The last few posts, starting here, reviewed some recent US network redesigns at our firm, all of which increased ridership above the rate at which they increased service. In other words, they increased productivity, the ratio of ridership divided by the quantity of service provided. They also increased productivity faster than it was rising overall in peer systems.
What can these examples tell us? The same thing that we know from our many other ridership-increasing redesigns:
- Think about the ridership-coverage tradeoff. Virtually any transit agency could increase ridership by abandoning areas whose development pattern is unfavorable to transit and focusing more service where the pattern is more favorable. But as government agencies accountable to elected officials, they usually aren’t being told to do this. Coverage service — which means service run in low demand areas knowing that ridership will be low — is very popular and fiercely defended. That’s why an effective plan involves clear decisions about the unavoidable tradeoff between ridership goals and coverage goals. (No, microtransit does not get you around this problem.) This requires a public conversation and a clear decision by the Board, and to get to that, you must …
- Include everyone in a reality-based conversation. What is critical to the success of these networks and projects is that in each case we worked closely and carefully with the agency, stakeholders, and the community to have a clear conversation about why and how to change the system. Everyone affected could understand why each agency was changing and what the goal of the major change was. But these conversations were reality-based. We created tools to help people see what was mathematically possible, so that they spent less time advocating fantasies and more time thinking about the actual problem facing the agency.
- Get the fare rules out of the way. Monterey-Salinas and Santa Cruz both made changing buses free at the same time they implemented the redesign. Charging people to use two buses instead of one is insane. It would be more convenient for our analysis if the fare change and service change had happened at different times, because it makes it hard to sort out the causes of the ridership jump. But in fact, they had to eliminate transfer charges for the redesign to work, because efficient networks tend to require a bit more transfering. Many authorities still have fare rules that penalize transferring, and that therefore require the operation of less efficient and liberating services.
- Talk about freedom. We never talk about network redesigns in terms of ridership predictions or modeling, because many people sensibly don’t trust these models, and they’re not really necessary. What matters is that we’re expanding freedom, and that’s what we measure. We’re making it possible for more people to get to more places sooner, so they can do more things in their lives. This turns out to be a great way to increase ridership, but it’s also something that everyone cares about.
At our firm we’ve lost count of the number of network redesigns we’ve led, both in the US and elsewhere. But they have almost all increased ridership, to the extent that was a goal. We’re proud of our work in agencies of all sizes, from small cities with a few buses to giant cities like Houston and Dublin. We have a lot of well-honed instincts and methodologies that make us good to hire for your community, but the real source of what we do is simple and we’re happy to explain it to the world: We have clear conversations about mathematical reality, and help people see all the possibilities that are before them.
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