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do line numbers matter at all?

Posted on August 18, 2011 in Branding, Legibility, Navigation

Does anyone care how the lines or routes of a transit system are numbered?  Commenters Chris and Paul Jewel, the latter a former colleague of mine, say no.   They're responding to this line numbering scheme proposed by LANTA in Allentown-Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which even makes a line numbering distinction based solely on whether a route runs on Saturday. Chris's example-rich comment boils down to this:

Route design is what makes the transit system easy to understand, not what you number the routes.

Paul Jewel piles on:

I think many transit planners tend to overthink the issue of what passengers want and more importantly, what they have the capacity to understand. After 20 years of planning I have yet to come across more than a handful of transit patrons who really care about the numbering scheme of their bus system or for that matter…the system they are visiting. Visual cues (i.e. good maps) and simple number systems (perhaps variations of the NYMTA's bus lines (M=Manhattan, Q = Queens, etc) are…IMHO…far more effective than complicated numbering systems that try to organize lines into neat and clean systems.

If I may update my earlier post on this topic (which is considerably funnier than this one):  Line numbering is really a dialogue between four impulses:

  1. Big-picture Visionaries, who imagine schemes where each number will not just refer to a line, but reveal its position and role in the network.  They want the customer to be able to identify her service amid the complexity of the offerings, but also to find it easy to grasp the whole network and how its parts fit together, so that it's less threatening to use transit for something other than a single rigid commute.   For example, these people may think up schemes that recall the patterns of numbered streets and avenues in many North American cities, or the similar numbering of the US Interstate system.  Visionaries, in their extreme form, can sometimes become …
  2. Perfectionists, who believe that a line number, properly chosen, can encode all the richness and complexity of a service, so that to those in the know, the number 834 will tell you where the bus runs, what node it feeds into, how frequent it is, what color the bus is, whether it runs on Saturday, and whether you can expect the driver to be courteous.
  3. Anarchists, who need a number for a new line, don't care about the vision, and pick whatever number comes to mind. 
  4. Conservatives, who believe that once a line number is assigned it should never be changed, no matter how offensive it may be to the Visionaries, let alone the Perfectionists.  Conservatives are responsible for the permanence of various reckless numberings made by Anarchists over the years.

Paul and Chris have spoken for the Anarchists, but we've heard from a few Visionaries and Perfectionists on the last post as well.  Conservatives on this score don't tend to read transit blogs.

I agree that when perfectionists run wild, you get overly specific line numbering systems.   When I hear of a scheme where, say, the first digit of a three-digit number signifies subarea, the second signifies type, and the third signifies the node served, my first thought is :"You're going to run out of numbers. In fact, you already have."

But I do think there are several uses for line numbering systems that are clear and simple, and that help a customer see important information that might otherwise be unclear. For example, in Sydney, an important frequent corridor from downtown to the university is known as the "420-series", denoting a group of routes (421, 422, 423 etc) that all run this common segment but then branch further out. This is a clean way of conveying both the useful frequent inner segment and the individuality of the different lines.

In a huge system, numbering by subarea helps customers just sort through what would otherwise be an enormous complex mass of line numbers. Put it this way: If, to make your trip, you can take any of five routes, which of the following would you rather have to remember?

  • Route 1, 4, 7, 8, or 9
  • Any route numbered in the 30s
  • Route F, 9, J2, 76, or 239K

Few would prefer the third, I think, so I don't think it's true that a totally random or Anarchist pattern of numbers is ideal. It's also clearly true that lower numbers feel simpler. Using lower route numbers in the central city, as many big regional agencies do, helps this core area, where ridership is highest, feel more navigable without reference to the more complex networks that the suburbs require.

I do also think route numbers can help capture some basic distinctions of importance. Using certain route number groups for specialized commuter express lines, for example, helps them not distract from the simpler all-day network. Rapid transit lines can reasonably have simpler numbers, such as the letters used by Seattle's Rapid Ride against the background of 1-3 digit local line numbers.  The letters cause the Rapid Ride to "stand out" as a backbone, just as the agency intends, much the way the lettered rail lines do in San Francisco against the background of numbered bus lines.

Here's the bottom line:  Numbers, like words, never just refer.  They also connote.  You can refer to a particular bus route as F, 9, J2, 76, or 239K, but those numberings will inevitably convey subliminal messages about those services, especially in relation to the other numbers around them.  "239K" for example, connotes that "this is a really complicated network, where you deal with details even to remember a line number, let alone figure out the service."  Likewise, if you see a long segment served by lines 121, 123, 124, and 127, the connotation is that the 120s represent some kind of pattern that might be useful in understanding the service.  It's almost impossible not to refer to this segment as "the 120s".

