Discussing Mass Transit Part VII - Which BRT features make sense?

October 15th, 2008 at 09:57am Common Sense Alliance 1530

The core premise for a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system on the Highway 82 corridor is that improved travel times will lead to huge ridership increases.  There is no guarantee that one will lead to the other, so the real question is what we should gamble, and on which ideas, to find out.

Improved travel times are supposed to come from a variety of measures, and the Corridor Investment Study (CIS) from 2003 quantified the time savings for different components.  Reducing the number of stops, known for generations as “express” service, was expected to shorten the travel time from Aspen to Glenwood Springs by 9 minutes, but there is nothing especially “BRT” about an express bus. 

The more BRT-like features described as “Queue bypass lanes”, “Transit signal optimization”, and “Transit/HOV priority system” received a combined value of 4 to 5 minutes of travel time savings.

Perhaps most significant, the technology upgrade to automated ticketing was projected to provide a 7.5 minute improvement.

If you do not travel on a schedule, more frequent departures may also save waiting time for the next bus.

Presentations around the valley over the last few months show the proposed BRT system serving about 13 of the 46 bus stops between Rubey Park and West Glenwood.  Another 11 stops are acceptable walking distance to BRT, leaving 22 stops to be served only by a local bus. There would be even fewer stops during peak periods, but the bulk of the service will fit this description.

Some BRT runs will originate in Glenwood, and others from Carbondale and Basalt, but the parallel routes of BRT alongside existing local service will create an approximate doubling of bus capacity on Highway 82 by 2013.

We do not know how long it might take for ridership to double, thereby getting the system back to the same level of efficiency being achieved today.  RFTA has not estimated future ridership because this step is not required for the particular federal grant for which they have applied.  It is not clear why ridership projections were not prepared for RFTA’s own internal use, or public review.

As obscure as the demand side of the ridership question might be, the supply side is not much better.  If 42 passengers are carried on a particular bus run, the 42 seat bus that carries them will not be at 100 percent capacity unless every passenger travels the full length of the route.  To know the average occupancy, you need to know the average trip length, and RFTA doesn’t collect that information.  Since RFTA only knows ridership numbers and not average trip length, the number of seats that are currently available on the existing service is unknown to the RFTA board.  This is a somewhat peculiar starting point from which to argue that additional buses are needed to accommodate growth in ridership.

To really understand what is happening on a bus route, especially one that runs a distance like that of the Highway 82 corridor, requires Boarding and Alighting (B&A) surveys.  By recording where each passenger gets on and off the bus we learn all sorts of information, including both average and peak occupancy, and the popularity of individual stops.  We are then also in a position to do efficiency comparisons with other systems, as “passenger miles” is the most valuable statistical data point for that purpose.

RFTA performed a rough B&A survey for a full day in March of this year, and a more precise B&A sample was gathered privately last summer.  The roughness of RFTA’s effort was the result of combining the 46 stops on Highway 82 down to about a dozen locations, so that averaging the distances between bus stops was unavoidable.  The precise survey done last summer was a sample, recording only four complete runs between Rubey Park and West Glenwood, but it accounted for B&A points for every passenger at every stop.

Both the rough full version and the precise sample version of a B&A survey show an average trip length of about 18 miles.  Taking a couple more steps to convert everything into seat miles we get an annualized average occupancy of about 37 percent for the Highway 82 corridor.  There is ample room for ridership growth on the existing system.

The results of the precise B&A survey also suggest why there should be a more thorough use of this tool by RFTA.  As previously mentioned, it seems likely that people in Basalt, Carbondale, Blue Lake, etc. will make their way to a nearby BRT stop rather than take the valley local bus.  Glenwood residents will only be able to board the BRT near Wal-Mart, which means that Ride Glenwood Springs, their in-town shuttle, will work as a feeder system.  That leaves 15 stops at which bus riders will rely on the valley local.

Using the four runs monitored last summer as an example, total riders from the 15 local stops never exceeded six, or more than five at any one time.  If RFTA is considering using full size buses for this service, the waste will be considerable.  Based on this preliminary data, RFTA could test the theory of whether express bus service will result in big ridership gains by contracting with a private company* to provide van service for the minor bus stops.

An automated ticketing system can be designed to provide complete B&A information.  (Have passengers key in their exact destination stop rather than a zone, and issue a ticket even when no fare is required.)  The cost is only a few million dollars, as opposed to a couple hundred, making this the most cost effective of the time saving features.  An additional benefit is that it makes the bus driver’s job much easier.

Not only is automated ticketing the best of the “BRT” features, it appears to be the data collection tool we need first - to determine whether the rest of the plan makes any sense. 

 *Disclosure – the author of this article works for a private transportation company.          

Next:  Part VIII

Things that make you go hmmmm.

Entry Filed under: Transportation, Basalt, Snowmass, Carbondale, Glenwood Springs, Aspen, El Jebel, Pitkin County, Rifle, Garfield County, Eagle County