

So in Sacramento (where I grew up), roughly 90% of all RT bus stops are located after the bus would exit the intersection. I always assumed it was due to how Sacramento streets are designed - lots of unmarked right turn lanes entering the intersection, and “merge” lanes exiting the intersection, with bus stops there to “discourage” people from making unsafe rights on red (see pictures). 

The flaw to it, in my logic, is that the bus has to make two stops: one for the red light, and the other for the actual stop.

Seems like a lot of (NYCT) stops are after exiting the intersection. So would moving them to the entrance side speed up routes?
 

 

Not weird at all. I was just riding the Q19 a couple of days ago. It seemed there were streches were the opposite was true.

The stop was before the light, so if someone wanted to get off and the bus stopped, we would miss the green light.

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3 minutes ago, GojiMet86 said:

 

Not weird at all. I was just riding the Q19 a couple of days ago. It seemed there were streches were the opposite was true.

The stop was before the light, so if someone wanted to get off and the bus stopped, we would miss the green light.

But is missing a green, picking up pax, then going a minute later worse and slower than making the green and stopping for a minute and waiting for space to merge in?

(That’s the TL;DR version of my question.)

Edited by Deucey
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2 minutes ago, Deucey said:

But is missing a green, picking up pax, then going a minute later worse and slower than making the green and stopping for a minute and waiting for space to merge in?

(That’s the TL;DR version of my question.)

No clue. I'm not even sure on where to find such a study.

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14 hours ago, BrooklynBus said:

And if they removed stops on a case by case basis, I have no problem with that. I was basically responding to the 1,000 foot standard that another poster proposed. 

But a law requiring cars to give the right of way to buses pulling out from bus stops would save much more time than eliminating bus stops. A bus saves an average of 12 seconds by eliminating a stop. Buses sometimes wait 30 seconds to a minute until they get the right of way when pulling out. Two states have such a law. 

I will say this, a case-by-case basis is better than just being afraid to remove any stop. But at the same time I don't think there is anything wrong with trying the opposite (trying for wider spacing and reviewing instances where it should be smaller on a case-by-case basis)

And I agree that such a law should be implemented. But as the old taco seasoning commercial says "Porque no los dos?" (Why not both?)

12 hours ago, BrooklynBus said:

Your logic is flawed The added three minutes and two minutes do not cancel each other out. They are cumulative. So if my trip previously was 30 minutes, it is now 35 minutes or about 16 percent longer. 

As far as short stop spacing discouraging longer trips, all heavily used routes either have limited or SBS service or a subway alternative. Buses are usually for shorter trips. 

According to you, you used to miss the bus with a certain frequency (10%). Now you miss the bus with a higher frequency (30%). So if we are to attribute the increased missing of the bus with the stop removal then it would make sense that it would be the difference between the two frequencies, no?

As for the assertion that all heavily used routes have limiteds, SBS, or subway lines paralleling them, I could think of a few offhand where that is not the case at all (Bx9, Bx22, Bx40/42, Bx3/11/13/35, B12, and then you have to consider that a lot of limiteds are rush hour-only and often peak direction-only)

8 hours ago, BrooklynBus said:

 “In contrast to the existing 37 stops, the model indicated that the optimal number of stops was 19, with several at new locations. Average spacing increased from approximately 200 to 400 m. Passengers’ average walking time increased 0.60 min, whereas their in-vehicle times declined 1.8 min.” 

How can an increased walk of 100 meters, over 300 feet, take a little over a half minute? Who can walk 600 feet in one minute? That would mean a mile in under nine minutes. Someone would have to be running to the bus stop. 

The important sentence here is the last one. What percentage of New York City has an irregular grid system? Probably 75 percent. The only places it is fairly regular is Manhattan north of 14 Street, Bedford Stuyvesant area, and southwestern Brooklyn. Even central Brooklyn’s grid is broken by Kings County Hospital and Holy Cross Cemetery. Queen’s grid is totally irregular, Staten Island has no grid, and the Bronx has many topographical issues. So one can assume that increasing bus stop spacing will have a negative effect in those areas since many would now be outside the quarter mile they would be willing to walk. And the data presented does not dispute that. 

The maximum walk increased by 100 meters. That is different from the average walk which (assuming uniform density along the length of the route) would be about half the maximum. So it is only a 50 meter increase in the average walk (so that's about 83 meters per minute which is a hair over 3 mph which is typical walking speed)

As for having a grid, most areas of the city have a localized street grid, even if the major arterials don't form a perfect grid.

6 hours ago, RR503 said:

Ditto here. Unless we get productivity reform (which, by the way, very much encompasses such things as increasing bus speeds) the agency will suffer fiscally...which likely means service cuts. That said, given the opportunities for rider-positive interventions such as speed increases, I wouldn't immediately write off some contained actions linking speed, frequency and net-zero ops costs. 

Case in point, the S79 SBS a few years ago. They saved runtime, and reinvested those savings into more trips and ridership boomed as a result (it wasn't quite cost-neutral because they added some S78 trips on weekends but within the S79 itself it was cost-neutral)

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On 10/24/2019 at 11:03 AM, BrooklynBus said:

Stops spaced at least every 1,000 feet would be ridiculous. Don't forget you first have  to walk to the bus route and then up to another 500 feet to the stop. That means many would have to walk a half mile or more at either end. What if you are only on the bus for a half mile or a mile? That would mean at least half your trip you would have to walk. So why pay $2.75 for only half your trip? It doesn't make sense. Not to mention the longer you walk, the greater the chance of missing the bus and lengthening your trip. 

And don't forget about those who have difficulty walking.

You already have to walk 800 feet. An additional 200 feet at a 3mph walking speed is 45 seconds.

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20 minutes ago, bobtehpanda said:

You already have to walk 800 feet. An additional 200 feet at a 3mph walking speed is 45 seconds.

So what exactly is your point? That walking an additional 45 seconds is insignificant? 

What about my other points? That many would be beyond the quarter mile standard to walk to a bus stop; some have difficulty walking and can't walk at 3 mph; why pay $2.75 to walk for half your trip?, what about inclement weather?, the greater chance of missing a bus the longer you walk, that buses may not stop anyway at lightly used stops so eliminating them is of little benefit, that eliminating heavily used stops would overload remaining stops increasing fare abuse, etc. Also, some stops are still 500 feet apart, so the extra walking would be more than 45 seconds. 

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