 So do line numbers matter?  What do you think?

what if route numbers signified service level?

Posted on August 15, 2011 in Frequent Networks, Legibility

From the new line numbering scheme (and service plan) in Allentown-Bethlehem, Pennsylvania:

All routes will be designated with a three-digit number which will provide an indication of the level of service

100’s routes act as the core routes – they will provide service Monday through Saturday throughout the day and into the evening.  These routes will also operate on Sunday;

200’s routes provide service along key urban corridors Monday through Saturday during day hours;

300’s routes provide service on the more suburban corridors in the region and operate Monday through Friday during day hours;

400’s routes continue to act as special routes to provide added capacity to meet demand from Allentown School District students;

500’s routes are LANta Flex routes – new flexible, reservation based feeder services designed for more suburban areas; and

600’s routes are circulator and crosstown routes designed to address specific markets.

So the whole numbering system is about service quantity.  Clearly, too, the higher numbers mean "don't less this distract you from the more versatile lower-numbered routes," which is exactly the principle of good frequency branding or a good network map such as Portland's (which distinguishes four tiers: light rail, frequent bus, infrequent bus, and peak-only).

Obviously, most agencies would resist the Allentown-style numbering because it means that if you change a service level you need to renumber the route.  But if followed through, it would be a step toward branding a core network (presumably also the most frequent) with route numbers, yet another way for that most versatile network to be most visible to customers. 

Personally I wouldn't recommend this if it were exclusively about service duration, as the summary states.  I'd do it only if it were also about a frequency distinction, or at least an intended one.  But it's interesting that while Frequent Networks are intended to be lasting top priorities of an agency, and usually represent permanent strong markets, no agency (in either North America or Australasia) has "locked in" the commitment to a Frequent Network by numbering the frequent lines differently.

in seattle next 3 days …

Posted on August 13, 2011 in Meta, Seattle

… but probably not with much spare time for non-work, non-marketing items.  I'm the lunchtime speaker on Monday at the APTA Multimodal Operations Planning Workshop, and will be at the conference through Wednesday.  It's always a good source of planning stories so I expect to emerge with some material, though maybe not time to write about it.

This is a very busy time for me between the 1.5 jobs and the book, so remember, we welcome quality guest posts — or even just stories from a thoughtful "correspondent," like this guy, that I can publish with just a little commentary. 

cambridge, uk: world’s longest guided busway opens

Posted on August 7, 2011 in Bus Rapid Transit, UK

From our UK correspondent Peter Brown:

The Cambridgeshire Guided Busway finally opens [today], Sunday 7th August, and at 25km will overtake Adelaide's O-Bahn (on which it was partly based) as the world's longest guided busway.  It will be an 'open' BRT as services will not be restricted solely to the Busway.  The guideway consists of two sections.  The longest runs from the northern edge of Cambridge to St Ives, while the shorter southern section runs from Cambridge rail station to Trumpington.  There are three Park and Ride sites on the route.
 
The buses are standard UK designs (single and double deckers) fitted with guide wheels.  Guideway stops will feature off-bus ticketing.  Guideway stop (prior to opening):

Cambridge busway

Two bus companies (Stagecoach and local independant Whippet Coaches) have signed a partnership agreement with Cambridgeshire County Council for exclusive use of the Busway for 5  years.  Services will operate under a single brand – "the busway".
 
More info:
 
http://www.busandcoach.com/featurepage.aspx?id=2088&categoryid=5
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridgeshire_Guided_Busway

If this busway doesn't turn up significant benefits in customer experience, it will probably be the last, or at least the last to be done with guide-wheels.  Adelaide's pioneering O-Bahn is now 25 years old, so one hopes the state of the art has moved on.  (There's also a guided busway in Nagoya, Japan, dating from 2001, where the government classifies it as a railway.)  All of these, including Cambridge, are open busways, i.e. designed so that buses can run off the ends of the facility onto various street-running lines. 

So I'll be curious to see how this goes.

bus rapid transit: two kinds of flexibility

Posted on August 5, 2011 in Brisbane, Bus Rapid Transit

 

On yesterday's post on the watering-down of Bus Rapid Transit proposals in Bristol, UK, a number of comments seem a little vague about how buses are more "flexible" than rail.  For example, Carl writes:

The two primary justifications for BRT [are]:

1. Like rail but cheaper. …
2. More flexible. More flexible means it doesn't need exclusive right of way everywhere (usually the chokepoints), that other traffic can use the lanes, etc.

This a very common way of framing the question, and a very misleading one.

