One Bus Away

Good piece in Atlantic Cities on One Bus Away. And a source of alumni pride: I didn’t realize (or had forgotten) that this great recent innovations in public transit was invented at UW.

One constant theme of transit advocates like the good folks of Seattle transit blog and Human Transit is that frequent  service, usually defined as at least every 15 minutes, is a crucial factor in attracting “choice” riders–those who might otherwise just decide to drive. For example:

Frequency is freedom.  Reducing the wait is the essence of what makes transit resemble the freedom we associate with cars, and it’s also crucial to allowing multiple lines to function as a network.

They’re a pretty data driven bunch, and I’m quite sure they’re right about this. I do think, though, that reliable real time information like OBA can make up for some lack in frequency. I was in Seattle not long after the launch of “Rapidride D,” which was basically a scam Metro ran on the feds to secure grant money for what was initially promised as a bus rapid transit line but they didn’t actually take the necessary steps to make it “rapid.” It replaced the old route 15 local, a route with which I had some familiarity. One actual advantage the D had over the 15 local was increased frequency–while not enough to be true rapid transit, it was supposed to come every 15 minutes, whereas the old 15 local have been scheduled for every 20–a 33% increase in frequency, and moving it (if just barely) into the “frequent service” category. But the fancy new Fed-purchased buses for the line were not connected to OBA for some reason. Because this is Seattle and traffic is unpredictable and awful and there’s a drawbridge in the middle of the route that goes up many times per day, the D (like the 15 local) buses are frequently late. When I took the old 15 local, I didn’t really bother consulting a schedule–I just checked OBA, and timed my walk to the bus stop accordingly. I wasn’t annoyed by a late bus because I didn’t know it was late. Shortly after the launch of “rapidride” I went to catch the D with no information except the knowledge that Metro aimed to run the D’s every 15 minutes “or less” during that time of day. The stop had several people waiting, and we proceeded to wait another 20 minutes in the rain. A few other experiences like this made very clear to me that from my perspective as a user, reliable, remotely accessible real time data is clearly worth more than a 33% service frequency increase. Now that the technology is pretty well developed, I’m guessing it’s a whole lot cheaper, too. I don’t claim that my preferences are universal here, but the linked story suggests this is worthy of future study. (And, of course, not all riders have the technology to avail themselves of OBA data, although real time signs at major stops and a dial-up system, which I used for years before I got a smartphone, make it accessible beyond just smartphone users).

While I’m still cheering on the transit authority here in Dayton for fighting and defeating the racist obstructionism of Beavercreek, (which I wrote about here) I’m rather frustrated with them on the real time data front. It’s clear, from the signs at the transit centers, that they have real time data for–if you’re catching a bus at a transit center it’ll tell you when it’s coming, and it seems pretty accurate. But this data isn’t available in any other way that I’m aware of. This would be particularly nice in the coming weeks as the obscenely cold weather is forcing me off my bike and onto the bus, and I’d really prefer to minimize my wait time when the wind chill is in the negatives. It’s not quite as big of a deal as it is in Seattle, since buses are far less likely to be more than a few minutes late, but it’s still frustrating.