[Editorial - not the official position of CART]

Remove Bus Stops on Broadway to Win

Buses can't get anywhere if they're always starting or stopping. TARC's #23 on Broadway has so many bus stops, that it is hopelessly slow. Stops average every tenth of a mile.  Around 3rd street, there are even two stops on the same block! Buses run standing-room only in this part of town, and all the stops are used constantly.

View #23 TARC Stops in a larger map

The stops at the head of the block are particularly nasty. Suppose you have a bus behind a line of cars. One lane over to the right, the bus can't travel because of on-street parking, but at the head of the block the bus must pull over to get to the stop. The bus is stuck until the light turns green. When the light is green, the bus pulls aside and must stop, almost certainly losing the green. In six trials, the driver/passenger team was only efficient enough to get the green once (actually they got a yellow).

In the eight stops from 9th street to 2nd street (inclusive), a total of 2:18 was lost to missing red lights from this phenomenon. That was just one run, with one video camera, but from my limited experience that's typical. Add to that time where the bus is accelerating or decelerating for a stop and not at its peak speed. I'd estimate a accel/decel pair as taking 20 seconds and you spend 2:40 travelling at half speed, or 1:20 worth of time. Taking accel/decel and blown greens, you have a time cost of 3:38 for the eight stops. That's one way.

Say you cut half the stops. Just throw 9th, 7th, 5th, and 2nd street in the trash. On the maps, these have no dot in the middle. (And move the unused bus shelter from 9th to 8th). Half of the 3:38 would now be saved on every one-way trip, and if the corresponding changes were made on the other side of the street, you'd be back to saving 3:38 per circuit. Assume the traffic is heavy enough only for this to make a difference from 7am to 7pm. That's 51 circuits * 3m38s = 3:05:30. Yes, that's right: three driver-hours saved per day from removing five stops.

But that's not why I wrote this article. I'm just bored to tears of waiting for the bus to put-put-put down Broadway. When you think that the load on the bus peaks in this corridor, that there are perhaps thirty passengers on the bus at any given time, the time amounts to four person days saved per day. Average life expectancy is 78 years in America. If these bus stops have been this way since 1989, they've essentially killed one customer of old age in that time.

And that's exactly the impression one gets riding the bus with all these stops. You feel like you're dying of old age. I dare you to watch the video in realtime, without fast forwarding. Its incredibly dull. I find myself hopping off the bus and riding in the rain just to avoid the incredible boredom.

But Dave...

I can hear the replies now:

"How can you force people to walk 500 feet more to their bus stops? That's too hard!"

IMHO its not TARC's job to double guess the walkable layout of the city. If you're not capable to deal with the walkable metrics of Louisville, then you're going to have massive problems no matter what. There are a bzongaload of examples of this:

• AASHTO MUTCD crosswalk signal timing standards assume you can move across crosswalks at 2.5 3.5 fps. To cross an additional 500 feet, that's only 3:20 2:20 of time - over half of which you'll get back in faster bus throughput! [thanks to our commenter from Columbus for setting me straight on this -ed]
• Streets here are designed in one-way couplets - if you can't navigate the distance between a couplet, say walking from 5th to 4th, then you can't use the #4 downtown either. If you're so slow that you don't take the #4, but you do take the #23, and you avoid using TARC3, then I'd like to shake your hand, because you're a hero. But only if you exist. We don't need to bend over backwards for imaginary people.
• What percentage of bus stops in Louisville have bus stops even 1000 feet in either direction? 20% or less? Chances are your walking distance is dominated not by your walk in the CBD, but by your walk at the other end of your trip.

Lets be brutally honest. This is not some snipe hunt, like the #29 with a dozen riders, picking up Uncle Tweedy at his front door in Seneca Gardens. The #23 - at its ridership peak - is honest to God mass transit. It is running with people standing in the ailes most of the time. Efficiency matters. We need to discard this "human services" mentality on this route. More people will be attracted by the greater speed than will be scared off by the extra walk. We will board faster, debark faster, and pay more farebox per driver hour.

If TARC and APCD employees aren't using this bus to go to meetings at eachother's buildings, 20 blocks away on a bedrock transit line, then that's a sign that there's something broken about the transit line! The test of a tool is whether the tool's makers will voluntarily use the tool. In software development, this is known as "eating your own dog food". The #23 as currently running probably doesn't pass the dogfood test.

Notes

All times were derived from videoing a single run of the #23 westbound around 1pm on a weekday. Thus the time savings error bars are enormous. However, external experience tells me its on the right track. E.g. as a tired bike courier on a hot day, with a run due in J-town, it pays to close the gap on the #23 by Jackson street, because otherwise the bike's 10mph can't ever catch it. I know the #23 is easy to catch in the CBD.

Also, I feel this sort of analysis should be applied from 1st through Jackson as well, but YouTube only allows 10m minute videos, so I stopped after 10 blocks.

Its easy to test stop elimination out without doing a major change. All the stops marked for removal except 9th street shelter could be removed just by putting a bag over the TARC sign, similar to "No Parking" signs on parking meters. This kind of thing happens all the time for sidewalk closures and stuff anyway. If it doesn't work out, take the bags off.