First of all, the notion of "flexibility" used in #2 has nothing to do with the bus/rail distinction, at least if we're talking about surface light rail or streetcars.  You can put streetcars or light rail in mixed traffic and get all the same speed and reliability problems that a bus would deliver in the same situation.  So again, in urban transit:  Speed and reliability are not about vehicle technology; they are about what can get in your way.

But Bus Rapid Transit offers a very different flexibility that in certain situations out-competes rail.  A busway can be designed so that buses from many surface lines can flow into it.  This potentially spreads the usefulness of the busway over a large area without requiring an additional trunk-to-feeder connection.  Connections are unavoidable in good networks, but if there are easy opportunities to eliminate one, it's still worth going for.

This ability to flow through to local lines yields what we call an open busway.  North American open busways include the Ottawa busway network, the Pittsburgh busway, and the Los Angeles El Monte Transitway, but they are much more common overseas, including the developed world's most extensive example in Brisbane, Australia.  This kind of flexibility is impossible to do with rail.

Closed busways, which has none of these benefits but can have more "specailized" vehicles, include the Los Angeles Orange Line.

The flexibility of open busways makes sense only where it matches the pattern of the market. Brisbane is a highly radial city, with a single downtown and densities dropping away as you move away from it.  Outlying nodes of high activity, which could be a strong endpoint for a closed busway or rail line, are scarce.  So the open busway makes perfect sense.  It allows busway service to spread out over a larger area, yielding high frequencies on the inner busway where the demand is higher, and correspondingly lower frequency further out.  It's the kind of flexibility that fits the city.

watered-down bus rapid transit: the u.k. edition

Posted on August 3, 2011 in Bus Rapid Transit, UK

We often hear that proper Bus Rapid Transit [BRT] is impossible in the US because any such proposal gets watered down by the defenders of traffic lanes until it's nothing but a fancy bus stuck in traffic.  I don't believe in surrendering to the inevitability of that, but there's no question that it's a political challenge in many cities.  Meanwhile, US readers should be assured that this isn't a particularly US problem.   Our reliable UK correspondent Peter Brown reports:

It would seem that [Bristol's Bus Rapid Transit] scheme has gone from medium to low end BRT due to central government latching on to the ease in which economies can be made by deleting the features that make it rapid – i.e. dedicated busways, and continuous bus lanes.  We are now reduced to short stretches of kerbside bus lanes approaching junctions, but no traffic signal pre-emption.  Where there were going to be median bus lanes, they are now going to be kerb running. 
 
This will make the BRT little different in the eyes of the (already sceptical) public to the separate package of conventional bus corridor improvements branded 'Showcase Bus Routes', several of which have been rolled out over the last few years.  In order to distinguish BRT in the eyes of the public I think the BRT stops are going to have to look much different from standard bus shelters, and the vehicles are going to have to have some eye catching branding, and have hi spec interiors. 
 
It troubles me that much of the BRT busways were to be located in the North Bristol fringe, an area of low density cul-de-sac esatates, out-of-town business and retail parks, all connected by dual carriageway roads and multi-lane roundabouts which cannot handle existing peak hour traffic, and would have made a real statement about better public transport.  There are also plans  for further massive housing development, and new roads that will add to the traffic load and threaten BRT reliability.  This is the latest newsletter that has got me so worried:
 
http://travelplus.org.uk/media/218106/rt%20travelplus%20newsletter%20final.pdf
 
Meanwhile I continue to defend the principles of BRT in the local press web comments!
 
http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/discussions/Does-think-bendy-bus-plan-abandoned-tram-pursued/discussion-12818823-detail/discussion.html#comment-2459045

Is this problem less likely in continental Europe?  I haven't toured the great BRTs of France, but the Amsterdam Zuidtangent certainly has gaps where, even in the judgment of the transit-loving Dutch, keeping an exclusive lane for the BRT was Just Too Hard.  (I'm not talking just about the narrow streets of Renaissance Haarlem, where the limitations are understandable, but also the quite modern southern suburbia where the line runs.) 

It would be great to hear stories about how BRT has fared in other developed countries, against inevitable demands to compromise reliability because it might get in the way of cars. 

transit and a shrinking u.s. government

Posted on August 2, 2011 in US Federal Policy

The recent "deal" intended to cut the US Federal deficit looks like it can only lead to further cuts in Federal spending on almost everything. 

Cities, in general, require higher levels of infrastructure, and a range of other spending, than the country as a whole.  So the further Federal budget cutting to come is likely to mean further damage to essential services in cities, including public transit.  While a powerful cadre of urban economists and thinkers are ready to make the case that the city is essential to the economy of the nation, and the battle for continued Federal funding may well be won, cities and local governments, including transit agencies, should clearly be strategizing for the possibility of permanent decline in Federal investment.

