![]() We did it before COVID and today should be no different. And then focus on the riders who have been and are consistently using the system. Rather than run mostly empty buses on certain routes and cancel trips on busier routes (which is a chronic issue here at CT), lets make those hard choices in combining redundant service and outright axing anemic routes. I think it’s time to fact facts: many of those riders aren’t coming back and it’s a waste of time (and taxes) in trying to entice riders to return. But the riders, understandably, went away while we maintained most service. Pre-COVID, we were running frequent service that was crowded with riders. However, in today’s case of low ridership, it wasn’t the buses that went away but the riders. Yes, reduced frequency makes for a terrible system and turns people away. That is a big reason why ridership is down. Basically the appropriate adjustments to the system given the reduction of crowding have already been you reduce service, you make transit much worse. This aspect of the system has already adjusted. A lot of routes that used to come quite often, don’t any more. This was not geared towards increasing ridership (it did increase ridership, but there were probably better ways to do so). This meant buses running every couple minutes. In the past, we used to run a lot of buses during rush hour, to deal with crowding. We try to balance coverage with ridership (regardless of what that ridership actually is). Buses like the 7 would run every five minutes, while there would be very few buses outside the city. If we were focused on ridership, a lot of routes wouldn’t exist, and a lot of routes would run a lot more often. Keep in mind, our system was never geared towards ridership. ![]() Making those cuts permanent (or making additional cuts) would only make ridership much worse. Cuts to service make the service less attractive. Of course there are other factors, but this is a really big one. In contrast, if you reduce service, you make transit much worse. But those toasters are still as good as ever. If you are making say, toasters, and people aren’t buying toasters like they used to, you make fewer toasters. Categories Uncategorizedīut transit isn’t like other commodities. Tackling these head on now will better help lay the foundation for recovery. I’m cognizant of the fact that there are many complex issues at play here, but transit agencies are at serious risk of losing many long-time riders for good. Nonetheless, I’ve spoken to a number of former riders who no longer feel safe on transit so these points certainly warrant substantive discussion at the leadership level for both Metro and King County. Policies to tackle these issues head-on, like fare enforcement or driver intervention, are controversial and fraught with risk. There are additional exogenous factors that further exacerbate driver morale, like substance abuse and homelessness, which impact perceptions of safety for both riders and operators. Even so, pay alone may not be sufficient incentive to draw in new operators. However, significant compensation package changes often have to go to the King County Council, which is lined with its own bureaucracy. On the hiring front, boosting pay and offering bonuses is a solution, albeit a partial one. In my own experience, however, even these sources sometimes conflict with each other. Not having readily available service information ultimately means that riders have to take an extra step of finding out about cancellations, whether through some GTFS-fed app, trip alerts, or the Trip Planner. It’s possible that there was too much overhead to do this on a daily basis, although Sound Transit manages to continue this practice. Metro previously highlighted cancelled trips on their published web schedules but no longer does so. Unfortunately, planners and schedulers don’t have a real-time way to make service adjustments on the fly.Įven if not much can be done to fill service gaps, the lack of information is also a major point of irritation. That’s why there are large gaping holes at some points in the day but not others. On the rider end, it basically appears that trips are getting indiscriminately canceled with no nod to headways. While I don’t have the inside scoop on how trips get canceled, the staffing deficit means that a slate of scheduled runs are left unpicked by drivers and that any additional call-outs have no extraboard (i.e., spare) operators to fill them. These impacts have bled downstream to affect a substantial number of riders, who often endure cancelled trips and gutted service with insufficient notice. The problem is particularly acute at Metro, which is currently short over 100 full-time operators. ![]() It’s fairly well-established at this point that bus driver shortages nationwide are hampering transit recovery efforts.
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