Transit is an essential aspect of any functioning city, but what happens when the system doesn’t work efficiently? Complaints about bus systems always seem to echo the same issues — the buses experience runtime delays, comments on the cleanliness of the transit system and concerns about safety.
Simplifying the System
Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (Metro) was one of the largest system to undergo a complete overhaul of its existing system. Metro is operating on a five-year plan; which focuses on reworking bus schedules, creating easier trips to link riders to key activity centers, creating simple connections, adds additional routes and puts into motion computer-aided dispatch. Kurt Luhrsen, the head of planning for Metro said that on a project of this magnitude, there is a great deal of research that goes into it.
“We definitely look at development patterns. So we look if new buildings have come online, if different activities have relocated to different parts of the area —like if the social security office closed and moved somewhere else, we’d look at how can we change how that location is serviced. We look at how demographics have changed, if they’ve changed at all, and how traffic patterns have changed. We look at our ridership, to see where ridership is up or down and adjust it accordingly,” said Luhrsen.
The major service change took place last August.
“August 15; it’s burned into my memory,” said Luhrsen.
They also took feedback from customers to help further the growth of the system in January. “We worked on making a lot of enhancements and tweaks to the system to improve it. We added a bunch of trips to different routes where we’re having standing loads. We revised a number of different schedules, traffic areas were much heavier than we thought, and they needed more running time. There were routes where traffic was a lot less and they needed less. So we rewrote schedules and moved them around. We moved to articulated buses from 40-footers. So we made a bunch of switches all aimed at enhancing the customer experience,” he said.
Offering Advice to other Agencies
As Houston Metro continues to successfully change its bus service network, its had other agencies reaching out with questions.
“We talked to about a dozen different cities; I just got my first international call from Auckland," said Luhrse. "We’ve talked to folks in Boston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Austin, Rochester and Maryland.
“A variety of agencies that have asked us why did we do what we did, how did we do it, what did we learn from it and would we do it all again? So we’ve been having lots of phone conversations and such about those lessons learned and we will continue to have them for as many agencies are interested in improving their networks and improving their ridership.”
Luhrsen said that while some agencies are interested in the initial planning process, others already have a plan created, but they have questions about engagement.
“You have to have an engaged board and an engaged community and a commitment to spend the time and effort to go through the process.”
Some of them have asked about the planning process and how they planned the network. Luhrsen said many of the questions are aimed at how Metro managed to switch over a system with 10,000 bus stops overnight — and how to communicate with the public. Metro is able to provide insight into what aspects worked, and what didn’t.
One such agency, the Maryland Transit Authority (MTA) reached out to Metro because of the scale of the transit system and the comprehensive network redesign that Metro underwent. Initial conversations with Metro revealed numerous lessons learned that MTA is taking to heart.
MTA staff said one example was that Metro suggested signage and routing be as flexible as possible with the understanding that routes may need to be changed once the new system goes live. As a result, MTA is designing signs that can easily be changed if needed, and designing a route structure that can also be modified relatively easily if necessary.
Bringing Transit Into This Century
MTA began its own bus network re-design — initially starting in 2013 with the Bus Network Improvement Project (BNIP). The project was a comprehensive analysis of the bus system that looked at routes, ridership patterns, new job centers, origin-destination pairs, and where MTA was and was not performing well.
The BNIP process lasted from 2013 to 2014 and focused on assessing the existing MTA transit system, examining socioeconomic and demographic factors pertaining to the system and gathering comment on the existing system through public outreach events.
Paul Comfort, administrator/CEO of the MTA arrived in May 2015. What he discovered was that MTA, a statewide agency that provides 380,000 trips per day, hosts the majority of its riders on the bus system.
“What I saw was that the worst preforming out of all of them was bus, and busses are what most people ride. When I got here senior management wasn’t even measuring on-time performance on a daily basis. They were recording it monthly and trying to do trend analysis,” explained Comfort. “So one of the first things we did was make sure that our key performance indicators were measured on a basis where we could actually use the information on a day-to-day basis to manage our work and so we changed and added other key performance measures and then started working immediately on improving our bus on-time performance.”
Comfort said that when he arrived the bus performance times were in the low 70s. After he implemented dramatic improvements, they changed that performance time to 80 in a 90-day period.
The MTA decided to move forward with a transformative complete network re-design — BaltimoreLink, based on moving to a hub-and-spoke model for local bus service with built-in transfer opportunities to light rail and metro subway, as well as creating a high frequency, easy-to-use new service — City Link — as the backbone of the bus route system along with implementing new suburb-to-suburb express routes.
“We’re trying to take this from the 1980s to the 21st century,” said Comfort.
Reaping the Rewards
While both Metro and MTA have more to complete before each agency’s redesign is complete, they’ve seen benefits already.
“We were able to put together a very large frequent network of routes. Twenty-two frequent routes that are seven days a week, running 15-minute service or better for 15 hours a day. That puts a million people and a million jobs within walking distance of that network. That’s very exciting for our customers to easily get to places — whether that be jobs centers, educational opportunities, recreational or shopping,” said Luhrsen.
Metro was also able to expand its weekend service. Adding 40 percent more on Saturday and nearly doubled Sunday service.
“We heard from so many people during the planning process that they wanted to be able to depend on their network all days of the week,” explained Luhrsen. “So many people do not have traditional jobs where they work Monday through Friday from 8 to 5. They work odd hours and they work on Saturday and Sunday. So it was really putting a strain on their lives. Just seeing how people have responded to that extra service has been really rewarding.”
Comfort worked hard to change public opinion, heading to around 20 town hall meetings, answering questions and getting everyone “rowing in the same direction.” He feels that they’ve been successfully pushing through institutional opposition. There are also plans for future growth. Comfort is aiming to have it be more data driven. He also said that he continues to demand improvements and work with business leaders.
Comfort said he wants to use transit to really lift the city and lift the region. "We touch half the lives in the city almost every day and we’re in an opportunity to really make a difference in their lives. Not just getting them from A to B, but really doing it in style, getting them there on time, having them be safe, having them feel good about riding transit,” said Comfort. “The way to do that is to create a safe, reliable system and give people world-class customer service. The future of our transit system here, is to meet the needs of the community in an outstanding way.”