It's important to separate, in all of our minds, two questions about urban services such as transit that often get confused:

  • Should urban services be subsidized by taxpayers to purchase their benefits to the whole community and economy?
  • At what level of government should this be done?

I have strong feelings about the first question but am quite agnostic about the second.  It's unavoidable, though, that if the Federal level of government decides to care less about cities, other levels of government will have to care more, and spend more.

The prospect of shifting responsibility from one level of government to another is understandably horrifying to anyone close to the task.  Voters must be convinced of the need to adapt to new realities with new funding.  Processes that have been working have to be changed.  Long-settled debates must be unsettled.  Most challenging is that the prospect casts doubt on the job security of the very people who have to make it work, though in general the job-security impact would be that Federal jobs would disappear and state-region-city jobs would have to grow. 

But you always have to separate thinking about the transition from thinking about the end state. 

Would it be a bad thing for each state, each city, and each urban region, to have its own debate about its own funding sources for transit, as it would for similar urban services that may see federal cuts?  The outcomes would vary from city to city and state to state.  Would that be bad?

Even within urban regions, is it a bad thing for different cities to want different levels of service, and to come forward with their own funding sources if they want more than higher levels of government, including their own regional transit agency, can offer? 

What would a US be like in which each city's transit network reflected its own resources and intentions, based on its own hard-won local consensus, in the face of declining Federal funding and therefore declining Federal influence? 

California and Texas would become even more different than they are now, as they charted this landscape guided by their very different values.  Urban outcomes in general would grow more diverse, as the choice became more stark between low-tax, low-infrastructure, low-service cities and others with higher taxes but a stronger foundation of infrastructure and essential services.  So we'd see, even more clearly, the result of that competition.

In other words, US urban policy would become more like that of Canada, a country where the Federal role in most urban matters is much smaller than in the US, but where cities, regional governments, and provinces are correspondingly freer to chart their own way, and pay for it.

It's easy to imagine that more conservative states would just let their cities die through underfunding, but that's certainly not happening in Alberta.  Canada's most conservative province, a natural resource powerhouse that draws comparison to Texas in its boom times, has remarkably good inner-city transit policy and a continuous stream of provincial investment.  Calgary's downtown commuter parking cost is about the same as San Francisco's and the result is extremely strong ridership on its bus and light rail system, at least for commutes, and support for a dense core. 

The transition to a more Canada-like Federal role would be hell.  Everyone involved is understandably horrified by the prospect, including me much of the time.  But if the Federal budget-slashers win, US cities and states will be on that course whether they like it or not.  Are we sure the eventual outcome would be a disaster?

Just thinking out loud here.  Discuss.

paris: did rail worsen freeway congestion?

Posted on July 30, 2011 in Light Rail, Paris, Streetcars (Trams)

Can transit projects be judged based on the "welfare" of various user groups?

IMG_0771 If you know how to equate the "welfare" of a transit rider with the "welfare" of a motorist, and are not concerned with any other forms of welfare, you can do a calculation that appears to say whether a transit project was a good idea.  

From a new paper in World Transit Research by Rémy Prud'homme. 

In Paris, an old bus line on the Maréchaux Boulevards has been replaced by a modern tramway [the T3, opened in December 2006]. Simultaneously, the road-space has been narrowed by about a third. A survey of 1000 users of the tramway shows that the tramway hardly generated any shift from private cars towards public transit mode. However, it did generate important intra-mode [shifts]: from bus and subway towards tramway, and from Maréchaux boulevards towards the Périphérique (the Paris ring road) for cars. 

… The welfare gains made by public transport users are more than compensated by the time losses of the motorists, and in particular, by the additional cost of road congestion on the Périphérique. The same conclusion applies with regard to CO2 emissions: the reductions caused by the replacement of buses and the elimination of a few cars trips are less important than the increased pollution caused by the lengthening of the automobile trips and increased congestion on the ring road. Even if one ignores the initial investment of 350 M€, the social impact of the project, as measured by its net present value is negative. This is especially true for suburbanites. The inhabitants (and electors) of Paris pocket the main part of the benefits while supporting a fraction of the costs.

So here is our plate of facts:

  • On series of boulevards running parallel to the Périphérique, the motorway that circles Paris, traffic lanes were removed and a light rail line was added.  This was done less than five years ago.
  • The light rail line didn't attract new riders beyond those already on the bus and subway systems.
  • The closure of traffic lanes caused traffic to shift from the boulevards to the motorway, increasing congestion on the motorway, therefore affecting many motorists traveling long distances around the edges of the city. .
  • As a result, the benefits tended to fall heavily within Paris, among public transit patrons on affected boulevards, while the disbenefits fell on suburban motorists.

All that may be true.  Does this mean the rail line was a mistake?  Discuss.

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